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Is revenge a good reason to do things you find immoral? I think a lot of us more principled folk would disagree.
If I am attacked, it is good to use force against my attacker to both defend myself but also to establish future deterrence. If I am cheated, it is good to sue not just for the value of what was denied me but also for punitive damages - to take the cheater's money. If I am stolen from, it is good not just to retrieve what was stolen, but also to incapacitate the thief to prevent their ability to do these things again.
How certain are you that you're actually being attacked and it's not underdog bias?
I know and see plenty of leftists online who say similar things in the way you're saying now. That the powerful conservatives are attacking everyone and that their left wing censorious behavior is justified in defense. They're just as convinced as themselves as you are.
Knowing that people delude themselves into the very same style of bias perceptions you currently hold, knowing that there are studies and evidence suggesting that this happens on both sides of pretty much every topic, how certain are you that you're not just experiencing an underdog bias and failing to see the ways your own side might hold institutional powers unfairly? And how does any answer you give look differently than what a leftist under the bias would give?
This is true. Is not the proper response to look at the evidence available and draw one's own conclusions?
I would hope others in a rationalist community are aware of how our own biases can impact our perception. Maybe you haven't read things like the lens that sees it's flaws and other parts of the sequences before, I recommend it
When we examine the world and we see a common self-perception bias about one's self and their own groups, one that all those other groups are blind to for themselves it stands to reason we might also have that same bias even if we don't see it. How sure are you that you're uniquely immune?
"Look, Charles, I know you look at those organisms there and note their similarities and differences and think this is good evidence that they arose via natural selection of variations among the offspring of some parent organism. But Archbishop Wilberforce, he's looked at the same 2500 organisms and he sees in them the hand of God. How are you so sure he's the biased one and not you?"
Interesting example given that conservatism is generally the one associated with denying evolution. And hey wait then, did you just show there was something about your own group you were accidently blind to?
"My own group"? LOL. When this all started I was an atheist libertarian. I'm still a atheist, and in some ways a libertarian -- but I demand my libertarianism pays off in liberty for me and mine, rather than simply being beliefs which require that I let others harm me. Heck, if you think Trump himself is a religious conservative you're way off base. This motley alliance of people who are seeing Trump beat on the institutions and being OK with it was put together, not by the religious right nor by Trump nor even by J.D. Vance. It was put together by the left itself, who has been throwing everyone who disagrees with them into a political pit with various derogatory labels for well over a decade now.
You've been carefully ignoring all the examples of this that have been presented, instead demanding we ignore all that and continue to give them the maximum benefit of the principles they do not hold and did not grant to us. And when that seemed a little much you retreated to the position of invincible ignorance, that we cannot know that we are right and they are wrong, so we shouldn't treat them as if they are wrong. But ignoring those things doesn't make them go away, and a universal argument against knowledge is just sophistry.
You don't think there's religious people who don't believe in evolution that are on your side of the left-wing/right-wing divide?
I agree with your general proposition that political alliances can not be split so easily to begin with and to blame you for the beliefs and actions of the religious evolution denier would be silly, but I also believe that of the many groups and factions that compose "the left".
Likewise I have been presented with tons of examples from leftists about conservative institutions and powerful elites censoring and oppressing people. Heck some examples are ironic, like a school that tried to ban Harry Potter due to depictions of witchcraft back in the 90s. That's of course a funny example, but there's plenty that aren't so funny.
The FCC's rules against "indecency" prohibiting even swearing. The radio stations that banned the Dixie chicks for opposing the Iraq war. Even now the director of the United States Office of Management and Budget has expressly said he wants to ban pornography through back door methods.
So I have evidence from both sides, strong evidence of both sides. Both of them yelling "we didn't start the fire" as they both throw Molotovs.
Good news, you can know you didn't start the fire if you don't throw molotovs and side with principled free speech organizations like FIRE.
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