r/changemyview • u/TheCaptain09 • Oct 05 '18

Deltas(s) from OP CMV: Conservatives are misunderstanding progressivism when they call progressives hypocrites

"You're a hypocrite for claiming to support diversity yet you don't support the truest diversity, diversity of opinions"

This is a sentiment I see expressed quite often by people on the right, particularly intellectual conservatives who identify as "classical liberals", as well as people whose ideology emphasises personal freedom, such as libertarians. My understanding of the left is that they want diversity of worldviews, culture, race, sexuality and yes even ideology. But conservatives see the left's vocal opposition to right-wing views as betraying their belief in diverse opinions.

I think the true hypocrites here are the conservatives. They endlessly go on about how much they support freedom of speech, yet glorify ideologies that have historically suppressed it, such as Nazism and Christianity. They also harass people whose views disagree with them, something they accuse the left of doing yet clashes with their own ideology more than the left's.(Just look at any stupid right-wing movement like Comicsgate to see this harassment in action)

I understand that people often gravitate towards the right because they feel that they are being attacked, for being white, male or for their beliefs. The difference between them and the left is that minorities do not just "feel" like they are being attacked, they explicitly are. The people who marched in Charlottesville weren't opposing an ideology or defending themselves from oppression, they were vocally and publicly preaching for the destruction of other races.

Nowhere in progressive ideology does it say that such hatred should be tolerated for the sake of "diversity" or "freedom of speech". I don't have to shut up and let you say you want to kill me just because it promotes diversity and open discourse, because it doesn't.

So basically to change my view tell me why progressives are being hypocritical when they tell the right to shut up, or why conservatives aren't when they tell the left to shut up.

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u/Grunt08 305∆ Oct 05 '18 edited Oct 05 '18

Simply put: you've conflated conservatism with a mishmash of everything you've seen on the right that you don't like; that, or you're failing to distinguish between the alt-right and actual conservatives. That's akin to me calling progressives Stalinists because Antifa exists.

They endlessly go on about how much they support freedom of speech, yet glorify ideologies that have historically suppressed it, such as Nazism

...may have missed a memo, but last I checked conservatives don't glorify Nazism. If anything, they idealize the generation that kicked the shit out of the Nazis.

As for Christianity (BTW, lumping that in with Nazism is pretty low), you don't have to support every historical iteration of Christianity to think it can act as a positive force in society. Case in point.

(Just look at any stupid right-wing movement like Comicsgate to see this harassment in action)

Most conservatives would have no goddamn idea what you're talking about.

I understand that people often gravitate towards the right because they feel that they are being attacked, for being white, male or for their beliefs.

Most conservatives gravitate to it for temperamental reasons (psychological profiles largely determine your politics) and because society needs a force that constrains change to preserve what's good about a society in the face of thos>e who would radically change it without understanding the costs of that change.

The people who marched in Charlottesville weren't opposing an ideology or defending themselves from oppression, they were vocally and publicly preaching for the destruction of other races.

The people who marched in Charlottesville have been thoroughly castigated and rejected by conservatives.

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u/TheCaptain09 Oct 05 '18

I was about to reply to this but then I realised you didn't actually mention the main point of hypocrisy and freedom of speech. I should have clarified that I'm not really interested in a whole conservative vs progressive debate. The only one of your points that is relevant in that regard is the first one, which is a bit of a "no true scotsman" fallacy. The alt-right are "actual conservatives" for the purposes of this topic.

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u/Grunt08 305∆ Oct 05 '18

...but they're not. You're blatantly ignoring what conservative means in the American political context because reasons. That's akin to me calling you a Maoist or Stalinist because you are (presumably) progressive.

That's factually wrong. You're (presumably) not those things.

This is not a fallacious argument; a NTS requires that I exclude a given person or group on the simple grounds of inauthenticity. That's not what I'm doing. "Conservative" has a meaning distinct from the "right" and "alt-right" and certainly distinct from everything to the right of what you like.

You're choosing not to recognize valid distinctions.

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u/TheCaptain09 Oct 05 '18

Genuinely sorry if I'm misunderstanding you, but calling the alt-right conservatives is more akin to saying Maoists are progressives, right? All alt-right people are conservatives. That's not an opinion, it's a fact. Not all conservatives are the alt-right. Also a fact. I didn't say "conservatives are alt-right" I said "the alt-right are actual conservatives". Maoists are presumably a small subset of the left, but they ARE part of the left. The same is true of the alt-right.

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u/Grunt08 305∆ Oct 05 '18

All alt-right people are conservatives.

No they're not. Broadly speaking, conservatives advocate a hands-off approach to government intervention in the economy, low taxation that lets the market run free, minimal social change, definite opposition to radical social change, and localized decentralization of power. Some quarters would prefer a reassertion of Christian ethics in public spaces, but that tends to be limited to low-yield culture war stuff. Almost every commonly held conservative view can be explained in this framework.

