As a liberal, I will say that liberals drastically overplayed their hand the last 8 years. Many of us have been saying for a while that the language, tenor, and actions of recent liberal movements was ultimately counter productive.
I understand and share the demand to be treated decently and equally, but admittedly things kind of got out of hand. Micro-aggression, safe spaces, trigger words - all things that have good intentions but the people who advocated for them were often, to put it kindly, un-diplomatic.
With "demographics" on our side, many of us constructed this alternate reality where America, ready or not, was going to bend to our will - our worldview. And so we poked the bear. Over and over and over again. Then it woke up, tore our heads off and left us wondering what the f*ck happened.
I didn't notice this until after I got back to the US after some time in an authoritarian country, and I noticed that liberals had this similar authoritarianness of being unwilling to consider the merits of the other side, a feeling of we are certainly right and we are going to enforce it on everyone else through legislation. California just banned single-use plastic bags; it could have simply charged a fee commensurate with the costs of cleanup. Or the hot-button issues. Abortion: women's rights, yes, but the conservatives have a point that it is also killing babies. Homosexual marriage: people's rights, yes, but there are some good arguments to the other side, too. Usually issues have two sides because there actually are two different ways of looking at the problem, and to say that the other way is ignorant, intolerant, wrong, etc. is really not respecting the other side.
(Full disclosure: I am a conservative. I am not saying conservatives (!= Republican) are any better, certainly we have our own failings.)
I like your analogy about the bear, btw. I think you are probably right on. And even as a conservative, I was just as shocked as everyone else. Hopefully this election will get a good dialog going and people actually trying to understand the other side. That would probably make it worth it.
IMO this is what distinguishes a traditional liberal from a a progressive. For me, a liberal is basically libertarian with a belief the state can be used to ensure the rights of citizens are administered evenly.
IMO, if someone's actions aren't depriving another of life or liberty, the state doesn't have much standing in regulating that activity. Progressives believe state power can/should be used to protects their rights and their feelings. But, depending on the issue, you'll find conservatives taking the same stance.
Gay people getting married deprives no one of anything. Conservatives that want they're feeling protected are no different than the "SJW" so many of them rail against.
Like all things there are some grey areas. For example, the trans bathroom thing. I legitimately see both sides on that. Abortion is another I see both sides on and believe compromise is the best way forward.
You'll find "authoritarians" on both sides of the political spectrum. In some cases (like abortion) conservatives have their heart in the right places. So do progressive/liberals (environmental issues, for example). In other cases, both sides can begin to see the state as a tool to unnecessarily curtail the liberty of their countrymen.
There's an opportunity cost. I expanded on that a few days ago, and rather than rehearse it again, I'll link the answer I gave to "What do anti-gay-marriage people gain?": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12933668
>Homosexual partnerships, which are incapable of producing children, thus are of no benefit to the state, and can only be an unproductive diversion of funds which otherwise would be allocated to the benefit of heterosexual marriages which can and often do produce children.
i think you're completely wrong here. Homosexual couples do adopt children and given the number of children in the foster care one can see how a homosexual couple adopting an existing child may be of even bigger benefit to the state/society/planet than a heterosexual couple producing a brand new child.
Like with most of the "liberal/progressive" agenda - ecology/climate, marijuana legalization, education, healthcare, social safety net, death penalty abolishment, equal gay and others rights, etc... - i wish to think that this is we, humans, becoming morally better, yet it is also very easy to notice that when the wide society accepts those ideas it is almost always correlates ("correlation is no causation"?) with the fact that at the time of accepting of the given idea that acceptance is economically more beneficial than the not-acceptance. Well, better carrot than the stick...
A commonly cited argument, to be sure. Let's look at the magnitude of its impact in practice. Per federal statistics, roughly five hundred thousand US children are in foster care, which is roughly two-thirds of a percent of children in the US, or six per thousand. Figures on the number of children adopted by homosexual couples are somewhat harder to come by, but the highest number I found cited by a pro- group calls it about 22,000, which works out to about 4.4 percent of children in care, or 26 per hundred thousand of all children in the US.
Does this benefit seem likely to outweigh the cost to the other 99,974 children and their families? Does it justify a federal transfer of wealth from those families - who, given the fashion by which the tax benefits we discuss are distributed, will tend toward the lower end of the income scale - to those homosexual couples already wealthy enough to consider adoption and be likely to gain approval?
There's an argument to be made that these figures aren't representative because homosexual marriage is so new, and will increase over time, and that's fair. Let's look at the best possible case. Roughly 1.5 percent of the US population identifies as homosexual. (We disregard self-identified bisexuals in this analysis; when they make up their minds, they all but unanimously settle on heterosexualism.) Out of call it 240 hundred million Americans, if every two homosexuals equate to one marriage, we have 1.8 million couples. With half a million children in care, to reach full coverage, the overall adoption rate among those couples needs to be a bit more than one in four.
Does this seem likely? That's four orders of magnitude, and roughly a factor of three thousand, over the general adoption rate - and if we disregard intercountry adoptions, as we have throughout this discussion and properly should here, it becomes more like a factor of five thousand.
I do not dispute that homosexual couples, unable themselves to produce children absent extensive scientific and medical intervention, are more likely than others to adopt. But five thousand times more likely?
The essential difference I see isn't one of individual probability of parenthood, but of aggregate. Not all heterosexual couples rear children, true. But the likelihood of a randomly selected example rearing children is vastly higher than that for a randomly selected homosexual couple. That, I argue, is what makes it worthwhile for the state to support the former and not the latter.
To go into individual personal detail, as you seem to think I advocate, might in theory be a natural corollary of what I describe - but to do so in practice not only massively increases the bureaucracy and cost involved and brings in creepy edge cases, but requires a panopticon state in order to work.
so, according to that principle you declared, the state clearly shouldn't support marriage (no new marriage licenses and no tax benefits to the childless couples with already existing licenses. Shouldn't the state just automatically annul the existing licenses of such couples?) after the age of 50 or 55 - i.e when that likelihood fells below whatever threshold you consider "worthwhile".
Yeah I feel like you're post-rationalizing a gut feeling, because you didn't think too hard about alternative solutions to the incentives/tax burden problem.
