Maybe we have a different conception of what McVeigh believed and why did what he did? My understanding of McVeigh was that he was motivated by his hatred of the US government and what he saw as its encroaching, expanding power. Given this account, he just seems like an extreme, violent libertarian - or at least in that camp ideologically. I don't think he was a follower or admirer of an authoritarian right wing regime. I've never heard him say anything positive about capitalism or socialism for that matter. It seems weird for me to call him "right." I usually associate the right with conservativism or a belief in traditionalism.

They were probably Bernie supporters who just wanted to give her free health care. No idea either why anyone would associate gun-toting Dem-hating liberty freak militias with the right wing. — Baden

They're gun-toting government hating liberty freak militias. At least one of them posted anti-Trump content. Would you consider Timothy McVeigh a right wing extremist?

As far as I can tell the plotters of the kidnapping were just anti-government extremists. I haven't found any evidence that they were either far right or far left, and according to the Detroit Free Press the Whitmer kidnapping was part of a wider plot to attack cops and try to start a civil war:

"The Wolverine Watchmen militia group didn't just plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, but they were on a mission to attack the state Capitol and target police officers at their homes as part of a broader mission to instigate a civil war, authorities said Thursday in announcing felony charges against 13 militia members accused in a sensational case of domestic terrorism."

As far as I can tell these guys were just violent anti-government radicals and while its fine for law enforcement to keep tabs on these groups I don't really know what else can be done because the right to a well regulated militia is a guaranteed in the Constitution.

So I suppose that we agree in a need for ever-vigilant suspicion and support for racial justice. — praxis

here's the thing: virtually everyone values justice. if we just consider racial justice or social justice or any type of group justice a sub-category of justice then it follows that (almost) everyone supports those categories, at least in the abstract.

my main concern here is that if we're not using phrases or words how they're actually used today then we run the risk of confusing people or being out of touch with the discourse today.

it's like if someone were to me if i'm an anti-fascist, i would answer something along the lines of "in theory, yes - i am certainly not a fascist and i don't support fascism, but the anti-fascist movement as it exists today is not one that i support due to their violence and rioting against random local businesses." in other words, i think both the traditional meanings of the words but also the way they're being used in discourse today matter when addressing an issue or a concept like that.

edit: if you were to ask me if i were an anti-fascist and it were 1936 i would give an unqualified "yes."

I think in order for Trump to win, he cannot win by just a narrow margin, but decisively, or else they are going to contest the election, demand recounts etc.

In other words expect a shit-show worse than 2000. — NOS4A2

I think if Trump were to win decisively it would be very suspicious and we'd hear calls of Russian interference/some type of voting fraud. It's already unlikely that he wins, but if he were to win by a large margin I would be quite suspicious. For him to win decisively he'd have to win states like Wisconsin which have around a 6-7% gap in favor of Biden.

Does this mean that you're a science denier? — praxis

no.

I don't think that you can win over a racist with reason. Their sense of fairness has to overcome the privileges of being part of the majority, if nothing else. — praxis

sure, but couldn't a racist be part of a minority as well? a minority could even be in power in a country as they were in south africa.

It sounds like you're more concerned with ideology than with extensions of the conception of justice or sub-categories of justice. If concerned with fair and equal justice, and a belief that that is a goal worth pursuing, it's easy to see how some approaches may be better than others, or that some approaches may even be corrupt. If an ideology doesn't value fair and equal justice then it may well consider the whole enterprise suspect. — praxis

it's not about ideology, it's about the actual modern usage of the term. it's not 1960. we're not discussing whether one group ought to have the right to attend integrated public schools or be able to vote. the discussion is simply no longer about equal rights under the law.

if you want to understand the discourse today look to ibram kendi and robin diangelo, both have widely read books on the subject and routinely lecture as educator. that is where we are today with discourse. the modern issues we are discussing including affirmative action, reparations, and other concrete proposals to help narrow the achievement gap - the article i mentioned above explicitly mentioned that term and it's a common one.

the traditional conception of justice in the western world is blind - s/he doesn't care whether someone is poor or rich, what race or class they are, while this version is justice is quite visual so i see the two as categorically different. justice can apply to individuals, when it applies to entire groups it is more suspect.

