#illiberalism

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Michael Deacon

Published: Apr 3, 2024

For young people today, finding a partner of the opposite sex must be dreadfully hard. But this isn’t because of the pressure to look like an Instagram gym buff, or the horrors of dating apps, or the fact that no one under the age of 30 seems to drink alcohol any more.

It’s because these days, young men and women have got absolutely nothing in common.

Seriously. All of a sudden, they appear to have developed completely different values. It’s unprecedented. In the past, the two sexes tended to hold roughly similar views on politics. But research compiled over the past five years shows that in Britain – and indeed other Western countries – young women have become more progressive, while young men have become more conservative. And the resulting ideological gap is now staggeringly vast. 

Alice Evans, an academic at King’s College London, is writing a book on this phenomenon, entitled The Great Gender Divergence. She says it’s been caused by a variety of factors, including “social media bubbles” and “economic resentment”. Whatever the reasons for it, though, I think there is a vital point we’re in danger of missing. Which is that only one of the two sexes is strictly responsible.

Recently, the Financial Times published some charts illustrating how the gulf between young men and women has grown in each Western country. And in every chart, there is an unmistakable pattern. The political views of young men haven’t actually altered all that much. Their drift to the Right has been really quite gentle.

The political views of young women, however, have changed dramatically. Their move to the Left has been abrupt and profound. In truth, then, this cavernous ideological divide is almost entirely attributable to them.

Which is curious. Because, whenever the divide is discussed by politicians and commentators, they make it sound as if the problem is young men. They fret endlessly about how young men today are being “radicalised” by nasty Right-wing YouTubers such as Andrew Tate, or horrid Right-wing politicians such as Donald Trump. 

Yet they never apply this word “radicalised” to young women. Why not? I suspect it’s because these politicians and commentators tend to be progressive themselves. Therefore, they see no problem with young women becoming drastically more progressive. In their view, the more progressive someone is, the better. So the fault lies entirely with young men, for failing to emulate young women’s lurch to the Left.

Personally, though, I think this lurch Leftwards should alarm us all. The future of Western civilisation is already threatened by our collapsing birth rates. And this sudden ideological chasm between the sexes is only going to make the crisis worse. No one’s going to be forming couples at all any more, if, on every first date, the woman asks, “What do you think of Gramsci?”, and the man replies, “He’s the type of striker Man Utd are crying out for.”

It’s a chilling thought. So clearly something must be done. Politicians must spend less time obsessing over the radicalisation of young men, and start paying attention to the radicalisation of young women, instead.

As it happens, the Labour Party has announced that, when it’s in power, it will help to combat the influence that Andrew Tate has on boys. Surely it would make more sense to help combat the influence The Guardian has on girls. 

Otherwise, the only way young men are going to get a girlfriend is by frantically boning up on George Monbiot and Owen Jones. And if that’s what the future has to hold, perhaps Western civilisation isn’t worth saving, after all. 

[ Via: https://archive.md/WlLXk ]

==

Apparently, it's not "radicalization" when you're calling for the extermination of the Jews; so sexist and racist that you call everyone else "oppressors"; teaching kids about the objectively true mythology of metaphysical "gender" thetans; advocating for the compulsory elimination of all privately-owned property and its forcible redistribution; and/or chanting for the dismantling of society itself.

No, that's not radicalization. It's just the self-evident values of all right-thinking people.

🤷‍♂️🤷‍♀️

#radicalization #far left #far left radicals #liberal society #liberalism #liberal values #illiberalism #religion is a mental illness

[liziedoodles]

Finally a long post of introducing my penguin fursona lmao

#penguin #furry art #fursona #anthro #furry #vtuber #art #artists on tumblr #digital art #illiberalism

[bankruptrocks]

Viktorland

#punk #hungary #magyar #political punk #viktor orban #illiberalism #punk rock #supercut

[brianshares]

#us politics #politics #fascism #theocracy #illiberalism #authoritarianism #neoliberalism #capitalism #communism #radical right #new right #reactionary #gop #republican party #christian nationalism #my posts

[rashmeerl]

#this week those books #poland #illiberalism #democracy

[xtruss]

World’s Most Wanted Criminal and Fascist Hindu Extremist Narendra Modi’s Illiberalism May Imperil India’s Economic Progress! Fulfilling His Great-Power Dream Requires Restraint, Not Abandon

— January 18th, 2023

“Politics And Religion Cannot Be Mixed,” ruled India’s Supreme Court in 1994 in what was then considered a decisive elucidation of the country’s secular constitution. Tell that to the millions who on January 22nd will watch Narendra Modi preside over the consecration of a controversial $220m Hindu temple, in a ceremony that marks the informal launch of his campaign for a third term as prime minister in elections to be held by May. To the alarm of India’s 200m Muslims, and many secular-minded Indians, it will mark a high point of a decades-long Hindu-nationalist project to dominate India.

