[Aekos]

"Abortion is murder."
"People of religion X are all..."
"People of [ethnicity speaker doesn't like] are all..."
"Homosexuality is immoral."

As liberals, we should of course not attempt to suppress or censor this speech, or people who genuinely believe in all other kinds of nonsense (creationism, climate change denialists, etc). However, what is the argument for allowing these views political clout? Does liberalism require that even the most illiberal of movements be given a voice in the political process?

[Fraqtive42]

This is one of the reasons why I choose not to label myself as an American social-liberal (or any liberal, for that matter). Modern liberalism plays itself as tolerant and accepting, but in reality is not very open to other viewpoints. Political correctness is often a grotesque demonstration of said intolerance, at least in my opinion. Things like 'being concerned about immigration is racist', etc. just demonstrate that dogmatic intolerance is coming from both the liberal and conservative side of the equation.

My recommendation would just to tolerate intolerance to a higher degree. Condemning intolerant views with equal intolerance makes things worse in the democratic process, especially when the two-party system is put into play.

[Alexander]

As liberals, we should of course not attempt to suppress or censor this speech, or people who genuinely believe in all other kinds of nonsense (creationism, climate change denialists, etc). However, what is the argument for allowing these views political clout? Does liberalism require that even the most illiberal of movements be given a voice in the political process?

I think it highlights the paradox of liberalism, to be honest. How is preventing a movement from gaining traction any better than censorship? I'm not saying there's anything wrong with either, but liberalism isn't the vehicle for doing it. At least other ideologies (particularly socialism, for example: although obviously the same can be said of right-wing movements) make it clear that they won't tolerate subversive movements: liberals try to have their cake and eat it too.

[Kman]

liberals try to have their cake and eat it too.

Only the fake liberals, real liberty supporters respect the principle of letting even really dumb people have their say because they understand that giving a bureaucrat the power to censor dumb people always ends up with said bureaucrat being one of the dumb people censoring the smart people.

Good ideas dont need government help anyway, they win on their own accord.

[Donna]

Although a Marxist, his influence on modern social liberalism is impossible to ignore: Herbert Marcuse argued that the classical notions of liberal tolerance are democratically flawed because they primarily benefit anti-egalitarian movements from the political Right. The most obvious example supporting this idea would be the fact that liberal democracies during the interregnum more readily tolerated a transition to fascism rather than Communism or even democratic or parliamentarian variations of Marxian socialism (or in other cases, various forms of gerrymandering that tolerated fascist groups more readily than Marxist and left-radical ones). Marcuse's solution to this problem of liberal tolerance, which he believed was harmful to civil societies in liberal democracies, was to promote the idea that certain views from the Right (not necessarily the Right itself) must be gradually subjected to a kind of social-mechanical intolerance, one which would secure the recuperation of formerly revolutionary items (such as black liberation, women's liberation, queer liberation, etc.), compromise the hegemony of bourgeois prejudices and pave the way for future left-radicals to diversify or focus new social movements. These changes, for Marcuse, would enrich the old liberal idea of democracy with the perfection provided by more radically egalitarian impulses that seek to constantly influence society.

In conclusion, no: intolerance should not be tolerated by liberals who believe in any meaningful way that society can be improved for the benefit of more people (a directive that is probably more meaningful to social liberals). This does not necessarily mean a strategy of divide and conquer using the repressive devices of the state (although I'm sure many liberals are fine with that anyway), but if the public and cultural spaces became infected with this libertarian relativity and nouvelle bigotry, this potentially facilitates a crisis of democracy.

[Kman]

In conclusion, no: intolerance should not be tolerated by liberals who believe in any meaningful way that society can be improved for the benefit of more people

Then they are not believers in liberty and hence not liberals anymore.

[Donna]

Thanks for illustrating my point, Kman.

[Daktoria]

Donald, demanding a counterrevolution to return to classic liberal ideas makes you no less bigoted. Heck, you're supporting progressive bourgeois elitism by sustaining the vicious cycle of expected violence where people stand up and act out to be heard while risking their legal dignity. You're also expecting libertarians to save the day when in reality, that establishes an excessive duty of care where libertarians aren't allowed to enjoy their own lifetimes, but rather have to sacrifice while everyone around them enjoys their own.

