Liberals and Conservatives on "Yes" and "No"

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
1

…so I had a recent argument with a liberal. I said, “Feminism and multiculturalism oppose tradition.”

He instantly asked me to prove my claim.

I said burden of proof is on the affirmative. “Oppose” is a negation. I’m just being skeptical.

Following that, he said that opposition is an accusation of being intolerant. It’s my obligation to prove persecution.

Afterwards, I said that opposition is not persecution. It’s just a rejection of something. Persecution is going after something as wrong although it’s arguable that indeed feminism and multiculturalism persecute tradition. (This seems to be common sense anyway such as challenging religion, “the 50s”, and family values.)

At that point, he just gave up in saying I was being impractical and he didn’t have the time to explain.

This might seem stupid, but it’s rather remarkable to me. It seems to explain half of the problem liberals and conservatives have coming to mutual understandings. (The other half of the problem is how those aware of this issue exploit it for status.)

“Yes” to a conservative means something is acceptable. “No” means something is unacceptable.

“Yes” to a liberal means something is tolerable. “No” means something is intolerable.

The difference between acceptance and tolerance seems to be why conservatives and liberals can’t agree on things. Conservatives believe ideas must be necessarily proven before they may exist. Liberals believe ideas are entitled to exist as possibilities until disproven.

2

It looks like your philosophical mind is finally maturing, and it’s about damn time. I’m proud of you. =D>

3

To be fair, I’ve read Wittgenstein’s notion of language games, and it hit me like I looked into the eyes of Cthulhu.

If it’s true that words can mean different things to different people, how does anyone ever understand anyone else outside of getting lucky from coincidentally believing in the same definitions at the same time?

For example, the only reason I ever talk is giddiness. If I wasn’t giddy, I’d rarely if ever talk at all. The idea of talking from getting lucky is pointless.

4

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[size=50]
…[/size]

[size=114]NOBODY understands each other.

Words are the Tower of Babel.

We fool ourselves & each other with words.[/size]

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5

It’s more like “war games” than language games. Every conversation represents a conflict of interest from each individual person. Not only are every individual’s lingual concepts different, but they’re also inexpressible at certain points, due to a lack of communication, description, expression, and explanation. Almost everybody I’ve met in life lacks a certain confidence when it comes to core concepts. How do you define things such as: life, death, fear, happiness, purpose, meaning, science, faith, pleasure, pain, etc.

People don’t tend to think about these things, don’t put much thought time into it. Most people go along with things, and trust definitions, arguments, and points made by respected authorities. Statements are not true because people “decide” they are, but rather that a few selected, “respectable” authorities deem them so. Again, like language, the acceptance of these authorities is also intuitive.

People mainly use intuition, instinct, and reflex to navigate lingual communication, or expressive communication of every kind, including direct physical communication. We see each other…I wink at you, or shift around nervously, or grin widely, what do these expressions “mean”? Do they have a meaning? Do I have an intent? Am I implying a message, or deceiving you?

Again, people don’t “over think” these things. In fact, most don’t “think” at all. They just “go with the flow”.

I’d love to talk about this topic with you more, face to face, but you act so coyly. You’re too introverted. I’d like to raise you to your true potential.

6

Why do you portray communication as conflict?

Literally, communication is about uniting in common. That’s peaceful, not hostile.

Yes, some people communicate hostilely either out of psychopathic or paranoid instinct, but everyone doesn’t.

Likewise, yes, many people go along with intuition and lose confidence over core concepts, but that can be overcome through the arts where people visually, audibly, and kinetically express what’s really going on. The problem seems to be that people are increasingly awkward from participating in the arts. On the other hand, many people are overwhelming in not respecting others’ sensitivities.

I worry about that a lot. Linguistic pragmatists seem so bent on using each other and simply deal with being used while assuming the risk of getting into legal trouble over abuse. Again, there’s no cultural unity over what expressions really mean from impressions of the sublime.

7

Let me rephrase my premise for you:

Communication/Language can unite as well as it can divide. It can be used for “love” and bringing people together, or “hate” and pushing people apart. This is common sense. You don’t want “bad” people around you, correct? But you want “good” people around you. So your language can include those who are “good” and exclude those who are “bad”.

This is done with language. Why doesn’t all people of the world speak the same language?

The conclusion is simple: because not everybody wants to become a part of the “human” group. Some people want difference, exclusion, separation, inequality, unequality, difference. Uniqueness. To become thought of as “Special” with special “Rights”.

Etc.

