So, I found this question on a forum relating to liberals, and I felt, given we just came off of me discussing Forward, and my big criticism of Yang boiling down to him not having a dogmatic bone in his body to the point he just abandoned a good chunk of his views to make nice with people with the opposite opinions, I figured that this might be a good topic to discuss.
The question was really about the idea that the right speaks with their values and convictions with such confidence, while the left...doesn't, and asking whether mirroring the right would be a good thing. Sadly it was mostly addressed to Biden bro libs who have the same character flaws of Yang in my view, and as you can imagine, most of the answers were some form of the same smarmy "well dogmatic right wingers are stupid and I'm smart." *sigh*, anyway, I have issues on both sides, so let me explain what I believe is the correct answer to the question, and trying to build a solid middle ground here.
I'm an ex conservative and an ex fundamentalist Christian. As you guys know, David E. Noebel's "Understanding the Times" was an early influence of mine. And in the class that that book was taught to me, I was taught the importance of worldview. Worldviews matter, values matter. And unlike what centrist craplibs and forwardists think, it's fine to be strong and confident in your worldview, to stand for certain things, and to push for certain values. I believe that this is a weakness of much of the modern left. They don't stand for anything. They are too busy trying to compromise, and push for ideas based on incrementalism and bipartisanship to actually stand for anything, and it pisses me off.
Now, to be fair, a lot of the comments in this thread from the craplibs were addressed at, as you might have guessed, the Bernie Bros, and people like that. So I do want to address that, and that's why I am a bit softer on this than they are. Just because I have values and convictions, doesn't mean that I'm a fundamentalist or an ideologue. Here's the thing with worldviews. They're great, they're our guiding star, but after leaving christianity and coming to humanism, I realize the world is complex. And maybe no single worldview has all of the answers. And maybe it's important to be aware of many worldviews, but to not hold one with such zeal you tend to ignore the others when they make good points.
As you can tell, when I lined up Understanding the Times' worldviews, I actually would say my views were heterodox enough where I actually had elements of other worldviews in mine to varying degrees. They just werent dominating influences. The problem with radicals is they dont do that. They find one worldview to really latch onto and they believe it dogmatically like its a religion. As we know, a lot of socialists and SJWs (postmodernists) are like this. They have their theories and their dogmas and they dont approach them with an open mind. I feel like a valuable perspective of humanism is that it's supposed to be based on reason and evidence, and can understand that different perspectives within secularism can be valid, without having an undying fixation on such things. And while its nice to have values and convictions, you shouldnt be so dogmatic you cant put your views aside to view things from a different perspective, or you're not open to being intellectually challenged at all. I feel like some lefties just get so hardcore over say, marxism, or postmodernism, that it's all they know and all they believe, and they struggle to see outside it. That isn't good.
But, at the same time, the centrist libs and forward has the opposite problem. They seem to lack ANY values at all sometimes. Look, just because being too rigid and dogmatic is bad doesnt mean that the opposite is good either. Values still need to guide discussions. It's okay for movements to come together around a set of values and policies. Im not saying anyone has to agree with them 100%. I mean, as you guys know, for as much as i respect yang, I dont agree with him on literally everything. I have different ideas with how to implement UBI, i am more anti work than him full stop, and I think his current trajectory of lacking values makes him weak and a poor leader, quite frankly. There has to be some flexibility there, understanding not everyone will agree with us 100%, but if we can move the needle in peoples' minds, get them to support our causes, and get them to advocate for our views, we're winning somewhere.
No movement can have its followers 100% in lockstep. As I like to say with the right, there isnt a single value system or political faction over there. Theres the fundie christians, but also the libertarians, the fiscal conservatives, the MAGA people. ALl of these groups have different emphases with slightly different values. The left is like that too. We have, sadly, the neolibs, but then we have the SJWs, the bernie people, and i think that the belief system Yang and I espouse is potentially another faction that could come to exist within this broad left wing coalition. And to some extent, there has to be give and take. Thats why im supporting Marianne Williamson currently. Is she my favorite candidate? No. Does she speak to my value system? Sort of. Are her policies good? Better than the neolibs, but we all know how I would do it. I've listed priorities and rough ideas of how to pay for them. Williamson is a partial match, but only a partial match. Why do I support her? Because she's the best we got. I can sit here talking about how my ideas are better all day, but unless I run for office myself, we're not going to get a better match. And I wouldnt run myself as I know I wouldnt win, and even if I did, I couldnt do much. Yang discussed much of that in forward. Id rather just be a cheerleader from the sidelines pounding my values and maintaining my purity than getting my hands dirty and becoming compromised. And I'm honest about that.
So...yeah, you can clearly say I have some middle ground here. I am a bit of an ideologue, but not enough that i cant understand and respect other opinions. I think being more dogmatic would make me a zealot, and I'm not a zealot. Why am I not less? And why am i more dogmatic than say a neolib? because worldviews and values matter. And I'm here to advocate for my worldview and values. Period. And I want candidates that are at least reasonable partial matches to my values.
THe reason the dems piss me off is they mock my values, are explicitly anti my values at times, but then expect me to support them, and after a campaign season of mocking and denigration, my only reasonable response to these people is "screw you". Even then, given 2024 with Trump and DeSantis as the only frontrunners, I'm probably gonna hold my nose and vote for Biden this time. Both are threats to democracy and....my values. Like explicitly. Not trying to have TDS here, but january 6th was a hard line for me, as is desantis in florida, given his behavior there. We might not have a fair election in 2028 if either one of them win.
But still, under normal circumstances where the GOP isnt a literal threat to democracy itself, and we were back in 2016 again, if I had to vote between a democratic candidate who sank my preferred candidate, mocked and denigrated people like me the whole time, and then tried to force me to support them, or a candidate who i share values with more, I'm going with the third party candidate I agree with.
Just how I see it.
So yeah. Again, to summarize, it's a middle ground. Being too dogmatic to the point you lose yourself to the dogmatism is bad. But so is having no values. You need to have values and fight for them, but also be nuanced enough to make REASONABLE compromises push comes to shove. I do believe a failure of the dems, and forward for that matter, is their lack of a value system and ethos to keep people interested. If anything they seem to fetishize not having one to the point that that IS their value system (yeah, you dont think you can really NOT have some value system, do you? Your lack thereof just becomes the value system). But at the same time the failures of say, the SJWs or the socialist left, is they're too fixated on values to the point they're dogmatic, blind to nuance, and just attack anyone who doesnt agree with them 100%. As I said before, I think my target number is 70-80%. That's about the extent to which I agree with people I like most in politics like Yang and Bernie. Notice how I reserve the right to disagree a good 20-30% of the time. That's fair, that's politics. Get someone to advocate my big prorities, but then compromise on lesser issues. The problem with centrists is i only agree with them around 50% of the time. The right? In all honestly, we're talking 10-20%. So yes, Im going to go with the 70-80% guys, but I acknowledge its never gonna be 100%. Unless I run myself. Even then the pressure of running for office and trying to get things done could cause the real me values wise to make disagreements with my actual actions. Again, another reason I dont run myself.
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