The point of tolerance in the first place is to make people immune from forced risk assumption. As I explained to you before, pragmatism is the problem. Even Marcuse agreed in how "moronization" is used to inhibit social mobility and secure social status:

Tolerance toward that which is radically evil now appears as good because it serves the cohesion of the whole on the road to affluence or more affluence. The toleration of the systematic moronization of children and adults alike by publicity and propaganda, the release of destructiveness in aggressive driving, the recruitment for and training of special forces, the impotent and benevolent tolerance toward outright deception in merchandizing, waste, and planned obsolescence are not distortions and aberrations, they are the essence of a system which fosters tolerance as a means for perpetuating the struggle for existence and suppressing the alternatives. The authorities in education, morals, and psychology are vociferous against the increase in juvenile delinquency; they are less vociferous against the proud presentation, in word and deed and pictures, of ever more powerful missiles, rockets, bombs--the mature delinquency of a whole civilization.

According to a dialectical proposition it is the whole which determines the truth--not in the sense that the whole is prior or superior to its parts, but in the sense that its structure and function determine every particular condition and relation. Thus, within a repressive society, even progressive movements threaten to turn into their opposite to the degree to which they accept the rules of the game. To take a most controversial case: the exercise of political rights (such as voting, letter-writing to the press, to Senators, etc., protest-demonstrations with a priori renunciation of counterviolence) in a society of total administration serves to strengthen this administration by testifying to the existence of democratic liberties which, in reality, have changed their content and lost their effectiveness. In such a case, freedom (of opinion, of assembly, of speech) becomes an instrument for absolving servitude.

[Donna]

I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, Dak.

[Alexander]

^I'm glad I wasn't the only one.

Daktoria, are you actually capable of writing in normal English? You may think you're being really profound, and sounding really intelligent with all these buzzwords, but you're not.

[Rei Murasame]

I think Daktoria has somehow missed Donald's point.

This is Donald's point in a nutshell and it's a really good one:

Comprenez enfin ceci: si la violence a commencé ce soir, si l'exploitation ni l'oppression n'ont jamais existé sur terre, peut-être la non-violence affichée peut apaiser la querelle. Mais si le régime tout entier et jusqu'à vos non-violentes pensées sont conditionnées par une oppression millénaire, votre passivité ne sert qu'à vous ranger du côté des oppresseurs.

Understand finally this: if violence were to begin this evening, if neither exploitation nor oppression ever existed in the world, perhaps concerted non-violence could relieve the conflict. But if the whole governmental system and your non-violent thoughts are conditioned by a thousand-year-old oppression, your passivity only serves to place you on the side of the oppressors.

Epic. And applicable in many ways.

Daktoria is going to disagree with the point mainly because he thinks that people should be able to continue to do whatever it is that they are doing right now, and that everything that everyone does should be tolerated. He, like all libertarians, preaches non-aggression and and non-coercion to those who are on their knees, but not to those who are standing on their feet.

The fact that libertarians are still preaching that even in a post-2008-crash world, shows just where their loyalties effectively are.

[Daktoria]

Donald illustrated his point well enough. The Marcuse reference fits what he said as well.

He's just playing dumb at this point to look hip.

Daktoria is going to disagree with the point mainly because he thinks that people should be able to continue to do whatever it is that they are doing right now, and that everything that everyone does should be tolerated. He, like all libertarians, preaches non-aggression and and non-coercion to those who are on their knees, but not to those who are standing on their feet.

Rofl...

...says she who says I stand up for the last man too much?

[myrmeleo]

As liberals, we should of course not attempt to suppress or censor this speech, or people who genuinely believe in all other kinds of nonsense (creationism, climate change denialists, etc). However, what is the argument for allowing these views political clout?

By not censoring speech, the governed are more comfortable that their speech will not be eventually censored. This resistance to government takeover is perhaps well encapsulated here:

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

[Donna]

He's just playing dumb at this point to look hip.

I'd like to suggest that you adjust the way that you communicate your ideas because they do not make any clear sense to me (and apparently, others). I read your response over twice and stared at my screen in bedeviled disbelief.

If you want to consider myself a pleb, that is fine, but this also obliges you to make your ideas more accessible. Otherwise your posts start becoming a vague form of harassment.

[Potemkin]

The point of tolerance in the first place is to make people immune from forced risk assumption.

Actually, no. No, it isn't.

As I explained to you before, pragmatism is the problem. Even Marcuse agreed in how "moronization" is used to inhibit social mobility and secure social status:

The quote from Marcuse actually reinforces Donald's point rather than refuting it. Just out of interest, what do you think is the meaning of that passage from Marcuse?

[Rich]

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak out because I was Protestant.

When did they come for the Catholics?

I love the way that Conservatives continually try to hijack the holocaust. The Nazis were part of an international anti internationalist anti left movement, which included both the Catholics and Protestants. In the battle for Berlin over half the defending troops were non Germans, a large proportion were assuredly Catholic. Of course now the Nazis brand has become quite toxic and all the Conservatives are trying to jump on the anti Nazi bandwagon. Because two Jewish economists and a dog from the Austrian school made some anti Nazi comments even the Right Libertarians are now trying to claim the anti Nazi cause as their own.

