A Logical Liberals Beef With the Left

[pandarilla]

I read it too and enjoyed it.  "identity politics" and, more specifically, "going from the particular to the general" is meat and drink to P&B.  Speaking of such, how's your health, buddy?

Not too bad chief. Reading all the breakfast posts had me very envious but my wee drip feed through the night is working a treat.

I'm also able to eat a few things during the day but it all goes a bit Pete Tong when I overdo it (which I do...regularly).

[NotThePars]

Burning Stephen Daisley would probably cure him of his gout.

[The_Kincardine]

4 minutes ago, pandarilla said:

Not too bad chief. Reading all the breakfast posts had me very envious but my wee drip feed through the night is working a treat.

I'm also able to eat a few things during the day but it all goes a bit Pete Tong when I overdo it (which I do...regularly).

Good result for your mob today, too.

[Afrojim]

Okay, so maybe I didn't articulate my points particularly well. I have a background in demographic analysis so I find it difficult not to use technical language when discussing these issues. I was also being a tad tongue in cheek by using the jargon that the left uses and assuming an ironic position of being offended and victimised. 

My first point was to do with group categorisation, or what the left would commonly refer to as a community.  The first difficulty with group categorisation is that it removes the nuances and differences that exist amongst people internally within these groups. As an example, demographically speaking, Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne are essentially the same - they are both wealthy, they both own homes in affluent areas, they are roughly the same age etc. When you categorise them into identifiable groups the obvious differences between them are eradicated. This is why the Left playing identity politics is such a dangerous notion - you have to assume that people that belong to the same group or community are not individuals but actually the same. So when someone claims to be speaking on behalf of all African-Americans they are making the assumption that they are all roughly the same, that their is no disparity in beliefs or ideology when it comes to their individual personal ethics or moral code. To assume that all Black people in America are the same is the textbook definition of racism - it's as racist a notion that is equal to whatever anybody on the extreme right is pushing.

This is the reason why I used the LGBTQ+ community as an example. The majority of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people (but not all of them) claim that the reason they are not heterosexual is fundamentally rooted in biology, that their identity is objective - they have no choice in the matter they were, to use the common phrase, "born that way". The majority of Transgender people (but not all of them) claim that identity is purely subjective personal preference, that identity is not rooted in biology or beyond their control, that they can transform their identity as they see fit. So Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people have a fundamentally opposing point of view to that of Transgender people in relation to these issues. So my questions were - Why is it that most people on the left have decided that they constitute a collective minority community when their points of view are so fundamentally contradictory? Has anybody asked them if they feel that they actually constitute a collective minority group? Who is it that has decided that they do in fact constitute a group? & In the wider context, why does the left feel the need to push identity politics in the first place rather than push to create a society in which everyone's individual beliefs are respected and individual competencies are celebrated? 

Many people on the Left may think that I'm overly concerned or that the things I'm talking about are non-issues but if we continue to lump people who have fundamentally contradictory points of view into collective groups and then push for their collective rights to be enshrined in law then we will end up enshrining in law legislation that is fundamentally contradictory.  This has already happened in Canada and certain parts of the United States in relation to LGBTQ+ issues. Human Rights Law was updated to include the subjective identity argument being put forward by Transgender people, or more accurately the argument was being put forward by self-appointed spokespersons that claimed to be speaking on behalf of Transgender people. Of course, the left celebrated it as a victory for the LGBTQ+ community. But the updated legislation undermines the legislation that already existed to protect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Racial Minorities and Women from discrimination based on the notion that their biology was the reason that they belonged to these minority groups in the first place. How can a woman claim to be discriminated against based on her biological gender when an opposing piece of legislation exists that enshrines in law the notion that gender is purely a subjective choice? They're are already people in Canada and the US claiming that they are "Transracial" that they belong to a different ethnic group/race other than the one they were born into. You can see the chaos that is being created here before it even occurs. Some poor judge somewhere is going to have to set legal precedent at some point that actually takes away rights from large numbers of people. No doubt that when that does actually occur the left will blame it on the inherent evils of the right-wing system and refuse to acknowledge that it was they who created the problem to begin with.

When you expand these specific issues out into a wider context and apply them to other left-wing policies such as the left's obsession with social equity or equality of outcome, so that's things such as affirmative action or workplace quota systems, it's patently obvious to see that it is technically impossible to introduce these things in a workable, coherent way to begin with. If identity is subjective then it becomes impossible to categorise people into identifiable groups for the purposes of affirmative action as people can transform which group it is that they belong too as they see fit. If it's decided that identity is objective you then have the issue of categorising people into identifiable groups (not an easy task as I've already pointed out) and then you have to simplify a multitude of complex issues into simplistic ones so that we can rank these groups in order of real or perceived historical and current injustices - so that we can decide what groups take advantage of social equity policies and in what order they should be allowed to take advantage of such things. There is nobody on the planet remotely capable of creating and implementing such a system.