Even as Mr Modi appears at the temple in Ayodhya in northern India, the other pillar of his mission continues apace: India’s extraordinary modernisation. The country is the planet’s fastest-growing major economy and now its fifth-biggest. Global investors toast its infrastructure boom and growing technological sophistication. Mr Modi wants to be India’s most consequential leader since Jawaharlal Nehru. His vision of national greatness is about wealth as well as religion. The danger is that a hubristic Hindu chauvinism undermines his economic ambitions.

To understand the strange symbolism of Ayodhya you have to travel back in time. Mr Modi’s once-fringe party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (bjp), built its name by campaigning over the status of a Mosque there from 1990. It organised a rally of Hindu activists in 1992 that led to its destruction, sparking Hindu-Muslim riots across South Asia.

The lavish Hindu temple that Mr Modi is about to open is built on the site of that destroyed mosque. For many Hindus this represents the righting of an ancient wrong: the location is also the mythical birthplace of the Hindu god Ram. Previous bjp leaders, such as Atal Bihari Vajpayee, downplayed the party’s Hindu-first ideology, known as Hindutva, to win mainstream support. After ten years in power, Mr Modi, who was implicated in deadly anti-Muslim riots in 2002 when he ran Gujarat state (he was later absolved by the courts), no longer seems so restrained.

The bjp’s radicals have been empowered. There have been Mob Attacks on Muslims. Several bjp-run states have passed anti-conversion laws. Mr Modi has exacerbated Islamophobia by, among other things, promoting a citizenship law that discriminates against Muslims. His strongman style of rule has also featured harassment and attacks on the pillars of India’s old liberal order, including the press, charities, think-tanks, some courts and many opposition politicians.

Were Mr Modi and the bjp to win a third term—as seems almost certain—many worry that the Hindutva project would go further. bjp activists are agitating to replace mosques with temples at hundreds of other sites. Mr Modi wants to scrap constitutional provisions for Muslim family law. A possible redrawing of parliamentary districts could see power accrue to the populous Hindi-speaking and bjp-supporting north, at the expense of the richer industrialised south. Mr Modi, aged 73, could rule as a strongman for a further decade or more.

The whiplash-inducing reality is that this religious and political struggle is occurring alongside enormous economic optimism. Growth has exceeded 7% in recent quarters. The country now has vastly improved transport infrastructure, huge and deep equity markets, stronger banks, massive currency reserves, a less complex tax system and less corruption. India is at last becoming a single market, letting firms exploit economies of scale and promising faster business investment. While manufacturing has yet to take off, industry is starting to couple with global supply chains, from internet routers to electric two-wheelers. The giant technology-services sector hopes to make a fortune as companies around the world seek help in adopting artificial intelligence.

Image: Alicia Tatone

The economic record is still far from perfect. The rate of formal job creation is much too low—one reason Mr Modi has built up digital welfare-schemes for the poor, augmenting his image among ordinary Hindus as a leader who cares about the downtrodden. India does too little to develop human capital and its education system is terrible. Some powerful firms have too much influence. Yet it is a foundation worth building on.

The question is whether the religious agenda and rapid economic development are compatible. The answer is yes, but only up to a point. In the past ten years many of Mr Modi’s economic accomplishments have existed alongside his religious agenda. The bjp’s parliamentary strength and Mr Modi’s popularity have made it possible to push through difficult reforms, including a national sales tax. The government’s unity and clout have given investors confidence that policy is stable, even though civil liberties have been eroded.

Yet if Mr Modi in his third term were to lurch further towards Hindutva and autocratic rule, the economic calculus would change. Take the north-south divide. If India continues to grow fast, the industrialised, wealthy and technologically advanced south is likely to pull further ahead, drawing labour from the north. But Hindutva holds little appeal in the south, and by pushing it further while concentrating more power in his own hands, Mr Modi could exacerbate already rising tensions over internal migrants, tax revenues and representation.

