Daily Moral Libertarian: Tribalism in Conservative and Anti-SJW Politics

Welcome to TaraElla News, where we discuss recent social and political issues from a moral libertarian viewpoint. What I am trying to do is to take a stand for this particular brand of principled classical liberalism, to help build a sphere of conversation around our ideas, and to hopefully increase the currently dismal classical liberal representation in a world otherwise too full of identity politics and fake news. By the way, I talk about a new issue every weekday, so if truly freedom-centered, non-echo chamber political commentary is your thing, I highly recommend subscribing to this channel.

The Moral Libertarian Ideal: Equal Moral Agency for Every Individual.

Today, I want to respond to two recent videos by Theryn Meyer, one of my favourite political commentators, although I get an impression that she may not do much political commentary anymore. I think her journey through our fractured political landscape holds an important lesson for everyone interested in politics, especially for us committed moral libertarians. The Moral Libertarian Ideal is that there should be Equal Moral Agency for every individual. Every individual should be able to live out their sincerely held moral views, on an equal basis with every other individual. Part of living out one's moral conviction is of course the ability to promote your beliefs in the free market of ideas, and everyone needs to be able to participate in a fair and square way. We should especially make sure that this applies to individuals that don't neatly fit into the established tribes of politics. Now, Theryn certainly doesn't fit in the established tribes, and I think her rise and fall so far is an important lesson for us all.

For those of you who don't know who Theryn is, she first came to prominence as one of the few LGBT supporters of Donald Trump, and is also known for having held an interesting discussion with Dr Jordan Peterson that was widely talked about. Now, I like Theryn because she is a political rebel. When we first knew her, she was the trans conservative, in a political landscape where the LGBT community was increasingly moving left. She was also a supporter of the men's rights movement, in an era where the LGBT community was all about intersectional feminism. The fact that intersectional feminism ignored her showed us how they didn't really want to hear minority voices per se, but just leftist minority voices. Later on, she gave a few hints that she was perhaps not entirely right wing, that she held some left wing beliefs too. Early this year, she made a video apologizing to gender non-binary individuals, outlining her change of mind on this issue. She received strong negative reactions from some of her former fans. She stopped making videos afterwards, and only returned to YouTube in the last two weeks.

Theryn's Difficult Journey is Our Collective Shame

In her latest videos, Theryn tells us that she is not a naturally conservative person. And if you saw the videos, you would get that impression too. From what I have observed, Theryn just happened to gain a huge conservative following because she said some conservative and anti-SJW things. From there, she found herself being forced to feed the appetite of the conservative echo chamber. Later on, when she tried to break free and speak her mind, she received a backlash so severe that it forced her to retreat from making any more videos for a while. And even now, I get the feeling that she isn't too keen to speak about politics anymore. You know, I know this feeling, because I actually went through something similar, except in the opposite direction. Back when I was in college, I was on the left, but one day I alienated many leftists by daring to discuss issues around abortion and divorce. For the next few years, I retreated to writing about my political opinions in my own blog, and instead mainly focused on commenting on Hollywood celebrities. I fully regret my retreat, but that's what people do, especially when they are in their early twenties and they don't know how to handle the backlash of the echo chamber.

Free Speech is Useless when you have an Echo Chamber Culture

Viewers of this show would know that I am almost obsessive about free speech. You all know that I regularly oppose the far-left on their attempts to no-platform people or introduce safe speech rules. But what's the use of having free speech when the world is divided into echo chambers, when people are socially pressured to toe certain party lines, be they left or right? As a Moral Libertarian, I support everyone being able to speak their minds equally because we are all inevitably wrong sometimes, and to allow anyone to dominate over another means we allow the wrong to shut up the right at least some of the time. This applies where there is an actual absence of free speech, but it also applies where there is an inability to speak one's moral conscience because of social pressure. In other words, an echo chamber culture allows the objective truth to be shut up by falsehoods, at least part of the time. Hence, echo chambers are immoral. Hence, I am committed to the dismantling of all echo chambers.

Of course, in our deeply divided political landscape today, to even challenge the echo chamber is difficult. Theryn found out the hard way. And it is unrewarding too. In our media landscape today, it is easy to rise to prominence if you always say what your intended audience wants to hear. It is easy to make lots of money that way. As for people like myself, who refuse to go along? You see what level of 'reward' somebody like myself gets. But anyway, I will stick to what I am doing, because I think the world needs it. Echo chambers have to die, and somebody needs to make it happen. If not me, then who else?

That's all for today. I'll be back with more moral libertarian commentary tomorrow. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss it.