> We need to deeply think about all this - allowing peaceful, objective, conservative opinions and policy (such as the Lincoln Project) while condemning hate speech, violence, white supremacy and other racist behavior.
But that’s the problem. Nobody trusts people in Silicon Valley or New York City to decide what those things are. These are people who have internalized ideas like “you can’t be racist against white people” which the vast majority of the country doesn’t share. And they certainly will not apply the same standards to people on the left glorifying violent radicals like Angela Davis. We just saw this happen this summer where the center-left media pretended for months that American cities weren’t on fire.
Your example proves the point. The Lincoln Project are basically fiscally conservative Democrats at this point. They’re not meaningfully conservative on any of the issues that matter to conservatives today: religious liberty, preservation of history, immigration, etc. And it’s not just an American thing. These issues are actually where the US right is increasingly aligned with the European center-right. Censors in NYC and SF would have censored a bunch of stuff people like France’s Macron have been saying lately.
The Lincoln Project is a distinctively bad example; their entire rationale is coded appeals to Democrats. The idea of a political equilibrium consisting of Democrats and Lincoln Project Republicans is wishcasting.
But it's easy to provide real examples of conservative speakers who are experiencing no meaningful interference. So, replace The Lincoln Project with The Federalist.
There shouldn't be any problem with these discussions when they're posed without hate. Immigration for example should be discussed in terms of cost/benefit and immigration of talent, policies, etc., not "Build a wall and Mexico will pay for it" or outright banning people based on religion (remember Muslim ban?).
The problem is that these are not conservative principles. This is just hate spewing, plain and straight.
Hate is an emotion, it is subjective. You might feel hate when you see or hear something, but it is not an intrinsic, objective quality of other people's words.
Without using these emotional trigger words, do you think the citizens of a country should be able to decide who visits them in their country?
The point wasn't per se about immigration. The point was to have a respectful, intellectual discourse in public. Pick your favorite public policy topic. My point stands, even if we're discussing soy bean pricing laws. Discussing the details of immigration is a massive topic for another day.
To really drive this home:
1) Don't spread hate - there are obvious limits to this. Calling for assassination of public officials counts as hate speech. Saying something offensive is fine as far as it doesn't incite violence.
2) Have an intelligent, evidence based discussion, be respectful and we're trying to move the country forward. Not divide and turn to our own echo chambers. Come to a resolution through debate and concession.
You can't have an intelligent and non-emotional argument about certain topics in full (e.g. racism, sexuality, politics, immigration, religion), nor can you do so without certain sides invoking some "hate" aura because like it or not, there is a prevailing (and left-leaning) definition that is semi-agreed and pushed by official institutions, and you can't go against it without your argument being labelled "hate".
And no wonder the right feels persecuted, because their beliefs are not necessarily hateful yet they are labelled as such by default. It's like drawing the line somewhere arbitrary and then asking the side whose beliefs are on the other side "why can't you discuss this without resorting to hate speech", and "stop complaining because your side is hateful" and "it's okay for companies to refuse you service because your ideas are hate speech and X-ist".
Few examples of acceptable "hate-speech" that falls within that acceptable line: Anti-white Racism. ACAB. Punch-A-Nazi.
And increasingly more and more things are being brought under that umbrella. The right’s doctrine of Constitutional interpretation? According to a sitting US Senator, “racist,” “misogynistic,” and “homophobic.” https://twitter.com/SenMarkey/status/1320808025393868800?s=2...
Immigration is a good example. Cultural relativism has become broadly accepted among the progressive left. As a result, they increasingly can only see immigration as an economic issue. Preserving the country’s existing culture to them isn’t a valid reason, so they deem it “racist.” This is internally consistent to them. If culture doesn’t make a difference, the only reason not to have mass immigration is potential economic downsides, or limited infrastructure. Assimilation and the “Melting Pot” is increasingly coming under attack for the same reason.
This is totally incomprehensible to conservatives, who reject cultural relativism. They believe the success of a society is based on deep-seated cultural features and social reinforcement thereof. (I once had a Japanese person go through hundreds of years of Japanese history to explain to me why the country has less problems with corruption than many other Asian countries.) Within that framework, “we don’t want our community to change” is a completely valid position. At the very least, assimilation is indispensable.
> There shouldn't be any problem with these discussions when they're posed without hate. Immigration for example should be discussed in terms of cost/benefit and immigration of talent, policies, etc.,
The idea that immigration is solely about “cost/benefit” and “talent, policies, etc.” is an inherently liberal, and indeed quite radically liberal framing of the issue.
The International Convention on Civil and Political rights recognizes that distinct “peoples’” have a human right to self determination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination. That is, distinct identifiable groups have a right right to self-governance.
That is the basis for national borders as we know them today. But if distinct people have a right to self governance, it follows that nations have a right to control immigration for whatever reason they want, including the characteristics that make them distinct.
