Proposition: The knee-jerk glibertarian reaction to what they call "Big Government" is largely zero-sum, replacing the authority of that largely democratic, transparent institution with the authority of undemocratic, legally-secret corporations who certainly will not act in the public interest.
This is probably the biggest roadblock to being able to call myself a libertarian. I have basically come to the conclusion that corporations are evil and destructive entities, but hold out little hope for them losing power any time soon. That said, I
will take issue with calling the government 'transparent.' America really has become a much more closed, paranoid society since 9/11, with little hope of this trend slowing down as far as I can see. Essentially, I have lived in utter terror of the federal government basically since the passage of the Patriot Act, with things only getting worse from there.
I dunno Knight, when prominent internet skeptics like Thunderf00t and even mainstream atheists like Dawkins approached the social justice issue of sexism their behavior didn't exactly encourage a "spirit of humility and good will." The aforementioned people certainly weren't showing much.
I have no reason to disbelieve you, but somebody has to raise the tone if we ever want to get things done, right? Social justice types hate tone arguments, but they aren't even the lowest form of argument out there (according to Paul Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement, both ad hominem and name-calling are even less well-constructed forms of arguing). In addition, studies have indicated that people take most readily to new ideas in a calm mindset with plenty of time to think things over, not in the heat of the moment in the middle of an impassioned debate. Also, I think that 'skeptics' may have been the wrong word to use–more on that in my response to Distind...
Proposition: 'Politically correct' is a valid socio-cultural/political term with objective & definable meaning, not simply a right-wing snarl term for 'not as much of a loud-mouthed jerk as me.'
That a definition does exist does not prevent the term from being used as said snarl term. Notably, politically correct is a term that could be used in a variety of context with different precise meaning for each context. When ranging across the vast stretches of fucknuttery that are submitted to the mainpage I can safely say the term has been used in the damnedest ways both for and against it's use. From it not being politically correct to judge people based on having sex with animals, to ... well... the exact opposite being claimed by some fuckwit talking about the mainstream media(which largely avoids mentioning the issue if it can manage).
Most of the time when this is used as a defense it's far less that what was said was against common expectation and far more that the person was a cunt in how they went about saying it. My previous sentence is something of an example.
I think that the profligacy of the snarl term use of 'politically correct' is the main reason the term is so rarely taken seriously anymore. There are plenty of trends and current events that could more than reasonably be called 'politically correct' in the worst sense of the term, but nobody can use it in an earnest manner because some intellectual lightweights call simple criticism of their views 'politically correct.' Put simply, I agree that the snarl term use is a thing, which is the entire reason people think that use to be its chief or even sole meaning. However, I fundamentally disagree that political correctness, at its heart, does not target ideas–language is the clay from which we form though, after all, so the manipulation of language makes the manipulation of ideas a very simple thing indeed.
Proposition: Social justice movements would benefit greatly if their constituent members learned to approach skeptics in a spirit of humility and good will.
There have been investigations into removing the high horse however apparently the activists have taken root and removal could kill the horse. That said, using the phrase skeptics in relation to social justice crowds is asinine, I've spent months mocking a great number of these people and I can whole heartedly tell you that there are issues to be discussed, but people who can get attention online are just about the last ones who should be discussing them. At least till the issues go off the deepend of transethinic or other related stupidity. I got a real funny reaction when I asked just where someone can safely draw the line between stupidity and real issue, not a peep.
'Skeptics' was indeed a poor choice of words. 'Outsiders' may have been a better one, I think, since social justice groups have a distinct tendency towards high concentrations of jargons and even flat-out bafflegab, especially on the Internet. Getting rid of that fluff would help make their message much clearer and more visceral (I would also recommend chucking the 'academic' definition of racism–all I've seen it do around outsiders is cause fights and sour people on social justice). This is how the right wins–they keep it simple, keep hammering their message home and keep dividing everyone who isn't a rich, straight, white, evangelical Protestant man against each other. Why on Earth would any of us want to carry their water?
Proposition: Though largely unwarranted, the recent conservative consternation over the term 'cracker' is, as a rule, genuine and should not be automatically taken as a marker of belief in white supremacy.
It's not genuine, to be such it being called a cracker have to carry some weight. That said, it's also not a marker of white supremacy, they're proud of being called such. It is however a marker of someone desperately trying to claw their way up the moral highground using false equivalences. Someone who doesn't care what stupid thing they can use to get there and does not understand the concept of loaded words. As such I prefer to be called a saltine.
Particularly notable is a group of people who actually go by cracker for non-(blatantly)racial reasons. But rather as cattle farmers known for cracking their whips. Adjust that definition for race relations of two centuries ago and be very happy to be called a baked good.
I meant to imply that they
think 'cracker' carries some weight, or at least that it ought to. Bear in mind that I specifically separated the concepts of 'genuine' and 'warranted'–in other words, someone can believe that 'cracker' carries or should carry some weight until the cows come home, but it will not change the fact of whether it does or doesn't by even one scintilla. The thrust of what this proposition seeks to disprove is the notion that acting as if 'cracker' has any weight or can be rightly compared to other ethnic slurs can be dismissed as, in the words of one Feministe comment thread, "racist-ass whining about how white people can't use all the words and THAT'S NOT FAIR!!" This base motivation may be the driving force behind some such comments, but in the main, those sorts of comments are well-intentioned, if ignorant–arguably willfully so–of the still-vibrant shockwaves of the racism of old, and tend more than anything to simply be unsure of how to deal with shifting race relations. A gentle touch will probably work better with these people than telling them off for daring to not "be very happy to be called a baked good."
And yes, there's a great deal of resistance to some sects of libertarianism around here as some of us have a knowledge of history and precisely how things end under strictly libertarian ethos. But there's good ideas in almost anything if you look, so why not see what we can shake out.
I'm quite pleased that you were willing to take me up on my offer of a debate. I came to calling myself a libertarian because I felt that a distinctly illiberal strain of leftism had taken over far too much of the left, while the more liberal varieties seemed isolated and unenergized. Essentially, I hold myself as an Aloof Ally/Sour Supporter of the liberal left, pushing them to take up (metaphorical) arms and take back leftism from the authoritarian puritans who have largely taken it over, but holding out little hope that they'll manage to do so any time soon. Hopefully, I'll be completely wrong on this one and the left-wing authoritarians are just about to run out of steam, but the more likely scenario is that if they do go down soon, the left-wing authoritarians will make sure to make that process as ugly as possible by design.
