IMO the left has been more extreme regarding removal of liberties for the past decade or so. Not saying the right isn’t trying to do that (see abortion), it’s just the left is much broader and those who are liberal seem to generally be blind to it or think the trades off are worth it (although it’s not really their call, that’s why it’s in the bill of rights).

That’s why so many people supported (and still support) Trump. Removal of the second amendment (guns), fourth amendment (FISA court), first amendment (all the political correctness), etc. The “right” feels persecuted and IMO justly so.

Personally, I fall on the libertarian side so I think both are pretty poor for liberty. But I have watched this scary shift and it kinda mimics the decent into Nazisim... “share my ideals or else we will erase you”.

People always refer to nazi's, but I think communism falls in the same boat. So both extreme right and extreme left are oppressive regimes. The difference is that extreme left has a more "social" explanation, but in the end they kill and oppress people the same way.

That's why extreme left is more scary to me, like a wolf in sheeps clothing. Historical death counts also show that extreme left can be quite devastating.

When has first amendment been threatened? And if anything, the "right" or whatever Trump is all about FISA courts and pro military/police establishment. I know that abortion rights, right to assisted suicide, drug rights, separation of church and state are all threatened by the "right" also.

“Free speech” isn’t just an amendment, but also an attitude or an ideal.

I've never met an actual free speech extremist.

They promote gab and confederate statues but I don't ever see them fighting against intellectual property laws, or fighting for legalizing sympathetic striking, or fighting to allow pornography on youtube. Instead it seems to be fighting for a very specific kind of free speech.

Well, you just met one on the internet, and I know many more like me. I hate any impediment to free speech from either side.

Ever since the Bush II years I've felt like the right and the left have been engaged in a competition over who can be the most irrational and insane. It's a game of reacting to reaction to reaction ... all the way down.

If we have this on the left and the "alt-right" on the right, I'm a bit afraid of what the next round will bring. How much crazier can it get? I'm sure top minds on both sides are working tirelessly on things even dumber, meaner, and crazier than anything we've seen so far.

I think worrying about the alt right is similar to worrying about antifa. Both seem to be fringe minority groups that get disproportionate amount of media attention. I've never met anyone in real life who claimed to be alt right, or repeated alt right talking points.

I've met a few and I run into them online a lot. It depends on your circles and where you live, but it's not nearly as small as you think.

You're lucky. There's a LOT of crypto fascists in this country.

Are we talking a lot in relative terms or absolute terms? How many is a lot and how did we get these estimations?

That’s a good question, but a bit pointless. Usually when people say “crypto fascist” it’s just shorthand for “people whose opinions I find inconvenient or with whom I don’t agree”.

I mean "people that can be bonafide described as fascists by any reasonable standard but are smart enough not to broadcast their horrifying beliefs in polite society" but sure, be cute with words, it's the right moment for that historically.

I am sure a fascist can hide in plain sight. But my currently unanswered question is how can you measure that? Is there any objective data here, or are we talking about our subjective perceptions of society?

I live in Kansas City and the alt-right people definitely exist and I’ve had a long chat in person with at least one. It was even more bizarre because he was half Jewish and seemed really excited about an approaching race war, it was really shocking and scary to hear. It was also strange because he was convinced this coming race war would be fine for him because he “wasn’t raised Jewish”. For some reason I was convinced I could dissuade him, he stopped talking to me though. The vast majority of people I know, even the conservatives, are nothing like that though.

>>Ever since the Bush II years I've felt like the right and the left have been engaged in a competition over who can be the most irrational and insane.

Look at this article from the New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/26/opinion/sunda...

Firstly I take some issue with the scope of the study being limited only to North America and Western Europe.....and completely ignoring the Asian democracies which largely skew more to the right. But scroll down to the third graphic (the line graph). The Republicans are slightly more-right-wing than they were 2000-2008. The Democrat's platform, however, has sharply gone off the deep end of the Left since 2008.

But most PEOPLE are fairly centrist. Even if they are slightly-left-of-center, the Democratic party's extremism is pushing normal to abandon them. But they long-standing Democrat power structures have an outsized influence on media and information channels, hence the non-stop bombardment of outrage culture at how everyone is a "Nazi". Ever notice that almost no-one uses "Communist" as an epithet anymore, despite the world's two major historical Communist governments having by FAR the largest domestic bodycounts of the modern age?

Hey remember when Al Gore was running for President and liberals and libertarians could agree on a lot of things.

A mural painted by a communist depicting Washington and his slaves walking over indian corpses wouldn't have lasted five seconds in any place dominated by the right, and anybody publicly defending it would probably have had their house burned down.

It probably would have been nixed. But now that it exists I don’t think we should go about erasing things because they’re uncomfortable.

Well, they aren't wrong as far as that goes. I would simply remind them that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me add also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

I'm not sure what those statements imply. I read them to mean that anything is justified if it can be said to protect "liberty" in any way, however small. And the same for "justice".

It's a Barry Goldwater quote.