Of course if Niemollah had been honest he'd have said:

"First we went after the Communists,
"then we went after the Socialists and trade unionists"
But then I chose to separate myself from the large majority of Germans who remained loyal to Hitler until the end."

[Brother of Karl]

In conclusion, no: intolerance should not be tolerated by liberals who believe in any meaningful way that society can be improved for the benefit of more people (a directive that is probably more meaningful to social liberals). This does not necessarily mean a strategy of divide and conquer using the repressive devices of the state (although I'm sure many liberals are fine with that anyway), but if the public and cultural spaces became infected with this libertarian relativity and nouvelle bigotry, this potentially facilitates a crisis of democracy.

I've always thought that freedom of speech is absolutely vital to any modern society, and perhaps the most valuable social contract in existence today.

It's much better to combat speech we disagree with and bigotry WITH speech and leading by example than with force, because if we use force, it sends a negative message about our beliefs and is basically shooting ourselves in the foot.

[Daktoria]

I'd like to suggest that you adjust the way that you communicate your ideas because they do not make any clear sense to me (and apparently, others). I read your response over twice and stared at my screen in bedeviled disbelief.

If you want to consider myself a pleb, that is fine, but this also obliges you to make your ideas more accessible. Otherwise your posts start becoming a vague form of harassment.

Donald, give it a break. We all know you're not stupid, and I'm not trying to look down upon you (nor am I obliged to analogize). If you stared in disbelief, it's because you can't believe I took the position I did.

Let me remind you of what you said before in respect to pragmatism over homosexuality:

Me: ...the real shift can come from pragmatism towards idealism, not from the cultural capitalist tool called queer liberation.

You: The agent of revolution is the proletariat, not homosexuals.

As someone from a working class background (ESPECIALLY as someone who HAS gotten in trouble disputing social-mechanical intolerance), I take tremendous offense from this. You basically said I'm obliged to endure frustration and revolt, gambling legal dignity just so democracy can be refreshed in a society that refuses to think for itself...

...and you repeated this above:

Marcuse's solution to this problem of liberal tolerance, which he believed was harmful to civil societies in liberal democracies, was to promote the idea that certain views from the Right (not necessarily the Right itself) must be gradually subjected to a kind of social-mechanical intolerance, one which would secure the recuperation of formerly revolutionary items (such as black liberation, women's liberation, queer liberation, etc.), compromise the hegemony of bourgeois prejudices and pave the way for future left-radicals to diversify or focus new social movements. These changes, for Marcuse, would enrich the old liberal idea of democracy with the perfection provided by more radically egalitarian impulses that seek to constantly influence society.

You also said libertarianism would be the key to this:

This does not necessarily mean a strategy of divide and conquer using the repressive devices of the state (although I'm sure many liberals are fine with that anyway), but if the public and cultural spaces became infected with this libertarian relativity and nouvelle bigotry, this potentially facilitates a crisis of democracy.

___________________

Actually, no. No, it isn't.

Are you familiar with Rawls' original position argument? When I say risk assumption, I'm talking about characteristics defined before birth.

The quote from Marcuse actually reinforces Donald's point rather than refuting it.

Yes, I agree. That's why I said the Marcuse reference "fits".

Just out of interest, what do you think is the meaning of that passage from Marcuse?

...to inhibit social mobility and secure social status...

That's what Donald's arguing. He's saying a new generation has to be frustrated in order to catalyze a new social revolution where the very dignity of the frustrated becomes jeopardized.

Don't play me for dumb. I see what you're doing. It's typical Foucault provocation, and it's exactly why Habermas started to believe postmodernists shouldn't be taken seriously. Merely giving postmodernists attention is what leads to social decay.

[Rei Murasame]

Are you saying that defending society as it presently is (and the direction it is drifting in), is something that is a good idea?

You seem to suspiciously be against almost any kind of social revolution. Can someone reveal the reason why libertarians are now acting as a quasi-traditional brake pedal on society? For a bunch of people who perpetually insist that your ideology does not have hegemony, you lot sure seem defend the status quo at every juncture as though it did have it. Very curious.

You are actually demonstrating Donald's point by trying to make the argument that you are now making.

[Donna]

We all know you're not stupid

Perhaps I lack the metaphysical training that you received at Hogwarts. I do not understand what kind of point you are trying to make. You're trying to make this very personal and it's very confusing. I don't really know what to say here.