The Ongoing Political, Philosophical, Social Theory Thread

[rubecube]

First of all, Peter, go take a cold shower. I figured it might be long overdue to start one of these threads so we don't keep polluting the actual political threads.

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Every non-liberal state has also encountered those issues. After all, human history is little more than a register of the follies and misfortunes of mankind. Slavery, conquest, subjugation, ruthless exploitation of people and resources - all universal practices carried out since the dawn of our species in every corner of the planet.

Sure, but different theories can share similar traits or outcomes can they not?

Still, liberal democracy is also responsible for outlawing slavery. For the emancipation of women from the shackles of tradition. For universal suffrage. For the right to own property without some lord confiscating it whenever it pleased him. To make a speech or write a book that criticizes the powerful. Global free markets have lifted a billion people out of dire poverty in the last 20 years alone. Progressivism itself is a child of the Western Enlightenment. There's a reason Greenpeace, gay rights, and feminism started in the liberal West and not in China, Egypt, or India.

Again that's kind of ignoring the influence of other theories had on liberalism. The emancipation of women, IMO, has its roots in Marxism and existentialism more than it does in classical liberalism. I personally disagree with Corsi that you can completely separate doctrine from action. If traditional liberals preached equality and tolerance but practiced the opposite, I don't think you can say unmitigated equality and tolerance were traditional liberal principles.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

preached equality and tolerance but practiced the opposite, I don't think you can say unmitigated equality and tolerance were traditional liberal principles.

I don't think unmitigated equality is inherently a liberal ideal, really, but I guess it depends what you mean by unmitigated equality. Treating people as individuals might mandate equal treatment in some respects but it also is going to inherently recognize individual differences. There's certainly no sense in which liberalism requires some doctrinal adherence to a blank slate theory. Quite the opposite; if you look at the argument Pinker makes it's pretty reasonable, just as the evidence for conclusions drawn by many evolutionary psychologists is convincing.

Anyway, if you express principle X, but don't follow it consistently, your failure to follow it does not somehow affect the principle itself. Either they've made a mistake somewhere or they weren't actually liberals in the first place and were simply paying lip service. Historical examples abound of both.

If I swear up and down that two plus two is four, but in practice when I have two apples and am told to take two more I end up with five, it doesn't change the fact that my original math was right. I've just failed to enact it.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

If I swear up and down that two plus two is four, but in practice when I have two apples and am told to take two more I end up with five, it doesn't change the fact that my original math was right. I've just failed to enact it.

I think it's a little different though when we're trying to describe an ideology and those who identify with it. If a group of people who identify themselves as liberals consistently identify as liberals but fail to adhere to a principle at liberalism, at what point do you finally ask how crucial that principle is to liberalism?

Christians believe in not killing people, but yet millions of people have been killed in the name of Christianity. At what point do you say that not killing people is no longer a prerequisite to being a Christian?

[rubecube]

I guess what you could say is that "x isn't an aspect of liberalism, but liberals might do x in the pursuit of liberalism," but if this is a recurring theme, the difference seems kind of unimportant to me.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Christians believe in not killing people, but yet millions of people have been killed in the name of Christianity. At what point do you say that not killing people is no longer a prerequisite to being a Christian?

I don't think not killing people was ever a pre-requisite of Christianity; the commandment is thou shalt not murder. Not that I want to get into litigating what makes a person a real Christian or anything, but my point is essentially, Christians may do things that aren't sanctioned by their ideology, but as long as those things aren't in conflict with that ideology, they don't reflect on the ideology itself.

To the extent the philosophy and the behaviour of its so-called adherents do conflict, then you've either got a Christian acting in an un-Christian manner (of which there are no shortage of examples), or a non-Christian who claims, or believes himself to be, a Christian, and isn't.

Similarly, if every person who ever subscribed to liberalism also subscribed to capitalism, this wouldn't suggest that liberalism mandates capitalism - you could simply have a situation where all the liberals also happened to be capitalists. For the same reason, if you called yourself an anti-capitalist liberal, that wouldn't be an oxymoron. However, if you said, "I'm a liberal but I don't think that people should be allowed to criticize the government because loyalty and order are more important than the ability to dissent", you're either failing to live up to liberal principles or you're not a liberal at all. The statement itself would be nonsensical.