Or consider economic stability, which depends on the management of the economy by internationally credible technocrats, not bjp ideologues. You can overdo how much store companies put by the rule of law—they invested in China for decades. But if decision-making becomes authoritarian and erratic as Mr Modi grows old and isolated, and if institutions are weakened, firms will grow warier of deploying huge sums of capital.

As he stands at the ceremony at Ayodhya before admirers and acolytes—the leaders of India’s new, brash, nationalistic elite—does Mr Modi see this danger? He has in the past: before he was prime minister he tried to rebrand himself from a Hindu zealot into a pragmatic manager of his successful home state of Gujarat. With a third term looming, he should realise that, to fulfil his dream of making India a great power, the balancing-act must continue. It requires restraint, not abandon. If Mr Modi fails, the hopes of 1.4bn people and the prospects for the brightest spot in the world economy will be dashed. ■

— This Article Appeared in the Leaders Section of the Print Edition Under the Headline "Modi’s Juggernaut"

#India 🇮🇳 #Elections #Fascist Criminal Narendra Modi #Butcher of Gujrat #Fascist Extremist Hindu #Muslim Minority #Illiberalism #Modi’s Juggernaut #Leaders | Hindu Nationalism #The Economist

[politikapolka]

Egy másik dagadt illiberális a cselédei körében

#Kim Jong-un’s armoured train #body language #testbeszéd #illiberalism #illiberalizmus #Kim Jong-un #orban #orbán viktor #fidesz #orbán #north korea #hungary #magyarország

[todaysamlearned]

Today I learned that I’m not crazy.

#illiberalism #TIL #idw

[menyhei]

I’m illiberal, therefore… I’m against freedom? I hate liberty? Not really, as I’ll make it clear later. For now, focus on your gut feeling when you hear “illiberal”.

It sounds like “I’m a baddie”. It sounds so nasty and negative that no one, even among the heavy hitters in the front lines of Fidesz’s kulturkampf identifies with it.

#hungary #illiberalism

[hezigler]

Opinion | Seven Years of Trump Has the Right Wing Taking the Long View - The New York Times

#illiberalism #fascisim #trumpism #republiquans

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Allan Stratton

Published: Jul 23, 2023

Toronto is one of the most tolerant, multicultural cities in the world. And yet, according to many of its progressive journalists, academics, and politicians, it’s actually a den of systemic racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia. Unless you’re a straight white man, daily life is supposedly an exhausting and dangerous struggle. If you live in the United States, the UK, Australia, or elsewhere in Canada, I’m guessing you’ve been told similar things about your own society.

I’m a gay man for whom these reports bear no relationship to the real world. Certainly, hate-crime statistics show a sharp increase in physical and verbal abuse against specific demographics, including my own. And there are even rare incidents of murder and arson. But to suggest that minorities live under constant threat from a bigoted majority is apocalyptic nonsense. This is especially true of Canada, an especially open, diverse, and welcoming country. Western nations, more generally, are incontrovertibly the most tolerant on the planet.

My heretical view (among fellow progressives, at least) may be due to my “positionality” (this being a faddishly woke jargon term that most English speakers would call “perspective”). The Holocaust and the internment of Japanese North Americans ended a mere six years before I was born. The pass system that turned Canadian Indigenous reservations into open-air prison camps was still in force. The United States was segregated by Jim Crow and redlining. Cross burnings and lynchings went unpunished. Marital rape was legal. Spousal abuse and unequal pay were commonplace. Gay sex and cross-dressing were criminalized, with outed individuals losing their jobs and children. “Fag bashing” was treated as public entertainment.

In the relatively few decades since, western governments have implemented universal civil and human rights protections for racial and sexual minorities. The speed and depth of this transformation has been so remarkable that it seems inconceivable that we ever lived as we once did. Has any other culture critiqued its failings and set about reforming itself so quickly?

This is not to suggest that everything is sunshine and lollipops. Human nature has not been repealed. Police departments without effective civilian oversight, for instance, continue to invite corruption and abuse. Nonetheless, we now have the tools to press for accountability, such as human rights tribunals and whistleblower protections.