That's actually closer to what I'd consider preferable, which would be no changes to existing marriage rights, but a federal civil union statute with marriage-level financial benefits contingent upon child-rearing. But such a thing would never be taken seriously on either side of the political crevasse - far too much for conservatives, far too little for progressives, thus decried from both sides. Is it too soon to bemoan the equation of nuance with assault in the modern American political environment?
> deny one of humanity's oldest and most important rituals [...] to an entire group of people
An entire group of people who have never in Western history, perhaps not even in human history overall, had access to that ritual, until the Supreme Court last year discovered in the Constitution a right heretofore unknown. It is very hard to overstate the extent to which this represents an upheaval of tradition, and such things don't happen in a vacuum - or, utopianism notwithstanding, without consequence. Being myself a member of that roughly one percent of the population which has been led to believe it may enforce its will upon the whole without fear of backlash, I don't think it is too hard to imagine what kind of "gut feeling" there might be somewhere in the back of my mind as I speak on this subject, as I've so often done over the last few years.
It's possible my analysis lacks accuracy, although that's yet to be demonstrated, and falling back on insinuations of bigotry doesn't really indicate confidence in one's arguments. But if you want to know what motivates me to concern myself with the subject in the first place, you need look no further than fear. I don't want to find myself in a war, and I really don't want to find myself in a war my side is all but guaranteed to lose - and one in a hundred isn't the kind of proportion that's conducive to a win. But some people seem to want to start one, and to put me and mine in it. They say it's for our benefit, but I've been observing and comparing their claims and their actions for some decades now, and I think they are lying. I also see no reason to expect that, when all the heavy things they've so blithely flung into the air start coming down on people's heads, they'll feel any need to stick around and share the horror they've let us in for. That seems to me like an outcome toward which it's eminently reasonable to look with trepidation.
We'd got by this long without being able to marry. We could've been satisfied with Lawrence v. Texas, which is an amazing accomplishment in its own right, and given it another generation or two before we told the rest of America again that it could take its morality and shove it even further this time. No, that's not ideal, but what is? Nobody ever promised us, or anyone else, an easy life. Nobody ever promised us a just world, by our lights or anyone else's. And the whole concept of progressivism revolves around gradualism, or so I'd been given to understand - the idea, I gather, being that of modifying morality over successive generations by a process mainly centered on education and subtle social pressure, rather than forcible reengineering of whole swaths of society at a time. Quibble though I may with the nature of such a process and the purposes to which it might be put, I at least have to admit that it has a reasonable chance of working. Trying to do everything in the space of half a generation like this is liable to get a hell of a lot of us killed, and to leave those who aren't worse off than they were at the start. I guess that's easy to contemplate for people who don't stand to suffer as a result of it. Here on what's liable to be the pointy end, maybe not so much.
I don't know about gradualism. You seem to have a better eye on the strategy than me, so I'll take your word for it -- though I'm struck by your cynicism about allies fleeing you when things get hard... but I can understand where it comes from. The number of people who would put themselves in harms way for someone else's fight is pretty low, so your numbers indeed look bad. Damn. Thanks for taking the time to reply. I hope for all our sake america isn't as dogmatic and lazy as you think it is..
Okay, but why guess? We already register children and parents, so only issue marriage licenses when a couple has a child. That takes the guessing out of it.
> but to do so in practice not only massively increases the bureaucracy and cost involved and brings in creepy edge cases, but requires a panopticon state in order to work.
I don't see how, the state already knows who a child's parents are.
As I've just mentioned elsewhere in this thread, I think a lot of this has origin in my failure to make clear that I'm not arguing one vast change in the status quo versus another, but rather arguing one vast change in the status quo versus no such change. (Status quo ante at this point, of course, but let's not get hung up on that point, when we've spent the entire conversation to date assuming that this is still a question meriting discussion.) Making marriage contingent on procreative capacity would be a vast change to the status quo. Permitting homosexual couples to marry, exactly as heterosexual couples do, is also a vast change to the status quo. There are cases in which vast changes to the status quo are not merely justifiable but utterly necessary. This does not seem to me to be such a case.
What about them? By your logic, won't be able to get married, unless they adopt, since they can't have kids, it's clear-cut.
> What about men and women who simply aren't fertile, for whatever reason?
Same, no marriage, unless they adopt.
> What about families in places where births aren't registered? Such places still exist.
Can't get married unless they register their kids. We can't have them benefitting from the institution of marriage if they aren't willing to do the legwork.
> What about the death of a couple's only child?
Could go either way, they gave it a shot. I'd be for letting them stay married.
> What effect has all this on divorce?
I don't know, what effect does not letting homosexuals get married have on divorce? Same deal.
> "Creepy edge cases."
Not really, though, they have pretty easy answers.
> And I can't see how maintaining all this additional information on which married status is now contingent (unless it's not!) could be achieved without a massive increase of bureaucracy, with its concomitant cost.
What's the additional information? It's literally "do you have any children? yes/no", which the state already has. You're literally advocating guesswork instead of using one simple and readily available piece of information.
I don't know, these arguments are so bad that I feel like you're trying to avoid recognizing that my solution is clearly superior. It makes me wonder what the real reason for you being against homosexual marriage is.
Civil discourse usually ends by presenting your clearly superior points and letting the weight of their clear superiority carry the day.
Questioning what the real reason for [him] being against homosexual marriage is an "Ad hominem fallacy".
This should sate the religious (they can have their marriage rules and do whatever they want they just wont have legal standing, we aren't calling the legal union a marriage anymore). It should also fix your issues.
In any case, the legal advantages are things that make it easier to live together permanently. As far as I'm concerned, if we moved to my proposal you should be able to get a civil union just for that reason.
So, if two best friends or roommates want to have a civil union because it makes their life easier have at it. If irreconcilable difficulties occur, then they can sever the union in court much like today's divorces.
If it helps any, I hardly more often find myself in agreement with conservatives on most issues than with progressives...
As I've tried, perhaps unsuccessfully, to point out, this isn't the same as arguing that permission to marry should be contingent upon procreative capacity. I can see how it might come across that way, from a starting perspective of weighing one vast change to the status quo vs. another such vast change, and I think I've failed adequately to clarify that I'm approaching the question instead from a perspective of weighing one vast change to the status quo vs. no such vast change. It's a different question.
You're also characterizing this as a "vast" change. What is the vast change here? From a logistical perspective, it doesn't exist: you pass a law allowing same-sex couples to do the exact same thing that opposite-sex couples can...and now they can go do so using exactly the same procedures as opposite-sex couples could before, and obtain thereby exactly the same benefits (tax advantages of joint filing status, visitation rights, and a host of other small preferential treatments given to married couples).
