politicartoons | Hate Free Zone!

... yeah, we all know how that ends. You think you'll be one of the guys in the jack-boots, calling the shots: LOL no. You'll be one of the aging, insignificant proles, still blaming everyone but yourself as your health-care and community services vanish, prices rise while living-wage jobs grow fewer, and the fossil-fuel corporations systematically destroy our planetary eco-systems beyond repair. Go ahead and do your right-wing rant; the "I told you so" can just hang quietly over your head and wait till it's run out.

Your statement that "liberal logic isn't logic" is itself logically fallacious. First you label any person or view with which you disagree as 'liberal'; then you discount them on the grounds of being 'liberal', which in your mind equals 'illogical'.

Very neat! You thus are spared having to seriously consider any view or person with which you don't agree. No different from Trump proclaiming that all negative polls are 'fake news'.

Did that make sense to you? If not, I refer you to this list of logical fallacies (http://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/ENGL1311/fallacies.htm): you're providing a textbook example of #3 and #31.

Of course, since I'm saying something you don't like, you'll naturally label me a 'liberal', and discount everything I have to say on the basis of that label. Q.E.D.

My response needs to be weighed in respect to the context I'm responding to. Someone presented their opinion as facts, and because it was declared as fact, it was deemed unquestionable. I called that liberal logic.

Don't seriously expect me to adhere to the rules of logic when the other party is playing identity politics. If you were being objective, I wouldn't have to point this all out to you. Instead, you would've realized I was being cheeky and playing tit for tat.

I suppose this means what I've been saying doesn't set well with you, and that's why you cherry picked me to correct.
QED

"... yeah, we all know how that ends. "

Haha... no you don't. But, that's not going to stop you from being hyperbolic about it all.

No, really, I didn't.

No he won't. Perhaps you should avail yourself to look up positive and negative freedom sometime.

Looks like the courts don't think it's hyperbolic, do they?

> Don't seriously expect me to adhere to the rules of logic when the other party is playing identity politics.<

Right, so now you've admitted that you're being illogical on purpose.

uh. no, Lefties glorify *people's right to choose* those things.

Lefties glorify the freedom of people to engage in whichever lifestyle works best for them on a private, non-invasive level. If they prefer to enact traditional roles and have traditional lifestyles in society, more power to them. If they choose to do otherwise, more power to them. Because the best society is one that grows with the people's directives, not some arbitrarily chosen set of mores that never change, never flex.

Our cultures have always been "multcultural" just now we do not criminalize it. We engulf it and reap the benefits of a happier, more inclusive group.

the most censorship those women faced was people not liking them. They were never saddled with legal, or physical obstacles. Sorry.

in fact all three managed to do very well for themselves when they began their journeys of self.

"Reverse racism and reverse sexism are stupid terms. It's not a one way street. Usually when you have a moral theory that isolates one group as capable of being racist, for example, but another group cannot be, then you have a bad moral theory"

Discussing racism without considering the power dynamic is a meaningless exercise. An individual without power holding racial prejudices has a vastly different impact than an individual in a position of power holding racial prejudices (supported by societal structures that also help uphold them.) That's why there is a distinction, in academic circles, between racism and prejudice. Anyone can be prejudiced or bigoted. Only someone in a position of power can be racist.

Quibble about dictionary definitions all you want, but the point of that distinction is that simply saying "everyone can be racist; there is no such thing as "reverse racism!" solves absolutely nothing. It's about as useful as saying "I don't see color!" It does nothing to solve the actual real-life problems being faced by people because of decades of inertia driving ingrained inequalities in our society. It's nothing more than an easy way to give lip-service to egalitarian ideals without actually having to wrestle with the difficult work of actually seeing where inequalities exist and doing something tangible to combat them.

there has to be an ethnocentric state for white people somewhere.

Why? I mean, why does it matter that "white people" survive? It's always held out as this obvious truth, this self-evident conclusion - but why? The type of "genocide" being discussed here isn't actually mass-murder. It's the slow change in skin tones through inter-breeding over time to the point that, potentially, people with pale skin that we currently call "white" may no longer exist.

So again, I ask: why is this a problematic future? What would that future look like? Why would it be "bad?" Unless someone is claiming that skin-tone actually affects intelligence and behavior, it should be absolutely shrug-worthy. I'm about as white as they come. Why in the hell do I care if all of my descendants are someday darker skinned than I am? Why should I care if the entire world settles into one shade? You have to demonstrate how this is actually a bad thing, beyond the old racist ideas of the past that darker skin somehow equates to lower intelligence and bad character.

I mean, we have to remember that race doesn't exist. It is a social construct. We came up with the idea that varying skin tones actually mean something, because we couldn't get past idiotic tribalism, left over from our development as apes in the wild. But not all evolutionary urges are beneficial or useful in a modern society concerned with the promotion and preservation of human rights. The great thing about our human intelligence is that we can ignore harmful urges.

Again, race is a social construct. Our deciding that skin color somehow is a valid criteria for separating ourselves into groups is about as valid as doing it based on hair-color, or tendency towards having freckles, or eye colors. It's a meaningless superficial characteristic that ought to hold about as much importance as those other things, but we decided it somehow matters, somehow makes us different.