If you look at affirmative action quota policies at top universities in the United States in relation to African-American applicants then on the surface it looks like it achieves greater social equity. But once you analyse it in greater detail most of the African-American people taking advantage of these quota systems are already from a relatively wealthy socio-economic background which is why they can afford to attend these top universities in the first place. In this instance the left's obsession with identity politics has oversimplified the criteria to the point where social mobility has become even less apparent and the already relatively privileged are becoming even more privileged. But the left celebrates these kind of things as victories despite defeating themselves. The Gender Pay Gap is another obvious issue and the general narrative from the left is that the "white male privileged" are actively suppressing the earning opportunities of women but this is a major oversimplification. The low end, less desirable professions, such as Refuse Collectors (or binmen to use the non-PC term), are almost entirely 100% male dominated professions. If you sack half of these binmen and eliminate their incomes and replace them with women then the gender pay gap will narrow. Are these relatively poor underprivileged binmen guilty of oppressing privileged upper-middle class women? Of course not, but in any social equity based quota system all women would be ranked as suffering more victimisation and oppression than all men -  Social Mobility for the benefit of the poor will be eradicated because these hierarchical quota systems will almost always benefit the relatively wealthy rather than the underprivileged poor. Is the left now more interested in identity politics than it is in creating a meritocratic society? Is the left now more interested in identity politics than it is in representing the poor?

My main reason for posting these concerns on here is the hope that some people on the left will reassess their positions and go back to being genuine liberals. That they will reject the incoherent, nonsensical narratives and policies and vitriolic rhetoric being pushed forward by other people on the left. That they will see that many people on the left have morphed left-wing politics into a warped version of what it was originally supposed to be and that left-wing politics is now totalitarian, fascistic and discriminatory in many ways. Can people on the left please go back to viewing all human beings as human beings? Can people on the left take the position that all individuals have inalienable rights and inalienable responsibilities and that all human beings should be treated equally? Can the left take the position that organising people into identity groups and then pitting them against one another is exceptionally divisive and dangerous? I hope so.

[Arabdownunder]

Got some Italian meatballs in the slow cooker, just about to have them with a glass of shiraz.

[Jacksgranda]

Swithering between Weetabix or a boiled egg.

[Benjamin_Nevis]

Toast with honey and a ludicrously strong coffee. 

[DublinMagyar]

Jolly Ranchers and Marlboro

[Jacksgranda]

54 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

Swithering between Weetabix or a boiled egg.

Changed my mind and went for scrambled eggs on toast - two double yokers, too.

(Didn't even attempt to read it this time, will wait for RedRob72 to explain it to me...)

[Benjamin_Nevis]

2 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

Changed my mind and went for scrambled eggs on toast - two double yokers, too.

(Didn't even attempt to read it this time, will wait for RedRob72 to explain it to me...)

I assume AfroJim heralds the tragic return of Swampy 

[The Chlamydia Kid]