Speaking of those benefits: while they exist, it is categorically impossible to uphold equality of rights and opportunities while opposing same-sex marriage. The only to reconcile these two positions is to either a) pick one or b) redefine marriage such that it confers no civil benefits (which would indeed be a vast change).
> You're also characterizing this as a "vast" change. What is the vast change here?
That marriage should now be an institution open to homosexual couples as well as to heterosexual. Taken in isolation, it doesn't seem like a big deal to me, either. But nothing in society exists in isolation, and quite aside from the historical novelty of it, many millions of people regard this particular change as a very big, and very undesirable, deal indeed.
The impression I have is that those with whom I've argued the point here today see no reason to doubt that they know better than those many millions who share this opinion - so much better, in fact, that there's no point taking very seriously any argument, opinion, or belief, other than that which they themselves advance, espouse, or profess - or at least already agree with on all substantial points.
I was that confident once, too. Sometimes I miss it. But nothing is ever simple, and pretending otherwise can make fools of us all.
And do you really want to equate homosexuality and infertility, which for all intents and purposes is a medical disorder? Is that where you want this conversation to go? It's not where I want this conversation to go. My sexuality is not a medical disorder.
As I've argued at length in this thread and the comments I've linked therein, I don't think it's reasonable to consider that standard met here.
Why is that a legitimate interest of the state?
Cynically you could argue that the state benefits far more from dysfunctional families who are more likely to become dependant. I would rather the government spend money on sex education and contraception for teens than supporting married couples.
Your cynical argument has value as well. The trouble is that the only even temporarily stable state thus produced is a single-party state, and you can't really kick everyone off the dole once you've finished using it to get where you want to go. It's an ongoing cost whose magnitude is only ever likely to grow over time, and the probable economic result is frightening.
Also you quoted me in your response, but your comments made no argument against my quote. Care to shed light on why people you don't know getting married deprives you of something?
1: http://www.legalmatch.com/law-library/article/marriage-compa...
There are really not that many fighting on the internet about who said what about who's sexual identity.
Liberals care about someone who has to work 12 hours a day for minimum wage, has no meaningful time with their children, has to go to work even when sick or risk being fired, is possibly just a broken bone away from homelessness, and is preyed on by the financial industry with fraudulent credits etc. Oh – and when they get home, there's Mit Romney on FOX saying poor people are lazy.
As a liberal I know that these people may have made poor choices. Where's the father? Shoulda finished school! Why do you need a cell phone? I just don't care. I see the willingness to spend money on anything /but/ the basic needs of people: the military, tax cuts to levels last seen in the 1920, etc. Indeed, conservatives seem to enjoy the suffering of others to such a degree that they're willing to spend more on people when they get to throw them in jail, with a bonus if it's a 20-year wait for the electric chair.
There are all sorts of questions about incentivizing people, motivating them and punishing them at the core of all this. The problem is that these questions are discussed only in terms of morality, not practicality. Every single industrialized country can serve as a laboratory, and time and again we see policies that improve lives.
Ridiculous. I can't tell you how many times I've heard those sentiments expressed when they're tapping away on their iPhones. Liberals care about whatever they currently feel the most strongly about. And they see no issues with using the fruits of Chinese laborers working in slave-like conditions while simultaneously agitating for the increase of minimum wages.
I see plenty of issues with Chinese laborers working in slave-like conditions. I'm happy to discuss breaking trade treaties and dealing with the consequences to give these people better lives. I'd say their condition is worse than the American poor - so if anything, we should bias towards them.
But, we have power to fix these things within the bounds of our nation and refuse to do it. We have more influence over our country than any other.
We do not. Increase minimum wages, and we increase inflation and the unemployment rate. You cannot legislate prosperity. You can legislate poverty though, as Venezuela found out.
> We have more influence over our country than any other.
We are the consumers of the world. If we suddenly stopped buying consumer electronics/clothing unless it was responsibly sourced and three times (at minimum) the price they were today, don't you think labor conditions would become suddenly far better?
You cannot legislate morality. You can coerce it through economic pressures and incentives, but just legislating that people have to be nice to each other doesn't work. Hasn't worked throughout history, won't be starting now.
And yet, there are enough to create a terrifying chilling effect for anyone whose beliefs don't fit in to the narrative, especially in hard-left milieus like college campuses or major tech companies, and the rest don't speak up against them.
> if someone's actions aren't depriving another of life or liberty
This requires definitions of what "life" and "liberty" mean. Once you choose these definitions you must ensure they are consistently applied to all your arguments.
> Gay people getting married deprives no one of anything.
What does "deprive" mean?
If we continued this discussion debating the definitions, the key would be ensuring they are applied consistently to all other claims by both parties. This is practically endless.
Maybe we need a new dictionary that is more specific and uses examples. Just like Stack Overflow Documentation - they realised that the key to good documentation is examples.
How would such a compromise look like?
> In some cases (like abortion) conservatives have their heart in the right places.
Right, but this is already your personal judgement. For example I personally feel that the conservative stance on abortion is cruel and creates more suffering.
Stop legal abortions at the age of viability as arrived at through scientific consensus.
>I personally feel that the conservative stance on abortion is cruel...
In some cases, it is. I'm not agreeing with all the anti-abortion arguments. I have also talked with "progressive" family members that have a cold/cruel absolutist view of it. In their mind, 8 months was fair game, because choice. When it comes to abortion, the assholery cuts both ways.
The age of viability could be arbitrarily early as technology progresses so I don't see how that is a good criterion.
Instead I would argue for several different criteria. One is consciousness. This probably only occurs half a year after the child is born. Another one would be the ability to feel pain.
Regardless of all other concerns, as a practical matter, I would argue that once a baby has some sort of independent existence from it's parents (once it came out as a matter of fact, no matter when) then it ought to be protected.
> In their mind, 8 months was fair game, because choice.
Is this really a practical problem? Abortions after 3 months (sometimes after 6 months) are somewhat controversial, but also very rare. For example, the numbers in Germany seem to be that 97% of abortions occur early.
The late abortions are almost always related to very serious disabilities and this is a completely different topic. For those rare cases I would again argue that sometimes good arguments can be made for the abortion. It is not a clear cut case.