If, over time through interbreeding, there eventually were no more white people*, it wouldn't be genocide** any more than if, over time through inter-breeding, we ended up with no more people with freckles, or brown eyes, or armpit hair. Again, it's a meaningless physical characteristic with absolutely no bearing on anything, and it's only our idiotic tribalism that has made us turn it into a tool of oppression.

*The "white genocide" preached by racists is never going to actually happen, and the people so "worried" about it know this. They're not actually interested in stopping white people from going extinct (which is next-to-impossible) so much as making a nation where they don't have to look at not-white people. That kind of silly nativism has its own problems worth discussing, but that's another topic.

**genocide has a specific definition, and it's not "the slow and gradual change in superficial physical human characteristics over thousands of years." It's murder, specific targeting of people based on race, or religion, or whatever, and it involves displacement and murder and persecution. It's not the scientific principles of genetic inheritance working themselves out over time. Claiming "genocide" is a blatant insult to the actual victims of genocide in the real-world, and the racist white supremacists and separatists who to try to claim that victim status should be ashamed of themselves. Of course, if they had any sense of personal shame, they wouldn't be white supremacists, so there you go.

Yes, I'm purposely being a parody of my opposition. And I like how they can point out the illogical qualities of my response but can't do so in their own, yet I simply mirrored it.

"Lefties glorify...

-unhealthy eating;
-numbing oneself with drugs and alcohol;
-self mutilation;
-rejection of the womb and childbearing;
-emasculation of men;

This is nonsense.

"Lefties" don't glorify eating one way or the other, any more than "righties" do. It's not a partisan thing. You have health nuts on both sides, as well as gluttons.

Lefties do not believe in "numbing oneself" with drugs/alcohol. They believe that we should start treating addiction like a disease and not a crime to wage war on. The recognize the disaster that the "war on drugs" has been and the vast damage it's caused to our inner cities, and want to reform our criminal code so that people committing victim-less crimes aren't treated like mass-murderers.

Lefties don't believe in "self-mutilation," but they do believe in the right to decide what to do with one's own body. Most lefties don't have multiple piercings and multiple tattoos. Most "righties" see nothing wrong with earrings or tattoos. Why is that not a "belief in self-mutilation?" Are you trying to take the example of a minority and apply that to the majority?

Most lefties want children. Most lefties also recognize that abortion is a necessity, and again, believe in bodily autonomy (and recognize the scientific facts about when a fetus is actually viable and can feel pain - "righties" reject science when it conflicts with their world-view.) Since the right refuses to consider the societal benefits (economic and in terms of crime) of widely promoting and funding comprehensive sex-ed and birth control, abortions will continue to happen. (The right's dismissal of those things proves that the right doesn't actually care about babies so much as policing sexuality. They HATE sex outside of marriage, and want to enact Puritan morality on everyone.) You don't like abortion? Support the things proven to actually work at lessening it: education and birth-control, and not abortion bans.

Lefties don't want the "emasculation of men." They want to show that "grunting beer-swilling muscle freaks watching NASCAR" is not the only way to be a "man" or masculine. Manhood is not a one-size fits all behavior model (that is only a couple hundred years old at most, for crying out loud.) I don't play sports, I don't really watch them on TV that much, I like musical theater, I display my emotions and cry when its appropriate. Guess what: I am every bit as much a man as some muscle builder or football player: but I stand for what I believe in, I support my family, and I work to make my world a better place. I'll have words with anyone who says that makes me "emasculated." I know who I am, and I'll not allow right-wing Victorian-era pigeon-holers to tell me what is, or is not, "a man."

"Multiculturalism is not and has not been the norm. The default has always been ethnocentricity. "

Babies and very young children can and do recognize differences in skin tone. But babies and very young children do not separate themselves accordingly. The separation of groups is something that has to be taught. Yes, there are certain tribalistic urges that come from our background as apes (which have more to do with group size than anything else, and we just decided to use physical characteristics as an identifier) but "we did it as apes" is no excuse if a behavior is harmful. Ethnocentricity is no more "default" than multiculturalism. We can decide which one we want by weighing the benefits and costs of each. I would argue that multiculturalism is, over time, the best road towards building a good society.

So, what Ayn Rand wasn't saddled with legal or physical obstacles because she escaped communism?

I guess if it was capitalism she'd be in that picture.

Nice omission of facts.

I fail to see what that has to do with liberals being totalitarianists, albeit unknowingly.

The problem with the cartoon is that it makes two mistakes.

1. "Tolerant Left." The ones acting in violence and the ones who generally preach tolerance are distinct groups. Of course, the cartoon wants to pretend that the actions of these few leftists somehow tarnishes all on the "liberal" side of the aisle, and that this somehow says something about "the left" as a whole, or even "tolerance" itself. Of course, I'd assume we are all smart enough to see through this sort of lazy false-dichotomy.

