I think this is a common misunderstanding among conservatives of a certain type.

The pattern seems to be:

A right-wing person makes a statement saying, "We need to stop allowing Muslims into this country to protect ourselves against terrorism"

A liberal response is to say, "That is intolerant. You can't group all Muslims as terrorists. We need to be tolerant of people with different faiths"

Right-wing response: "What?! You get mad at Christian conservatives for being anti-gay, but you want us to tolerate Muslims? Muslims are even MORE anti-gay than Christian conservatives!"

The problem is that liberals AREN'T tolerant of Muslims who have anti-gay beliefs; we are as against them as we are against Christian's who are anti-gay. The liberal position is that you shouldn't lump ALL Muslims together; there are Christians and Muslims who are tolerant of homosexuals and Christians and Muslims who are intolerant of homosexuals. We are against the latter group. We are defending the moderate Muslims who aren't intolerant against being lumped in with the intolerant ones, but conservatives seem to think that is a blanket support for all Muslims.

Now, of course, the reponse when I make this point is usually to link to some tweet or post by a self-proclaimed liberal supporting anti-gay Muslims. However, these are often parody tweets or posts made by a conservative trying to mock liberals support of Muslims, or perhaps some delusional person who calls themselves a liberal. It is NOT an opinion held by the majority of liberals.

And yes, my characterization of pro-life as being trying to control a woman's body might be a bit uncharitable. I could have worded it more neutrally.

In principle, yes. In practice they definitely are not. Liberals are not going on mass firing and blacklist campaigns of conservative Muslims. They aren't getting filtered and censored on social medial platforms. There is nowhere near the same level of emotional hatred and vitriol towards them. And anyone that has such hatred is seen as a bigot. But the same level of hate towards Christians is perfectly accepted.

This was a big issue in the atheist community. A lot of atheist thinkers became massively successful for mocking and criticizing christians. But there was huge controversy when they started doing the same for Muslims.

What happened? Well Muslims might have the same wrong beliefs. But they aren't The Hated Outgroup like the Christians were.

Where are these 'mass' campaigns happening? I am sure there are some by fringe liberal groups, but 'mass' is probably an overstatement. Same with filtered and censored on social media; I see plenty of right wing posts on Facebook and Twitter.

> This was a big issue in the atheist community. A lot of atheist thinkers became massively successful for mocking and criticizing christians. But there was huge controversy when they started doing the same for Muslims.

Any examples? I have never seen any 'huge controversy' for mocking conservative Muslim beliefs.

Some of what you are observing probably also has to do with location and culture; the people posting things encounter a lot more conservative Christians in their day to day life than conservative Muslims. You don't have the same emotional response to something that isn't happening near you.

I am realizing as we are continuing this discussion how difficult it is to reach each other. A lot of this has to do with our own perceptions of the zeitgeist of society, and we clearly are not seeing the same things. I see the massive power social conservatives wield over our national discourse and politics, while you see the power liberals hold. I don't know how we can convince each other. We can both surely find countless examples of both conservatives and liberals making comments that prove our points, and countless examples to disprove the other person's.

I feel like so much of this is your own personal lens with which you see the world. I don't think we can show the other person our lens through an anonymous internet forumn.

If your belief is that you want to deny rights to some people, you are going to be held accountable by society in the sense that you won't get to hold powerful jobs. You won't be arrested, but society isn't going to let you run a public company.

What does that are liberals who are trying to assert their power. Now I would bet that most of the liberals who helped bring about that result wouldn't support a legal right for polygamy, polyandry, or marriage between close relatives.

Why not? While being sexually attracted to close relatives is very rare, the portion of the population that is preferentially polyamorous is larger than the proportion that is preferentially gay. Why should people who wish to make multiple commitments not have the rights that gay people have?

I submit that their reasons for not supporting those causes are no better or worse than Brendan Eich's for not supporting gay marriage. I further submit that when people are punished for publicly supporting statements that half of the nation supports, you're creating chilling effects for free speech that fly in the face of how this democracy is supposed to work.

In the sake of disclosure, my white mother was married to a Chinese man before that was legal in much of the country. Furthermore my sister performed a gay marriage before THAT was legal most places, and I have another close relative who was openly polyandrous for over a decade. As a libertarian, my only issue with gay marriage is why the government involves itself in people's private affairs.

But that is a lot less important to me than concern over political correctness making people feel scared about expressing unpopular opinions. When am I going to have an unpopular opinion that I get penalized for?

And your presentation of his belief is, again, very uncharitable. A decent percentage of conservatives were in favor of civil unions and other legal work arounds to give gay couples the same benefits as straight ones. Many didn't really care what gay people did and were just afraid of the slippery slope.

>A liberal response is to say, "That is intolerant. You can't group all Muslims as terrorists. We need to be tolerant of people with different faiths"

That's a very good characterization of most liberal responses on this particular issue. It's a complete non-sequitur. The RW statement does not in any way imply that all Muslims are terrorists. The liberal response doesn't address the crux of the statement at all, it just impugns the character of the person who made it.

While it is true that the RW statement doesn't imply that all Muslims are terrorists, it does imply that it is ok to ban ALL Muslims if some are terrorists. The liberal position is that this is NOT ok; we feel that the cost of blocking innocent people from entering the country is not worth the cost of allowing some possible terrorists in.

The RW position is that the cost of innocent people being blocked from entering is worth paying to block the possible terrorists.

This is somewhat ironic, because the positions become reversed when talking about gun control; conservatives believe you shouldn't punish law abiding gun owners because some people use guns to hurt people, while liberals believe it is a fair price to pay.

This is actually one place where I diverge from the traditional liberal position; while I think some gun control is reasonable, I think we shouldn't punish gun owners unreasonably because some people can't be trusted with guns.

