Conservatives, libertarians and political identiifcation

[Sander]

she is a resident scholar for AEI, a conservative non-profit organization (think tank).
no, not all her views are conservative.

All the views she espouses publicly are conservative. I don't really care what views she holds privately, because that's not really relevant to the issue at hand. Or anything else.

I mean, if you think my bias is that I identify conservative positions with...conservative positions then I don't think you understand the word 'bias'.

EDIT: Split this from GamerGate thread because this sub-thread is not about that in any way.

 

[TheWesDude]

she is a resident scholar for AEI, a conservative non-profit organization (think tank).
no, not all her views are conservative.

All the views she espouses publicly are conservative. I don't really care what views she holds privately, because that's not really relevant to the issue at hand. Or anything else.

I mean, if you think my bias is that I identify conservative positions with...conservative positions then I don't think you understand the word 'bias'.

EDIT: Split this from GamerGate thread because this sub-thread is not about that in any way.

yet again, stop it.

your bias is that anyone that does not agree with you is conservative or anyone that posts on conservative websites is a conservative IS YOUR bias.

and last time i looked, an interview with a liberal news outlet posted on their site where she verifies her democratic values, is not a privately held view.

yet again, stop it.

 

[BigBoss]

Bro, why are you still arguing?

This isn't even a logical argument anymore. This argument has become dumbed down to the point where, well fuck just read the thread.

Sander isn't ever going to agree to you.

Just saying that this entire argument has become pointed, tired, and well, stupid. It's like a Christian/Jew arguing with a Muslim. Neither one will ever agree with the other, and it will carry on for fucking eternity if you let it. They would be closer to murdering eachother than to coming to an agreement on common grounds.

I'm just saying, someone can't argue with you if you refuse to be in the conversation. You're not "losing" the conversation just because you don't want to put up with the bullshit. You're just being the smarter man.

 

[Sander]

yet again, stop it.

your bias is that anyone that does not agree with you is conservative or anyone that posts on conservative websites is a conservative IS YOUR bias.

and last time i looked, an interview with a liberal news outlet posted on their site where she verifies her democratic values, is not a privately held view.

yet again, stop it.

God this is is a stupid argument.

The views she supports publicly are conservative. An off-hand mention about abortion doesn't change that. I get to call people whose known views are all conservative, conservative, because that's how logic works. Don't like it? Think that's 'bias', rather than deduction? Tough shit.

 

[alec]

Cool, I did not know she is still a registered Democrat.

So you have opinions about things you aren't informed about? That's not cool, Sander, that's sad.

Not that it surprises me.

 

[Deleted member 53669]

Come back to tO Sander, it's okay.

 

[Crni Vuk]

yeah, we will nurse you back to health and boosting your ego, Sandy. Come back to us.

 

[Yamu]

All this talk of "conservative" and "liberal" sort of frames the conversation within a false duality, doesn't it? It is possible for someone to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative, for instance, or have any number of other gradients of opinion. It's geographically relative, as well, and the American political lexicon has fallen pretty far out of sync with much of the rest of the world. Amsterdam's "conservative" may well be Farm State USA's "moderate," or even "moderate with Liberal pet causes."

That said, WesDude, I don't want to pile on, but I'm not seeing where there's any ground for argument here. If someone bakes for a living, day in and day out, they're a baker. If they tell you they're a butcher because they enjoy the occasional steak, that doesn't make them a butcher-- it makes them a baker with a very distorted outlook. Or an agenda.

Some of the things Hoff Sommers has to say align fairly well with things liberals were saying 50 years ago in this country, but these days they qualify more as educated, moderate common sense. As to the rest of her opinions... I'll readily admit I don't go seeking out her stuff, but most everything I've ever seen from her is socially conservative. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, peer-reviewed and not generally noted for its bias one way or another, classes her clearly stated views as those of a social conservative. She's won her fame championing the dismantling of the modern liberal evolutions of feminism and the generally liberal ideals informing them. Anyone with a dictionary that contains the words "liberal" and "conservative" and access to Sommers' twitter feed should be able to make the right call in a minute flat. There are shades of nuance, but she certainly leans markedly to one side.

As to her online publication history, who you publish with isn't nearly as important as the content of what you publish, and only the most irretrievably polarized talking heads only seek to preach to their own choir, so it's not unsurprising that she'd put up articles wherever she felt they were relevant. As to her being a registered Democrat, that's not saying much either. Political affiliation isn't a solid indicator of anything-- unless we're to take Zell Miller and Orson Scott Card, also both registered Democrats, as staunch textbook liberals. Not everyone toes a party line, and not everyone claims a party affiliation for purely ideological reasons.