Okay, so maybe I didn't articulate my points particularly well. I have a background in demographic analysis so I find it difficult not to use technical language when discussing these issues. I was also being a tad tongue in cheek by using the jargon that the left uses and assuming an ironic position of being offended and victimised. 
My first point was to do with group categorisation, or what the left would commonly refer to as a community.  The first difficulty with group categorisation is that it removes the nuances and differences that exist amongst people internally within these groups. As an example, demographically speaking, Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne are essentially the same - they are both wealthy, they both own homes in affluent areas, they are roughly the same age etc. When you categorise them into identifiable groups the obvious differences between them are eradicated. This is why the Left playing identity politics is such a dangerous notion - you have to assume that people that belong to the same group or community are not individuals but actually the same. So when someone claims to be speaking on behalf of all African-Americans they are making the assumption that they are all roughly the same, that their is no disparity in beliefs or ideology when it comes to their individual personal ethics or moral code. To assume that all Black people in America are the same is the textbook definition of racism - it's as racist a notion that is equal to whatever anybody on the extreme right is pushing.
This is the reason why I used the LGBTQ+ community as an example. The majority of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people (but not all of them) claim that the reason they are not heterosexual is fundamentally rooted in biology, that their identity is objective - they have no choice in the matter they were, to use the common phrase, "born that way". The majority of Transgender people (but not all of them) claim that identity is purely subjective personal preference, that identity is not rooted in biology or beyond their control, that they can transform their identity as they see fit. So Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people have a fundamentally opposing point of view to that of Transgender people in relation to these issues. So my questions were - Why is it that most people on the left have decided that they constitute a collective minority community when their points of view are so fundamentally contradictory? Has anybody asked them if they feel that they actually constitute a collective minority group? Who is it that has decided that they do in fact constitute a group? & In the wider context, why does the left feel the need to push identity politics in the first place rather than push to create a society in which everyone's individual beliefs are respected and individual competencies are celebrated? 
Many people on the Left may think that I'm overly concerned or that the things I'm talking about are non-issues but if we continue to lump people who have fundamentally contradictory points of view into collective groups and then push for their collective rights to be enshrined in law then we will end up enshrining in law legislation that is fundamentally contradictory.  This has already happened in Canada and certain parts of the United States in relation to LGBTQ+ issues. Human Rights Law was updated to include the subjective identity argument being put forward by Transgender people, or more accurately the argument was being put forward by self-appointed spokespersons that claimed to be speaking on behalf of Transgender people. Of course, the left celebrated it as a victory for the LGBTQ+ community. But the updated legislation undermines the legislation that already existed to protect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Racial Minorities and Women from discrimination based on the notion that their biology was the reason that they belonged to these minority groups in the first place. How can a woman claim to be discriminated against based on her biological gender when an opposing piece of legislation exists that enshrines in law the notion that gender is purely a subjective choice? They're are already people in Canada and the US claiming that they are "Transracial" that they belong to a different ethnic group/race other than the one they were born into. You can see the chaos that is being created here before it even occurs. Some poor judge somewhere is going to have to set legal precedent at some point that actually takes away rights from large numbers of people. No doubt that when that does actually occur the left will blame it on the inherent evils of the right-wing system and refuse to acknowledge that it was they who created the problem to begin with.
When you expand these specific issues out into a wider context and apply them to other left-wing policies such as the left's obsession with social equity or equality of outcome, so that's things such as affirmative action or workplace quota systems, it's patently obvious to see that it is technically impossible to introduce these things in a workable, coherent way to begin with. If identity is subjective then it becomes impossible to categorise people into identifiable groups for the purposes of affirmative action as people can transform which group it is that they belong too as they see fit. If it's decided that identity is objective you then have the issue of categorising people into identifiable groups (not an easy task as I've already pointed out) and then you have to simplify a multitude of complex issues into simplistic ones so that we can rank these groups in order of real or perceived historical and current injustices - so that we can decide what groups take advantage of social equity policies and in what order they should be allowed to take advantage of such things. There is nobody on the planet remotely capable of creating and implementing such a system.
If you look at affirmative action quota policies at top universities in the United States in relation to African-American applicants then on the surface it looks like it achieves greater social equity. But once you analyse it in greater detail most of the African-American people taking advantage of these quota systems are already from a relatively wealthy socio-economic background which is why they can afford to attend these top universities in the first place. In this instance the left's obsession with identity politics has oversimplified the criteria to the point where social mobility has become even less apparent and the already relatively privileged are becoming even more privileged. But the left celebrates these kind of things as victories despite defeating themselves. The Gender Pay Gap is another obvious issue and the general narrative from the left is that the "white male privileged" are actively suppressing the earning opportunities of women but this is a major oversimplification. The low end, less desirable professions, such as Refuse Collectors (or binmen to use the non-PC term), are almost entirely 100% male dominated professions. If you sack half of these binmen and eliminate their incomes and replace them with women then the gender pay gap will narrow. Are these relatively poor underprivileged binmen guilty of oppressing privileged upper-middle class women? Of course not, but in any social equity based quota system all women would be ranked as suffering more victimisation and oppression than all men -  Social Mobility for the benefit of the poor will be eradicated because these hierarchical quota systems will almost always benefit the relatively wealthy rather than the underprivileged poor. Is the left now more interested in identity politics than it is in creating a meritocratic society? Is the left now more interested in identity politics than it is in representing the poor?
My main reason for posting these concerns on here is the hope that some people on the left will reassess their positions and go back to being genuine liberals. That they will reject the incoherent, nonsensical narratives and policies and vitriolic rhetoric being pushed forward by other people on the left. That they will see that many people on the left have morphed left-wing politics into a warped version of what it was originally supposed to be and that left-wing politics is now totalitarian, fascistic and discriminatory in many ways. Can people on the left please go back to viewing all human beings as human beings? Can people on the left take the position that all individuals have inalienable rights and inalienable responsibilities and that all human beings should be treated equally? Can the left take the position that organising people into identity groups and then pitting them against one another is exceptionally divisive and dangerous? I hope so.