Well I'm living in Massachusetts so a Trump yard sign or bumper sticker is a rare sight here. I actually bet on Trump with a friend last election and I was able to get 10:1 on it which worked out nicely. No one expected him to win but if someone's giving me those kind of odds who am I refuse?

It's surprising to me that the odds across betting sites are only 65-35 in favor of Biden. FiveThirtyEight has a pretty clear projection of Biden winning and while it seems Trump could win he seemingly has no margin of error and needs to win in basically all the swing states. In any case 65-35 is not a sure bet at all. For the poker players out there that's basically the equivalent of getting it all in against a flush draw. Hillary was around a 70% favorite if I could recall. People just see "favorite" and they think it's a sure thing but people are bad with probabilities.

That's what I found remarkable. But I didn't look into the case so I can't do anything but speculate. — praxis

Equal justice is generally suspect? How so? — praxis

This sounds like a strawman, but I may be misinterpreting you. — praxis

I think what's happening here is that you're regarding "racial justice" as a sub-category of justice and I'm regarding the term more in its modern social usage. Racial justice in its modern usage generally refers to redressing historical wrongs through perks or advantages today that apply to only one group, e.g. reparations and affirmative action. Easier grading for minorities could easily fall into this category.

Of course I support justice, and that includes justice for everyone regardless of race, class, gender, etc.
so in that sense I obviously support "racial justice" or "social justice." But the actual meanings of these terms today are quite different from just an extension of the conception of justice.

I don't think that our fundamental values differ much, actually. We just suppress or promote the values that are in accord with whatever tribe we belong to. A dedicated atheist can have a sense of the sacred, for instance, it's just that they revere something different than the theist. — praxis

Oh yeah I wasn't talking about you and me in particular not being able to have discussions because our fundamental values vary so much. I was talking more in a general sense. I personally find it nearly impossible to carry on fruitful discussions with strong identitarians either on the left or the right. If someone is willing to prioritize their own ethnic group before justice/fairness then I just find it impossible.

And I agree with you about how atheists can still have a sense of the sacred. I wouldn't be surprised if much of the environmentalism/conservation debates today are at its core clashing conception of the "sacred."

It's remarkable that you think this could be considered racial justice. Offhand, to me it sounds like the school is simply doctoring the numbers to look good or meet some standard. They're cheating (the minority kids most of all), in other words. — praxis

I never committed myself to a position as to whether that policy would constitute racial justice. I think the concept of racial justice is a suspect one in general, but if I were to accept it as a valid goal then blatant academic favoritism is not out of the question.

In any case my broader point was more just about how difficult discussion can be when the fundamental vales of two individuals can be very much at odds.

I think many people value truth privately, but in public the ego blow from being wrong is just too much in this heavily partisan environment.

I think it comes down to what people fundamentally value. For instance it's fine if someone values racial justice, but if they place that as their top concern it's going to conflict with others who take a broader, more traditional view of justice. For example there was an article in the WSJ today about a school in Chicago which was pushing teachers to grant minority students artificially higher grades in the name of decreasing the achievement gap. Maybe this is racial justice, who knows, but it's not justice in the traditional sense.

Why can't you post something more relevant and useful, like which type of baseball bat is best at breaking a political opponent's legs? Why are we talking when we could be fighting?

I think philosophy can be self-taught really because there is so much literature available, ranging from introductions to books by the importance authors. — Jack Cummins

I think good reasoning and writing skills can be self taught, but if you're going to get into the weeds with academic philosophy you're probably going to need a PhD near you who can help you navigate some of these thinkers. You can trust a professor in the field to know what's going on, especially when they're dealing with their specialty, and the field really requires a precision with language. I hate to say it, but I'm suspicious of a lot of non-academic philosophy just because I can't entirely trust these writers to fully understand some philosophers or arguments. Until it's been approved by peer review or comes from someone within academic I'm suspicious.

I don't really know what I thought I would do after my studies but I do think that if I could go back I would have studied more with a view to a career and have kept my interest in philosophy as a part time, personal interest instead. — Jack Cummins

Yeah, I think studying philosophy while not being entirely sure what field you're going to go into is a common experience - it happened with me too. I just kind of fell in love with the subject and closed myself off to the outside world, and when the 4 years of that degree were up I was kind of left empty handed.