 

[No Man]

All this talk of "conservative" and "liberal" sort of frames the conversation within a false duality, doesn't it? It is possible for someone to be socially liberal and fiscally conservative, for instance, or have any number of other gradients of opinion. It's geographically relative, as well, and the American political lexicon has fallen pretty far out of sync with much of the rest of the world. Amsterdam's "conservative" may well be Farm State USA's "moderate," or even "moderate with Liberal pet causes."

Bonus points if you are European and use the classical definition of liberalism, in which case 'liberal' and 'libertarian' are pretty much the same thing. According to Wikipedia:

Libertarianism is a modern form of neo-classical liberalism.

Then get into a political discussion on the Internet with someone and start using the classical definition. Will get a lot more amusing if you actually agree with that person, but use some of those differently defined terms to say it.

 

[TheWesDude]

i see lots of people calling her a conservative.

i correct them with actual statements from her.

then everyone says that based on what they have seen she is conservative.

then i find a political statement about a stance. abortion. conservatives are pro-life, liberals are pro-choice. what is her position? pro-choice.

i gotta say, your limited research is obviously not worth shit when you actually look up her political stances. as you do not seem to be correct.

but continue to call her a conservative if you wish. whatever helps you sleep at night i guess. if i can find evidence that your opinions are wrong by a few google searches, it really just tells everyone that you have no clue what her political stance is on issues, and you are in fact applying your bias based on your opinions of a few things she has said that actually do not touch on political issues.

judging someones political affiliation seems to many of your weak suits. maybe substitute your opinions with some actual facts of her statements on political issues next time.

or i guess you could continue to stick your fingers in your ears shouting gibberish, several of you prefer that method it seems.

 

[Byzantine]

Neither one will ever agree with the other, and it will carry on for fucking eternity if you let it.

That's pretty much how parliament works, isn't it? You've got a bunch of people on two opposing sides who scream at each other for an hour, blame the previous government for everything that's wrong with the country, and then go home. What was the original topic of this thread, again?

 

[Crni Vuk]

how to correctly boil potatoes I think.

 

[Yamu]

You seem to be starting to get a bit personally invested in this, and I'll admit I was a little sloppy in my phrasing, so I want to apologize and reframe myself a little more concisely: As a scholar, as a social influence, she is largely a conservative one. The foot she chooses to put forward, and the direction she chooses to spend the most time and effort trying to influence public thought in, is markedly socially conservative.

She speaks most often, most voluminously and most vocally on an issue that has been classed as socially conservative, not by her detractors but by respected nonpartisan bodies of political philosophy.

She presents herself largely through conservative outlets, and her bread-and-butter for the last 20 years and the only reason anyone knows her name is a socially conservative academic and cultural reform agenda which is embraced by large numbers of self-identifying conservatives and rejected by large numbers of self-identifying liberals.

I don't know about any number of her other personal opinions. I know no one here seems to be accusing her of being some horrible ultra-con harpy like Ann Coulter. A lot of what she's told the press about what she personally believes (in the few interviews you can find, which actually say remarkably little of substance) registers as good common sense with me, but those aren't the views she's actively seeking to advance. If we were in her family or on her PTA or belonged to the same book club they might matter; in public life, however, she is functionally conservative.

That's not implying she's a reactionary. She actually seems like a smart lady, and fairly nice. It's not implying that her conservatism is a negative thing. It's just the fact of the matter.

 

[Akratus]

So you call her a conservative, and this is shown to be incorrect, so then you say: "Yes but under these specific conditions I'm right though."

 

[Sander]

So you call her a conservative, and this is shown to be incorrect, so then you say: "Yes but under these specific conditions I'm right though."

That has not actually been shown to be incorrect, as the extent of her non-conservative, publicly-stated opinions is that she's in favor of abortion rights. The other data-point is that she's a registered Democrat (which does not say much about how she votes, nor about which policies she supports). We have those two data-points, contrasted with 20+ years of publicly writing about, advocating and endorsing conservative positions on a much wider range of issues.

Aside from that, what Yamu attempts to point out and what I've been saying constantly, is that the point was that her advocacy is conservative. Regardless of her personal views on other subjects, what she is known for and what she talks about is (social) conservatism. Her personal opinions in other areas could diverge, but that's not the point -- that's not what anyone was talking about. When people call her "conservative" they do so because it accurately describes the viewpoints she talks about publicly, including the viewpoints relevant within the context of the Gamergate debate (which is where this entire disagreement comes from).