You’re wasting your time on here trying to discuss a complex issue in any depth, which doesn’t have a clear “party line” which can be regurgitated and manipulated into a simplistic attack upon Westminster/the Union/the tories.

[Cyclizine]

You’re wasting your time on here trying to discuss a complex issue in any depth, which doesn’t have a clear “party line” which can be regurgitated and manipulated into a simplistic attack upon Westminster/the Union/the tories.

He's wasting his time because he can't write in fucking paragraphs, despite supposedly being an analyst whose job is presumably to summarise things for a certain audience.

Scrambled egg and Aldi smoked salmon, btw.

[pandarilla]

Right afrojim I was with you with the first message but come on tae f**k.

Judge your audience.

(Scrambled egg n toast)

[Savage Henry]

2 hours ago, Afrojim said:

Okay, so maybe I didn't articulate my points particularly well. I have a background in demographic analysis so I find it difficult not to use technical language when discussing these issues. I was also being a tad tongue in cheek by using the jargon that the left uses and assuming an ironic position of being offended and victimised. 

My first point was to do with group categorisation, or what the left would commonly refer to as a community.  The first difficulty with group categorisation is that it removes the nuances and differences that exist amongst people internally within these groups. As an example, demographically speaking, Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne are essentially the same - they are both wealthy, they both own homes in affluent areas, they are roughly the same age etc. When you categorise them into identifiable groups the obvious differences between them are eradicated. This is why the Left playing identity politics is such a dangerous notion - you have to assume that people that belong to the same group or community are not individuals but actually the same. So when someone claims to be speaking on behalf of all African-Americans they are making the assumption that they are all roughly the same, that their is no disparity in beliefs or ideology when it comes to their individual personal ethics or moral code. To assume that all Black people in America are the same is the textbook definition of racism - it's as racist a notion that is equal to whatever anybody on the extreme right is pushing.

This is the reason why I used the LGBTQ+ community as an example. The majority of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people (but not all of them) claim that the reason they are not heterosexual is fundamentally rooted in biology, that their identity is objective - they have no choice in the matter they were, to use the common phrase, "born that way". The majority of Transgender people (but not all of them) claim that identity is purely subjective personal preference, that identity is not rooted in biology or beyond their control, that they can transform their identity as they see fit. So Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people have a fundamentally opposing point of view to that of Transgender people in relation to these issues. So my questions were - Why is it that most people on the left have decided that they constitute a collective minority community when their points of view are so fundamentally contradictory? Has anybody asked them if they feel that they actually constitute a collective minority group? Who is it that has decided that they do in fact constitute a group? & In the wider context, why does the left feel the need to push identity politics in the first place rather than push to create a society in which everyone's individual beliefs are respected and individual competencies are celebrated? 

Many people on the Left may think that I'm overly concerned or that the things I'm talking about are non-issues but if we continue to lump people who have fundamentally contradictory points of view into collective groups and then push for their collective rights to be enshrined in law then we will end up enshrining in law legislation that is fundamentally contradictory.  This has already happened in Canada and certain parts of the United States in relation to LGBTQ+ issues. Human Rights Law was updated to include the subjective identity argument being put forward by Transgender people, or more accurately the argument was being put forward by self-appointed spokespersons that claimed to be speaking on behalf of Transgender people. Of course, the left celebrated it as a victory for the LGBTQ+ community. But the updated legislation undermines the legislation that already existed to protect Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Racial Minorities and Women from discrimination based on the notion that their biology was the reason that they belonged to these minority groups in the first place. How can a woman claim to be discriminated against based on her biological gender when an opposing piece of legislation exists that enshrines in law the notion that gender is purely a subjective choice? They're are already people in Canada and the US claiming that they are "Transracial" that they belong to a different ethnic group/race other than the one they were born into. You can see the chaos that is being created here before it even occurs. Some poor judge somewhere is going to have to set legal precedent at some point that actually takes away rights from large numbers of people. No doubt that when that does actually occur the left will blame it on the inherent evils of the right-wing system and refuse to acknowledge that it was they who created the problem to begin with.