It’s also important to acknowledge that while the relative increase in reported hate crimes may seem shocking, that rise is based on a remarkably low baseline. For instance, 2021 saw a 65 per cent increase in incidents (over 50 per cent of these comprising verbal slurs) targeting Canada’s LGB and T communities. But that still represents just 423 cases in a country of 40-million people. That’s hardly a “tsunami of hate.” The number is infinitesimal compared to the 114,132 domestic assaults and 34,242 sexual assaults recorded against women.

One often hears that a reversion to the backward ways of the past is just around the corner. And it is true that abortion rights now hang in the balance in many conservative U.S. states. But the idea that any Western country (especially Canada) is on the cusp of a wholesale rejection of liberal principles is absurd. Women will never again need their husband’s signature to open a bank account. Racial segregation is unthinkable (except, ironically, in certain progressive institutions). Marriage equality for same-sex couples is constitutionally protected in North America, and enjoys a historic 70 per cent level of support in the United States.

So, unlike those on the left who came of age in the 90s and the decades that followed, I don’t see an intolerant society destroying civil rights and minority safety. Rather, what I am now witnessing is a period of progressive overreach, led by ideologues with no (apparent) historical memory or understanding of how our liberal social contract evolved. They have turned language inside out so as to render words such as “woman,” “safety,” and “genocide” essentially meaningless; pursued policies that lock one-time progressive allies in a zero-sum culture-war conflict; recast free speech as hate speech; confused wishes (and, in some cases, fantasies) with rights; and punished dissenters from their Borg-think with social exclusion, “re-education,” and firing.

This radical attempt to unilaterally impose a new social order based on race and gender essentialism has ignited a widespread public backlash, which has been weaponized by the far right, destroyed public goodwill, and done more damage to the progressive cause than anything its reactionary enemies have done in recent years.

-

The civil-rights movements of the last century won victories by liberal means based on liberal values. This included an insistence on free speech and civil liberties; and an appeal to the universal values of dignity and equality, which in turn underpin the case for protecting individual human rights and freedoms.

In part, this was because we liberals understood math. We needed white, straight, male legislators to support our causes, a project that could only be engaged through free and open debate. Empathy-based co-operation enabled us to create bridges among our diverse groups: The Gay Liberation Front raised money for the Black Panthers. In turn, its leader, Huey Newton, supported the gay liberation and women’s liberation movements. Meanwhile, Jewish groups applied their historical understanding of discrimination to help lead the fights for women’s rights (Betty Friedan), gay rights (Larry Kramer), and black voting rights, with some even giving their lives as Freedom Riders

By contrast, today’s illiberal left explicitly rejects the principles of free speech and universality. It ignores the lessons of past civil-rights successes, often denying that such successes even took place. After all, how can one insist on the dismantling (or “decolonization”) of a system that has shown itself capable of self-correction and continuous improvement? The only framework that validates the progressive narrative of ongoing oppression and white supremacy is one that ahistorically presents mainstream liberal values as a failure.

The switch in social-justice circles from liberal to authoritarian ends and means has at least three major causes. The first is structural: As (originally) liberal rights groups such as the ACLU achieved their objectives, they were required to rewrite their mission statements and pretend away their past successes — this being the only way to justify their ongoing existence.

Far from seeking to “burn it all down,” most of us within the original LGB and T movements simply wanted equality within existing social structures. We used liberal “respectability politics” to make our case, and (for the most part) folded our tents when we achieved our goal. The unwitting effect of this was to leave our old organizations to the radicals, who had long condemned us as sellouts to the patriarchy. Their goal is nothing less than the remaking — or “queering” — of society, a vaguely defined project infused with a deep suspicion of, or even hostility to, capitalism and the nuclear family. The liberal LGB and T wish to live and let live is now the authoritarian “live as we live.”

The second factor is generational change. Just as children separate from their parents in their passage to adulthood, so does each generation define itself in contradistinction to its immediate predecessor. Without personal memory of past struggles, present conditions are taken for granted. And so the battle against current injustices (real or otherwise) is seen as humanity’s defining and timeless struggle.

My generation mocked our parents’ conformity and stoic, suck-it-up ethos, forgetting that these traits had been necessary social adaptations during the Great Depression and World War II. Similarly, activists of this generation attack our commitment to free speech and integration within society, forgetting that these strategies were necessary for us to be heard during the Cold War, when outsiders were suspected as potential fifth columnists.

