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Progressive Thought, Updated
- Gender is a social construct; there are no differences between the sexes. All men are bad.
- Race is a social construct; there are no differences between the races. All white people are bad.
- No culture is better than another. Western Civilization is bad.
- Diversity of skin color is good. Diversity of thought is bad.
- Religion leads to conflict and war. Islam is the religion of peace.
- An especially harsh winter in one part of the globe does not disprove global warming. A single extreme weather event proves it.
- Marriage is oppression. Opposing same-sex marriage is oppression.
- There are no absolute truths. Absolutely.
- The Left’s violence is free speech. The Right’s free speech is violence.
- White silence is violence. White speech is violence.
- Segregation is bad. Separate black college dorms and black graduation ceremonies are good.
- Stereotyping people is wrong. All white people are racist oppressors.
- “White flight” from inner cities is bad. White migration to inner cities (aka “gentrification”) is bad.
- Diversity strengthens us by bringing in different viewpoints. Adopting diverse viewpoints is “cultural appropriation.”
- Government must be directed by the will of the people. Government must be directed by a technocracy that is shielded from politics.
- Merited success condemns merited failure, therefore no success is merited.
- The Constitution is a living document. The Supreme Court’s “Roe v Wade” decision is carved in stone.
- Raising the cost of cigarettes will discourage people from smoking. Raising the cost of employing workers will not discourage businesses from hiring.
- Slavery – an economic system in which people can arbitrarily demand others’ time, labor, and produce – is bad. Social Justice – a philosophy that holds that “the oppressed” can arbitrarily demand others’ time, labor, and produce – is good.
- Monopoly by corporations – which must satisfy their customers to survive – is bad. Monopoly by government – which can use deadly force to survive – is good.
Additions from comments:
- Voter fraud is when Republicans get elected. We stuff ballot boxes to prevent voter fraud.
- We must defund police departments that oppress left-wing rioters, looters, and arsonists. We must increase funding for police departments that protect our gated communities and that arrest Christians who refuse to wear masks while worshiping outdoors.
- The ATF, CFTC, CPSC, DEA, EEOC, EPA, FAA, FCA, FDA, FCC, FDIC, FERC, FHA, FRA, FTC, NLRB, NRC, OSHA, SEC, and Federal Reserve regulatory agencies must be strengthened because unfettered capitalism is failing.
- Nuclear, coal, hydroelectric, and natural gas power plants have been banned in California and must be banned throughout the country. Free enterprise has failed to keep the lights on in California.
- We must teach our children that 2+2=5. Unemployment is rising among high school and college graduates, proving the failure of capitalism.
- Our ideas are contradictory only in the light of Western logic – a patriarchal and racist tool of oppression.
Knowing one’s enemy’s tactics is vital to defeating them. Just because one might employ some of his enemy’s tactics/strategies doesn’t make him into his enemy.
No. I’m not trying to convince him. Most of them are too far gone. I’m trying to get the people in the middle to start laughing at him. He gets flustered, he gets shrill, and the mask comes off.
Politics isn’t warfare and the importation of martial language can really skew our perceptions. A good way to draw a moral distinction between one party and another is for one party to behave better.
Even ignoring that, there’s real danger in getting carried away with all the Sun Tzu stuff. It invites in logical fallacies and magical thinking. When the byzantine armies were at their low ebb after the muslim conquests they got the bright idea that because the Arabs banned representations of the divine and pretty much any art other than calligraphy that must be the cause of their success. Hence iconoclasm, which mostly involved people who wanted to tear things down, getting to tear things down. And, surprise, it didn’t work in reversing anyone’s military fortunes.
So now conservatives are waiving Rules for Radicals as their holy Quran and claiming that this book will lead us to victory, but really it’s just an excuse for people who never saw the point in discourse to begin with.
Except dumber than that. The Byzantines were actually losing. Conservatives have redefined losing to mean not getting everything they wanted right away without much work.
Except dumber than that. The Bush agenda was popular with conservatives at the time. And then it wasn’t, so we redefined losing to mean not getting what we wanted before we knew we wanted it.
Pacifism is a lovely philosophy … for my enemies. May they all adopt it at once.
Who are thee people in the middle who you believe are hearing this? By today’s standards I’m probably closer to the middle than anyone else here and I’m not laughing. And even if they were here to listen “Progressives believe progressive things” is only a funny joke to a sub-section of committed conservatives.
Looking at the tactics in the streets is does seem that the “left” regards it as war. When they form groups with names like “By Any Means Necessary”, I think they mean it. It would be a shame to lose the war because we didn’t realize we were in one.
With regard to conservatives redefining losing as you describe, all I can say is that the left doesn’t have a monopoly on whiners.
What’s your point? The left isn’t my moral loadstar. Nor do I think they’re omni competent or necessarily particularly astute. The imperative to sink to the level of the worst of your opponents only exists if that’s what you really want to do. Actually being better than the people you insist you’re better than won’t kill you.