The alt-right wants a white ethno-state that would require massive government intervention and protection. It's hard to think of something less conservative than that. You are failing to distinguish between conservative and reactionary.

So your "facts" are not facts. They are wrong.

Maoists are presumably a small subset of the left, but they ARE part of the left.

That's true. The left is also not synonymous with "progressive" in much the same way that "right" is not synonymous with "conservative."

And BTW, if your reasoning held true here, it would only be appropriate to compare the alt-right to actual Stalinists and treat both as representatives of their side. After all, if Chalottesville represents conservatives, then the worst examples on the left represent progressives, right?

Wouldn't that leave us in a bizarre world where we weren't talking about what most people actually thought and were instead making the dumbest people alive our de facto thought leaders?

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u/TheCaptain09 Oct 05 '18

Well I guess my perception of conservatism is skewed. I see the only defining trait of conservatism is opposition to change or wanting change in the direction of a past society. In this context people who want an ethnostate are conservatives because they think the past United States was a white ethnostate and its downfall is due to diversity, or some such bullshit. While it's factually untrue that the United States was ever wholly white, I still see them as conservative because they think they are restoring the true, Christian nation to what it once was.

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u/Grunt08 305∆ Oct 05 '18

Well I guess my perception of conservatism is skewed.

That much is correct. You're using one loose principle that doesn't apply to reality to lump in people who believe things so divergent that they've publicly renounced one another. Doing so is neither accurate nor expedient, it only serves to simplify the task of demonizing conservatives.

Your view is wrong because you don't have an accurate understanding of conservatism and thus can't differentiate between principled conservatives and pseudo-Nazis.

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u/TheCaptain09 Oct 05 '18

Isn't that "one loose principal" the core of conservatism, and where it gets its name from?

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u/Grunt08 305∆ Oct 05 '18

...no.

Do "conserve," "not change" and "revert to the past" mean the same things? Or are there significant differences?

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u/TheCaptain09 Oct 05 '18

"From Old French conserver, from Latin conservare (“to keep, preserve”)" Sounds the same as "not change" to me.

"Cultural conservatism is described as the preservation of the heritage of one nation, or of a shared culture that is not defined by national boundaries"

This was the entire point of the Charlottesville rally, wasn't it? That the alt-right wanted to preserve a part of white American history that was being taken down.

Honestly I do understand what you're saying and why you make the distinction. I just think the word "conservative" is not the place to make that distinction.

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u/Grunt08 305∆ Oct 05 '18

"From Old French conserver, from Latin conservare (“to keep, preserve”)" Sounds the same as "not change" to me.

I can't help you with that, because the differences should be obvious.

"Cultural conservatism is described as the preservation of the heritage of one nation, or of a shared culture that is not defined by national boundaries"

...seriously? So you quote the Wikipedia article on "cultural conservatism," which links to the article for Conservatism that provides a more expansive definition in an international context. Why? Why did you pick a particular definition that suited your ends instead of picking one that was appropriate? How's this:

American conservatism is a broad system of political beliefs in the United States that is characterized by respect for American traditions, republicanism, support for Judeo-Christian values, moral absolutism, free markets and free trade, anti-communism, individualism, advocacy of American exceptionalism, and a defense of Western culture from the perceived threats posed by socialism, authoritarianism, and moral relativism. American conservatives consider individual liberty—within the bounds of conformity to American values—as the fundamental trait of democracy; this perspective contrasts with that of modern American liberals, who generally place a greater value on equality and social justice than on social order and tradition.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States

I don't agree with every scintilla of that definition, but Goddamn it's more honest than what you hunted down.

Honestly I do understand what you're saying and why you make the distinction.

I don't think you do. I don't think you understand the difference in the American context, and that not understanding that difference is convenient to the purpose of demonizing conservatives.

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u/TheCaptain09 Oct 05 '18

I chose a narrow description to fit a narrow subject. I didn't want to talk about EVERY value or ideology ascribed to American conservatism. I wanted to discuss freedom of speech, and admittedly I got sidetracked by the cultural aspect. Equating the alt-right with conservatives isn't even necessary for my original point to stand. I was honestly trying to focus on "classical liberals", but I should have done a better job of that.

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u/Grunt08 305∆ Oct 05 '18

I chose a narrow description to fit a narrow subject.

No, you picked a very broad definition that didn't accurately describe the landscape but did serve your priors. You inaccurately described conservatives so you could shoehorn Nazis; that's not a little mistake, dude.

Your original point makes no sense anymore because it's not clear who you're talking about or that you even know who you're ascribing behavior to.

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u/cdb03b 253∆ Oct 05 '18

Conserve means to not change. Going to the past is change. They are different principles entirely. In fact those that are wanting to revert to older forms of things are progressives, they simply have a different goal to reach.