But perhaps the most significant factor has been the academic trend toward postmodernism, which instructs adherents that neither objective reality nor human nature exist in any certain, provable way. Reason, logic, and objective facts are rejected — or at least put in scare quotes — as are appeals to history and science. These are all held to be mere artifacts of language, which is itself presented as a reflection of existing power structures. And since these structures are presumed to systematically oppress the powerless, they must be deconstructed, dismantled, and decolonized, root and branch.

This kind of thinking isn’t just claptrap that flies in the face of day-to-day human experience. It also encourages a kind of intellectual nihilism that precludes amelioration of the injustices and power imbalances that supposedly concern many postmodern thinkers: After all, what could possibly replace our current power-based intellectual constructs except new power-based intellectual constructs?

Nonetheless, postmodern habits of mind (often flying under the banner of “critical” studies of one kind or another) have infected academic humanities and social science departments all over the west, much like the fungal parasite on The Last of Us. Its professorial hosts now work to dismantle their own institutions, attacking the “colonial” concepts of science and empiricism in favour of undefined and unfalsifiable “ways of knowing.” Meanwhile, their students have incubated its spores and spread them into the wider society, including corporate human-rights offices.

Progressives (rightly) have denounced Donald Trump and his supporters for their paranoid belief that the 2020 U.S. election was “stolen.” But these right-wing conspiracy theorists are not so different from campus leftists when it comes to their à la carte approach to accepting or rejecting reality according to passing ideological convenience

In particular, the idea that pronouns serve as magic spells that can turn a man into a (literal) women is no less ridiculous than anything Trump has ever said. The same goes for the mantra that while girls who cut themselves need therapy, girls seeking a double mastectomy require “affirmation.” Likewise: Racial segregation is a bigoted practice … except when it represents the very acme of progressive enlightenment. “Defund the police” doesn’t mean abolish the police, except when it means exactly that.

And then there’s Schrödinger’s Antifa, which presents these street thugs either as a very real force that rose up as a morally laudable reaction to fascism … or as something that exists only in Tucker Carlson’s fever dreams, depending on context.

But postmodernism and critical theory have done more than just damage our societies’ intellectual cohesion. Their denial of universal human nature eliminates empathy as a tool to bridge differences among groups, which are instead presented as warring sects prosecuting unbridgeable race (or gender) feuds. Since power is presented as the singular currency of the realm, the ability to shut the other side up is valued more than the ability to persuade it.

Gay men such as Andrew Sullivan and Andrew Doyle have been among the most prominent dissenters against wokeism — in part because we instinctively recognize the destructive nature of this power-fixated mindset. Our experience suggests that empathy and reason are far more important than threats and cultural power plays.

Dave Chappelle has said that the LGBT movement won public support more quickly than its black counterpart because of racism. But I believe the truth is different: Unlike racial and ethnic minorities, we exist in every demographic, every family, every ethnic category. When we gay men came out en masse during the 1980s AIDS pandemic, all communities realized that we were among its children, parents, and siblings. People have a harder time discriminating against their own than against outsiders.

Traditionally, the left has appealed to a sense of camaraderie and shared purpose. The resulting project of alliance-building has entailed negotiation among different groups, all of which may have different priorities and perspectives. But that alliance-building project becomes impossible when one sect or another demands that disagreement be treated as a form of thoughtcrime. Deplatforming doesn’t just hurt the target; it also hurts the movement, since the summary excommunication of dissidents means that adherents never need to acknowledge or address counterarguments, internal logical inconsistencies, or the off-putting nature of their message.

Indeed, ideologues such as Nikole Hannah-Jones claim that politics has a colour: Blacks who aren’t “politically black” are traitors who collaborate with “whiteness.” As seen through this lens, Asian-Americans who fight anti-Asian discrimination in the context of affirmative action are supposedly puppets of white supremacists, and the LGB Alliance, by standing up for same-sex attraction, is smeared as a transphobic hate group. (For asserting that biology is real, Stonewall UK even tried to destroy the career of one of the LGB Alliance’s founders, Allison Bailey, a lifelong social justice advocate who happens to be a black, working-class lesbian, and the child of immigrant parents. Thankfully, Stonewall did not prevail.)