When are you going to PM me? I’ve been waiting forever.

8

facepalmed when I read this.
People throw around the term ‘burden of proof’ so easily.
It doesn’t work like that.

9

Skeptical would be saying things like…I am not sure feminism is good. Or I am not sure if feminism is right when it wants to change X.

To make an assertion and in fact a positive one - since you are stating what is the case - bears the burden of proof if you want anyone to be convinced by what you are saying, just like any other assertion.

Ridiculous. Conservatives often think that traditions should be defended because they are traditions, regardless of any proof. So not simply that ideas are entitled to exist, but even practices.

10

Actually that was worded brilliantly, because Daktoria you conflated the terms “feminism”, “multicultural”, and “tradition” all at once, then pronounced your skepticism. What you implied with your statement was that feminism and multiculturalism are anti-traditional. What you glossed over was…who is this anti-traditional against?

That caused a lapse of definition in your conversation. For extreme feminists, feminism IS their “tradition”. So a radical feminist is being “traditional” within her own sub culture.

11

No. I stated opposition which is a negation, not an affirmation.

The problem is the liberal I was talking with believed I was accusing intolerance, but I wasn’t. I was skeptical of feminism and multiculturalism accepting tradition.

The history of surviving traditions is taken as evidence that traditions should be accepted. There’s also the matter that people need values to unite around in order to get along. You can’t have property rights without properness, you can’t have customers without customs, you can’t engage others without rules of engagement, etc.

Ironically, feminism and multiculturalism are economically unsustainable due to their opposition to tradition. They depend on consumerism which begs the question where the cash to afford things come from. Instead, feminists and multiculturalists say there’s nothing wrong with a debt-fueled service economy, and evidence needs to exist in order to prove it’s unsustainability…

…upon which they argue government intervention can correct market failures, expecting conservatives to prove them wrong after claiming conservatives are absurdly ridiculous in their skepticism.

12

What you said about sub-culture was actually his final words. He said that feminism and multiculturalism have their own traditions (without proof), and just because they don’t expect united traditions doesn’t mean they oppose diverse traditions.

Traditions are about uniting people in common though (such as what we just discussed over communication), so what he argued didn’t make sense.

He also ignored the matter of consumerism as just noted above.

13

I definitely agree with this. You see liberals exploit elitism all the time against working class whites. Their communication style is incredibly snobbish, and they take pride in saying family values and religion are unnecessary for success, ignoring how the working class is unfamiliar with due process or rules of engagement such that tradition levels the playing field.

This is especially in opposing the Catholic Church (as opposed to Protestantism, Judaism, and Islam) despite how the Catholic Church was incredibly multicultural across ethnic groups in Europe as well as opposing slavery of Africans and Native Americans.

LIkewise, you see feminist pursuit of liberation through empowerment which is basically class warfare against working class males. They inhibit working class male social mobility while saying males don’t know how easy they have it in accordance with historical injustice. This is especially in a debt-fueled, service, consumer economy where the unweaving of social fabric has left working class males at a loss for role models and social networks to learn how to communicate.

Even working class females are stuck here because they don’t know how to network either, but then feminists will turn class warfare around to justify females doing what middle class males typically do. This coincides with the displacement of the private sector with government programs where women are employed en masse in education, health care, and social work. Feminists will argue that government programs are justified because they’re less categorical, more contextual, in how they’re organized. That is the communication style of government programs lends itself to femininity because of its trial and error experimental style. Policies are disproved instead of proved in advance, forcing people together in assuming the risk of struggle.

14

Again, this is very confused. You are making a claim about reality. If I say that the gravity of the earth opposes the energy released by the fuel of a rocket taking off, I am making an assertion about the way things are. And a positive one. IOW I am describing how I think reality is.

If a scientist publishes a paper or a philosopher makes and assertion that there are no X in Y, they have to back this up. I don’t no where you got this confused notion that a negative assertion is a not a claim about reality that needs to be backed up.

I agree with you on the issue. It seems to me they are going against some traditions. Just as those wanting to abolish slavery were. The issue is whether the tradition is a good one or not.

Sure, people accept that, but that is not evidence. Slavery survived a long time. Nobless oblige survived a long time. Some good things last, some terrible things do. Lasting is not evidence.

AND EVERY SINGLE CONSERVATIVE MUST AGREE WITH THIS.
Why?

Because they follow radicals who changed traditions. Whether it is Jesus or the founding fathers of the US, secular or religious they all follow people who changed traditions.

This made no sense at all, and I have not heard feminists assert this.

