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Originally Posted by troutman
Most of your posts seem to be about the "left". Where does this come from? Just curious.
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Basically, I'm an instinctive skeptic. I can't help but identify the assumptions underlying any argument and having a go at them. And in the last 10 years, that has put my off-base and drawn criticism from those on the ideological left far more often than those on the ideological right.
For instance, if I point out that the same thing Harris pointed out, that there's strong evidence rape is natural behaviour, I'm certain to be attacked by self-professed progressive leftists who can't distinguish between a descriptive statement and a prescriptive statement. When I challenge a shibboleth of the right, like the notion that marriage is a religious union between a man and a women, I find I get far less criticism. Probably because social conservatives are in retreat in Canada today, and accustomed to being challenged, while the modern left seems to rarely have their assumptions challenged in mainstream media. But this could also be because I simply don't hang out in a lot of places (virtual or meat-world) where conservatives hang out.
If I have to self-identify with anything, it's as a liberal. A liberal in the traditional sense, which is more about casting a wide net and relentlessly asking questions than advocating for a particular ideology. It's about genuine tolerance of dissenting opinions, and habits of scepticism and doubt.
In Canada in 2016, I see liberalism under threat more from the left than from the right. It's the left that is enthusiastically narrowing the range of acceptable debate, policing language, and using blaming and shaming to enforce conformity. It's also the left that is increasingly embracing irrational dogma in the face of scientific evidence that the world doesn't subscribe to that dogma (ie the naturalism fallacy and the blank slate myth). Most importantly, identity politics, which is the dominant dogma of the left today, is fundamentally illiberal. It eschews rigorous empirical analysis (ie women earn 70 cents for every dollar a man earns), and its prescriptions for how to address disparities (safe spaces, quotas, check your privilege) are hostile to the bedrock liberal principle that people should be treated as individuals.
Hope that answers your question.