I'm about to speak one of the "heresies" that sama referred to in the third paragraph.

I don't believe there is a significant "cost" to barring immigration of low-skilled, poorly-educated people into the US. If fact, in my calculation, it costs us more than we gain by letting them in, considering that the number of jobs that the half of our citizenry with an IQ of 100 or below are capable of doing are shrinking.

I'm not without compassion for those people who want to come here. I don't blame them at all for wanting to. But my main priority is helping our own citizens (of any race, creed or color) who rightly view their future with trepidation. America has a huge number of huge problems, and I don't see how low-skilled, low-educated immigration addresses any of them. But I do see how it exacerbates some of them.

Unlike many people, I'm not moved by platitudes like "but we're a nation of immigrants!" or "diversity!" I think US immigration policy should be based on what benefits the US and its citizens, rather than other countries or their citizens. My position is essentially based on mathematics.

I would say that in about 80% of the instances where I've attempted to discuss this issue with liberals, they've offered not a shred of dispassionate reasoning, but reached straight for the old "but that's racist!" arrow in their quiver. They either can't or won't refute my reasoning, so they impugn my character instead.

I really enjoy the rare occasions where I can have a legitimate discussion on political issues with someone who disagrees with me, and who can discuss the issues without calling me names. But alas, those occasions are rare. That's why sama's article really resonated with me.

That said, the majority of studies that I have seen disagree with your calculation. http://budgetmodel.wharton.upenn.edu/issues/2016/1/27/the-ef... is typical. Even low skilled immigrants have a small but net positive effect on the net wealth of US citizens. But the effect is small, and there are some who are impacted negatively. Particularly among blacks and teenagers who have been displaced from bottom rung jobs by immigrants who are willing to work harder for less, and still feel lucky because their lives are better than where they came from.

Due to that I am happy with having relative open borders for immigration. But I can understand why others might be concerned.

I understand that reducing productivity costs will increase productivity, so unlimited immigration would make GDP go up. (And GDP does not factor in the costs of supporting increased numbers of unemployed people.) But this, from the study, strikes me as pure hand-waving:

>Moreover, immigrants are often imperfect substitutes for native-born workers in U.S. labor markets. That means they do not compete for the same jobs and put minimal downward pressure on natives’ wages.

For the statement "they do not compete for the same jobs" to be even partially true, you would have to show me at least one job in the US that only immigrants do, and no natives do. It certainly would not be construction, or landscaping, or custodial work.

A flood of low-skilled, low-educated immigrants would benefit people like me, who they do not compete with for jobs, because it would make the services they provide cheaper for me.

But as you acknowledged, it does hurt the people whom they DO compete with, and I would argue that extends beyond blacks and teenagers, although that alone is enough for me.

Roughly half of the working population in the US has an IQ of 100 or below. These are the people upon whose well-being, I, personally, place a far higher priority than similar people who are currently not US citizens. That is what my position is premised upon. I am willing to forgo the extra GDP and cheaper lawncare so that their lives might be a little less difficult than they currently are.

I don't personally support banning Muslims because the terrorism is so low it's not worth worrying about. But one could imagine if it got much higher and was a legitimate large threat. Then I would be completely ok with banning Muslims.

This is because American Muslims are nowhere near powerful enough to write their prejudices into law, whereas conservatives control all three branches of the Federal government and 31 state legislatures (see https://ballotpedia.org/Partisan_composition_of_state_houses).

You will always find that people consider your opinions worthy of much closer scrutiny when you reach a position from which you can impose them on everybody else.

In fact that's the biggest problem. These two groups completely hate each other, but live in separated regions. If they were completely mixed together geographically there would be no issue. People fired from liberal run companies could just go work at conservative run ones. We would have conservative social networks and liberal ones, and the "free market of free speech" argument would actually work.

This is only true in some parts of California, whereas other parts of the state are notoriously deeply conservative. Orange County, for example, was central to the power base of both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. (The Nixon Library is in Yorba Linda; Reagan's is in Simi Valley.)

Taken as a whole California tilts left these days, and even Orange County isn't the hotbed of conservatism it used to be (it went for Hillary by a few percentage points). But there's still plenty of conservatism in the state -- enough for Donald Trump to win 25 of its 58 counties last year.

- [Changing Attitudes on Gay Marriage | Pew Research Center](http://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-gay...)

I don't think this is the reason. The offending group could be arbitrarily big or small. Today's true problems (from the perspective of likelihood of affecting the civilization or the planet) and today's problems that dominant ideologies care about and feel threatened by, are two completely different things, sometimes laughably so.

I think it's entirely about signaling, and that applies to all sides. When a person or movement or another social entity claims they care about X, the real information the entity is conveying is "caring about X is now the color of our flag, raise a flag of the same color if you're one of us". The actual issue of X is largely irrelevant and can even revert if necessary (i.e. if the signal becomes too unreliable to detect potential members). At least this is what I've noticed across cultures, ideologies, languages, continents..

Edit: Incidentally, that's also why you hear complaints about double standards all the time (how come Europeans don't criticize it when... how come Feminists are silent when... how come Conservatives are nowhere to be found when...). Logical consistency is rarely a useful signal as people are not well-tuned for detecting it and have great capacity for bypassing it: by applying self-deception, compartmentalization, a host of biases, and by building narratives and simple models in their heads while ignoring all evidence to the contrary. It's difficult to think of even one group that enforces logical consistency as its signal (maybe logicians? who knows?)

You're spinning the argument and calling the other side "intolerant". You're part of the problem Altman is mentioning. Sad thing is that probably you are not aware of that.

However, no one is arguing for a woman to be able to abort a fully healthy baby at 9 months. That isn't an operation that happens, so it is a complete straw man to try to argue it.