Related: "I wager that the fetus experiences nothing in utero; that it feels the way we do when we are in a deep, dreamless sleep." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/when-does-conscio...
Abortion ban as political issue and abortion as moral issue are a different matter. The latter is an interesting thing to debate in light of various ethical principles. The former should be straightforward (if it wasn't for desire to impose your morality on others and control their lives). Once you admit both sides have a point the only option left is being pro-choice. Pro-life argument is based on "I am right, you are wrong and I am willing to legislate against you even though your decisions have 0 influence on my life". It's very similar to legislating against gay sex in this respect (no influence on you but as you find it disgusting you are willing to legislate against it).
Abortion is the biggest issue I disagree with conservatives and even though I lean more right as I am getting older and as the left (in my view) is collectively losing their mind this one I really can't get over.
This is kind of tied in with the Judaeo-Christian worldview, which says that sex is only designed to be done within the context of an unbreakable covenant (marriage), because it bonds you together in a deep way. Sex isn't just an act, which is why divorce is so traumatic. Children are supposed to be conceived out of an act of love into a safe, loving environment. (Everyone is aware that this is often not the reality, but this is what the design is.)
All that is hard to explain, though, so it's easier for people say "it's morally wrong because God says so," which really isn't a helpful or even appropriate way of interacting with non-Christians. An appeal to authority doesn't work if the other person doesn't accept the authority...
Obviously, you are free to reject this view. You can even reject the moral part, but I think that fundamentally the conservative stance is taking responsibility for the consequences of your actions. We take a dim view of people who get drunk, drive, and kill someone, because driving carries a responsibility. So why are we okay with people who have sex and then kill someone to get out of their responsibility?
Hopefully this makes the pro-life position more understandable, even if you don't agree.
No-questions-asked contraception.
edit: A more radical idea would be to ban abortions but allow the parents to give up the baby at birth as a ward of the state. The expenses would be covered by a new tax.
No contraception is even less reliable.
Really? I don't. It's a weird thing to care so much about.
> In some cases (like abortion) conservatives have their heart in the right places
Do they? I guess you could argue that cruel laws like the one Pence signed in Illinois are the only recourse they have for what they consider a moral battle.
I'm not sure how you can explain away fighting abortion while simultaneously fighting sexual education, contraceptive use, and welfare for those people who choose to keep the baby when they have no real hope of raising it well without help.
I agree with you. It wasn't something any thought about before. But once it made its way into the public discussion, I understand how some people would be uncomfortable with it: especially people who don't know any trans people.
>'m not sure how you can explain away...
I can't and I don't. I think people like Mike Pence are assholes. My personal stance is we should use the age of viability (as arrived at by scientific consensus) as a legal cut off.
How? Requiring trans people carry papers just so they can use the restroom doesn't strike you as just as little bit terrible? Trans people already use whichever bathroom they feel more safe and comfortable in: All these bathroom laws do is make life harder for members of what is already a very marginalized group. There's literally no positive aspect to them whatsoever.
I've had discussions with psychologists and trans people.
This illustrates the disconnect we're seeing between the left and the public.
Trans people are a vanishingly small proportion of the population, compared to the people who have lost jobs when their manufacturing jobs moved overseas.
Worrying about their desires (a tiny percentage of the population) and de-prioritizing the desires of a far larger group of people is insulting to the people who have lost jobs and can't find new ones. Talk about skewed priorities.
Also, if you thought you were Napoleon or black (and happened not to be black), you'd be roundly laughed at and diagnosed with a mental illness, and sent to therapy, resources permitting. Similarly, you can argue that Trans people have a mental illness - they think they're something they're not. It's just that the therapy to disabuse them of the notion is more trouble than it's worth.
I don't really have the stomach to dissect your Napoleon analogy, but instead I will simply note that you have made a false equivalence and suggest that laughing at or trivializing peoples' mental illnesses is not particularly helpful. I think that a comparison to phantom limb syndrome or alien hand syndrome would be more accurate. Most people can rely on their brain telling them accurate information about their bodies. Some of us are not so lucky. I can't begin to describe how difficult it is to have your brain constantly at war with itself. I can promise that therapy isn't going to fix that sort of brain malfunction, any more than "pray away the gay". With rare (and controversial exceptions), the majority of studies agree that HRT/GRS + therapy produces better quality of life than therapy alone. The suicide rate is pretty high for both groups though.
Manufacturing jobs and my body may both make Republicans feel uncomfortable, but are not otherwise linked. You are displaying emotional reasoning, not logic. There is no reason to compare these two things, and the worrying implication of your reasoning is that any injury to a minority can be absolved if the majority can be shown to have suffered some other harm.
There are a number of issues where conservatives have taken a stance against empirical reality (with its well-known liberal bias). It's tough to build a coherent worldview if it's not founded on empiricism. Trump epitomizes this problem. One hopes that the same may not be said of you.
You are missing the main thrust of my argument.
Transgender issues are such a vanishingly small portion of the population of course people who speak about the economy will get more traction. And people who fixate on transgender issues will rightfully be seen as fringe elements who are completely out of touch with most of the country.
Complaining about not being able to use the bathroom you want to use instead of worrying about towns and communities getting hollowed out because of manufacturing jobs leaving and never coming back does not get you votes and does not portray your side of the argument in a flattering light.
It'd be like complaining about grizzly bear attacks while getting drunk and driving home. One is a much more pressing concern.
> There are a number of issues where conservatives have taken a stance against empirical reality (with its well-known liberal bias).
Which are?
The main thrust of your argument was that we must either talk about jobs or trans issues. This is a false dichotomy. I'd say it's a pretty clever way to control public opinion, but we've seen these same rhetorical tactics being used against gay rights for some decades now. It seems to be very effective with the more emotionally driven populace.
This is most certainly not a false dichotomy. Everybody has a certain amount of mind share that they command. If you're talking about Subject A you're not talking about Subject B.
That goes a long way to explaining again why liberals seem so out of touch with most working class folks living in middle america.
They don't care about what rights a tiny portion of Americans have, or what bathrooms they can and cannot use. They care about getting jobs and food and making rent, which are the concerns of a much greater proportion of the populations.
When they hear about politicians ramble on about things that only affect a tiny minority of people, while ignoring things that affect much more people in a larger way, then you have an out-of-touch political party.
