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I never said to just "turn the other cheek". But you have to be careful how you fight back. There are plenty of people here whose only motive at this point is to just hurt the people who hurt them. It would be just as bad if they win the culture war as it would be if the woke left won the culture war. I don't want a tyranny of the left, but that doesn't mean I want a tyranny of the right either.
Less practically, I believe that the one thing that really matters in the end is your character. Not victory or defeat in some culture war, but who you are as a person. It's important to hold on to that above all else. Again, that doesn't mean that you have to just meekly accept everything others may throw your way (unlike how @DaseIndustriesLtd incorrectly characterizes me as a "cooperate bot"), but it does mean that you can't just go "well that's a losing tactic" as a form of dismissal. Better to lose while being moral than to win while being immoral. The latter is quite literally barbaric and is beneath us.
On the whole I'd rather be immoral than go extinct.
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it shouldn't be surprising a movement who doesn't even have the righteous belief winning would even be good to constantly choose to lose
without the belief that you should shape the world into something better, the world will always be shaped by worse men and you've chosen this as a strategy
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I despise this phrase, and I think its central error is presenting a false dichotomy. There are third options, and this phrase is used to deflect responsibility for avoiding costly actions that are moral while simply taking the L with an air of smug self-righteousness. Your character is not just determined by your actions: refusing to act can negatively reflect on your character when you are shirking obligations that are your proper responsibility--to yourself, your kin, the Truth, etc.
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Genocide is barbaric even in a time of war. Killing enemy soldiers is normal in war but a crime in peace, while an agreement is in place. You wish to apply the rules of peace and tell me I shouldn’t target enemy soldiers because that would make me just as bad as them. And of course if there was an agreement in place it would be an atrocity. But this agreement having been shredded by the enemy, we are in a state of war.
Yes, I anticipate your objection that that is what both sides would accuse the other side of. The thing about being an adult is you have to weigh the evidence and make a choice. At the very least if you abstain from making it, you should take the Scott Alexander route and admit you are doing it for your own good (TheMotte statement, Kolgomorov) instead of dressing it up as superior morality above the petty squabbles between left and right.
Who ended federalism (violation 1) and then overrode the legislature of the national population (violation 2)? Who unleashed violent actors to terrorise it’s enemies and cleanse them from urban life?
These are not at all hard questions.
You're right. That is what the other side would accuse you of. I'm not buying it from them, and I don't buy it from you either. I don't care to listen to the warmongers on the left or on the right.
Would it be fair to say that your morality is downstream of a religious world view that in effect dismisses the entirety of the material world as mere testing grounds for «good character»? Taken together with your harm-OCD-like beliefs on account of sinful thoughts, that's the best case for you that I can make.
Because otherwise it makes no sense at all. You commit to losing wars and surrendering the world to people who do not share your compunctions, much less your positive vision. This is cowardly betrayal of good, justified by a pathetic veneer of false symmetry.
No.
If that's what you think, then you have failed to understand me. I am not of the belief that one should simply roll over and surrender to evil. I simply believe that victory is not the most important thing, and I'm not willing to compromise my morals to achieve it. That doesn't mean I give up forever, it means I try to achieve victory through means I find acceptable.
But you have not communicated even a slight interest in victory – in this thread, you jump at every chance to smugly equate people «on your side» and people who clearly deny everything you stand for, including the belief that victory is not paramount, just because it makes you feel better about your moral purity. It is not clear what, if anything, you are willing to sacrifice to make the world more in line with your values. Not even low-grade entertainment?
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