2. "Tolerant Left." The cartoon misunderstands what "tolerance" means. It's a common straw-man tactic on the right to pretend that liberal "tolerance" means "anything goes" and that we cannot ever judge anything or hold an opinion on it: "we should have tolerance for Muslims - therefore we must ignore violence committed by Muslim terrorists." It's obvious that this is, again, a very lazy argument, and it's a shame that so many on the right buy into it.

I'll quote someone else who spoke more eloquently on this than I can:

1) Free speech and tolerance are not the same thing. Free speech is the legal principle that the government cannot limit someone from expressing their opinions, no matter how repugnant those opinions are. Tolerance is a social contract in which people of vastly differing opinions and worldviews essentially agree to disagree. Free speech is protected by the State. Tolerance is a meta-ideology held by the culture.

2) Free speech has always had limitations. You can't yell fire in a crowded theatre. You can't slander someone, generate false criminal accusations, nor lie under oath. Free speech endures to a point until that speech becomes false and causes material harm.

3) Similarly, tolerance has its limitations too. It is a social contract: a peace treaty that establishes each individual has their own subjective lifestyles and worldviews and we shouldn't encroach on them. You do your thing, I do mine. However, if one's subjective worldview/lifestyle is such that they seek to stamp out other worldviews/lifestyles... well, that is a breach of the social contract. It inherently endangers that peace treaty for all. A tolerant society is under NO obligation to indulge an ideology that seeks to destroy said society. On the contrary, a tolerant society is OBLIGATED to fight intolerance. The ultimate goal of tolerance is peaceful coexistence, and an ideology of intolerance directly contradicts that.

Tolerance isn't a principle of passive indifference. It is a NATO for a diverse, multicultural population. And Milo Yiannopoulos is precisely the kind of asshole that we're supposed to stand against. Let's have Mark Levin, Charles Krauthammer, or good god even Dick Morris coming to Berkeley to offer a conservative voice. They actually have something substantive to offer.

But Yiannopoulos is simply a troll with no real principles to speak of. All he's ever done is kick beehives and bitch about how unjust it is that he's getting stung.

EDIT: To put it another way: Tolerance is the philosophy of everyone saying "I'll do my thing, you do yours." Bigotry is the philosophy of "I'll do my thing, which is to prevent you from doing yours." Bigotry demands we allow their ideology to exist unhindered, while it refuses to afford us the same in exchange. Which is precisely what Milo Yiannopoulos is doing.

"Discussing racism without considering the power dynamic is a meaningless exercise."

You've introduced a power dynamic in order to isolate one group's behavior -- which is the point of your exercise whether you admit it or not. You're looking to justify cherry picking who is and is not racist. That's what this serves to do.

You're not being objective. You're being the opposite of that. The power dynamic is irrelevant.

Your presuppositions about inequalities affect your concepts about racism. i.e. You've redefined racism according to such filters.

Simply put, equality is a fantasy of the left.

Race is more than just skin color.

I will add to the above by saying: civil disobedience, even violent civil disobedience, has long been a championed method of expressing political opinion. The founding fathers often broke the law when fighting against the Crown, and committed economic and physical violence against the property and representatives of the tyrannical King George III. Martin Luther King Jr. committed civil disobedience by refusing to move, and although he eschewed physical violence, he committed economic violence against shop owners through boycotts and physically blocking the way while performing sit-ins. Abortion protesters knowingly break the law by blocking access and sometimes commit physical assault on those they disagree with. In all of the above cases, those committing disobedience knew the consequences and were willing to face them, but viewed the cost of failing to act as higher.

Civil disobedience, even violent civil disobedience, has a long and storied history in our nation as a way to stand up against oppression. In the face of rising fascist and monarchist white nativist movements, those who break the law by blocking traffic, destroying property, and even committing physical assault, are part of a rich tradition that is every bit as "American" as free-speech.

I'm not arguing that any specific incidence of law-breaking or violence is justified: that is a question for the history books. But those who will argue that the violent protesters are somehow "unAmerican" are woefully unfamiliar with our own American history.

[citation needed]

"equality is a fantasy of the left."

What does this statement mean?

Babies and small children will walk up to a tiger without any awareness of the tiger posing as a threat. And, tigers being predators isn't a social construct. So, you have to take into account that there are stages of development going on as various internal systems are booting up or calibrating to the environment, to put it analogously.

Apes behave tribally, and this behavior is not a social construct. More importantly, that tribalism drives them to engage in war with other tribes that are in proximity. And we have those same qualities. So, this notion that race is just a social construct is a complete farce.

Rather, race is merely the abstraction we use to identify our collective identity. This tribalism is innate. And another way to put that is: Ethnocentricity.

Now, people can condition against this by exposure to other groups, and this is what multiculturalism does. However, this is a conditioned response.

You've adopted an ideology that holds this conditioning as some moral imperative. And I have no reason to accept that.

Any sense of equality you think exist is not based in reality. It is something you're projecting upon reality.

So, for example: social equality does not exist; economic equality does not exist; biological equality does not exist.

Why are you governing yourself as though it ought to?

Basically, you have Hume's ought VS is problem here. You're trying to force reality to conform to this ought. And that's putting the cart before the horse.

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