But in the current employment crisis it is hard to know whether formal education should be more or less career orientated or less so. — Jack Cummins

Personally, I tend to lean towards it being more career oriented. A college education is an investment - often a 6 figure one - that lasts 4 years here in the states and I think the entire education model needs to be reworked because it's becoming unsustainable. For one, you're asking 19-20 year old kids who have no experience in the outside world to choose what their field of study will be and many just choose what seems most fun or intellectually stimulating. I think I choose philosophy at the time because I was interested in whether objective morality existed and maybe the major could help me reach an answer. When you have no bills to pay why not choose a major based on that?

what i am asking here is, should i study philosophy at school. or just learn from my self as a hooby — ramo

You should learn it as a hobby unless you want to study law (not advised) or go into academic philosophy (DEFINITELY not advised.) Learn a useful skill or study something useful. Your bank account will thank you later. Of course people on a philosophy forum are going to tell you to study it, and in a vacuum of course studying philosophy is fine, but if you're preparing to enter the workforce then there are better choices. You can study it all you want after you have a decent job.

I'm not suggesting killing anyone. — Xtrix

Sure, you just want them to die and don't care if they suffer or not - understood. After all it's for the good of humanity.

I have to say, I'm more in favor of him dying. I don't care whether he suffers. Sounds terrible, yes, but from my point of view it would (possibly) benefit the future of the human species. I feel the same way about Americans who continually vote for him - their dying off is a good thing in general. — Xtrix

You might as well support offing the libertarians as well you wouldn't want those kind of ideas floating around.

So when can you wish someone were dead? If there are circumstances where it's OK to kill someone, then there certainly must be a lot more circumstances where its OK to wish someone were dead. — Benkei

That's a good question. I don't have an immediate answer. If we're just going to wish leaders dead every time they do something suspect or enforce a policy that we don't like or believe something that we consider offensive then all leaders are to be wished dead. This would go very well beyond Trump.

If Trump is indeed either committing treason or something along those lines I'd rather see him on trial though.

You can't be tolerant towards the intolerant, that's just your basic Karl Popper /s. Next logical step is hoping all your political opponents choke on their own vomit or come down with AIDS because they're like basically Nazis. I mean besides conservatives like don't even care about black people or whatever.

Trust me it's all good philosophy.

Streetlight, what is it exactly that you want in terms of government-type? You're not a liberal, but you say you're not a fascist either. Do you support democracy? Do you just want very considerable restrictions on free speech?

They’re idiots, as far as white supremacists go. They don’t even realize that their leader is a black Cuban. — NOS4A2

They've got one of those Dave Chapelle, black white supremacist scenarios going - the black Cuban is obviously blind and doesn't know he's black and the proud boys leadership make sure to cover his head everytime he meets with the other proud boys so they don't know.

In all seriousness though the term "white supremacist" as well as "racist" - racist especially - have become absolutely meaningless these days. It use to mean actual Nazis and KKK, but now it's basically just all conservatives and probably libertarians. It's really a shame what's happened to political discourse lately, it's barely worth it anymore. I'm worried about someone just being labeled a racist for whatever reason and therefore being denied a platform. It's the ultimate insult today. Shut them down. Don't let the racist speak.

When those interested in philosophy cannot exchange ideas with each other, all is lost. Sounds dramatic, but there's a truth to it.

(And I still have confidence on the administrators following the rules of the forum equally with everyone.) — ssu

Sure, but I would ask myself whether those who use that type of language are actually interested in a discussion or if they're just more interested in venting.

Anyway, you do you. I can't help but notice that the insults here always seem to flow from the left to those on the right though.

There's our Aussie moderator doing his job of moderating a Philosophy Forum. — ssu

No one suggested this is an "issue only with the black and minorities" you dumb fucker — Maw

You might want to just not engage with people who are talking to you like that. I, for one, don't.

Pointing out examples of white victims misses(or devalues) the point in much the same way that "All lives matter" does... — creativesoul

Well that's too bad because if you're trying to effect change it might come in handy to show those largely (but not entirely) white suburbanites that police violence actually effects people like them.

Someone else mentioned up thread, in a way better than I can recount from memory, how one of the founding principles of analytic philosophy was the rejection of system-building — Pfhorrest

Interesting - I've never heard that explicitly said or taught, but come to think of it it does make sense to me intuitively.

So politically, I'm a socialist because I'm a libertarian, and I'm a libertarian because of my deontological normative ethics (something like the non-aggression principle that you're probably familiar with), and my deontological ethics hinges on there being things that are objectively right or wrong (if it's not actually wrong to aggress upon people, but just "unpopular" or "illegal" or something, then the whole politics falls apart), and that account of things being objectively right or wrong can't be explained without explaining what "right" and "wrong" (etc) even mean, which is an account of moral semantics, which of mine hinges on the concept of speech-acts, but in any case all moral semantics, being semantics, hinge on some linguistic concepts or other. — Pfhorrest

Yes, I'm very familiar with NAP. It's very popular among right-libertarians as well. Personally, it's not what I follow and I've actually debated some right libertarians or anarcho-capitalists on the NAP a few years back. Since I reject NAP - or any deontologic/principles-based grounding for my libertarian-leaning beliefs I don't consider myself a full-blooded libertarian. I prefer to describe myself as libertarian-leaning more due to the values that libertarianism encompasses, and I suppose these values come from reflecting on my own way of being and conception of truth in society. I feel strongly about encouraging entrepreneurship and investing and that goes beyond me.

I'll first mention that I completely agree with you when it comes to your assessment of analytic philosophy today. When I think back to the system builders I think back to really the mid 19th century with Schopenhauer, Hegel, Kant, and a few other who were really very ambitious, and we don't really see that anymore, and I think part of the reason is just because there's so much knowledge out there that I just don't see how anyone can put forth something like that today, but I know your project and I do wish you luck.

For example, I can easily see myself in a political argument ending up talking about speech-acts and other philosophy of language stuff. — Pfhorrest

Interesting, could you explain please? Maybe cite an example?

I don't know, personally, if the entirety of analytic philosophy is useless to society - probably not, but a lot of it is. Philosophers very often vastly disagree on different central questions, so there's not much unity in the field in contrast to many other fields where there is widespread agreement on the basics that they can teach students. Even in the rare cases that there is widespread agreement, like with the Gettier paper, no one outside of philosophy really seems to care and there doesn't seem to be direct applications for it.

I feel bad sometimes for studying philosophy. Other fields are focusing on actual problems like how to stop COVID or how to help countries with serious economic problems while philosophers shut them selves off from the outside world to go play in their own heads or provide extensive commentary on a long dead philosopher that no one cares to read and often requires a second language to fully understand. It sometimes makes talking with them about contemporary issues extremely frustrating as facts and evidence clash their a priori presuppositions. Every once in a while though the old armchair philosopher will come down from his ivory tower and become strong proponents for a cause, if not lead the charge themselves like Peter Singer.

The way I interpret this is that the first guy has a loser's mindset. He'd rather protect his own ego and simply follow what the instructions (i.e. learn the "right" way) say than actually learn how to do his craft better. Then when someone upstages him he just gets resentful and bitter instead of either trying to learn from the guy or look inward and critically examining his own approach to the javelin instead of just regarding it as flawless because he knows the instructions. He thinks he knows the craft because he seems to be possess a limited amount of knowledge that he gained from the instruction manual, it's classic amateur thinking he is expert.

I see this in poker a lot. Nobody cares how you think the game "should" be played - everyone thinks they're decent or an expert. Learn when people get the better of you and leave your ego at the door. At least that's the way I read it.

"Empowering divisive political rhetoric" - that's a good one. Nah, Streetlight and I are beyond rational political discourse with each other at this point. We don't seriously discuss politics with each other because our fundamental values are so different and I think we both know that. There's no real discussion to be had, so we either joke around or insult each other depending on our mood. "Comrade" is just me keeping things light.

Left-wingers call each other comrade all the time. You could even call a democratic socialist "comrade" it doesn't matter. I wouldn't call a centrist Democrat "comrade" but then again I'm pretty sure Streetlight isn't a centrist Democratic.

I wouldn't call you comrade.