Two points, one being the tired and over-used example from WFB, Jr., but it’s used a lot because it’s valid. If someone pushes an old woman into the path of a subway train, and someone else pushes her out of the way, in both cases an old woman was pushed, but the actions are clearly not morally equal. The point there is that using the same tactics doesn’t make you sink to the level of your enemy. Seems obvious to me.
Second, being “better” is pointless if it causes you to lose the conflict. It is better be be gracious in victory. I believe conservatives can do that, but I don’t believe leftists can.
This all started when I said that we should address the best, most articulate version of left wing positions rather than just giggle at the crazy version. That’s not about pushing women away from busses, it’s about whether we should push women whom we don’t happen to like into them.
That being better leads to more or greater losses than it does gains is something you have to prove. My point in my original comment was to argue that addressing the best arguments on the other side will keep us sharper, more honest and more effective.
Then maybe we’ve been talking at cross-purposes. Wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened to people.
That was meant to address what I perceived to be your comment that we would in effect become morally equivalent to left if we adopted their tactics in self-defense — a ridiculous assertion, if you had been making it.
It was said of the Japanese in WWII that they would either put your neck under their boot or kiss your boots—there was no in between, no equality or innate human worth where you could disagree but still look one another in the eye. All there is is power and authority. Obviously a caricature but with a grain of truth as seen in the way they treated conquered peoples.
Similarly, the left has abandoned the entire tradition of the innate value and dignity of the individual in favor of mere membership in a class as defined by those in power. The power is real which makes classes real. Individuals? Not so much. Think about how easily cops are dehumanized or the rhetoric directed at Kavanaugh, McConnell, Barrett and anybody connected to Trump. They are no longer people, just elements of the enemy class.
It depends on what you mean by adopting the left’s tacts. Arguing that no we should liquidate their kulaks pretty much gives away the store. And for too many conservatives these days the tactics/substance distinction has evaporated and the culture war has become the agenda. But those are broader points.
In this case I do think we were talking at cross-purposes.
I don’t think using Alinskyite mockery makes conservatives the moral equivalent of the left. I think it makes them less effective, less thoughtful conservatives.
Winston Churchill, on the Germans:
All of us who care about conservatism and fighting America’s leftward slide are, or should be, in the business of persuasion. There are a lot of ways to persuade, and a lot of audiences for that persuasion.
I believe that adopting the worst tactics of the left is counter-productive because, while it might persuade a few, it will drive off far more.
On the other hand, I think humor, even mocking or biting humor, is a powerful tool, which is why I applauded Richard for this post. It’s a useful tool even if it’s pitched only at those who already share our views. Not everyone is equally confident, either in their beliefs or in their ability to articulate them in a compelling way. Posts like this remind people that, yes, the left is as nutty and self-contradictory as we often think it is, and arm people with a few useful examples of that nuttiness.
There’s a place for tedious, wonkish pieces about traditional American conservatism and its superiority over progressive policies, about the virtues of free markets and free expression and all of that. Some will prefer to persuade that way, and some will benefit from hearing that kind of persuasion. But anything that strengthens conservatives in their resolve is likely good; if it does it in an amusing and memorable way, even better.
Thank you. I will.
Really well said.
My fear is that many leftoids are no longer capable of asking the question for which conservatism is the answer.
I get your point and I somewhat agree. At the same time, I think that your rewording of my far left versions of the arguments was something of a motte and bailey argument: “Oh, we never meant to imply that Western Civilization is evil, we’re just saying that we should appreciate other civilizations.” That doesn’t fly after Jessie Jackson famously led students in the “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Western Civ has got to go” chant.
I don’t get this at all. Jackson being unreasonable prevents others from being reasonable? That’s more than just guilt by association. I don’t know what to call it. What other people on one’s side have had to say limits what one is allowed to think? It rules out lines of criticism on historical questions?
If western civilization had been especially unjust it wouldn’t become retroactively just because Jesse Jackson lead a chant.
No. You’re missing my point. Lot’s of people are arguing that Western Civilization is uniquely evil. And it’s not just crazies making the argument. That is what is being taught in thousands of K-12 schools and universities across the nation. The New York Times’s 1619 Project is making this point. The Times is the nations’ newspaper of record, not some left-wing rag.
You’re whole point is that my post is arguing against crazy left-wing positions that are way out of the mainstream Left. They are not.
You’ve tried to clean up the language to make them sound more reasonable. But even cleaned up, they don’t fly.
The stupidity is strong in CA. Years ago, I heard a Stanford law professor say that the Constitution meant nothing to her because there was no one of her race — Asian — or sex in the room at the time it was written.
That was not my point which I said explicitly. Focusing on bad arguments on the other side makes us lazy and self righteous whether they’re in the mainstream or not.
I guess I don’t know what it means for arguments not to “fly”
I thought you’re responses to my devil’s advocate points were good. I don’t agree with you on all the particulars but your rebuttals were insightful and interesting unlike the op which I consider partisan empty calories.
So I consider my first two comments on this post a success.