Why Commitment to the Objective Truth is Important

Let's continue talking about laying the foundations for a culture and politics rooted in shared values. Last time, we talked about compassion. This time, I think we should talk about commitment to, and respect for, the objective truth. One reason why an extreme and toxic politics has proliferated on both the left and the right, is because of a lack of commitment to the objective truth across the board. Postmodernism, which has strongly influenced the Western left in recent times, openly rejects pursuing the objective truth, and sees speech, discourse and knowledge itself as fundamentally manifestations of oppressor vs oppressed power dynamics. There is clearly no room for respect of objective truth in this worldview. Meanwhile, the right is at least equally, if not even more, disrespectful of the objective truth, in its pursuit of power. In the past few years, the right has demonstrated a sickening level of 'will to power', never letting a crisis go wasted, trampling on both scientific and social truths in their attempt to create a politically advantageous narrative. Together, in slightly different but ultimately similar ways, the left and the right have buried our previously long-standing commitment to the objective truth, to the extent that people basically don't live in the same environment of objective facts anymore. This has made society and politics fundamentally dysfunctional, and is one of the biggest reasons for the polarization and tribalism we have right now.

Why is the objective truth important? It's because only when we know and acknowledge the objective truth can we begin to make fact-based decisions and take reality-based actions to improve things. Of course, knowing the objective truth is only the beginning. What decisions we make, and what actions we take, will also depend a lot on our values. Two people with different values can and will act differently even if they agree on the same set of objective facts. It is our values that make us want to rectify injustices where they exist, or resist tyranny in all its forms. If people with a different set of values were in charge during World War II, for example, they might not have had the will to stop fascism, even if they otherwise had the same facts available to them. They might have decided to make a peace deal with Hitler instead, not caring about how many people would suffer and die under his rule. Therefore, it is ultimately our values that determine our course of action. However, those values would only be able to be applied accurately if we know the objective truth, and know it accurately, in the first place. Knowledge of, and agreement with, the objective truth also forms a fair basis on which we might judge the ideas being sold to us in the marketplace of ideas. I think a major reason why some ideologies wantonly distort and obscure the objective truth is because they want to distort the marketplace of ideas. It's really about forcing their ideas down our throats, when a fair appraisal of such ideas would always lead to their rejection.

Postmodernism and New Left critical theory clearly have a problem with the objective truth. Their view that knowledge and discourse is fundamentally and inevitably shaped by power dynamics is incompatible with a commitment to freely pursue the objective truth, both in theory and in practice. In theory, such a worldview necessarily leads to the selective censorship of ideas, as argued by Herbert Marcuse in his Repressive Tolerance essay. In practice, this worldview has led to the phenomenon of cancel culture, and has clearly made many people afraid of speaking their mind. Some people have asked me, what if they acknowledge there is some truth in what postmodernism is saying, while not following it to its logical conclusion, is that OK? I think the important thing here is whether you are critiquing power dyanamics for distorting the marketplace of ideas, or dismissing the validity and necessity of the marketplace of ideas altogether. Far too often, the postmodern project is clearly of the latter worldview. It is clear that most adherents of postmodernism are not out to critique power dynamics so that the marketplace of ideas can be even freer. If that were the case, we wouldn't have cancel culture, so-called 'progressive stack' speaking systems, and the ostracization of people who don't toe the party line in many leftist spaces. The problem with the postmodernism-influenced left is that they don't trust the marketplace of ideas to arrive at the best understanding of the objective truth, and that the application of our long-standing values to the objective truth will result in fairer and more just outcomes in society. Old school liberals and progressives have long trusted this process, but postmodern critical theory ideology has destroyed that trust, to our collective detriment.

While members of the political right have enjoyed criticizing the left's lack of commitment to the objective truth and the scientific method, as if they hold the moral high ground here, there is actually a similar crisis happening on the right as well. For at least a generation now, the right has had a strong distrust of expert scientific opinion in many areas, simply because such opinion is usually not in line with the right's increasingly reactionary ideology. From the fact that LGBT people are 'born this way', to the rejection of 'intelligent design' in favor of evolution, to the strong evidence in favor of man-made climate change, scientific facts derived from empirical observation and the scientific method have been a thorn in the side of right-wing politics since at least a generation ago. Therefore, the right has indeed been anti-science for even longer than the left. This attitude informs the anti-academic stance of ideologies like neoreactionism, which has become more and more influential on the right in recent years, after fully breaking into the mainstream at the time of the pandemic. The post-pandemic right is essentially post-truth, and this is really not an exaggeration. Just look at how Trump and his allies have campaigned and governed. From spreading fake news about immigrant communities, to the drastic cuts to the funding of scientific research, the right is really waging war on science and truth right now.

Given that both the left and the right, as they exist right now in the 2020s Western political landscape, have substantial problems with respecting the objective truth, I believe that those of us who remain committed to the free and unbiased discovery of the objective truth must remain independent of the dominant political discourse of both the left-wing and right-wing echo chambers. In an age where partisan politics has been fundamentally corrupted by anti-truth forces, independent thinking is the key to restoring the truth.
 

Why We Need to Bring Back Love and Compassion

Today, I am going to start a new series, where I attempt to lay the foundations for a culture and politics rooted in some fundamental shared values. The value I am going to focus on today is compassion. Compassion, love for each other, following the 'golden rule', or whatever else you can call it, has long been a cornerstone of any successful society, and is a major driving force for society's improvement over time. I think a fundamental problem with today's Western political landscape is a lack of compassion, especially among the loudest voices on both the left and the right. This, in turn, is due to a combination of factors, including polarization and tribalism, obsession with ideology and philosophy, as well as the proliferation of dishonest influencers in the media. I will talk about how to tackle these problems, and bring back compassion.

The level of compassion in Western society has dropped rapidly in the past ten years or so. Many people might point the finger towards online political culture, especially of the right-leaning variety, which started the whole 'SJWs owned' thing. But although that culture is really toxic and is indeed part of the problem, what is often called the 'woke left' is equally responsible for trashing compassion, in my view. Let me explain.

