Recently on Twitter, I debated with British liberals. David Campanale, a parliamentary candidate for the Liberal Democrats and a Christian, has been deselected following his desire to reduce abortion time limits. Whilst I regard this as an act of intolerance – concern about abortion is associated with faith - some of my Twitter friends saw it differently, emphasizing that there are many Christians in the Liberal Democrats and the deselection reflected Campanale’s failure to meet party standards.
Looking back I think that maybe it was Tim Farron's scrape with the moral police that made me first notice how the Liberal Democrats see themselves. Which is as a progressive, rather than centre, party.
Farron's sin was how he interpreted scripture, but as a genuine liberal he didn't let faith-based moral scruples guide policy. But being a liberal was neither necessary nor sufficient, which struck me at the time as ironic.
Yes. I think that embracing liberalism for the reasons Mill gave, i.e. because "it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living [etc]", involves espousing the view that minority opinions should be freely aired: it's not just about saying that people shouldn't be imprisoned or 'cancelled' for saying X, but saying that it is better, all things considered, if people get to hear X, and a culture or society is better to the extent that both people who believe X and those who believe not-X are (practically and in reality) able to air their views and get a hearing for them.
That is not the current thinking of progressives. They believe, as I suspect most people have believed in most places and periods, that there are better and worse ways of thinking and also that a culture or society is better to the extent that not-X (if right) is heard and X (if wrong) is not heard, and that while some penalties for saying X may be disproportionate (prison might be going too far), there's nothing wrong with the tyranny of the majority giving a firm steer towards thinking the right things.
I think pro-tolerance liberals have been too keen on 'process' arguments and too keen to say that they are not taking sides in what a good society looks like. In order to promote tolerance, liberals will have to embrace a view of a good society as one which includes diversity of views, even views now considered to be wrong/unacceptable/offensive, and they will have to 'lean' on both the state and private institutions (including the LibDems) to promote those kinds of outcomes. That's a tough sell for liberals who thought they were not advocating any kinds of outcome - but it's that or give up freedom of expression.
The ideology that isn’t in power would obviously want freedom of speech and the ideology in power wouldn’t want their opponents to have free speech. And something that nobody explains fully is what is freedom of speech and where is the line into incitement if violence that shouldn’t be tolerated. It’s not hard to see why people think an opposing political ideology that wants to make their lifestyle illegal has crossed that line. And then you mix that was the principle that you should not platform or even expose yourself (or allow others to expose themselves to) those dangerous ideas. Add in a sprinkling of defamation, where moderate conservatives are accusing of promoting genocide, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. This mode of operating is so potent for making the left robust and win, and has become so entrenched, that they have lost all ability to self-police. The left doesn’t criticize their own, doing so will get you kicked out of the left. Meanwhile the right spends most of their time criticizing their own. So we’ve got anyone to the right can’t sneeze without the left and the right criticizing them. And the left accepts any crazy idea the fringe comes up with, and those who don’t agree keep quiet out of fear.
Looking back I think that maybe it was Tim Farron's scrape with the moral police that made me first notice how the Liberal Democrats see themselves. Which is as a progressive, rather than centre, party.
Farron's sin was how he interpreted scripture, but as a genuine liberal he didn't let faith-based moral scruples guide policy. But being a liberal was neither necessary nor sufficient, which struck me at the time as ironic.
Yes. I think that embracing liberalism for the reasons Mill gave, i.e. because "it is useful that while mankind are imperfect there should be different opinions, so is it that there should be different experiments of living [etc]", involves espousing the view that minority opinions should be freely aired: it's not just about saying that people shouldn't be imprisoned or 'cancelled' for saying X, but saying that it is better, all things considered, if people get to hear X, and a culture or society is better to the extent that both people who believe X and those who believe not-X are (practically and in reality) able to air their views and get a hearing for them.
That is not the current thinking of progressives. They believe, as I suspect most people have believed in most places and periods, that there are better and worse ways of thinking and also that a culture or society is better to the extent that not-X (if right) is heard and X (if wrong) is not heard, and that while some penalties for saying X may be disproportionate (prison might be going too far), there's nothing wrong with the tyranny of the majority giving a firm steer towards thinking the right things.
I think pro-tolerance liberals have been too keen on 'process' arguments and too keen to say that they are not taking sides in what a good society looks like. In order to promote tolerance, liberals will have to embrace a view of a good society as one which includes diversity of views, even views now considered to be wrong/unacceptable/offensive, and they will have to 'lean' on both the state and private institutions (including the LibDems) to promote those kinds of outcomes. That's a tough sell for liberals who thought they were not advocating any kinds of outcome - but it's that or give up freedom of expression.
My thoughts related to this topic are here: https://furtheroralternatively.blogspot.com/2021/05/freedom-and-cancellation.html .
The ideology that isn’t in power would obviously want freedom of speech and the ideology in power wouldn’t want their opponents to have free speech. And something that nobody explains fully is what is freedom of speech and where is the line into incitement if violence that shouldn’t be tolerated. It’s not hard to see why people think an opposing political ideology that wants to make their lifestyle illegal has crossed that line. And then you mix that was the principle that you should not platform or even expose yourself (or allow others to expose themselves to) those dangerous ideas. Add in a sprinkling of defamation, where moderate conservatives are accusing of promoting genocide, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. This mode of operating is so potent for making the left robust and win, and has become so entrenched, that they have lost all ability to self-police. The left doesn’t criticize their own, doing so will get you kicked out of the left. Meanwhile the right spends most of their time criticizing their own. So we’ve got anyone to the right can’t sneeze without the left and the right criticizing them. And the left accepts any crazy idea the fringe comes up with, and those who don’t agree keep quiet out of fear.