A philosophy is independent of the people who claim to practice it. Otherwise the sentence "You think you're a liberal but you're behaving illiberally" wouldn't make any sense. If I could respond, "the fact that I think I'm a liberal makes my behaviour liberal", that would completely erase the concept of ideology.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I don't think not killing people was ever a pre-requisite of Christianity; the commandment is thou shalt not murder. Not that I want to get into litigating what makes a person a real Christian or anything, but my point is essentially, Christians may do things that aren't sanctioned by their ideology, but as long as those things aren't in conflict with that ideology, they don't reflect on the ideology itself.

To the extent the philosophy and the behaviour of its so-called adherents do conflict, then you've either got a Christian acting in an un-Christian manner (of which there are no shortage of examples), or a non-Christian who claims, or believes himself to be, a Christian, and isn't.

Similarly, if every person who ever subscribed to liberalism also subscribed to capitalism, this wouldn't suggest that liberalism mandates capitalism - you could simply have a situation where all the liberals also happened to be capitalists. For the same reason, if you called yourself an anti-capitalist liberal, that wouldn't be an oxymoron. However, if you said, "I'm a liberal but I don't think that people should be allowed to criticize the government because loyalty and order are more important than the ability to dissent", you're either failing to live up to liberal principles or you're not a liberal at all. The statement itself would be nonsensical.

A philosophy is independent of the people who claim to practice it. Otherwise the sentence "You think you're a liberal but you're behaving illiberally" wouldn't make any sense. If I could respond, "the fact that I think I'm a liberal makes my behaviour liberal", that would completely erase the concept of ideology.

Okay but don't you then basically run into the problem of essentialism?

[troutman]

What do you make of postmodernism and the critiques of it?

I have not considered it closely since having contract law taught to me by David Cohen at UBC (now the Dean at UVic).

Ex.

"Postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal."

http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/ge...ostm-body.html

[Ozy_Flame]

How timely I stumbled upon this great Reddit today:

https://www.reddit.com/r/TMBR/

You think you're correct in your politcial viewpoints? You think you can defend your argument? You think you have what it takes to endure the waves of dissenters that have overtaken the internet? Then channel your inner Spartan and DEFEND YOUR BELIEFS.

[Kjesse]

Originally Posted by troutman

....

I have not considered it closely since having contract law taught to me by David Cohen at UBC (now the Dean at UVic).

Interesting post. Just to update you though, David Cohen hasn't been the Dean of UVic Law since 1999.

Also, isn't post-postmodernism taking hold?

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Delgar

Interesting post. Just to update you though, David Cohen hasn't been the Dean of UVic Law since 1999.

Also, isn't post-postmodernism taking hold?

Thanks for the update - I see he went to Pace:

http://law.pace.edu/faculty/s-david-cohen

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Okay but don't you then basically run into the problem of essentialism?

I'm not convinced it's a problem, philosophically, but am prepared to be convinced. A rectangle, essentially, has four sides. A liberal, essentially, follows liberal principles. There probably is no essential liberal person in the real world, much as you can't actually show me a real life two-dimensional object. That doesn't mean the concept can't be understood, approximated and adhered to to varying degrees.

For example, there are inevitably going to be instances where liberalism conflicts with some generalized moral theory - a person who in general follows liberal principles might want to diverge from them in the instance where they might conflict with some other value the person holds (say, hedonistic utilitarianism).

For example, let's alter the statement I just used earlier. Suppose someone said, "I'm a liberal, but I'm also a hedonistic utilitarian. Generally I think liberal principles lead to the greatest possible happiness for everyone. However, in the specific case of X, I think that speech should be restricted, because that particular restriction will produce greater happiness". That would just be an instance of a person who is usually a liberal acting in a non-liberal manner in a particular case (possibly for defensible reasons), which is one of the examples I used in the post you quoted. That doesn't change the fact that liberalism demands we place no restrictions on peoples' voicing of their views - the essential philosophy remains unaffected. What am I missing?