"She's a conservative" is not a slander, nor an insult, nor derogatory. It's a description of her position as an advocate within the context of the debate.

 

[Akratus]

I never said that it's slander, or an insult, or derogatory. It's simply you trying to twist the story to your sjw us-vs-them view. You're the 'progressive' people, and they're the ignorant people trying to hold progress back.

Rather than say: "She's extremely critical of third wave feminism/cultural marxism/etc.", you try to put her in a political slot. As though this is a cultural war and everyone has to pick a side.

Also, this is interesting: https://medium.com/@cainejw/the-factual-feminist-a-factcheck-f5ae584f56da
I know how scary facts are though, to you.

 

[BigBoss]

Just to jump in here since I haven't really put anything meaningful into this fucked-up argument:

I've personally been reading her shit lately, and haven't seen anything remotely conservative. I do like that her name is Dabitch though.

 

[Byzantine]

I have little to no aqcuaintance with American politics, but even then, this thread is becoming increasingly silly. From what I've been able to decipher (Google Translate can now convert Forum Angst into English), all that's being argued here is whether Christina Sommers has a Republican or Democratic whiff about her person and on what premise. Meanwhile, the Ebola virus is destroying lives, Israel has yet to answer for its war crimes against Gaza, global resources are running scarce, India is sending space probes to Mars while its people starve, Australia's government has no real leaders anymore, journalists and tourists are being beheaded by fanatics, and the United States has bullied its allies into entering yet another dragged out conflict in the Middle East (support for which is being feed unapologetically through the mainstream media, which in turn propagates generic hatred for Muslims, as Cory Bernardi likes to remind us time and time again). Needless to say, I'm in a very pleasant mood.

 

[Sander]

I never said that it's slander, or an insult, or derogatory. It's simply you trying to twist the story to your sjw us-vs-them view. You're the 'progressive' people, and they're the ignorant people trying to hold progress back.

Rather than say: "She's extremely critical of third wave feminism/cultural marxism/etc.", you try to put her in a political slot. As though this is a cultural war and everyone has to pick a side.

I'm accurately describing her advocacy within the spectrum of American politics. As has been pointed out repeatedly, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy also identifies her positions as socially conservative. It's a description, one that is widely used. That's all. It's not about identity politics or "sjw us-vs-them" thinking. It's just describing her positions.

It should also be noted that this was only in response to TheWesDude's complaining that her positions were being called conservative. As I've also said repeatedly, I don't have a clue as to why calling conservative positions, conservative is a sticking point.

It is interesting to ask why this is a sticking point, though. One reason is that TheWesDude and others are very eager to use her as a voice on the other side (the other side being feminism), to try to use her as an example of the reasonable side of feminism, vs the extremist "cultural marxists", "third wave feminists" etc. In effect, she is being used in a form of identity politics: "See, she has your identity but she agrees with us!" But this is a form of sleight of hand: she isn't a part of mainstream feminism, nor is she a part of liberal or progressive thought, and pretending that she is relies solely on her self-definition, rather than on the agreement of her public advocacy with progressive or feminist thought.

None of this is to say that that makes her ideas incorrect. That's a different argument altogether. It's just that when you try to cast her as an accepted part of feminism, or someone advocating for progressive thought, to try to frame her as the reasonable part of the people you disagree with, you are not making a fair argument -- she was not a part of the people you disagree with.

Also, this is interesting: https://medium.com/@cainejw/the-factual-feminist-a-factcheck-f5ae584f56da
I know how scary facts are though, to you.

You may want to refrain from trolling the administrator. Also note that that link says nothing that hasn't been addressed already in this thread, repeatedly.

 

[BigBoss]

I have little to no aqcuaintance with American politics

Here's a civics/politics lesson then. America's government is full of greedy old fucks that don't care who they step on. End of lesson.

That's not to say I don't love my country though. I firmly believe in why this nation was created and what it was made to stand for. But shit's changed since the 1700's.

You may want to refrain from trolling the administrator.

This isn't cool man. As an administrator your supposed to be an icon of NMA, the best of us. But that right there just straight wasn't cool.

I'm not going to say why because you'll call it trolling and give me a strike or whatever, but I'm just going to say, this isn't cool, specifically because your letting your personal emotions of this argument cloud your administrators judgement.

I'm sure the other mods and admins will immediately jump in to support you, but I think people like Akratus, Alec, and WesDude would support me on this (at least silently, in fear of retaliation).