Opponents of cancel culture often focus on its negative effects on conservatives. But it’s often woke organizations that end up imploding under its strains, typically due to internal battles over victimhood status and linguistic control. In recent years, many of these groups have been driven off the rails by single-issue gender activists who are willing to support misogyny and homophobia in the name of trans rights; or BLM activists willing to permit racism directed at “model minorities.” Even antisemites have been allowed to infiltrate left-wing political parties, the arts establishment, and anti-racist education initiatives. No wonder everyone involved with this movement is always complaining about how emotionally “exhausted” they are: They’re surrounded by toxic fellow travellers who gaslight them as right-stooges if they dare raise a complaint.

Another notable feature of militant social-justice movements is the sheer joylessness of their leaders and supporters, a condition that often seems to blur into a collectively embraced state of clinical depression and paranoia. This posture flows from their presupposition that they suffer endlessly due to the malignant primordial character of “whiteness” and heteronormativity (or, yet worse, cisheteronormativity). The language of individual agency and hope, which animates liberalism, is replaced with a soul-dead idiom by which the activist presents as a self-pitying victim of oppression, constantly at risk of suicidal ideation, erasure, and genocide.

Even privileged “allies” are encouraged to dwell on their whiteness, straightness, cisness, “settler” status, and other marks of intersectional Cain. By erasing the possibility of redemption, the movement alienates liberal allies who are seeking to build bridges with others en route to living successful and fulfilling lives in a way that escapes the politics of identity. The social-justice puritan, being primarily concerned with advancing his status within a cultish inward-seeking subculture that’s constantly inventing new grievances, on the other hand, finds such a goal unthinkable.

The use of words such as “harm” and “violence” to describe the microaggressions known to the rest of us as “daily life” is a particularly unattractive feature of social-justice culture. In the 1980s, gays and lesbians responded to daily discrimination with the chant, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it.” Today, the children and grandchildren of that generation, now enjoying full civil rights and perches within elites sectors of government, culture, and high society, instead tell us, “We’re here, we’re queer, and … we’re terrified to step outside.” As a gay man, it’s humiliating to hear this kind of maudlin rhetoric uttered in my name.

The broad public, long sympathetic and accommodating, has had it. People have no time for hysterical activists who whine, bully, and hector them about things they didn’t do and over which they have no control. This is particularly true when those same activists demand the elimination of women’s sex-based rights, the medical sterilization of children and teens, and the explicit exclusion of job applicants by race. The more that ordinary men and women came to learn about gay marriage, the more they accepted it. By contrast, the more that ordinary men and women come to learn about trans-activist demands and critical race theory, the more they’ve become repulsed.

Support for Black Lives Matter collapsed when the woke trivialized the arson and looting that accompanied the George Floyd protests. The public was completely onside with the left’s demand for police reform, but horrified by the extremist push to dismantle public security, and enraged that the left justified breaking pandemic restrictions for protests while insisting that grieving families be kept from their dying relatives in hospitals.

Likewise, Lia Thomas tanked support on gender radicalism. The public had long welcomed trans civil rights, sympathized with those suffering dysphoria, and accepted that even non-dysphoric trans-identified individuals should be able to live and present as they wished. But the sight of a strapping, butch male taking women’s prizes and opportunities was a breaststroke too far.

Facing resistance, the woke doubled down, insisting on automatic gender affirmation for everyone, including rapists and children. The result gifted social conservatives an issue of concern to majorities across the political spectrum. Now, progressives in the U.S. face a raft of bills that, among other things, resurrect false charges of Alphabet paedophilia. No wonder LGB groups are jettisoning the T: In the space of just a few years, trans activists have undone the good work that gay activists did over multiple generations.

The progressive movement must stand up to its extremists. We must restore the liberal social compact that won our civil and human rights. That means we should root our claims in areas of common ground, demanding fair treatment, but not the right to dictate what others think.

The most intense theatres of culture-war combat involve the education of children, an area in which liberal attitudes must be allowed to hold sway. Popular free speech principles should be applied to school libraries and curricula — which means opposing campaigns to root out books demonized by both the left and the right alike. In classrooms, an open exploration of history can provide a context for kids to discuss how injustices were overcome in the past and how they might be handled in the present. Students can be taught to brainstorm how to use their advantages to help the less fortunate, and how others in their situation have dealt with adversity. But they should never be taught that personal relationships and moral hierarchies are determined by the colour of one’s skin.

