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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 26, 2023

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Can you explain why you think my comment is uncharitable? Because I certainly don't think it's uncharitable.

How many leftists do you think would agree with you that their reason d'etre is to "remove the market forces that push people away from poor decisions"?

Frankly, I think this is a good illustration that the determination of what is "charitable" or "uncharitable" is inextricably tied up with one's own ideological position.

It's very tedious to go through another round of "You modded this comment because you disagree with it." I no longer bother trying to disabuse people of whatever assumptions they make about my ideological positions.

Re the first question, judge by actions not words. Democrats support raising the minimum wage. Democrats support wealth transfers. Democrats support subsidies to numerous industries (eg education, green). Democrats support very intrusive anti discrimination laws predicated on disparate impact. Democrats support extensive mandatory maternity leave laws. Democrats support nationalized health care. Democrats support banning goods they determine are bads (eg gas stoves). Democrats believe in highly progressive taxes. Democrats believe in a robust industrial policy (see Biden’s activities).

How many leftists do you think would agree with you that their reason d'etre is to "remove the market forces that push people away from poor decisions"?

If we're talking about economic leftists in the sense of classical Marxists/anarchists? All of them. It's an anti-market ideology. Read Marx, read Adorno, read Marcuse, read any classical Marxist thinker. They are anti-market and therefore they are anti markets doing anything, let alone "punishing people for bad decisions". This is all pretty explicit, it's not a secret.

Now granted there's been a lot of slippage of the word "leftist" over the years (including in my own history of the usage of the word) and it's come to describe a lot of people who are economically liberal rather than Marxist - people who actually support markets and think they should continue. These people might not agree with my original comment. Fair enough; I could have been more precise and narrowed down my claim to only describe Marxism rather than what is today known as "leftism" as a whole. But honestly even then I think the distinction is somewhat moot in this case. Even a technically-economically-liberal LGBT activist, say, who doesn't really care about classical Marxism, is still not going to be in favor of using markets as a tool to punish people. They're going to agree with the basic principle.

"You modded this comment because you disagree with it."

That's simply not what I said. What I did say is that determinations of uncharitability are made (in part) on the basis of what readings and positions are counted as inherently "insulting", or "beyond the pale". You can personally disagree with something, but you won't perceive it as uncharitable unless you also perceive it as either a naked attack, or outside the Overton window.