Wokeness, the worldview and brand of activism heavily influenced by postmodern critical theory, likes to say that it is for social justice. However, it is not for the kind of social justice most of us knew before 2015 or so. The 'woke left' simply doesn't care much about justice at the practical, individual level. Instead, it cares about fulfilling its ideology, which is basically the dismantling of what it sees as interlocking systems of oppression. This ideology divides people into oppressor vs. oppressed groups, mostly based on their immutable characteristics like race and gender. And if you're somehow placed in an 'oppressor' group, they don't have much compassion for you. Even if you are in the 'oppressed' group, if you disagree with their worldview, they might try to label you as 'privileged' in another way, and by implication, less deserving of compassion. Therefore, under the postmodern critical theory identity politics model, there really is a lack of compassion towards many people, and in many contexts, especially when compared to the model of universal compassion old-school liberals used to argue for civil rights and gay marriage. Wokeness prioritizes its ideology of deconstruction over genuine, universal compassion, and its attempt to supplant old-school liberalism on the left in the 2010s led to a rapid loss of compassion on the left, and eventually across society more generally.

On the other hand, the New Right are clearly not into compassion either. During the 2010s, the angle they took was that so-called SJWs were too focused on compassion, to the exclusion of everything else. This implied that what was needed was less compassion. However, this is a dishonest way of framing the problem because, as previously discussed, the woke left suffers from a lack of compassion, rather than a surplus of it. By framing compassion as the problem rather than the solution, the New Right was able to mainstream their own extremely uncompassionate brand of politics. Instead of championing free speech on the ground that everyone deserves to be able to express their concerns, or that a free marketplace of ideas would allow us to get to the truth which is best for everyone, their 'free speech' is about nihilistically 'owning the libs', often by saying things that are deliberately bigoted towards minorities. This has allowed them to build a culture where deliberately antagonizing and hurting people for no benefit is not only tolerated, but actively celebrated. Today's online right, where being against interracial marriage and openly hating minorities is effectively normalized, is the end result. Thus the New Right effectively used the widespread frustration towards wokeness to dishonestly build an even more toxic movement.

To end all this, I think we need to start by simply demanding a return to compassion. We need to insist that compassion is universally applied to everyone, and that ideology and philosophy are never allowed to get in the way of this again. We need to insist that truly caring for everyone's wellbeing is a valid goal of politics, in and of itself. On one hand, the woke left should be called out for the harms that result from its ideology labeling certain people as oppressors based on their immutable characteristics. We should push this radically hateful way of thinking out of polite society, where it clearly doesn't belong. Indeed, we should teach our kids that it is always fundamentally wrong to think this way, so that this ideology doesn't find a way to spread to future generations. On the other hand, the New Right's toxic embrace of an anti-compassion culture that revolves around the nihilistic goal of 'owning the libs' should be firmly rejected too. Life is already difficult enough for most people as it is, if your mission in life is to make other people more miserable than they already are, there really should be a special place in hell for you. Again, polite society should be able to just say no to this cancer. If we can't even do this, there is no hope for the future of humanity.

Battle for the Soul of Libertarianism | Moral Libertarian Talk

Why we can't cede the libertarian movement to authoritarian pretenders

Today, I want to talk about why it is important that we, the people who actually believe in freedom, win the battle for the soul of libertarianism. After all, I've said repeatedly that labels don't matter all that much, that political philosophy is not the way to build a coalition to fight against extremism, that most ordinary middle class people probably don't care about political philosophy, and so on. Yet, I still believe that it is very important that true believers in freedom win the battle for the soul of libertarianism over so-called paleo-libertarians who pander to paleoconservatives, to the extent of sacrificing both civil liberties and free trade, 'beltway libertarians' who have no problem with neoconservative interventionism, neoreaction-adjacent pseudo-libertarian authoritarians who discredit us all, as well as AnCap-adjacent extremists.

The reason why we must win the battle for the soul of libertarianism is because it is simply the battle to define what freedom means, at least in the Western political context. Libertarianism is the only movement in the Western political landscape that consistently says it is for freedom first and foremost, and consistently speaks the language of freedom. If we cede the libertarian movement to people who don't actually put freedom first, or believe in freedom in a truly universal way, or else use libertarianism to justify their extreme agendas that have nothing to do with practical personal freedom, we will lose the language of freedom to people who don't actually believe in freedom, and will use it to justify its opposite. This will be a real tragedy, with serious implications across society, including implications on civil liberties, free speech and even world peace or lack thereof.

Another thing we need to recognize is that libertarianism has become the way it is because of deliberate actions by forces from certain factions of the ruling class, acting on the small movement in the form of big sums of money over various periods of history, in order to promote their broader agendas. This, in my opinion, is what has pulled libertarianism into an unjustifiably close association with the political right, to the extent that the movement is now in danger of being swallowed by right-wing populism. First, it was the 'taxation is theft' but civil liberties and wars don't matter people. Later, it was the Tea Party people. Lately, it has been people from the populist right looking for anti-establishment credentials. All these people are not true believers in freedom, and we must not let them define the libertarian agenda going forward. I think remaining committed to a meaning of freedom that makes sense for ordinary people is the key to seeing through these schemes.

To defend libertarianism from all the aforementioned forces, I believe we need to call out those who say they are freedom but are not really for freedom in any ordinarily meaningful sense of the word. We also need to continue to think about what freedom means, and the conditions under which it is achievable or not. I think that if we have a firm sense of this, we will not get tricked by the pretenders so easily.

We Need a Middle Class Revolution | The New Woke-Skeptic

The ruling class is behind the grandiose thinking that has caused division and polarization

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about why so-called 'woke thinking', i.e. critical theory-style thinking, has become so prevalent on both the left and the right, despite its demonstrated harms, and why our politics has become so polarized more broadly speaking. I have come to the conclusion that it is because the ruling class is basically in total control of the media (both the old and new media), and hence the cultural discourse. Members of the ruling class are prone to grandiose thoughts, and an impulse to want to remake everything, because they have too much time on their hands, and because they are indeed very out of touch with practical everyday life. Let me explain.

Let's face it: the ruling class are currently in control, not just of government and industry, but of our entire cultural discourse. Ordinary middle class people are only able to 'choose' from what the rival factions of the ruling class are championing. The odds of an idea created by ordinary middle class people breaking through are very, very low, in a media landscape where loads of money and connections are required to launch any influential campaign. By ruling class, I mean people with either a very substantial amount of intergenerational wealth, or a network of connections among influential circles of society, or both. To be in the first group you basically need to have very rich parents, and likely very rich grandparents too. To be in the second group you need to have at least attended an Ivy League school, and you likely need to have parents who have connections in influential circles, or at least know the right people. It is clear that not everyone can be like Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Taylor Swift, or even an influential journalist working at the New York Times or Washington Post, and this is likely to already have been decided at birth for most people. Ordinary middle class people who make an ordinary amount of money, who went to an ordinary university and know only ordinary people, have no way to break through into the cultural world created by the ruling class. They can only passively consume the media funded and created by the ruling class, which means that they can only choose to side with one rival faction of the ruling class or the other, or else tune out altogether.

The problem with the ruling class's control of the cultural discourse is that they are much more likely to have grandiose thinking, and are much more likely to be out of touch with how practical everyday life works. Both these factors strongly predispose one to 'woke thinking', of either the 'woke left' or the 'woke right' variety. After all, when you have all that money and all that power, you inevitably slip into the 'hero' mindset, where it is easy to start dreaming of grand plans to remake everything. You also stop appreciating how practical, incremental change can improve the lives of many people, while ignoring the very real pain disruptive change can bring to people. Thus you end up dismissing the value of working within the society we've actually got to improve things. If regular middle class people drove the conversation instead, I think we would see a lot of these grand narratives about our culture being dominated by something like 'interlocking systems of oppression' or 'the cathedral' lose their hold on our imagination.

Using a 'shared values' approach, rather than a political philosophy-based approach, to combat woke thinking also fits into this vision of middle class revolution. The fact is, only a minority of ordinary middle class people care about political philosophy, or even understand political philosophy in the first place. Most simply don't have the time to care about this stuff. Don't get me wrong, I believe that the continued development of political philosophy is necessary, because it can give us important insights and arguments to use. However, a broad-based, middle class movement cannot be based on political philosophy, period. After all, fighting ideology with ideology is the ruling class way, because of the ruling class's grandiose thinking style, and this has given us the 'woke left' vs 'woke right' phenomenon. On the other hand, fighting bad ideology with our long-standing shared values like freedom, compassion and objectivity is the middle class way, and I believe the most effective way to win the battle of ideas in the public marketplace of ideas.

Finally, there still remains the question of, how do we get there? How do ordinary middle class people snatch back the cultural narrative? There is no easy answer here, but the first and most important step would be to consciously realize the situation we're in. We need to recognize the ruling class-backed narratives for what they are, and think critically about them. We need to stop listening to celebrities, mainstream media journalists, TV news talking heads, podcasters and other influencers telling us what to believe, because most of them are basically spokespeople for one of the rival factions of the ruling class. We need to realize that it's OK to pick neither side of the ruling class's culture wars, and it is actually more productive to come up with an independent view yourself. We need to resist the peer pressure to conform to ruling class narratives, and find creative ways to break the 'coalitions' the rival factions want to create in their war against each other. If we do all this, we will have progressed a long way, and the next step will likely become apparent when we get there.

There Really is a Woke Right, and it is a Grave Threat to Freedom

The evidence is solid, despite the loud and desperate denials

Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about whether there is a 'woke right'. Some moderates have long used the the term 'woke right' to describe reactionary right-wing culture warriors who engage in cancel culture and other forms of free speech denial, but this term was only embraced by a small minority, until James Lindsay and several other key influencers on the right began promoting it in recent months. As you might expect, some on the right have been quite defensive, and dismissive of the idea that the right can be 'woke' too, going so far as to accuse Lindsay and others of promoting left-wing ideas (this clearly has the same energy as far-left activists trying to paint Barack Obama and Joe Biden as right-wing). It is in this context, particularly the right's defensive, tribalist and almost anti-intellectual response, that I began thinking about whether a 'woke right' might indeed exist.

When a few people began talking about the 'woke right' two or three years ago, my initial attitude was skeptical. After all, wokeness arose from postmodernism and critical theory, philosophies which are firmly rooted in the left, and have only been (openly) embraced by left-wing people and movements. Just because something looks similar to woke doesn't make it woke. I mean, Christian and Islamic fundamentalism are authoritarian and anti-LGBT, and so is fascism, but religious fundamentalism and fascism are clearly two different things.

However, over time, I have observed that the similarities between the woke left and the new movement of culture warriors on the right are simply too many to ignore. Both despise free speech, and distrust the marketplace of ideas to the point that they believe they have to actively shut down speech and ideas they disagree with, often using unscrupulous means. This, ultimately, stems from a belief on both sides that society and culture are controlled by an all-pervasive power structure, that would not allow the truth to emerge simply from free speech and free debate. There's a clear oppressor vs oppressed worldview at work here on both sides, although there is clearly disagreement on which groups are the oppressor and which groups are the oppressed. There's also a 'let's turn the tables of oppression', revenge on the oppressors is legitimate feeling on both sides, and the 'oppressors' are seen as one indistinguishable bloc, so it would be okay to hurt all of them without considering individual guilt or lack thereof. Above all, for both sides, the biggest goal of politics is to dismantle the power structure and disarm those who are propping up the power structure, and this has to be done at all costs, including costs to individual liberty, as well as actual harms to actual people. The last point is important, because not many ideologies in the modern West would condone this 'whatever it takes', 'the ends justify the means' attitude, for good reason.

It is clear from the above analysis that the woke left and the New Right culture warriors share not only superficial similarities or even just tactics, but rather, they ultimately share the same kind of worldview about culture, human nature and the general epistemology of society. Given this, I think we are talking less about two things that are only superficially similar like fascism vs religious authoritarianism here, but rather two things that actually share the same core nature, like Italian fascism and German Nazism. Just like we can put both Italian fascism and German Nazism under the same general umbrella called 'fascism', I think we can justifiably put both the 'woke left' and the 'woke right' under the same general umbrella called 'wokeism'. Indeed, failing to do so would severely limit, and even distort, our view of reality.

Building the New Woke-Critical Movement | The New Woke-Skeptic

A shared values approach is what we need going forward

In my recent article titled 'There Really is a Woke Right, and it is a Grave Threat to Freedom', I analyzed how the current batch of culture warriors on the right actually embody the essence of critical theory-style thinking, and are hence actually a 'woke right'. The 'woke right' sees a liberal 'cathedral' centered in academia, dating back to the Whigs in Britain several centuries ago, as the oppressor of what they see as 'true conservatives', and they believe the overturn of liberal values, at all costs, must be pursued. This is why they are a grave threat to freedom. With this in mind, the fight against wokeness has become at least a 'war on two fronts', broadly speaking. Moreover, besides the 'woke left' and the 'woke right', there could also be more niche versions of woke thinking that don't fit into either the left or the right as they currently exist. An example of this is extreme gender critical feminism. 'Woke TERFs' think of gender issues in a way consistent with the critical theory model, with all biological males as oppressors and all biological females as the oppressed. Their resentment of trans women stems from this ideology, and is not amenable to reasonable compromise. I think all this means that, going forward, the woke-critical or woke-skeptical movement will need to be able to consistently point out the flaws of all branches of woke thinking, in order for it to be an intellectually honest, sustainable and fruitful movement.

I believe the best way to combat woke thinking is simply to point out the flaws with thinking that way, and the associated real world harms. Critical theory-style thinking is bad because it removes the role of personal agency and personal responsibility in the determination of social outcomes, and by extension, removes the justification for virtue, morality, independent thinking, and ultimately freedom itself. Instead, it sees everything as a 'system', with individuals being no more than pieces in the system. Furthermore, give that the goal is always to take down the system as a whole, it doesn't care about harming the individuals within the system, or otherwise treating them unfairly. This, I believe, makes it a very dangerous mode of thinking. Extremists on the 'woke left' believe that all men are responsible for 'patriarchy', all white people are responsible for 'white supremacy' and so on, thus justifying their 'turn the tables of oppression' style of reverse sexism and racism. This attitude is not only divisive, it has also caused real world harms like the neglect of men's issues and needs on the left. On the other hand, extremists on the 'woke right' believe that all establishment experts are bad, thus justifying a completely anti-science attitude towards everything from environmental science to public health. Moreover, they also believe that LGBT people are products of liberal ideology, thus justifying their support of policies that are harmful and unfair to LGBT individuals. Both the 'woke left' and the 'woke right' are clear examples of why this mode of thinking needs to be thoroughly challenged, and ultimately defeated. It is for the good of humanity's future that we must win this battle of ideas decisively.

I used to mainly combat woke thinking with classical liberal values and philosophy. I actually don't think that is the best approach anymore. Don't get me wrong: classical liberal values and philosophy are indeed a good antidote to woke thinking, they are effective against both the 'woke left' and the 'woke right', and we should continue to develop those arguments. However, what we need to recognize is that political philosophy is like religion. We all have our own beliefs, some of us have stronger beliefs than others, but at the end of the day, we have to acknowledge that, in a free society, not everyone is going to share our beliefs. It is sometimes said that, in a democracy, religious people can hold views that are influenced by their religion, but they still have to make their case in terms of secular, common values in the marketplace of ideas, if they want to build support for the change they want to see. I think it's a similar deal when it comes to political philosophy. Classical liberal philosophy can inspire us to take certain positions, but we still need to build a coalition to achieve what we want, and that would have to include people who aren't true believers in classical liberalism, and people who might not even be into thinking about political philosophy at all. This is where the 'shared values' approach to combating woke thinking is clearly superior.

The 'shared values' approach to combating woke thinking lies in simply promoting and emphasizing some of society's long-standing shared values, that provide a check on the flaws and ill effects of critical theory-style thinking. For example, universal compassion would prevent people from thinking of some individuals as belonging to or associated with 'oppressor' groups based on their immutable characteristics, and treat them unfairly because of this. Objectivity would provide a check on philosophical theories that paint a picture of an 'oppressive system' based on limited anecdotal evidence, and also prevent a blanket anti-expert anti-science attitude from developing. Intellectual seriousness would prevent broad brush thinking in general, and encourage us to look into the details of each issue before coming to a judgement as to what the correct answers are. Anti-tribalism would prevent us from lazily agreeing with the people on our own side, even if their ideas are not sound. And so on. And then, there is also an additional overall effect of focusing on applying these values in our lives, in that it prevents us from succumbing to grand theories of oppressor vs oppressed thinking, or similar conspiratorial-style thinking in general. When you are dedicated to treating everyone with the same compassion, and understanding the nuanced truth of every issue, your brain gets used to thinking about issues multifactorially. You become much less susceptible to grand theories about how society works based on false simplicity.

In conclusion, critical theory-style thinking, what is often called 'woke' nowadays, is prevalent among both left-wing and right-wing culture warriors alike. This kind of thinking paints a picture of structural oppression that is simply not there empirically, and justifies illiberal means of 'tearing down the system' that inevitably harms many people along the way. Moreover, when groups of people have been assigned to be part of the oppressive power structure, harming them becomes well-justified, even if they do not personally deserve it themselves. Overall, this is clearly a dangerous mode of thinking, and one that is incompatible with the long-standing values of our society. While liberal philosophy has provided effective arguments against this mode of thinking, we need to understand that not everyone is into political philosophy, or believes in classical liberalism. If we are to win this battle of ideas, we would need as many people as possible to be allies. Which is why a 'shared values' approach, where we emphasize the role of values like compassion, objectivity, intellectual seriousness and anti-tribalism, is superior, and should be pursued going forward.

Why Centrism is the Best Antidote to the Populist Right | New Centrist View

Centrism brings balance, and balance is required for sustainable progress

Since the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential election, numerous left-wing commentators have blamed 'centrism' for the defeat of Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Given that Harris ran a relatively moderate campaign, and still lost, they reasoned that centrism must be to blame. This is despite the fact that Biden and Obama also ran relatively moderate campaigns, and won. Moreover, in Britain, Labour leader Keir Starmer also won in a landslide on a moderate platform earlier this year, recovering much lost ground from the massive defeat of Jeremy Corbyn's far-left campaign five years earlier. The fact is, centrism still has a very good track record of winning overall.

The biggest problem with popular misconceptions regarding centrism is that there seems to be quite a bit of confusion as to what 'centrism' is actually. My long-standing view is that centrism is a balance of what I call the rational progressive impulse, and organicist conservative philosophy. While these modes of thinking are generally represented by the center-left and the center-right respectively, it is not always the case that left equals progressive, or right equals conservative. Take 'neoliberal' economic policy, arguably the strongest pillar in the three-legged stool of Reaganite neoconservatism. It really is quite radical, in that it does not care about the harms it brings to working families. All it cares about is benefits in economic and productivity terms. This means that its proponents are motivated by the prospect of achieving better things, while not caring too much about the harms their proposed changes could bring. Hence, 'neoliberal' economic policy, although championed mainly by the right before 2016, is actually a form of unfettered progressivism, and like all forms of unfettered progressivism, it has led to chaos, destruction and suffering. A truly centrist perspective would have provided a check on the unrestrained and unbalanced optimism of neoliberalism, and effectively prevented the economic frustrations that ultimately fed into the rise of the populist right.

Besides economic frustrations, cultural concerns, particularly the rise of wokeness, are also providing fuel for the populist right. This represents yet another case of unfettered progressivism that would merit some checks and balances, that organicist conservative philosophy can provide. Woke ideology, rooted in postmodern critical theory, insists that the whole status quo is oppressive and must be dismantled wholesale. This is a good example of insisting on radical change, justified on abstract philosophy alone, the very thing that Burkean conservative philosophy has been warning us about for centuries. If progressives are willing to heed that philosophy, they will opt for a more practical program for reform instead, which would remove one important factor fueling the growth of the populist right. This would actually also be good from a social justice point of view, because we would actually be making progress rather than arguing endlessly, polarizing the public, and ceding more and more ground to the reactionaries in the process.

There are still other areas where the impulse for progress and change needs to be kept in check by organicist conservatism. I even admit that this would apply to libertarianism sometimes. For example, during the summer of 2020, many libertarians became sympathetic to 'defund the police' and other soft on crime policies. As we all know, these policies are now subject to a massive backlash, because of concerns about crime, in basically every major city across the Western world. This result should have been seen from a mile away. The fact is, while in an ideal society, where the people are more enlightened and crime is much less common, we probably should not spend so much on policing, we don't actually live in that society. In our current reality, defunding the police and going soft on crime will definitely mean more crime. The lesson here is that, when making or endorsing policy, we can't just look at what our ideal society, in the abstract, would look like. We also need to consider how the policy will practically play out in the society we actually have. Failing to do this will give fuel to the argument for authoritarianism.

A final important point is that being a centrist does not mean being unprincipled, as people on the far-left often accuse us of being. For example, as a centrist libertarian, my primary principle is freedom. While I'm not going to take it as far as demanding the abolition of driver's licenses like some libertarian immediatists do, I'm certainly going to fight tooth and nail against attempts to take away existing freedoms, and turn society towards a more authoritarian direction, whatever the justification. This is why I'm so opposed to the culture warriors in both the woke left and the populist New Right. I'm not going to compromise with people who want to shove their ideological beliefs down other people's throats at the expense of individual freedom, period.

Divisive Identity Politics Can Never Lead to Progress | The Fault in the Left

In the wake of Donald Trump winning the 2024 US Presidential Election, and winning the majority of young men according to multiple exit polls, there has been a lot of soul searching as to whether the Democrats have a problem with male voters right now. A major point of discussion is whether the divisive us-vs-them identity politics that much of the left has embraced in the past decade is to blame. Frankly, I think it is to blame.

The truth is, you can either have a win-win politics for all, or you can have an identity politics that divides society into oppressor vs oppressed groups, but you can't have both. Postmodern critical theory and the identity politics inspired by such theory is always going to lead the left down the route of divisive identity politics, which is going to alienate many potential supporters. When you swap out old-school inclusive liberalism for the kind of philosophy that labels people as privileged oppressors based on their immutable characteristics, you are bound to lose a lot of support over time. I hope they can really learn this lesson, and get rid of this faulty and harmful philosophy once and for all.
 

What Would You Do (if not for the Culture Wars)?

I think a good way to get past the tribalism and polarization of today's Western political landscape is simply to constantly ask yourself: what would you do if not for the tribalist culture wars? What would you have decided was the best outcome, if not for what you have heard about the culture wars, the strange ideological theories, the propaganda of political influencers, and so on? What would you support, if you didn't know a thing about politics before today?

Several years ago, I heard someone say that they were opposed to gay marriage, but only because the so-called 'cultural Marxists' were supporting it. Leaving aside the issue of the validity of their assertions, I think thinking about things this way is very wrong. So you decide to oppose something just because you think your enemies support it. You let this consideration overide all your values, and all your decency and compassion as a human being. I think there's something very fundamentally immoral about this. And it doesn't really make sense either. After all, if your enemy drinks water, you wouldn't stop drinking water, right?

The level of polarization and tribalism we now have in Western society is dangerous and unsustainable. If we let this continue, I fear it could lead us to really bad places. It's time to say no to all this.

What a Centrist Libertarian Program Looks Like in Practice

I think it could be more popular than right-libertarianism and left-libertarianism

In recent years, I've come to identify as both a centrist and a libertarian. I've explained numerous times elsewhere why I identify with these labels. But still, some people seem to think it's a contradiction. And it really shouldn't be. I mean, if someone told you that they identified as being on the right and a libertarian, that would make sense to most people. Alternatively, if someone told you that they identified as a leftist and a libertarian, that would still make sense at least to people who are familiar with political philosophy. In other words, right-libertarianism is not only real but also the default mode of libertarianism in the English-speaking West, and left-libertarianism is at least a very real thing that is well understood by many politically engaged people. On the other hand, most people still seem to be unable to imagine what a centrist libertarianism looks like.

To explain centrist libertarianism, I think we should start with left-libertarianism vs right-libertarianism. The differences between left-libertarians and right-libertarians ultimately lie in what they believe to be the biggest barriers to freedom. Traditionally, right-libertarians believe that the government is the biggest barrier to freedom, and left-libertarians believe that capitalism is the biggest barrier to freedom. In recent times, cultural views have also entered the conversation. Here, right-libertarians tend to believe that the 'woke' establishment and its institutions are the most important enemy of freedom, while left-libertarians tend to see the same with religion and traditional values. The clarity of who the 'enemy' is means that both left-libertarians and right-libertarians tend to have quite extreme, and therefore 'immediatist', policy positions, and they believe that if they were allowed to get their way, liberty would be realized almost overnight.

Centrist libertarians are different from both left-libertarians and right-libertarians in that, while we aim for the maximization of freedom like all other libertarians, we understand that the conditions that favor or disfavor freedom are multifactorial. We don't believe that the left or the right exclusively has the answers to what makes a society free. Rather, we empirically observe what conditions are conducive to freedom in practice, and what conditions are harmful to freedom in practice. The set of 'conditions for freedom' that we care about are much larger than the simplistic views of both left-libertarians and right-libertarians. For example, polarization, echo chambers, loss of respect for science and objective truth, and an over-commitment to abstract philosophy are all harmful for freedom. Both left-libertarians and right-libertarians fail to see all this, because they are too obsessed with their own ideology. Centrist libertarianism, in contrast, is much more empirical and practical.

This also means that a centrist libertarianism is necessarily a gradualist libertarianism. When you believe that freedom is multifactorial, and that there is no simple fix that would magically take us to freedom utopia, you understand that the road to more freedom lies in trial and error, give and take, and in both promoting new forms of freedom, as well as safeguarding existing forms of freedom. Like other centrists, we understand that making good, sustainable policy lies in balance and compromise, and aiming for overnight perfection is just a recipe for disaster. This is in contrast to both left-libertarians and right-libertarians, who mostly agree with the broader left and the broader right respectively as to who is the 'enemy', and find almost no room for agreement with the other side. This is what leads to many right-libertarians embracing policy positions very similar to that of the Republican Freedom Caucus, and many left-libertarians embracing wokeness to some extent, even though that ideology is clearly anti-free speech and individual liberty. Of course, we centrists know that both the hard-left and the hard-right are actually not that good for freedom in practice. As centrists, we are able to see the pitfalls inherent in both left-wing and right-wing politics, and their anti-freedom implications.

Centrist libertarianism also differs from pure 'centrism' in an important way. Unlike centrists who are not libertarians, we still insist on prioritizing our general goal of promoting freedom when it comes to what we are willing to support, and the kind of compromises that we are willing to make. For example, a centrist libertarian will not agree to a platform that results in clearly less freedom than the status quo, no matter what benefits its supporters claim it will bring. Also, in hammering out compromises, we will always bring the case for freedom to the table, and argue that a policy of agreeing to disagree and respecting each other's freedom will often be the best form of compromise. Finally, our commitment to freedom means that we will not fall for 'populist' policy platforms that combine social and economic authoritarianism, even if they do superficially combine policies from the left and the right. We want to take the best parts from both sides, not the worst parts.

Creating a False Consensus | Influencers vs. Truth

Beware when 'everyone' moves in lockstep.

Welcome to Influencers vs. Truth, a new series where I examine the strategies often used by political influencers to recruit viewers to their point of view. I think this is needed for three reasons: firstly, online influencers have a range of new strategies that they have been using to convince people of their positions, and these have been much more effective than the old strategies used by TV talking heads and talk radio personalities. Secondly, recent revelations have shined a light on the fact that many online influencers are likely being paid gigantic sums of money to push certain talking points. Finally, the combination of these things has meant that more and more people have been converted to extremist or otherwise unsound positions on a wide range of issues, as a result of the work of influencers aligned with the far-left or the far-right. I'm concerned that this could be a major contributor to the political polarization we are seeing, and the fact that we don't seem to be living in the same universe of objective facts anymore.

In this first installment, I'm going to talk about how influencers create a false sense of consensus, and the dangerous effects this could have. I've been paying attention to the world of online political influencers for about seven years now, and I've seen this in action many, many times. It was during the pandemic, when we were all stuck at home watching too many YouTube videos, that I first became consciously aware of this. I noticed that a certain subset of right-aligned influencers kept taking the same stances on a wide range of topics, including topics regarding the pandemic, as well as regarding things like BLM and the 2020 US Elections. Their lockstep agreement struck me as unusual, even for a group of people aligned with the Republican Party, because there was actually a much wider range of views within the Republican Party itself on these issues in the real world. For example, back in around April 2020, many Republican elected officials held the view that they should focus on sorting out the pandemic first, then campaign hard in the summer, because they expected the pandemic to go away by August back then, but none of the influencers seemed to have any sympathy for this view. Republicans were also split on whether Trump should take up one or more culture war campaigns, but all the influencers were fully in on the culture wars, with no exceptions. It became clear to me that all these influencers were only representing the views of one part of the Republican Party, not even the whole Republican Party, but they were trying to portray these views as the widespread consensus of people who had 'common sense', ignoring all the very real and very valid disagreements that were actually happening in reality.

Once I became aware that these influencers were trying to pretend that the views of one faction of one party were the consensus view, I noticed even more unusual things happening. Like how these influencers would all promote certain books at around the same time, generating a sense of buzz, when such buzz was clearly missing in the real world. I mean, most of the time I couldn't even find the promoted book at my local bookstore. Or how, in early 2021, they all jumped up and down when Dr. Seuss Enterprises decided to stop publishing six titles deemed to have racist content, even though there was almost no real world interest in this piece of obscure news. I mean, it's a stretch even calling it 'cancel culture', because it's not like somebody actually had their career ruined, or was threatened into silence and submission in any way. It was just that six of the less popular Seuss books, out of a catalog of more than sixty, would not be printed anymore. The rest of the world couldn't care less. But the influencers kept trying to manufacture outrage for about a week.

This weird lockstep behavior was happening on more fundamental issues too. For example, by late 2021, they had all turned against the 'classical liberalism' they were championing just one or two years ago, and were singing praises of the new illiberal 'National Conservatism' movement. Somehow, all of them believed, just like myself, that it was important to uphold classical liberal values against wokeness in 2019, and what the West needed was more free speech. However, all of them had a change of heart by 2021, and now saw liberalism itself as responsible for wokeness, and what the West needed was to give up on classical liberalism itself! In a roundabout way, they had all managed to become enemies of the version of themselves from just two years ago!

The first question that came to my mind was, why weren't these people challenged for their nonsense? The answer was clear: they mostly only collaborated with those who moved in lockstep with them. In other words, they were making strange behavior and awkward moves look more natural by doing it together, and holding conversations where they justified each others' talking points. What they were doing was manufacturing a false consensus. In the real world, people were not giving up on classical liberalism en masse during 2021. But somehow, in right-wing influencer world, it seemed like a real shift was really happening, and 'everyone' was getting behind it. The fact that the arguments for classical liberal values that were valid in 2019 would still be valid two years later was ignored by 'everyone', and voices from the outside that could carry this point of view were of course excluded from the show. Later on, it would turn out that all this was a prelude to the launch of a new brand of big government, illiberal culture war politics, with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's infamous War on Disney as the first big move. The aforementioned influencers would all go on to become DeSantis fans, justifying his every move, even as they seriously infringed upon the value of free speech.

I believe what we saw here was an example of a group of influencers manufacturing the appearance of a consensus, to justify a controversial political program. The goal here was to loosen the viewer's previous commitment to classical liberal values, so that they would not get in the way of the new political program. I think this is very Orwellian indeed.

The Reationary Rabbit Hole of Competitive Outrage | The Fault in the Right

It's very bad news indeed for the future of freedom in the West

Welcome back to The Fault in the Right. Today, I'm going to talk about an increasingly worrying phenomenon: the rise of competitive outrage on the right. This is perhaps one of the things most characteristic of how the populist New Right is different from old-school conservative politics. Think of it as the mirror image of the 'oppression olympics'. Instead of competing to be the most oppressed, however, it seems like many in the populist right like to compete to be the most outraged. We are seeing this phenomenon more and more often in both political influencers and actual politicians making policies. And this has some worrying consequences.

Firstly, competitive outrage always results in whipping up people's emotions, and bringing out the worst in people. It leads to irrationality, tribalism, and even open bigotry and hate towards certain groups. And because you win the game by acting more outraged than other people on your side, and promising ever harsher actions against perceived enemies, there is no circuit breaker here. Nobody can call out others on their own side for going too far, because they would be perceived as 'weak', and also lose the game of competitive outrage by definition. Hence, things can only get angrier, more irrational, more detached from reality, and more outrageous as time goes on.

Many might think that competitive outrage is only something that happens online, among political influencers and users of social media. However, it is clear that this is not the case. Populist right politicians' talking points about immigrants, LGBT people, and 'liberal elites' have been getting darker and more divisive in the past few years. And it has also affected policy making, with ever increasing numbers of anti-LGBT bills being filed every year across America and the West for example. The truth here is, populist right-aligned politicians have to keep filing these bills, even though they are unnecessary because they all look similar to each other, because they have to show that they are outraged, and will respond in a 'strong' way. If they don't do this, they could get primaried and lose their career. Over time, the content of those bills have also gotten more and more outrageous. There is clearly no room for rational thinking, compassion or compromise, even in policy making, when everything is driven by competitive outrage.

The ultimate effect of competitive outrage is likely going to be the total triumph of reactionism in right-of-center politics, and the complete death of organicist conservatism. This is because competitive outrage always ends up favoring the most reactionary points of view, and is always incompatible with the rationality, compromise and moderation required to maintain a viable organicist conservative position. Given that, as I previously analyzed, organicism is important for the maintenance of freedom, while reactionism is fundamentally incompatible with individual liberty, the triumph of reactionism over organicism on the right is going to have very adverse impacts on freedom. Therefore, I believe that, for the sake of defending freedom, we need to take a very firm stance against competitive outrage. Not only should we make sure we are not playing that game ourselves, I think we actually need to call it out whenever we see it, to prevent it from being normalized any further. And we need to keep raising awareness, to make more people aware that this is something that is happening, and is going to have a deleterious effect on freedom if it continues unchecked.

Three Things That Can Reunite Libertarians | Moral Libertarian Talk

Freedom, Peace and Honesty is our Common Ground

Today, I'm going to talk about how we can reunite different types of libertarians across the political spectrum again. Given that the usual attitude of libertarians is that 'only my version of libertarianism is real libertarianism', and that as the saying goes, if you have a room of libertarians there would be as many versions of libertarianism as there are people in the room, how can we hope to get different kinds of libertarians to come together at all? I believe the answer lies in finding, and emphasizing, our common ground. I can think of three areas where the vast majority of libertarians, if not all libertarians, can passionately agree on.

The first thing that can unite all libertarians is a fundamental belief in the importance of freedom. While this might just be stating the obvious, the rising level of authoritarianism in both the left and the right has made the libertarians on both sides increasingly uncomfortable, which could be a catalyst for the formation of a new cross-political spectrum alliance for freedom. If left-libertarians and right-libertarians can come together for the sake of defending freedom, we might even see a real fundamental re-ordering of Western politics along libertarian-authoritarian lines in the future.

The second thing that can unite libertarians is a commitment to peace. Historically, libertarianism has often gained support for taking a principled stance on unnecessary and unjustified wars. I first became sympathetic to libertarian ideas during the 2003 Iraq War, for example. While left-libertarians and right-libertarians disagree on economic issues, they generally agree on non-violence, peace, and opposing unjust wars. What we need to remember is that, if left-libertarians and right-libertarians choose to work with the authoritarians on their own side rather than choose to work with each other, there will never be any hope for world peace. What we also need to remember is that a hopeful commitment to world peace is becoming rarer among other ideologies, which means libertarians are becoming increasingly isolated on this. Neoliberals and neoconservatives generally don't believe that world peace is possible, nor do the National Conservatives of the New Right, if you examine the roots of their ideology. They all seem to think that the forever wars are inevitable, even if for different reasons. Which means libertarians probably have to go it alone to keep the hope of peace alive. This alone, I think, could be enough motivation for at least some left-libertarians and right-libertarians to work together, at least some of the time.

Last but certainly not least, an often overlooked thing that all kinds of libertarians share is a need for honesty. This honesty is actually what makes it difficult for libertarians to form coalitions of convenience in the first place. However, the fact that both the left and the right have become very tribalist, very focused on winning and 'owning' the other side, and have resorted to dishonest tactics and hypocritical positioning to achieve what they want, has gotten libertarians on both sides more and more concerned. This, I think, could be something that could make libertarians of all stripes come together, and realize our fundamental similarities, despite our disagreements. In libertarianism, you will never find the manipulative philosophical sophistry of postmodernism, or the win at all costs mentality of the New Right. True libertarians never 'hide their power level', to borrow an increasingly popular saying. While left-libertarians and right-libertarians could disagree vehemently with each other, at least you can expect that all parties will remain honest and straightforward.

Why the Critical Theory-based Model of Change is Counterproductive | The Fault in the Left

Attempts to remake society to satisfy theoretical needs are often anti-utilitarian

Welcome to The Fault In The Left, a series where I will examine the major faults in today's Western Left. I intend for this series to run parallel to my other series, The Fault In The Right, in order to ensure balanced criticism of both the left and the right.

Today, I will start the series by discussing what I have long believed to be the biggest problem with the Western Left today: the dominance of philosophical theory, and the selective inattention to realities that are not consistent with these theories. It seems that these days, there is a theory on the left for everything: critical race theory and postcolonial theory for issues concerning race, the various forms of feminist theory for gender issues, queer theory for LGBT issues, disability theory for disability issues, and so on. Many of these theories are rooted in postmodernism and critical theory, which I have specifically criticized previously. This time, however, I will focus on the issue of redefining social justice as the fulfillment of the requirements of philosophical theory, and why this model of change is ultimately counterproductive.

Attempts at encouraging the use of 'Latinx' to replace 'Latino' as a neutral, plural noun to refer to Latinos is a good example of what's wrong with the Western Left today. As you would expect, it has been overwhelmingly rejected by the Latino community, because it is both unnecessary and an unnatural imposition. It is unnecessary because, in Romance languages, the masculine form already acts as the neutral when necessary. Indeed, French President Emmanuel Macron made a point of this last year, during a debate about the use of non-gendered terms in French government documents. Macron is certainly no right-wing reactionary, yet he recognizes that it is not a good idea to unnecessarily change the rules of a language radically. In the case of 'Latinx', it is also a very unnatural imposition, because it violates Spanish grammar rules, and can't even be pronounced in Spanish! This means that it is just impossible that it would ever have been adopted organically by Spanish speakers. I have long argued that people are justifiably skeptical towards inorganic change, because it is, by definition, not something that has been well considered by multiple sections of society.

The other problem with theory-based change is that it is often anti-utilitarian, i.e. it leaves society less happy as a result. This is because, unlike changes intended to alleviate suffering or solve specific practical problems, theory-based change tends to require the complete implementation of a radical set of changes across a wide-range of contexts to be considered successful, because this is what would need to happen to make the real world conform to the demands of philosophical theory. Compare gay marriage and the 'gender neutral language' movement, for example. The legalization of gay marriage required only the change of laws specific to marriage, and it generally doesn't impact the lives of those who don't wish to enter into a same-sex marriage. It doesn't demand society-wide radical change. The fact that gay couples get to be happier, and the rest of society isn't affected much, means that the change is justified on utilitarian grounds, because net happiness is increased. On the other hand, if some theory tells us that all language, in all contexts, must be made 'gender neutral' in order to get rid of the 'patriarchal' language, then to fulfill this theory, changes would need to be made everywhere, including in places most people have never thought about. Given that the vast majority of these changes would not result in making anyone happier, but some of the changes would really upset traditionalists, the net effect would be anti-utilitarian. Unlike the legalization of gay marriage, the attempt to impose 'gender neutral language' universally is clearly unjustifiable from a utilitarian point of view.

The left's insistence on imposing changes that are unnecessary, inorganic, and anti-utilitarian to satisfy their philosophical theory has been divisive, and it has led to a backlash to many legitimate causes, that has made rational, productive change more difficult. The frustrations towards activists imposing clearly anti-utilitarian changes has also led to a general increase in reactionary sentiment, which has been harvested by the reactionary populist right to win elections in many places across the West. I think the experience of the past ten years provides a strong and conclusive case that this theory-dominant form of 'progressive' thinking is very counterproductive, and a return to a more practical model of change is in order.

The Politics of Forever Despair vs Constant Outrage

I think that, sooner or later, people are going to realize that the left and the right both have nothing good to offer us. What they offer is basically the politics of forever despair vs the politics of constant outrage.

The problem with the left is that, because of their ideological commitments and philosophical obsessions, nothing is ever going to be good enough for them, or even sort of good. Everything is oppressive, all the time, and remains just as oppressive and bad even after reforms are achieved. This leads to a state of constant despair, and ultimately burnout. This, I think, is why many people who start out as commited left-wing activists when they are young eventually end up withdrawing from politics altogether, or in a few odd cases, defect to the hard right. The left effectively burns up the passions of generation after generation of young people, and yet achieves nothing in the end.

On the other hand, what the right offers is not really better either. The right, especially the populist New Right, likes to get people constantly outraged with no end. The goal of the right seems to be to get people disproportionally outraged towards everything, including things that are really small and insigificant. For the right, every change is always bad, and every move must have a hidden radical agenda. This leaves not much room for rational thinking, or indeed, optimism for the future. To join the ranks of the right is therefore to give up on the hope that a better future is possible, and also to give up on rational thinking, which I think is a very sad thing.

I refuse to have to choose between forever despair and constant outrage. This is why I refuse to choose between left vs right. I think there is a better way, and I think more people are realizing this.