When you expand these specific issues out into a wider context and apply them to other left-wing policies such as the left's obsession with social equity or equality of outcome, so that's things such as affirmative action or workplace quota systems, it's patently obvious to see that it is technically impossible to introduce these things in a workable, coherent way to begin with. If identity is subjective then it becomes impossible to categorise people into identifiable groups for the purposes of affirmative action as people can transform which group it is that they belong too as they see fit. If it's decided that identity is objective you then have the issue of categorising people into identifiable groups (not an easy task as I've already pointed out) and then you have to simplify a multitude of complex issues into simplistic ones so that we can rank these groups in order of real or perceived historical and current injustices - so that we can decide what groups take advantage of social equity policies and in what order they should be allowed to take advantage of such things. There is nobody on the planet remotely capable of creating and implementing such a system.

If you look at affirmative action quota policies at top universities in the United States in relation to African-American applicants then on the surface it looks like it achieves greater social equity. But once you analyse it in greater detail most of the African-American people taking advantage of these quota systems are already from a relatively wealthy socio-economic background which is why they can afford to attend these top universities in the first place. In this instance the left's obsession with identity politics has oversimplified the criteria to the point where social mobility has become even less apparent and the already relatively privileged are becoming even more privileged. But the left celebrates these kind of things as victories despite defeating themselves. The Gender Pay Gap is another obvious issue and the general narrative from the left is that the "white male privileged" are actively suppressing the earning opportunities of women but this is a major oversimplification. The low end, less desirable professions, such as Refuse Collectors (or binmen to use the non-PC term), are almost entirely 100% male dominated professions. If you sack half of these binmen and eliminate their incomes and replace them with women then the gender pay gap will narrow. Are these relatively poor underprivileged binmen guilty of oppressing privileged upper-middle class women? Of course not, but in any social equity based quota system all women would be ranked as suffering more victimisation and oppression than all men -  Social Mobility for the benefit of the poor will be eradicated because these hierarchical quota systems will almost always benefit the relatively wealthy rather than the underprivileged poor. Is the left now more interested in identity politics than it is in creating a meritocratic society? Is the left now more interested in identity politics than it is in representing the poor?

My main reason for posting these concerns on here is the hope that some people on the left will reassess their positions and go back to being genuine liberals. That they will reject the incoherent, nonsensical narratives and policies and vitriolic rhetoric being pushed forward by other people on the left. That they will see that many people on the left have morphed left-wing politics into a warped version of what it was originally supposed to be and that left-wing politics is now totalitarian, fascistic and discriminatory in many ways. Can people on the left please go back to viewing all human beings as human beings? Can people on the left take the position that all individuals have inalienable rights and inalienable responsibilities and that all human beings should be treated equally? Can the left take the position that organising people into identity groups and then pitting them against one another is exceptionally divisive and dangerous? I hope so.

Do you know any good one-liners?

[Savage Henry]

25 minutes ago, Cyclizine said:

He's wasting his time because he can't write in fucking paragraphs, despite supposedly being an analyst whose job is presumably to summarise things for a certain audience.

Scrambled egg and Aldi smoked salmon, btw.

Sounds good.  Add chives and creme fraiche to your scrambled egg, and you can pretend you're at the Ivy by charging your loved ones £47 for a small serving.

[welshbairn]

45 minutes ago, jupe1407 said:

I assume AfroJim heralds the tragic return of Swampy 

Whoever it is shares his and banana's obsession with American student politics and mistakenly thinks anyone gives a f**k about it over here.

[anotherchance]

The "problem" with the left is that they treat the right like human beings.  

Or, as evidenced here, the problem with the left is trying to cheapen political conversations Old Firm-esque tit for tat nonsense like this which is really an attempt at shutting down debate.

I’d say the below is an accurate summation of my thoughts on many of those who present themselves as leftys, albeit not necessarily agreeing with the specific examples he gives.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/11/mainstream-left-silencing-sympathetic-voices

[RedRob72]

Changed my mind and went for scrambled eggs on toast - two double yokers, too.

(Didn't even attempt to read it this time, will wait for RedRob72 to explain it to me...)

 

Mostly points re-emphasising yesterday’s post, but a couple of interesting examples used in Higher Education and the Workplace to contest how ‘identify politics’ can actually stifle social mobility through positive discrimination.

 

Thought it was another decent read tbh.

 

Fruit & Fibre, Marmite Toast & Coffee! [emoji6]

[NotThePars]

Shouldn’t the thread title have an apostrophe in “liberals”?

[welshbairn]

16 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

Shouldn’t the thread title have an apostrophe in “liberals”?

The casual use of American slang also offends me, as in "beef".