The idea that we can have value-free laws instituted by impartial institutions is a fantasy. By its very nature politics is about rewarding friends and punishing enemies.

If the state - any state - regards you as deplorable, then it is totally irrelevant that some piece of paper somewhere might claim you are entitled to some rights. In practice this won't matter. The state will crush you, and the mob will cheer.

There is no true scotsman. Doesn't mean we can't have truth

That's irrelevant.

The fact is that we don't have neutral institutions. Even theoretically it would be extremely unlikely, and in practice it won't happen, chiefly because it would involve people in the in-group making comittiments to deplorable people in the out-group.

This might be approximately possible in a united cohesive high-trust society... but that bond of kinship simply doesn't exist anywhere in the West today

Journalists thought the same while feeling decently smart. They were neither smart nor produced articles worth reading in the end.

Anyone can strive to objectivity. Even if you can never reach it, the quality between someone who tries and someone who gives up is tremendous.

In the context of the US, everything I’ve seen suggests the right seeks authoritarianism more than the left does, doing things like getting books they don’t agree with banned, working to eliminate the votes of those not aligned with them, and weakening the barrier between church and state.

You are right it's those evil damn Republicans and conservatives that champion hate, seek to tarnish the rule of law, and want to conduct progroms against minorities. It is unconscionable that we allow them to act and operate in a free society, the paradox of intolerance predicts that eventually they will force everyone into a Sharia law type tyranny where sexual and religious minorities are hunted down.

We need to do something to stop them it doesn't matter what it takes they aren't playing by the rules and we can't hope to win if we do, they control the courts the politicans the government.

We need to strip them of their power and teach them if their wrongs, maybe we can concentrate them in camps of some sort and force them to understand their intolerant immoral ways and see the light.

Of course we'll need some sort of solution to those that refuse to be properly educated, some sort of final solution to the problem of conservatives. Hmmm.

Classic DARVO.

Nobody is calling for anything remotely extreme as your post seems to be hinting at in a tongue-in-cheek manner. From the perspective of someone who sits in the middle with a leaning to the left, it looks to me like the left doesn’t have problems with others holding differing views, so long as following those views doesn’t result in the harm or impediment of liberty of others.

Nobody is saying it’s wrong to be be a conservative or republican, they’re saying it’s a problem when e.g. religious fundamentalism worms its way into legislation, because the unavoidable consequence of that is reduced freedom and harm on a mass scale. The constitution defends the rights of those who choose to adhere to religious guidelines, but it does not extend to enforcing them on those who chose otherwise.

In my personal experience the left is much worse at handling disagreement. I have had lefties get angry at my more conservative opinions, but conservatives never seem to get angry when I'm more liberal than them.

When it comes to day to day interactions, it probably varies a lot between circles. Having been raised in a deep red area but living in a more blue area the past decade or so, my experience has generally with a few exceptions been the opposite… lots of buttons I need to tiptoe around and avoid accidentally pushing when visiting back home.

I live in a deep red area and I am a liberal. I’ll happily share my thoughts or talk politics with pretty much any conservative I meet and rarely have I encountered a person that gets angry about my opinions. They might disagree, be dismissive, offer to pray for me, or give me the fabled “bless your heart”, but they are generally polite. However, I avoid those kind of conversations with most anyone who I know to be “on the left”, because those conversations tend to sour faster than milk on a hot day.

Literally I have been told that not being “liberal enough” is worse than being a conservative.

I can appreciate what you are saying about religious fundamentalism worming it’s way in to legislation and I have fought hard for decades against that.

But…religion is more than just the form of the Christian church. I’d argue that in the case of some of the moralities of the extreme left today have reached the levels of dogmatic fundamentalism and their demands and influences on their politicians are not unlike what the religious right was doing in the 80s onward. They very much have a problem with differing views, attempt to ban books, and work to shun out folks from public life whose views don’t align with their own.

40 years ago I would have argued against the horseshoe theory but I damn sure wouldn’t question it today.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

> the left doesn’t have problems with others holding differing views, so long as following those views doesn’t result in the harm or impediment of liberty of others

A lot comes down to the definition of “harm”. If harm includes making people feel uncomfortable, unhappy, offended, annoyed, or even just having their world view challenged, then I can see how a problem can emerge.

Godwins law strikes again.

Surely there is a reasonable response to the poster that doesn't involve just a list of strawmen?

It's clear to me that you left off the /sarcasm tags. Hopefully it's clear to others as well.

Ahh yes the lovely “/s” tag. A superfluous visual indicator for intelligent people to recognize obvious sarcasm.

You're not paying much attention to current events are you. You have a massive blind spot.

May I recommend you check out ground.news and use the bias checker to see what you're missing out on?

What did they say that's inaccurate and betrays they have a massive blind spot?

I'm not sure why you've been downvoted. The right is actively forcing books out of libraries in Florida and deciding that trans people shouldn't exist in many states. It's not like they're going to stop with that. This notion that the left is authoritarian is, frankly, projection.

You should read about leftist ideologies before making sweeping statements like this.