It’s wholly legitimate for a country not to take immigrants who they think might change the culture of the country, or not fit in, or simply because they don’t want to. It doesn’t have to be justified with some sort of economic analysis. It’s not “hate spewing” when the Japanese refuse to accept immigrants for no reason other than large scale immigration would change Japan’s culture. It’s likewise not “hate spewing” for someone in Boise Idaho to say “I like my society the way it is, and I don’t want people here who have a different history, political tradition, etc., especially when they’ll be voting on the laws that govern me.”
My family is from Bangladesh. My parents are fairly Americanized, but they really don’t understand some of the subtler things about American culture, like our anti-elitism and love of guns. In Bangladesh, the elite govern and there is no “glorification of the common man.” It was also disarmed by the British, so there is no gun culture. This results in hilarious arguments between my dad and my wife, whose family populated the Oregon coast on the wagon trails, who still hunt for food and hate the government for taking their homestead to build the pacific coast highway. Immigration inherently changes the culture and people are fully entitled to support it or oppose it, or support slowing it or increasing it on that basis.
But liberals usually can’t even see that dimension of the issue because they’ve internalized cultural relativism.
America has embodied immigration since the Naturalization Act of 1790, albeit for white persons only. Perhaps you're mistaking a country such as Japan? America is far more liberal than what you indicate. Immigration in the US has always been a major centrist point of view since the dawn of this nation.
The fact that the US long favored immigration under different circumstances doesn’t mean that it’s an impermissible view to oppose it right now. There was a strong period of immigration restriction starting in 1920 where the foreign born population dropped to 5% while the country became culturally much more homogenous due to mass media. The foreign born population started rising again due to the 1965 INA and is now triple what it was in 1970. Also, the country is much more interconnected today since everything was federalized starting in the 1930s. Mass immigration to the coasts—where people coming from different political cultures back home would eventually start voting here-didn’t affect folks in the rest of the country as much during the mass immigration at the turn of the 20th century.
Also, you’re again painting the issue with a liberal brush by talking about “white persons.” That’s a viewpoint rooted cultural relativism—it overlooks that immigrants don’t differ only by race, but culture, political tradition, etc. It’s also incorrect: for example under the 1921 immigration act there was no restriction at all on immigration from Latin America, while it was restricted from every European country to an annual 3% of the existing population of people from that country. (Of course there was a racist element to it as well with the 1924 Asian exclusion act. But that confirms that there are two separate issue.)
I’m not trying to convince you of this point, I’m explaining why we can’t have folks in NYC and SF deciding what political ideas can be expressed online. American liberals have increasingly fully embraced cultural relativism, while American conservatives (and most ordinary people around the world) still believe that “culture matters.” Conservatives assume that culture drives societal differences, and, especially combined with a natural pessimism, are terrified of changes in culture. They also tend to live in the vast swaths of the country that have a low foreign-born population and fairly homogenous cultures. Ironically, as an immigrant myself it’s easy for me to understand someone in Idaho who is afraid of the culture of his community changing. Bangladeshis would feel the same way. Asians, in general, are not cultural relativists.
I don’t even judge her for the 1970 courthouse shooting, but the New York Times is publishing flattering pieces on her even as she continues to support terrorism against Israel.
> She has supported confessed terrorist Rasmea Odeh, and called for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the internationally designated terror group al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. In addition to killing many dozens of Israeli civilians, the Brigade did enormous damage to Israeli support for negotiations with Palestinian groups. They were granted amnesty through a Palestinian Authority deal in which they agree to renounce terrorism. Then when Hamas took control of Gaza, they renounced the agreement and resumed attacks on Israeli civilians as Gazan fighters. Angela Davis considers them “freedom fighters” and called for Barghouti’s release, referring to him as a political prisoner. She maintains Odeh’s innocence, and claims her trial was unfair despite International Red Cross observation of the trial and a subsequent confession.
> She has supported confessed terrorist Rasmea Odeh, and called for the release of Marwan Barghouti, a leader of the internationally designated terror group al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade. In addition to killing many dozens of Israeli civilians, the Brigade did enormous damage to Israeli support for negotiations with Palestinian groups. They were granted amnesty through a Palestinian Authority deal in which they agree to renounce terrorism. Then when Hamas took control of Gaza, they renounced the agreement and resumed attacks on Israeli civilians as Gazan fighters. Angela Davis considers them “freedom fighters” and called for Barghouti’s release, referring to him as a political prisoner. She maintains Odeh’s innocence, and claims her trial was unfair despite International Red Cross observation of the trial and a subsequent confession.
But that’s the problem. Nobody trusts people in Silicon Valley or New York City to decide what those things are. These are people who have internalized ideas like “you can’t be racist against white people” which the vast majority of the country doesn’t share. And they certainly will not apply the same standards to people on the left glorifying violent radicals like Angela Davis. We just saw this happen this summer where the center-left media pretended for months that American cities weren’t on fire.
Your example proves the point. The Lincoln Project are basically fiscally conservative Democrats at this point. They’re not meaningfully conservative on any of the issues that matter to conservatives today: religious liberty, preservation of history, immigration, etc. And it’s not just an American thing. These issues are actually where the US right is increasingly aligned with the European center-right. Censors in NYC and SF would have censored a bunch of stuff people like France’s Macron have been saying lately.