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Governments have been intervening in markets for a couple of hundred years in the US. That is the tradition. How much, where, etc.? those are issues. And the last set of deregulation of the finance sector led to the most recent crisis. Greenspan, who hated restrictions on markets and fought for deregulation, was shocked by what he had created.

15

We’re talking about ideas here, not reality. Opposition to an idea is not like opposing forces in physics.

Literally, (philosophical) idealism is not realism. Burden of proof is on the affirmative. If people are expected to believe X is in Y, then it must be proven to people. People are not obligated to give it the benefit of the doubt just because of possible speculation.

If you want, think of it like people who expect you to believe in God. There’s no (reliable) proof of God, so you’re entitled to be agnostic.

That’s not what’s meant by traditions. We’re not talking about practice itself. We’re talking about the culture which identifies with practice.

Again, you’re ignoring the difference between ideas and reality. I also don’t think you understand “history” because you’re treating it scientifically rather than artistically. People identify with history because it’s a story that reflects who they are.

(The problem with slavery is that it prohibits people from identifying with practice as they see fit. Literally, it coerces people’s to do others’ bidding just because others say so. Likewise, it inhibits historical interpretation which is used to demotivate people from enslaving one another into the future.)

Second wave feminism embraces meritocracy such as what happens when women work in retail outlets.

Third wave feminism embraces exhibitionism such as the objectification of women into pop culture which is sold in retail outlets.

No. Tradition contains values, but market interventionism in the national interest doesn’t have values. It just brutally asserts a definition of market failure without garnishing unanimous consent of everyone who participates in the economy. There is no freedom to identify with the track record as instrumentally appropriate.

16

Sure, of course. But once you enter the discussion and make an assertion then you need to back it up.

I never at any point suggested this. I am not saying you bear the burden of proof and they don’t. I am saying you also bear the burden of proof.

If someone says there is a God, they bear the burden of proof for that assertion. If someone responds to this with, no, there is no God, they bear the burden of proof for that statement.

Think of the agnostic, who does not know. Both of those people are making claims. And as you say yourself…

Anyone making a claim has the same burden of proof as anyone else making a claim.

Of course. But look at the OP. You did not make an agnostic claim. An agnostic would say I do not know if multiculturalism and feminism are going against tradition or not.

You did not respond as an agnostic on that issue. If you go back to my first post I gave a couple of examples of skepticism/agnostic responses.

YOu need to take responsibility for the way you framed the issue. Artists tend not to say ‘you have the burden of proof’ not when dealing with artistic matters. You raised the issue of who has the burden of proof, so you have moved the discussion into the realm of reasoning and science.

But it was a tradition and very much a part of the culture of the South in the US. The fact that it was a part of the culture and a tradition offered no support for it.

Again, government intervention of markets is the rule in US history. Complete free markets and total deregulation goes against tradition. Bush, for example, was not a conservative on these issues he was a liberal to radical, just as most of the presidents on both sides have been. Liberal in the sense that he was changing traditions.

17

In the 1960s, feminism was called the Women’s Movement, which questioned the traditional role of men in western society. The 1990s brought multiculturalism, which is has to do with respecting cultural ‘rights.’ Both are often misunderstood, misdefined, and misused in debate.

But, imm, neither has that much to do with liberals and conservatives.

Multiculturalism has given way to the Law of the Land. If someone emigrates from one country to another, s/he must live by the laws of that country. A conservative, as a traditionalist, might disagree. A conservative, as a traditionalist, might say, “A woman’s “place” is in the home, teaching ‘family values’ to her children.”

A liberal would say, “Exactly what ‘family values’?” The ‘traditional’ ones that ‘value’ marriage, no matter what? Or the non-traditional ‘get out of an abusive marriage and take any kids with you’ anti-marriage stance?

You might enjoy this:

colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/394522/august-11-2011/gloria-steinem

I don’t know what the OP is trying to say.

18

If it’s any consolation, you’re both as wrong as each other. This can’t help mutual understanding.

But everyone else in the thread is right: “feminism opposes tradition” is a positive claim, in the normal philosophical meaning of the words. I’m sure you can think of all sorts of silly arguments that could escape the burden of proof just by using verbs that could be argued to have some form of negative effect on the verb subject; really, that’s not how it works.

The answer’s in Wittgenstein, waiting for you: we share forms of life. “If a lion could speak, we shouldn’t be able to understand it”. Philosophical Investigations is one of the best works of the 20th century, to my mind, I’d recommend reading it. :slight_smile: