vimothy

yurp
there are two definitions of liberalism: procedural and substantive. in the naive view liberalism is just a procedural belief - you go your way and I go mine - and therefore no one could possibly disagree with it and all it's really saying is that youre entitled to believe whatever you want and so am I. but in reality it's a substantive set of beliefs about the world which people are expected to get behind, and even the stuff that seems procedural like strict neutrality in the public square (which obviously clashes with other more substantive liberal beliefs and is often disregarded in practice) is itself substantive, since it's saying that beliefs about the world effectively have to be a private affair which don't affect anyone else. "we're free to be you and me, as long as the differences between us never matter".
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
(side note: I know so little about cricket that I don't even know if they have a league commissioner)

In England, Wales and the Falkland Islands, local teams are grouped into regional organisations called chapterhouses, each of which is headed by either a master-sergeant or a grand wizard (a purely ceremonial distinction that dates back to the Civil War), all of whom in turn answer to the Ayatollah.

In Scotland they have a different system, modelled after the Bavarian Lodge.
 

luka

Well-known member
there are two definitions of liberalism: procedural and substantive. in the naive view liberalism is just a procedural belief - you go your way and I go mine - and therefore no one could possibly disagree with it and all it's really saying is that youre entitled to believe whatever you want and so am I. but in reality it's a substantive set of beliefs about the world which people are expected to get behind, and even the stuff that seems procedural like strict neutrality in the public square (which obviously clashes with other more substantive liberal beliefs and is often disregarded in practice) is itself substantive, since it's saying that beliefs about the world effectively have to be a private affair which don't affect anyone else. "we're free to be you and me, as long as the differences between us never matter".

Enumerate it's substantive beliefs for us vim.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Yeah, but I think that's the argument that's being made. People feel that other people's beliefs are being imposed upon them when their kids are being taught about homosexuality against their wishes and other people feel that not teaching kids about homosexuality is depriving them of their rights and freedoms because they're being treated differently to heterosexual people so there's this push and pull where there can't really be any compromise without chipping away at someone's rights or what they believe are their rights.

I don't think the existence of LGBTI people counts as a 'belief'!
 

version

Well-known member
I don't think the existence of LGBTI people counts as a 'belief'!

Neither do I but that's how its characterised by a lot of homophobic people. There's all that stuff the American right insist on blabbering on about it being a "lifestyle choice".
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I know, didn't think you did! Just making the point that eliding the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive (one of the oldest bad faith argument tactics in the book) is very much at work here
 

version

Well-known member
This thing of people arguing in bad faith seems impossible to deal with online. It's completely broken the way people discuss things.
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
Yep, it's pretty bad.

On liberalism - ahistorical modern liberalism is one of the most absurdly hypocritical things ever [after the thing about 'all men are created equal' in the US Dec of Independence] . Pretending the West invented liberal concepts, rather than: destroying them everywhere they found them in the rest of the world during colonialism, before adopting them in the West only after decades of heroic and violently-resisted efforts from groups of people subject to discrimination, then pretending that everyone in the West had basically always thought that way, and finally browbeating non-Western countries in a quasi-racist way about the 'lack of tolerance' that the West had itself introduced at gunpoint. Quite a remarkable propaganda exercise.
 
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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I recently saw an old friend of mine who is Palestinian, and as much a Muslim as I am a Christian in terms of religious belief, and he told me he'd recently started thinking of himself as a "post-Muslim agnostic" rather than an atheist (as he always had before) precisely because of the connotations that the word "atheist" now has due to the likes of Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins using it as a stick to beat Islam/Muslims with.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
I recently saw an old friend of mine who is Palestinian, and as much a Muslim as I am a Christian in terms of religious belief, and he told me he'd recently started thinking of himself as a "post-Muslim agnostic" rather than an atheist (as he always had before) precisely because of the connotations that the word "atheist" now has due to the likes of Sam Harr and Richard Dawkins using it as a stick to beat Islam/Muslims with.

lol hello mate I've been on this forum it's all love here but ok?

Like I couldn't believe in the ulema and subscribe to communism simultaneously, thats decadent idiocy for american hippies.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
patty if you were just musically stuck in the 90s that would be endearing but that article is politically stuck in the 90s as well. oh dear. this is serious.
 

version

Well-known member
I dunno if it's a moniker they came up with themselves but there's a clip of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens where they're referred to as "The Four Horsemen". It's like The Avengers for self-described "intellectuals".
 

version

Well-known member
It's that craving for myths and whatnot that came up in the dematerialisation thread earlier. You see it in the NBA too. A lot of people discuss certain players like they're superheroes or anime characters. When LeBron became the villain and moved to Miami he started wearing the #6 and people talk as though he became some evil version of himself like when a wrestler adopts a new persona. You couldn't have planned this photo better and now it's this iconic image of "villain LeBron".

lebron-james-black-mask.jpg
 

version

Well-known member
I dunno if it's a moniker they came up with themselves but there's a clip of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens where they're referred to as "The Four Horsemen". It's like The Avengers for self-described "intellectuals".

The comments are as you'd expect...

This is BRAIN porn.

i rubbed one off to this

Almost too much reason and intelligence for one video

You can practically smell the high IQ in the air.

Listening to these 4 converse is akin to listening to 4 great musicians jam. Beautiful.
 
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