It occurred to me that it isn't a top-down "stick with the team" decision, but rather an expression of bottom-up "sacred value" dynamics.
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All ideologies have "sacred" values, beliefs, and structures that prevent their own critical examination from within respective ideologies.
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Beyond the freedom of speech issue, this also encompases ideological opposition to specific aspects of science, history, and other fields.
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This is essentially what Jonathan Haidt has been researching, writing, and talking about for however many years.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9kJkuuedw0 …
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If you can identify what an ideology considers sacred, then you know what will cause ideologues to break with principled freedom of speech.
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That is the essence of the brouhaha behind the football anthem kneeling protest. They're clearly violating something ideologically "sacred."
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In many ways, much of the American right wing considers the flag, the anthem, and what they represent to be ideologically "sacred" objects.
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The situation has a clear parallel in what happened to James Damore at Google. The left's "sacred" object is feminist diversity activism.
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I highlight this phenomenon because of its specific role in preventing principled support of freedom of speech and other individual rights.
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In fact, I believe that the purpose of individual rights in enlightenment philosophy is exactly to protect individuals from this phenomenon.
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We're currently seeing an ideological erosion of support for individual rights, and a rapid expansion of a "collective rights" paradigm.
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This is what I mean when I say "identity politics," which privileges the rights of "collectives" to not have their "sacred" values impugned.
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This, of course, necessarily results in individuals having their individual rights being restricted and curtailed for these collectives.
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I've previously made a thread that discusses these issues of "individual vs collective," and you can find it here:https://twitter.com/M_Methuselah/status/904529705541533697 …
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When thinking about the situation, I found an interesting way to frame events that I hope will shed some light on the principles involved.
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"The POTUS gives guidelines to a private institution, with implied sanctions for noncompliance, to infringe upon the rights of individuals."
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Trump calling out the NFL, right? Maybe the Obama administration issuing the "Dear Colleague" letter? ...Exactly.https://twitter.com/M_Methuselah/status/912479361802096642 …
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Be it nationalist patriotism or feminist activism, an ideological government will want to protect sacred objects over individual rights.
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Even if those individual rights happen to be as vitally important as the freedom of speech or due process and the presumption of innocence.
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This is why it is so incredibly important to stick to principled support of individual rights over ideological support of collective rights.
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The government can, has, and will be led by ideologues. Individual rights are the only thing protecting you from a government like that.
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And as we've seen in the past few months with Weinstein, Gab, and Damore, you need them to protect you from private institutions as well.
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I'm explicitly protecting my rights, and yours too, when I defend the free speech rights of Nazis and the due process rights of rapists.
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And of course, I also defend the free speech rights of football players, as well as the free speech rights of other peaceful demonstrators.
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This just loops me back to the beginning though, because the issue is that ideologically motivated people are not principled regarding this.
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Most people, with much encouragement from partisan media, will flip-flop along party lines depending on what their side considers heretical.
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I have absolutely no idea how to even begin to tackle this problem, and many people smarter than I am have tried and failed miserably.
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You've made it to the end. If you're still interested in this subject, then I suggest reading this fantastic piece:http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/09/can-democracy-survive-tribalism.html …
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