Mindshare may or may not be a finite resource but there is nothing suggesting that we are over-budget on that. But if that is a problem, again, your team created it. You are the party of legislating bathrooms and bedrooms. Own it.
Also, you may want to consider different news sources, as you seem to have a problem with repeating talking points instead of supporting your arguments with facts. This "out of touch" rhetoric is being heavily pushed by the right-wing apparatchik, and I am sure that you would rather be able to have your own opinions rather than the ones that the Party thinks you should have.
That is ridiculous. We've had gender separated restrooms for the longest time. It's only until now that social mores weren't enough to enforce the fact that you're just not supposed to use a restroom not of your gender, except for children with their parent under a certain age.
A law is a heavy handed way to solve the discomfort of most people, but it was passed in a state by its elected legislature. Since the Constitution doesn't say anything about sexual relations or orientation at all, it devolves to state rights.
> But if that is a problem, again, your team created it. You are the party of legislating bathrooms and bedrooms. Own it.
We are owning it. We're owning it because people aren't respecting long held social norms because of certain ideas of justice they have. Get over yourself. When a majority of people in a political jurisdiction believe a certain thing, either learn to live with it or move.
> This "out of touch" rhetoric is being heavily pushed by the right-wing apparatchik, and I am sure that you would rather be able to have your own opinions rather than the ones that the Party thinks you should have.
Ad hominem much? I have not attacked you personally at all, and you're insulting my ability to have my own opinions on thin evidence. I repeat points in the media because they make sense. Heck, I repeat facts every day. The mere fact that I repeat them so often doesn't make them less true.
Also, the left has been the political leaning that has clamped down heavily on thought crime and dissent. Note that Milo Yiannopoulos is far right, as he found the left far too stifling intellectually.
Actually that's pretty modern, historically. And thanks for telling me what my gender is, I really needed the guidance.
> Since the Constitution doesn't say anything about sexual relations or orientation at all, it devolves to state rights.
State rights and the People. I don't feel the need to make a moral argument about human rights on this issue, but I am sure one could be made. > Get over yourself. When a majority of people in a political jurisdiction believe a certain thing, either learn to live with it or move.
The majority is not always right, and democracy does not mean "majority rules". Also appeal to tradition is a fallacy, not a valid argument.
> I repeat points in the media because they make sense.
The triumph of rationalization over empiricism is nearly complete.
> Ad hominem much? I have not attacked you personally at all
Right, that thing where you said all trans people are insane or faking it was not in any sense a personal reflection. You do seem to be persisting in that belief though, which again does not reflect empirical reality. You are insisting that laws be made on the basis of your feelings -- and then blaming your opponents for it.
I'm not asking you to agree with the other side, just to give it a fair shake before putting it down.
Consider the viewpoint of a parent of a young (10-year-old) child. That parent sends their 10-year-old daughter into the women's restroom. If that restroom can be legally entered by any person who is willing to say out loud "I feel like I am a woman", that restroom is open to any number of adult men who prey on children to enter.
Yes, this is the ever-present, sometimes-alarmist "who will think of the children" argument.
But being a tired argument doesn't make it an inaccurate or illegitimate one. If there is no answer given for it, then it remains valid, if eventually tiring to hear.
That's a conservative talking point, not the reality of the situation. In reality, a trans person will have to go far beyond just feeling like a woman to get away with entering a women's room; they will also have to take substantial steps towards looking like a woman.
You don't even have to feel like a woman to enter a woman's room, you just have to say you identify as a woman.
"Substantial steps towards looking like a woman." What does a woman look like? A woman looks like whatever she chooses to look like. Actually, she sort of looks like me after Taco Tuesdays where I have to use the restroom really badly and all the stalls in the men's bathroom are full.
If you are demanding that a "real woman" make herself subservient to what society thinks a real woman should look like, or maybe even get a note from a doctor diagnosing gender dysmorphia, I would advise you to check your cis privilege. /s
I am not American, but I must say on the level of politicians, Obama repeatedly tried to be bipartisan and was repeatedly rebuffed by the GOP who seemed intent on grinding the government to a halt. Frankly, and it made the Dems look like a pathetic 'hanger-on', IMO.
"Considering the merits of the other side" is a losing strategy in game theory when the other side always defects.
The financial world was crumbling, and both parties recognized that drastic economic action was required.
Later, when Obama undertook healthcare reform - a project he had won both EC and popular support for - Republicans initially supported him. The Tea Party and the coming midterm elections pulled them to the right, and their success in 2010 left us with the obstructionism that we continue to see.
Related to the 'political showmanship' - if you recall the Boehner-Obama negotiations, I could hardly characterize that as showmanship. Representative Boehner risked his position as leader to try to demonstrate Republican cooperation but was ultimately drawn back by his party.
Overall, I read your comment as one that is supporting the 'Republican party line' without the context of following the events occurring during the Obama presidency. I would be keen to read any evidence you have in contradiction to the points I have raised.
[1] Here's an article describing the orchestrated obstructionism from the lens of 2012:
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/biden-mcconnell-decided-to-withhold-all-cooperation-even-before-we-took-office/2012/08/10/64e9a138-e302-11e1-98e7-89d659f9c106_blog.html
Second, there was Republican support for the ACA. You'll say 'no one' voted for the bill but the bill's signing was delayed as additions were continually made to appease Republicans who were on, the fence but eventually decided not to vote for the ACA. One Republican Representative did support the bill after it was clear it would pass. Indeed, there had been bipartisan efforts to create an ACA-like bill before the Tea Party pulled the Republicans to the right; see the third link.
- http://prescriptions.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/health-bill-earns-one-republican-vote/
- http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2009/roll887.xml [See Rep. A J Cao's vote]
- http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2010/may/12/george-will/george-will-pegs-sen-bennetts-loss-votes-tarp-stim/As for the party moving right, that's basically what I was referring to. Having been excluded from negotiations on legislation early on, with the stimulus bill and such, the Republicans became a unified opposition when many were initially willing and politically able to compromise. This is what made room for the tea party in 2010, which has been a big obstacle for them afterwards in my opinion. It's all sort of a lose-lose situation.
I still disagree with your second assertion. The Tea Party forcing the Republicans to the right happened outside Washington and didn't seem directly related to anything Obama or the Democrats had done.