Likewise, boys and girls should be allowed to play and dress free of gender stereotypes, with a no-bullying policy strictly enforced. They should learn who they are by themselves, and be taught that they are more than the sum of their parts. They should not be labelled by ideological adults consumed by a mania for gender theory. In school, I skipped with the girls, had a lisp, and liked to play with china elves. That didn’t make me a girl, just as dressing butch and dreading the effects of a puberty doesn’t turn a lesbian into a boy. (I shudder to think what might have happened were I a child today.)

We should also return to the left’s traditional focus on class. Diversty, equity, and inclusion initiatives enrich the small group of well-educated profiteers who proselytize the DEI faith, but they’re actually worse than useless when it comes to workplaces, exacerbating intolerance among the hapless workers forced to submit to tedious seminars and questionnaires. Resources from the DEI industry’s rapidly metastasizing bureaucracies should be redirected to programs that materially help the poor: Unlike affirmative action programs, investments in deprived neighbourhoods disproportionately assist minorities without the creation of double-standards and racial left-behinds that serve to energize white nationalists. They also support social mobility and economic inclusion.

“I just want to say—you know—can we, can we all get along?” is how Rodney King put it in 1991. While many of us might read the underlying sentiment as self-evident, the militant social-justice left now treats it as a forbidden lie, since the entire movement is based on the conceit that peaceful and harmonious coexistence is impossible within a pluralistic liberal society that doesn’t forcibly “queer” itself, endlessly hector citizens about their bigotry, and segregate workers and students by skin colour.

I believe we can all get along. As a progressive, a gay man, a Canadian, and a liberal, I want no part of any movement — whatever it calls itself — that insists we can’t.

[ Mirror: https://archive.is/es3Q4 ]

==

To the extent that liberal principles are actually being rejected, it's coming from both the authoritarian reactionary right, and the authoritarian postmodern left.

#Allan Stratton #liberal ethics #liberal values #liberalism #illiberalism #antiliberalism #anti liberal #critical social justice #social justice #wokeism #cult of woke #wokeness as religion #woke #toxic wokeness #religion is a mental illness

[denminn]

Podcast Clip: The Church as Truth Teller

In this podcast clip, @utsdoc says the church needs to be a truthteller, which means the church is willing to speak the truth even if it means attacking sacred cows that people like.

In late May, I interviewed David Watson, the Academic Dean and professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton Ohio, and the lead editor of Firebrand magazine for the En Route podcast. We talked about classical liberalism, the church, and the rise of postmodern liberalism. In this clip, David talks about how the church needs to be a truthteller, which means the church is…

View On WordPress

#classical liberalism #illiberalism #postmodernism #united methodists

[sarahowritesostucky]

A response to "Milking" : Isn't she sweet?

🥰A lovely series of comments I received from a kindhearted and intellectually mature fan.

#My lovely fans #antis #illiberal antis #protect tumblr #tumblr tos #online abuse #online bullying #online harassment #trolls ate my blog #trolls #mcu #stucky #learn the difference

[tanadrin]

still annoyed by the tiktok i saw once of someone smugly declaring the Federation was “an empire” and that this point was so obvious it brooked no debate

like

you have to apply for membership! it’s a post-scarcity utopia that has transcended the need for money! this meets no definition of an empire, except that it has some of the aesthetic trappings of liberal democracy, and edgy online types like to refer to liberal democracies as “empires” when trying to discuss the more general phenomenon of imperialism.

#yes quark and garak have that scene where they bitch about creeping Federation cultural hegemony #but they're both from illiberal societies #trying and failing to maintain authoritarian traditionalism #and like of course authoritarian traditionalists #don't like neighboring societies that demonstrate successful individual autonomy #but that's not 'cultural imperialism' #that's ferengi women and cardassian dissidents wanting to not be oppressed! #ferenginar's culture sucks shit and deserves to be overwhelmed by the federation's #if it cannot provide an alternative to its people that actually makes them happier #and obviously mutatis mutandis for the real-world examples of authoritarian traditionalists #complaining about encroaching liberal norms

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

March 10, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last weekend, Daily Wire host Michael Knowles said that “for the good of society…transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely—the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.” He worded his statement in such a way that it would inevitably create outrage that he could then angrily refute by insisting that “eradicating transgenderism” was not the same thing as eradicating transgender people. This sort of word game is a well-known right-wing tactic for garnering media attention.