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I'm not convinced it's a problem, philosophically, but am prepared to be convinced. A rectangle, essentially, has four sides. A liberal, essentially, follows liberal principles. There probably is no essential liberal person in the real world, much as you can't actually show me a real life two-dimensional object. That doesn't mean the concept can't be understood, approximated and adhered to to varying degrees.

For example, there are inevitably going to be instances where liberalism conflicts with some generalized moral theory - a person who in general follows liberal principles might want to diverge from them in the instance where they might conflict with some other value the person holds (say, hedonistic utilitarianism).

For example, let's alter the statement I just used earlier. Suppose someone said, "I'm a liberal, but I'm also a hedonistic utilitarian. Generally I think liberal principles lead to the greatest possible happiness for everyone. However, in the specific case of X, I think that speech should be restricted, because that particular restriction will produce greater happiness". That would just be an instance of a person who is usually a liberal acting in a non-liberal manner in a particular case (possibly for defensible reasons), which is one of the examples I used in the post you quoted. That doesn't change the fact that liberalism demands we place no restrictions on peoples' voicing of their views - the essential philosophy remains unaffected. What am I missing?

Right, I guess what I mean is who holds authority on determining what a liberal is? You could have two competing schools of liberal thought, or two people claiming to be liberal. By what measure do you determine who is and who isn't, and how and who gets to decide said measurements?

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by troutman

What do you make of postmodernism and the critiques of it?

I have not considered it closely since having contract law taught to me by David Cohen at UBC (now the Dean at UVic).

Ex.

"Postmodernism is highly skeptical of explanations which claim to be valid for all groups, cultures, traditions, or races, and instead focuses on the relative truths of each person. In the postmodern understanding, interpretation is everything; reality only comes into being through our interpretations of what the world means to us individually. Postmodernism relies on concrete experience over abstract principles, knowing always that the outcome of one's own experience will necessarily be fallible and relative, rather than certain and universal."

http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/ge...ostm-body.html

From a historical perspective post modernism is a useful tool. The modernist approach to history, narratives of progress used to exult the present, and maintain the status quo, is not only erroneous, but it is dangerous .

Post modernism, l believe, is useful because it embraces the existence of multiple realities. This deconstructs the notion that any knowledge can be truth. This in turn challenges the powerknowledge maintained by the elite. more importantly to everyday life, it challenges the notion that one is wrong because they are different ( a view sustained by modernism). Embracing heteroglossia leads to new fields of knowing and understanding, which helps reduce violence during cultural transactions and translations. Post-modernism in my opinion is a useful tool for navigating a world that was been globalized for the better part of 600 years.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

Right, I guess what I mean is who holds authority on determining what a liberal is? You could have two competing schools of liberal thought, or two people claiming to be liberal. By what measure do you determine who is and who isn't, and how and who gets to decide said measurements?

Ah, I see. Good question, and probably no easy answer aside from the classic pornography one - you know it when you see it. If someone consistently makes arguments rooted in liberal principles, and you can draw a clear line from those principles to their behaviour, it's probably fair to call that person a "liberal" in general. If someone consistently shirks liberal principles, and their behaviour rarely matches up with what you'd expect to see someone following liberal principles doing (even if they might sometimes by sheer coincidence), they probably aren't.

Where to draw the line exactly, I can't really tell you, but as a practical shorthand that process works for me. If I'm paying attention to someone's public positions, patterns usually emerge, and you tend to notice anomalies in behaviour. If, for example, Clifffletcher tomorrow posts in support of a new bill banning people from criticizing others' religious beliefs in public, for example, I'm going to be surprised. If Mike Pence tweets his support, meanwhile, I won't be quite so shocked.

[CliffFletcher]

From the other thread:

Originally Posted by longsuffering

I am genuinely interested in where you think this has happened or is happening.

Academia. Much of the media. Most mainstream political parties. In all cases, opinions held by large minorities - upwards of 40 per cent of people - are essentially taboo. Not to be debated.

The notion that reasonable people can disagree about important issues used to be a foundational value of our democracy. I see it being abandoned in favour of the comforting simplicity of moralizing - of discounting disagreeable opinion as rooted in moral deficiency, rather than engaging in dialog or compromise.

Take immigration. I'm pro-immigration. I believe someone is just as much a citizen the day after they immigrate than someone who can trace their lineage in Canada back four generations. And I believe that if only for economic reasons, Canada needs to continue its high rates of immigration.

However, I believe it is an issue that reasonable people can disagree about. Sure, a lot of people who oppose immigration are flat-out bigots. But some aren't. Some worry about the high cost of housing, about jobs for their low-skilled family members. Or they just want to be able to debate the issue openly and resent being denounced as bigots the instant they bring up the issue.

But our mainstream cultural institutions have recently determined that immigration is a closed issue - not open for debate. That's illiberal, and bad for democracy.

Originally Posted by Itse

White supremacy / fascism on the other hand is a huge movement right now, with supporters in many governments.

While Trump has surrounded himself with some unsavoury people, I don't buy the notion that white supremacy is anything but a marginal political movement in North America. 92 per cent of Canadians and 87 per cent of Americans approve of mixed-race marriages (and some of that small fraction who don't are themselves non-white).

Originally Posted by Itse

Let's just say that I consider this "third group" to be mostly intellectually too lazy to understand the issues, and are mostly people who are not threatened by things like poverty, imprisonment, violence or removal of civil rights.

That third group is actually mainstream Canada. Most Canadians are neither dyed-in-the-wool conservatives nor ardent champions of identity politics. The polarization of the media and public dialog has turned a great many people off. The exasperation with ideologues of all stripes expressed by Trey Parker and Matt Stone in South Park as "a pox on both their houses" is a lot more common than you think.

And that isn't just an attitude of complacent, white males. Only a quarter of Canadian women self-identify as feminists. Most visible minorities aren't on the identity politics bandwagon - they just want to be left alone and treated like everybody else. You can call them lazy and uninformed. But for the most part they're people who recognize that we have it really good compared to other places and other times, and it's much more likely that a revolution or ideological war would make matters worse than make them better.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Ah, I see. Good question, and probably no easy answer aside from the classic pornography one - you know it when you see it. If someone consistently makes arguments rooted in liberal principles, and you can draw a clear line from those principles to their behaviour, it's probably fair to call that person a "liberal" in general. If someone consistently shirks liberal principles, and their behaviour rarely matches up with what you'd expect to see someone following liberal principles doing (even if they might sometimes by sheer coincidence), they probably aren't.

Where to draw the line exactly, I can't really tell you, but as a practical shorthand that process works for me. If I'm paying attention to someone's public positions, patterns usually emerge, and you tend to notice anomalies in behaviour. If, for example, Clifffletcher tomorrow posts in support of a new bill banning people from criticizing others' religious beliefs in public, for example, I'm going to be surprised. If Mike Pence tweets his support, meanwhile, I won't be quite so shocked.

Sorry, I should have clarified. My question was more along the line of how you come to a consensus on the epistemicological foundation of liberal principles. With Marxism it's fairly easy because you can just consult Marx. Who do we agree is the authority on what the tenets of liberalism are?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by rubecube

With Marxism it's fairly easy because you can just consult Marx. Who do we agree is the authority on what the tenets of liberalism are?

I don't think it's quite as clean as Marxism, but if you need a Liberal Manifesto, you could do worse than On Liberty. That said, I think the actual prescriptions as to how to run a liberal state have developed over time. How would you fence in the concept, or would you?

[wittynickname]

Pulled this from the other thread and put it here because it's more fitting in this thread.

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

In 1965, a clear majority of Americans supported the Civil Right Act of 1964 (58 per cent for, 31 per cent against).

People will say lots of things about what they support in theory, but when it's in their own back yard, all of a sudden they're pissed off. Look at politicians that favor fracking but don't want it on their property.

After the 90s featured an emerging acceptance of the gay and lesbian community, after women started taking over more a share in the job market and as college attendees and graduates, etc, you're now seeing backlash against those groups. Suddenly you have more and more laws limiting women's rights, you have companies complaining about paying for birth control, about being forced to not discriminate against gay people/couples, etc.

Backlash always happens when people see their privilege slipping away. Equality looks like oppression when you're used to privilege, and that's happening now, and it happened then.

Originally Posted by Itse

First of all, this completely ignores the part where Nazism is a fundamentally violent ideology that preaches racial supremacy and supports completely removing undesirable elements from the society and especially from positions of power.

Itse's entire post here was phenomenal and I just want to point out a couple of things from it.

This is a huge thing for me when people are up in arms about the Nazi-punching thing. Nazi ideology literally says certain groups of people don't deserve to be alive. It advocates for the extermination of certain races/religions.

We live in a country that absolutely worships the Second Amendment and the "right" to protect oneself and one's property. I'd say punching a Nazi, who advocates for violence against someone, is perfectly in line with the 2A. And if punching a Nazi is a problem, we really need to re-evaluate how we approach gun ownership and self-defense, especially in states with Stand Your Ground laws, where you can basically shoot first and ask questions later if you feel in any way threatened.

There's also the problem that as we have seen many times, the far right is in no way interested in debate. What you're suggesting is the ultimate liberal fantasy of how things should be done. If you listen to the current reactionary conservative movement, this is exactly the kind of "nonsense" they hate.

As a rule of thumb, if you look at debates organized between liberals and conservatives, it's almost always the liberals who ask the conservatives to come around and be heard, and very rarely the other way around.

People like Milo Yannopoulos especially are not interested in debate. They are only interested in free speech to the extent that they get a platform to rant from. They are in no way interested in providing the other side a chance to respond.

I've been harping on this for months, being surrounded by conservative right wing types--they are in no way interested in debate or facts or science or reality. They're interested in free speech only as long as it's speech that they agree with, otherwise they want people to sit down and shut up (see Tomi Lahren ranting at Kaepernick for his anthem protesting).

It would be lovely if Republicans and Democrats would sit down at the same table and discuss things, but when one side only wants to talk and then stick their fingers in their ears, the "discussion" isn't going to go anywhere. The conservative/right wing part of the US right now is not open to discussion, not open to reason, not open to compromise of any kind.

I also support silencing ISIS recruiters. I don't really see much of a difference between Nazis and them.

Exactly, 100% this. Believing Nazi ideology and promoting it is not the same as a conflicting political belief. I can tolerate if you want to discuss how taxes should be collected and spent, that's a difference of belief and people are welcome to share it. If your "political belief" advocates for the extermination of another group of people, I no longer care much for your freedom to advocate it.

Nazis are extremists the way Al Qaeda are extremists or ISIS are extremists. This is not differing political opinion that deserves a voice at the table, period.

I do think there is a chance that the current reactionary wave is pretty much the last desperate show of force by a dying breed, and it will really just blow over as long as people just peacefully stand up to it and refuse to give in.

I think that there is a lot to this. Ideology tends to have a slow trend toward progression. Slowly women gain power, minorities gain power, the weak take their place at the table. It's a slow process, and there are setbacks, but eventually people move forward, sometimes with a lot of kicking and screaming along the way. There was a lot of kicking and screaming as labor unions took hold, but eventually, workers got rights and protections. There was a lot of kicking and screaming against suffrage but eventually women got the right to vote. There was a lot of kicking and screaming as the US worked toward desegregation, and there still is, but the slow trend is towards, not away from, equality.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

That doesn't change the fact that liberalism demands we place no restrictions on peoples' voicing of their views - the essential philosophy remains unaffected. What am I missing?

Where does liberalism demand that?

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Where does liberalism demand that?

Chapter two of the aforementioned manifesto...

Let us suppose, therefore, that the government is entirely at one with the people, and never thinks of exerting any power of coercion unless in agreement with what it conceives to be their voice.

But I deny the right of the people to exercise such coercion, either by themselves or by their government. The power itself is illegitimate. The best government has no more title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, or more noxious, when exerted in accordance with public opinion, than when in opposition to it. If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.