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I mean, presumably the fundamental reason you don't feel like allying with the right is because you're center-left. If you were center-right instead, you'd probably feel more comfortable with the right!
I don't think there's much point in speculating what a rightist censorship regime would look like right now, because the right doesn't have the power to enforce those policies on a national scale and I don't realistically see that changing any time soon. So I'm fine with just trying to push back against leftist censorship for now, and if rightist censorship ever gets out of hand we can cross that bridge when we come to it. (Of course, part of the reason why I'm comfortable saying that is because I'm apt to find the right's policies more hospitable in the first place - someone of a more leftist bent might say that current leftist censorship is really no big deal after all, but rightist censorship is a lurking omnipresent danger that we must be on constant guard against).
For what it's worth I think I'm about as close to a free speech absolutist as you can get. I don't think anyone should be punished for supporting Palestine, or questioning trans ideology, or anything else. But if I have to make a choice, I'll go with the side that is less censorious on the issues that are closer to me personally.
I do. It's called nuclear war. I don't, y'know, want nuclear war, but it's pretty obvious that the small-town conservatives comprise a much-larger percentage of the population immediately following one because nobody nukes farmhouses or small towns.
Assuming that nothing flips the table is potentially assuming your way out of reality.
In a post-nuclear world, do you really think issues of free speech and wokeness at Harvard will be primary concerns? I’m pretty close to a free speech absolutist, and that is a value I hold pretty dear, but even I wouldn’t expect to care about it much at all in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear attack.
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Might I gently suggest that in case of a nuclear war the finer points of hate speech laws and college campus environments may no longer be a particularly urgent concern.
(this doubles as a reply to @Lewis2)
I quoted what I thought was wrong; the idea that the right will not have the power to do censorship any time soon.
Indeed, one would not need to worry about "wokeness at Harvard", because my whole point is that Harvard would be a smoking ruin. I would be concerned about White Terror, both immediately (in cases of supply-chain interruption and government disruption causing hungry chaos, I don't imagine that being the HR lady would do wonders for one's survival chances) and in the months and years to follow.
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I consider myself primarily a pragmatist, not ideologist, so I can see myself allying with a broader right coalition in principle, if I had the impression that I can fit in under a live and let live paradigm. In particular I'm probably more center than left, so it's not even inconceivable that I'll someday identify as center-right. But nevertheless, I just do not have the impression that free speech absolutism is really something the right is dedicated on (nor the left, which is key to my frustration with them, but at least I agree with them on more other things). Currently I do push hardest against left-wing orthodoxy because it's the only realistic threat to me at the moment since the right-wing has no power whatsoever in science, but I have no illusions that life would be better under the thumb of the right.
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