Make no mistake: this attack on transgender people represents a deadly attack on the fundamental principle of American democracy, the idea that all people are created equal.

CPAC and its representatives have become increasingly close to Hungarian president Victor Orbán as he has asserted autocratic power in his own country. Orbán has explicitly rejected the liberal democracy that his country used to enjoy, saying that its emphasis on multiculturalism weakens national cultures while its insistence on human equality undermines traditional society by recognizing that women and LGBTQ people have the same rights as straight white men. The age of liberal democracy is over, he says, and a new age has begun.

In place of equality, Orbán advocates what he calls “illiberal democracy” or “Christian democracy.” “Christian democracy is, by definition, not liberal,” he said in July 2018; “it is, if you like, illiberal. And we can specifically say this in connection with a few important issues—say, three great issues. Liberal democracy is in favor of multiculturalism, while Christian democracy gives priority to Christian culture; this is an illiberal concept. Liberal democracy is pro-immigration, while Christian democracy is anti-immigration; this is again a genuinely illiberal concept. And liberal democracy sides with adaptable family models, while Christian democracy rests on the foundations of the Christian family model; once more, this is an illiberal concept.”

Orbán has focused on LBGTQ rights as a danger to “Western civilization.” Arguing the need to protect children, his party has made it impossible for transgender people to change their gender identification on legal documents and made it illegal to share with minors any content that can be interpreted as promoting an LBGTQ lifestyle. After Orbán put allies in charge of Hungarian universities, his government banned public funding for gender studies courses. According to his chief of staff: “The Hungarian government is of the clear view that people are born either men or women.”

As the opening speaker at CPAC in Texas last August, Orbán called for the establishment of a global right wing to continue to work together to destroy liberal democracy and establish Christian democracy.

The American right wing has heard the call, openly embracing Orbán’s principles. Vox senior correspondent Zack Beauchamp, who is a crackerjack analyst of right-wing political ideology both in the U.S. and abroad, noted in 2021 the rise of right-wing ideologues who saw themselves as the vanguard of a “post-liberal order.”

Beauchamp explained that these ideologues reject American democracy. They argue that “religious liberty, limited government, ‘the inviolability of private institutions (e.g., corporations),’ academic freedom, constitutional originalism, free markets, and free speech”—all central tenets of democracy—have created “liberal totalitarianism” that has destroyed “all institutions that were originally responsible for fostering human virtue: family, ennobling friendship, community, university, polity, church.”

They see the government institutions that defend these democratic tenets as part of a totalitarian system designed to destroy national virtue. If this were truly the case (it is not), it would be an act of heroism to try to destroy those systems altogether. Right-wing attacks on the FBI, the Department of Justice, and even the government itself over the arrest of January 6th rioters who they insist were peaceful tourists shore up the idea that the FBI and DOJ are part of a government determined to crush Trump supporters. That ideology invites those who believe it to continue to attack our government.

Knowles’s statement last week that transgenderism must be eradicated from public life was not simply an attack on transgender individuals, although it was certainly that. Tapping into the anti-LGBTQ sentiment that Orbán and those like him have used to win voters, the statement was a crucial salvo in the attempt to destroy American democracy and replace it with Christian nationalism.

But there is a very simple answer to the radical right’s attack on LGBTQ people that also answers their rejection of democracy. It is an answer that history has proved again and again.

Once you give up the principle of equality, you have given up the whole game. You have admitted the principle that people are unequal, and that some people are better than others. Once you have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, you have stamped your approval on the idea of rulers and subjects. At that point, all you can do is to hope that no one in power decides that you belong in the lesser group.

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that arguments limiting American equality to white men and excluding black Americans were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.”

Either people—men, in his day—were equal, or they were not. Lincoln went on: “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it…where will it stop?”

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #equality #LGBTQ #the principle of equality #authoritarianism #white supremecy #illiberal democracy #democratic rule #Bizarro Comics

[transgenderer]

every ideology has a persecution complex, because no society is organized in a way that aligns with an extant ideology, because nobody's ideology includes things like "food should be hard to grow and disease should be hard to cure", but unlike all those other ideologies my ideology is genuinely persecuted

#caught myself being sad about human illiberal tendencies