About the Boehner-Obama moment: while (if I recall correctly) it ultimately led to another budget, in the thick of their negotiations, they would have changed tax law as well. [1] I agree that there are fewer easily memorable moments of bipartisanship after 2010 but I do not agree that the Democratic supermajority (which really only lasted a year, due to Scott Brown's election in Massachusetts) played an important role in promoting obstructionism.
Rather, the Tea Party and the ACA fight provided cover for the Republican leadership to do what they had already been planning (see the Washington Post link from above for an unattributed source who claims the same).
1. http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2011/07/11/137760498/grand-bargain-budget-deal-elusive
I was incorrect about the reason the Boehner-Obama negotiations began - it was the federal borrowing limit [2]. Reports at the time, and since, suggested that this fight was totally unnecessary, as the all expenditures accounted for by the borrowing limit would already have been approved by Congress.
2. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/debt-reduction-talks-in-limbo-as-clock-ticks-toward-aug-2-deadline/2011/07/10/gIQAOeXt7H_story.htmlThat doesn't explain the other 6 years pure obstruction.
Consider the conservative position, and what strategy would work for conserving what is important to them. Any sort of compromise is a long term losing strategy, so of course they'll block progressive moves if they're capable. I'm not aware of any real trade ever being offered, something like: we want full on no joke equality of outcome for every flavor of the rainbow, and in exchange we'll give you the abolition of federal income tax.
Imagine if someone demanded you eat a sandwich made of human waste, and then they got upset when you refused to compromise and only eat half of it.
I would also add that the media-portrayal of conservative perspectives if in multiple instances further to the right than that of the electorate. I'm happy to go into examples if you care (one example would be people wanting healthcare before the ACA became associated with the 'evil' Democrats).
The ACA is not "health care." It's an insurance regulation. The conflating of the two is a useful narrative but it is not accurate in any way.
In the pre-ACA insurance marketplace, pre-existing conditions either precluded individuals from coverage or forced them to pay for more expensive plans. Self-employed individuals were in a similar position.
Without insurance, health care, ranging from the mundane to emergency room coverage, was/is exorbitantly expensive. What rhetorical clarity, then, do we gain by explaining that the ACA is not health care?
I don't agree with you on the media-portrayal point, because I think your premise is way off. There is no unified conservative perspective in the way that there is with progressives. This last election has made it very clear that the old conservative guard, the ones most similar to progressives, who called for universal healthcare before Obama, are in a minority position.
I'm not likely to be the one you want to discuss this with though, as I'm an anarchist.
History has by and large been a march towards these ideals. Freedom, equal chances, some organized support isolating you from the raw&random powers of markets&nature.
That believe isn't new, by the way. The first progressive would have said: "We believe these truths to be self-evident".
My understanding of how Americans use the word "liberal" is that it's an alternative way of saying "left wing". In that case history has not been a march towards left wing views, surely the fall of the USSR, the rise of Reagan and Thatcher ... it's been the opposite.
And aren't "liberals" now pitching for unequal chances? Like, HRC should be President because she's a woman, affirmative action, get women into tech funds etc?
It looks like you just picked a few things that are widely regarded as good, and labelled them liberal.
Saying this reveals a dire mis-understanding of access and opportunity in society. The reason those initiatives are needed is because of the extreme amount of inequality that currently exists.
Women would not need to be put into tech if they were already well there. Affirmative action would have no purpose if minority groups were properly represented.
These are initiatives fighting the status quo, which has an extreme bias towards men and white people. It is exactly the opposite of giving "unequal chances."
Your scope of the playing field is limited. Affirmative action is indeed unfair when you consider only the choice at hand. You have to back up and take in a larger scope. Minorities are frequently disadvantaged in many areas of their lives: they are born into poverty at a larger percentage than whites; they are policed with much less forgiveness; they are killed by police at a much higher rate, and must live with that fear at all times; their fathers are incarcerated at a much higher rate. The list goes on and on. Affirmative action is an attempt to give an advantage in important employment and education opportunities to make up for those disadvantages.
History is the past as it is described in written documents. In other words, a narrative.
Yes, but now people are going for an immediate overcorrection.
Tossing Brandon Eich out of Mozilla is the type of behavior that liberals probably should reconsider. I do think he was wrong, but is he really an evil man who deserved get kicked out of his company. I don't believe so.
Is the University of Toronto professor who is fighting to not use preferred gender pronouns a terrible person who liberals should hate? No, I don't think so. Especially when his argument is that it's compelled speech and violation of his charter rights.
Are the white supremacists and other racists who have come out of the woodwork to support trump bad people. Yes. They are. They need to be opposed.
> the conservatives have a point that it is also killing babies
It's not killing babies.
That being said, it's completely understandable that it is a moral issue for people. They believe it is wrong. That's not a viewpoint that makes you a bad person.
> there are some good arguments to the other side, too
Oh really? What are they? I've yet to hear a single one.
That's why the serious discussion happens on 4chan. Say WTF you think, or GTFO.
I also upvoted you. :-)
I've been saying this to my HRC-supporter friends, many are horrified that I could vote for Trump. A few are no longer friends (by their choice, screaming at me from the top of their lungs that I voted for Hitler).
The manner in which we discuss our differences matters.
For this election, for me (a moderate in a left-leaning city), the left was worse. I genuinely hope they can change.
Jobs. Jobs jobs.
You'll/us/we lost the election because the candidate didn't motivate people.
For the past 8years republicans stalled all your legislative attempts.
Before that they created wars and before that they created Fox News.
Along the way people created global warming deniers, creationism and vaccine denial.
America is at the forefront of figuring out ways to packages and deliver emotions to leverage policy and votes.
Communication had already failed for the past decades.
Memes/Facebook/fake news are red herrings - symptoms, not the diseases.
The American legislature has become more contentious and partisan - iirc voting across party lines is seen as a sign of disloyalty.
The issue is that the strategies applied and improved here are studied and applied elsewhere.
A massive wall of propaganda and emotions.
How can communication happen when even straight up Adoption of GOP programs (iirc mitt Romney launched the predecessor to Medicare.)is cause to Reject it.
Basically how can you talk when people are rarely going to hear you?
?? I suppose the question is how can signal be sent over lossy/noisy(hostile?) channel without degradation or subversion
I think you're missing some perspective on this; a small % of activists on the left (mostly on college campuses) do not represent the trends of liberals in the USA. I can't think of a mainstream Democrat who considers these serious causes (including liberal ones like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren).
