Wow. Just wow.
Way to question your own biases dude. That was tight.
Is the OP asking for a group of conservatives that only exist in the imaginations of liberals?
This is the exact point I’m trying to make in this thread. Claims about the regressive left whither under even the mildest scrutiny because the regressive left is not actually a thing.
Thats not a controversial opinion. Bill Maher is a good example. Maher is a traditional liberal who values liberal values. However he notices that modern Islam is a threat to those values (religious liberties, women’s rights, gay rights, minority rights, etc), and he speaks out against it because Islamic cultures are worse for these things than many other cultures. This places him in the crosshairs of the SJW type liberals who do not want any criticism of marginalized groups.
Also some liberals engage in rioting and protests when conservative speakers show up (see the riots at Berkeley as an example), but others do not. When I was in college I wanted to see a conservative speaker, but a bunch of leftists kept trying to interrupt his speech. A lot of us who are liberals do not agree with this. However some liberals trying to shut down conservative speakers is a problem that has happened repeatedly.
The idea that there is a division in the left between the traditional liberals and what can only be described as a more authoritarian SJW type liberal (the type that want to restrict debate and free expression in pursuit of social justice) is not wrong. I’ve seen it in person and in the media.
It’s a problem that has happened repeatedly. In the 60’s, the 70’s, and on until today. There have always been those on the left who were a little louder and a little angrier. It’s not a schism it’s a continuum.
Here’s a simple example.
Civil libertarians want transgender individuals to be treated like regular people. On the other hand, social justice warriors want transgender individuals to be treated like regular people. Wait, that’s the same friggin’ hand.
There is no schism here. They want the same things because for the most part they are the same people. They aren’t two distinct groups. There’s a huge amount of overlap.
That’s one form of it. Another, more like the Bill Maher example you cited, is that the liberal “big tent” often, by its very nature, requires walking a tightrope between conflicting groups, or sometimes just supporting one marginalized group against another.
The most commonly used example is Islam; Islam is one of the world’s most repressive religions against feminism and homosexuality. So if a liberal wants to support 1) Islam, *and *2) feminism, *and *3) gays, he will often find 1# to be at odds with 2# and 3#.
Some liberals will try to strike a certain balancing act: “Well, *true *Islam is tolerant of feminism and homosexuality,” or, “Those within Islam who disapprove of feminism or homosexuality are only a minority.”
Have you never met an obnoxious person from the Left? I have just as I have met white supremacists. I promise you that they exist and they are terrible because they tend to be dysfunctional people in general.
I think it would would be better if people stopped trying to protect “their own” and just acknowledge that some people are just bat-shit insane no matter what team they are currently playing for. I like transgender people just fine and have even been close friends with a couple but that is hardly the pressing issue of the day. Most people don’t care one way or the other. They just want roads paved and good schools.
I can tell you you that protests don’t work anymore. It is like a mime show at the side of trade convention. Nobody is going to pay attention. The Left is arrogant but they shouldn’t be because they are Bambi ignorant about how the things really work. That makes them a laughingstock with the general public.
No. No balancing act.
We want women to be treated equally by everyone.
We want homosexuals to be treated equally by everyone.
We want practitioners of Islam to be treated equally by everyone.
These don’t come into conflict.
A wise man once said…
Give that a try and get back to me.
No, I think the issue at hand is rational proportionality.
I think most liberals would agree that it’s not good that a lot of Islamic societies are biased against women and gay people.
But they disagree with the solutions that some conservatives propose to this problem. Passing laws against Islam is not a good idea. Banning Muslims from entering your country is not a good idea. Launching military attacks against Islamic countries is not a good idea. None of these solutions are going to reduce misogyny or homophobia.
It’s like the old laws in France where if there was a poor harvest, the authorities would round up all the cats and kill them. The idea was that cats were associated with witches and killing the cats would weaken the witches. And the witches were the ones causing the poor harvest.
There were people who said that killing cats was a dumb idea. But here’s the key point: that didn’t mean those people were in favor of poor harvests. They were just as opposed to poor harvests as the cat killers were. They just thought cat killing was a bad solution to the problem of poor harvests.
The same thing is true today. When somebody says banning Muslims is a bad idea, it doesn’t mean that they’re in favor of terrorism. They’re just as opposed to terrorism as the banners are. They just think banning Muslims is a bad solution to the problem of terrorism.