No True Scotsman fallacy?

I personally give the respect to people to refer them as they would like to be identified. If a Muslim jihadi says he is a jihadi, I respect his self identification and call him that. Similarly, I respect these people's self identification as liberal or progressive.

Claiming someone's actions don't line up with their words is not a no-true-Scotsman scenario.

I think he's simply alleging that their revealed preferences do not line up with their stated preferences.

> Claiming someone's actions don't line up with their words is not a no-true-Scotsman scenario.

No, but claiming someone isn't truly in a category to defend the category from the hypocrisy of the individual is, because it ignores the possibility that the category lends itself to hypocrisy.

I think what you describe is pretty much exactly the no true Scotsman fallacy.

[Delete rest of comment, not relevant]

It is not fallacious to have defined criteria for membership of a group - the fallacy is to create new criteria on a whim in response to criticism.

> I personally give the respect to people to refer them as they would like to be identified

Huh? Why?

Seriously, I don't understand that kind of thinking. I don't think individuals necessarily deserve that kind of power others. Sometimes we should adjust to save other peoples feelings. But having that as the default seems crazy. What if they are full of shit? Or misuse that power? Or I simply disagree with them.. shouldn't I have the right to disagree with their self identification?

These labels are all fuzzy, so self identification is the only reliable way of applying labels in any sense. For example, if the Chinese communist party says they are communist, why would you want to argue with them?

> These labels are all fuzzy,

True

> so self identification is the only reliable way of applying labels in any sense

No, it's not. Self-identification is one of many ways of operationalizing a categorization, and it's useful for some purposes but not others. You can also operationalize by sets of concrete policies, which is useful for different purposes. And there are other options.

The relevant basis of categorization depends on the purpose of categorization.

If you claimed your comment was in French instead of English, even though I can clearly see it's in English, why wouldn't I disagree?

False equivalence. Language isn't a subjective language, ideology most definitely is.

Raising the No True Scotsman fallacy here provides an "out" for anyone accused of hypocrisy. It "proves too much" if you will.

To make no issue of someone calling themselves "progressive" while not supporting the policies considered "progressive" is perfectly possible, but it basically shifts the conversation away from the topics at hand and pushes them one level of abstraction into the slippery nature of the way we use language.

There is a substantive disagreement that could be addressed head on: What does the person calling themselves "progressive" believe that title mean? And why do they believe that the title applies to themselves?

That fallacy does not apply. I can claim to be an alien from Saturn. People can, and should, disagree.

Besides, powerful and wealthy people have often claimed to be "on the side of the poor and helpless", to "protect" their subjects and so on throughout history.

This applied to: emperors, kings, aristocrats & knights, shogun & samurai, military leaders... hence the hypocrisy that the pastor is pointing out.

Is it so strange? The progressive value system very much says that social services should be provided by the state and paid for by taxes. It's not hard to see how this leads to the conclusion that if they're paying taxes then their work on this planet is done. In fact, several progressives including Bernie Sanders have actively campaigned against private charities.

> In fact, several progressives including Bernie Sanders have actively campaigned against private charities.

It's very common for progressives and leftists to be skeptical of tax-subsidies for private charities viewing them as mechanism for redirecting resources from public priorities to the private priorities of wealthy donors.

It's less common to see them actually campaign against private charity as such, and I suspect any claim of the latter is based on the former.

It's more complex than that.

The old 2x2 model of Left vs. Right and Authoritarian vs. Libertarian doesn't really work on a "longitudinal" basis. Community has been redefined in a few ways, and we're more bipolar -- Liberal Libertarianism for "us", the full authoritarian treatment for "them".

Regressive Left.

They are actually liberal, they are not progressive or leftist. People get confused because conservatives have spent a long time equating those, and they are sometimes allies against conservatism.

It's gross that the American professional class posture for status by one-upping each-other with views on social issues too radical for a 20th-century bomb-throwing anarchist, while simultaneously acting as middle-class to upper-class conservatives on every issue where they can have a material impact.

I'm waiting for the day you literally see city government in Palo Alto or Berkeley obscuring a homeless camp from view with a rainbow banner or a Hate Has No Home Here sign.

(The lovely thing about "hate has no home here" is that neither does anyone else.)

Most of them are more capital-L Libertarian.