The reality is the left has been making huge inroads on social causes in the last eight years - in fact, this may be the primary enduring legacy of the Obama years. The public perception of gay marriage, police violence against blacks, and marijuana use have all drastically shifted and led to very real changes that won't be undone. I wouldn't call this overplaying their hands.
Also, I wouldn't extrapolate much from this election. Obama is a fair bit more liberal than Hillary and is extremely popular compared to her.
I'm black and I wish folks realized that stuff like that needs to kept behind closed doors. I'm not one of those black folks that tries to twist the definition of racism such that it can never be applied to us. It's ironic that lots of the same folks who talk about "micro-aggressions" are purveyors of them.
Considering how dumb/immature the average product of an American high school is at 18, I'm not surprised they think like that (and are aggressive about their beliefs) Also, considering how some choose to treat college like an extended party, they carry over the same traits to 22.
But hopefully, the job market hitting them in the face after graduation beats some liberal bullshit out of them.
Also, class warfare and money will always trump identity politics and all that social justice BS. If there's anything the US can get behind it's their hatred of the poor (yes, well-off left are just as guilty of this, just more implicitly)
This is just a personal anecdote. I'm 23, also live in Ohio, and went to a very liberal private school. I have never met a single person who has un-ironically said these things.
A vocal minority + rapid societal change + social media echo chambers = reactionary backlash = Donald Trump presidency
>I wouldn't extrapolate much from this election
I would. 60+ million people voting for a man as odious and unprepared as Donald Trump says a whole lot to me. That and pretty much total Republican domination on the state level. The GOP is one state house away from being able to call a new constitutional convention[1].
1: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a50672/st...
Let me rephrase: you are extrapolating the wrong thing when you say the "liberals drastically overplayed their hand" and then use this election as evidence.
Obama almost certainly would have annihilated Trump (his support in rural swing states is much stronger than Hillary's), and he's more liberal than Hillary. For all we know, Bernie could have done decently. Hillary's downfall is that she's seen as an out-of-touch corrupt establishment politician, which Trump (and Obama) were not.
Obama got people excited. He had a message he got out to people and they responded in a huge way. I'm really not sure what Hillary's was.
Trump got a different set excited. Sure some are deplorable. A lot are just republicans. A lot are people who just want their lives to be as good as they used to be, or their parents were.
Although Obama was opposed to gay marriage when elected, I will say that this is an issue that the progressives have driven into the public consciousness.
But Trump will be the first elected President to support gay marriage when entering office.
> police violence against blacks
There are far more protests about police violence against blacks now.
As for "smug liberalism" where if only uneducated people were given the facts, they'd make the right conclusion and be liberal, is probably a real thing; i.e. there are educated people who are still ignorant and there isn't a lot you can about it. A major factor in getting along with each other is living among each other, and that really doesn't happen in rural areas of the country. There's no real effective way to impart city dormitory life, not just social tolerance but diversity appreciation, to people who don't live in cities.
The election is really not that big of a surprise. The country is this divided. It is very difficult for the same party to win three election cycles in a row. And, key Democratic party demographics didn't show up to vote in sufficient numbers that it affected the outcome of the election.
This is not "tore our heads off" territory, that's hyperbole.
You're over-estimating the appeal of the liberal movement on younger people. If some college kids can't openly talk about their inclination to right wing politics that doesn't make them 'liberals'.
Regardless of intent, they are ultimately part of the problem, not the solution. I understand that the latter are responses to the first, but they all serve to paint every member of society with an us-vs-them brush.
In the end, dialogue is a necessity to reform your broken society. Segregating off each subgroup into their own community, whether by choice or government policy, only increases distance and polarization and makes it harder for everyone to engage with other parts of society.
The All Lives Matter movement, as a reaction to BLM, is essentially saying that they don't, and that the racial struggles of American Blacks are irrelevant.
That is the reason why All Lives Matter is considered abusive.
Yes, of course, they do. But some houses need immediate attention because they're in danger.
I'm not really up-to-speed with US politics, but I know it's horrifying how easily and with impunity the police have been killing black people. Still, "Black lives matter" isn't a great slogan, and calling "all lives matter" racist definitely seems like an overreaction. I'm not familiar with ALM's positions, though, so maybe it's a racist organization in disguise, I don't know.
Well, the fire department does tell people that they need to pay attention to things that might cause fires. The response isn't "well, people should pay attention to all dangerous things! What about car accidents?"
I mean, this isn't a difficult concept to grasp. When someone is raising money for orphans, people don't usually say "but what about money for veterans?" When people are raising awareness about breast cancer, you don't usually tell them "hey, we should be raising awareness for all cancer." They don't get angry that Smokey Bear focuses on forest fires ("Oh, house fires don't matter to you?").
People understand single-issue campaigns for most things, but some suddenly have an issue with it when it comes to African Americans deaths. This naturally raises a few eyebrows.
The controversy isn't because it's a bad slogan. The controversy is evidence of it being the correct slogan.
It seems that the argument has been framed around black people's mistreatment in general, which is fair enough, but, when specifically talking about the police, it seems to me that getting the latter to be less trigger-happy would alleviate the problem for all races, which is why I find the focus on black people a bit odd.
A group of people is experiencing horrible and unjust treatment. The implication of the situation is they don't matter, and the correct reformist statement is that they do matter.
Black lives matter also is not the correct statement. It is the correct understanding of the while situation but you need to keep in mind the nuance of language.
"Black lives matter. White lives matter. All lives matter."
Whatever may have happened after, there was little justification to destroy that candidate for saying this.
Make no mistake, Trump and the alt-right are incredibly hostile to anyone who doesn't see Black Lives Matter as an evil, racist attack on white people, who don't think that blacks complaining about police violence against them is the real racism.
[1] http://edition.cnn.com/2015/08/21/politics/martin-omalley-do...
People had to choose between two extremes, not one extreme and one moderate position.
EDIT: Perhaps I am wrong here, as I said, I know nothing about All Lives Matter, can you justify calling it an "abusive" movement?
The statement 'All Lives Matter' not as response to BLM would have been fine, but come on. No one here is blind to the current discussion to that extent.
That's not what "all" means. It's turning the name of the movement by implying it means "only" Black Lives Matter. So All Lives Matter is saying that not only Black Lives Matter.
O'Malley was eviscerated for that statement, even though he clearly agreed with the sentiment that black lives matter.
I can understand the concern that some have that turning "Black Lives Matter" into "All Lives Matter" could conceal the reality that people with darker skin have been disproportionately impacted by our Justice system, but I also agree with the contention that overreaching and overreacting to a statement that seems completely reasonable to people not deeply aware of the discussion can ultimately have the opposite effect and serve as fuel to movements like the alt right.
It does happen to black people somewhat more often, per capita, but 50% of people killed by police are white.
Predicting the likely response to this, of course, we get into the (surprisingly hard to accurately work out) question of what proportion of crimes are committed by people of various races, and to what extent that figure is manipulated by conscious / subconscious bias on the part of law enforcement. (It's a swamp, and I don't feel like arguing about it tonight, I just wanted to acknowledge it's complicated.)
Edit to acknowledge: yes, it's more like 60% white if you're splitting out Hispanic-origin into its own category. Still, disproportionate.
I find this argument (the one you are referring to) to be spurious. We don't calculate the number of rapes committed by men and there is no subsequent societal bias against men as criminal by default (or suspect by default). Not to mention the mindset leads to a feedback loop: "Of the bugs found during team code reviews, 50% were in Bob's code" will lead to everyone going through Bob's code with a fine tooth comb - and finding yet more bugs, while Stacy's code never gets a second glance regardless of its quality[1].
1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the-b...
If the main problem is (2), but society mobilizes to solve (1), thigs won't get better.
If we solved (1), everyone would be equally likely to suffer from police brutality. This would make us more likely to then go ahead and fix (2), because suddenly it would no longer be something which mostly happens to long-downtrodden minority groups.
Mind, if we fix (2) first, it's somewhat plausible that we might continue in a situation where minority groups are disproportionately targeted by the police, and we just go "eh, it's not that bad, we're not shooting them all the time any more".
The thing is most violent crime is commited by blacks even though they are about 13% of the population. So please don't act like evil cops just hunt them down for fun, that's the biggest gripe with BLM. They act like it's 1900 when that's just BS
Agreed.
And that implies that Black Lives currently do not matter, which hopefully we can all agree is a big overstatement.
I understand that movements need simple powerful slogans to chant and make bumper stickers from. That's fine. But let's not treat these three words as some definitive analysis of race in America.
The problem is innocent people who happen onto the conversation, interpret it at first glance, not unreasonably, as some insane asshole saying "only black lives matter", engage in good faith on that basis, to uphold ideals that we can all agree are right... and subsequently are piled on by a mob who agree that the offender has just instantly and irredeemably proven themselves to be one of the worst things they've been taught it's possible to be. With a real, non-zero chance of their real lives being actually, materially ruined as part of this public shaming.
The problem is things like "Black Lives Matter" being used as a shibboleth[0] -- an excuse to form a gleeful lynch mob, giving everybody a pleasurable and community-affirming chance to engage in collective norm-enforcement against The Other.
The problem is an atmosphere where I'm so paranoid about even attempting to have a good-faith intellectual conversation about this that I have to create a throwaway account to remove a not-at-all implausible chance of having my life ruined for even engaging on this topic at all.
And this isn't even getting into the atmosphere that seems to really be setting in, where agreeing to listen to someone has become tantamount to agreeing with everything they say. That's the really frightening one.
----
It could also mean that black people are not especially target by the police and that outrage at law enforcement is misplaced. For example we know that the rates of police violence against black people vs white people roughly mirrors arrest and conviction rates.
Now you might consider this incorrect, but I think it's a debate that has to be had in the open and not shut down by calling people racist.
Those in the Black Lives Matter movement say black people are in immediate danger and need immediate attention, like the broken bone or house on fire.
Saying “All Lives Matter” in response would suggest to them that all people are in equal danger, invalidating the specific concerns of black people.
“You’re watering the house that’s not burning, but you’re choosing to leave the house that’s burning unattended,” said Allen Kwabena Frimpong, an organizer for the New York chapter of Black Lives Matter. “It’s irresponsible.”
More to the point: It is a given that all lives matter, said Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, an assistant professor of African-American Studies at Princeton University.
“That has always been an assumption,” she said. “The entire point of Black Lives Matter is to illustrate the extent to which black lives have not mattered in this country.”
“if we jump too quickly to the universal formulation, ‘all lives matter,’ then we miss the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of ‘all lives.’ ”
Also watch "The 13th" if you haven't.
Institutional racism is real and because of that it can't be undone by just pretending everyone is equal all of the sudden. It is much more nuanced than you make it out to be.
That being said, many of the people that twitter banned are just straight up racist and xenophoic/intolerant speech should not be protected.
Any evidence of this claim? Cause as an outsider to the US I see a black president and a lot of reversed-racism (affirmite action I think you ppl call it)
For example, http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/06/news/ferguson-arrest-warrant... shows that people in Ferguson are being arrested for things that wouldn't even be considered a crime where I live.
Compare that with https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethan_Couch or http://www.cnn.com/2016/10/27/us/oregon-standoff-ammon-bundy... and you will begin to see how crimes committed by white people are often punished by a slap on the wrist when the same crime committed by a person of color would land them in jail.
They still champion equality.
Unfortunately, it's now the equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity.
Yeah – or to put it another way, they champion social equality instead of equality under the law.
It's the difference between Classical Liberalism and the Social Liberalism which is currently in vogue.
The idea of equality is not some abstract mathematical notion. The left's treatment of social issues, including affirmative action, stems from decades of serious empirical study of society, rather than from an imagined "spherical-cow" sociology. That does not mean that the policy is the right one -- either ethically or the best means of achieving its goals -- but I think that the debate should be carried out based on all we know about our real society, though history, anthropology, sociology and psychology, rather than by deliberately ignoring them in favor of an idealized model that bears no resemblance to reality. You can disagree with leftist policies on many fronts, but you cannot say that the left has abandoned the idea of equality based on your observations unless you choose that imagined model.
Now, the left calls colorblindness and "all lives matter" racist. (Remember when Martin O'Malley was destroyed for saying that?) They create advantageous standards based on race, and even exclusive positions for non-white applicants. (For example, at the BBC.)
And I too doubt they would object to "dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of African descent in the United States, and around the world."
MLK's dream that one day people would not be judged by the color of their skin was abandoned by the left before the alt-right rose to power, and I believe that helped the alt-right rise to power.