Why don't we ask Streetlight what he is politically and from there I'll determine if "comrade" is appropriate? @StreetlightX

Far left. I don't know Streetlight's political position exactly but I'd wager either socialist or communist, thus the "comrade."

I think it’s safe to say that if right-wing mobs were parading through cities looting and burning we’d have a national discussion on the topic. Until then... — NOS4A2

No doubt about it.

I think a lot of our discussion just concerns what qualifies as "right wing." Traditionally the far right refers to Nazism or other extreme, racist, authoritarian, nationalistic movements but if we remove the authoritarianism and racism but leave the love of guns then what? I guess we can call racism "right wing" - sure, whatever - but there's a line made in the conservative movement between those who are more racial and those who aren't. I haven't defended racists and I haven't stood against going after violent groups regardless of political affiliation if they've been linked to violent acts. The sins of one group don't excuse the sins of another.

Department of Homeland Security had this to say:

In June 2020, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) tweeted in reply to a Politico[49] article about the boogaloo movement that an intelligence bulletin released by the agency "does NOT identify the Boogaloo movement as left-wing OR right-wing" and stated that "they are simply violent extremists from both ends of the ideological spectrum".

A lot of American "right wing" violence, like Timothy McVeigh, is just anti-government. I don't know if it's fair to call this right wing and place it in the same camp as like Hitler. We could use some clarity here unless we just want to count everything from Waco to Hitler as right wing.

If you'd read the two FBI links I shared you'd know lone wolfs first, then white supremacist groups and ultra-national groups. Boogaloo is an obvious, militant, far right group that has been involved in various incidents and two killings just in the past year. — Benkei

Are you aware that there are pro-BLM boogaloos? There are left-wing boogaloos too, the only thing the organization has as a binding principle is that they're pro-gun and anti-government. You can say, like with antifa, that there are people within the movement that are bad but it's simply not true to label the entire movement as Nazis or white supremacists.

We often simply group anti-government activists as right wingers but this has never entirely made sense to me. I mean who's largely anti-police right now?

Everyone not on the Trump Train is a communist, right? The programing has really stuck. — praxis

Yes, I refer to all non-Trumpers as communists. It's just part of my programming as a non-liberal. Ya got me.

But hey, who would have known that in this particular instance it's actually right? Streetlight is very far left if we're going by the typical political spectrum and I don't think he would deny that.

So where are the organizations behind this? Lets go after them. Nobody likes right wing terrorism, but other attacks happen and we just don't call them terrorism. To the best of my knowledge, as I mentioned earlier, many of these "right wing" attacks are lone wolf attacks where the attackers were radicalized over the internet so unless you want to shut down parts of the internet I don't know what to tell you.



Thank you for the insightful response. I'll be sure to check with you about the facts before I post next time, comrade.

I'm denying your allegation that Antifa as a group goes out of its way to target journalists. Apart from your really, really low standard of what consitutes a journalist. And let's put things in perspective here: https://www.rcfp.org/black-lives-matter-press-freedom/ — Benkei

I don't believe antifa as a group goes out of its way to target journalists, but this partially just due to the fact that there is no "antifa as a group" on a large, national scale. Isn't it just a patchwork of local organizations? Just curious, do you consider any conservative journalists - say, Ben Shapiro or Ann Coulter - as "legitimate" journalists? Are there any smaller conservative journalists who you like/would consider a "real" journalist? Plenty of oppressive organizations may not have gone "out of their way" to target journalists but they still did.

I mentioned this last time but the police is a separate discussion. Conservative journalists don't really have links to the police. If you consider the police your opponent just because they do something wrong doesn't mean you therefore get to do it.

I know you didn't. So you agree the actual threat to the USA are far right extremists? — Benkei

I don't like right wing extremists and I have no interest in defending them. That said, my impression about right-wing violence in the US is that it's largely lone wolf attacks but if there was a unified group behind, say, the Dylan Roof shooting or the El Paso wal-mart shooting I'd be more than happy to target those groups but in the absence of there being those groups it's kind of a dead trail. For instance it's my impression that Roof got radicalized over the internet, but I don't know of any group behind it and what are we going to do, shut off the racism side of the internet? I guess the most present group is the boogaloos but you've got also pro-BLM and left wing boogaloo's so it's not that simple to just label all boogaloo's right wing extremists. They almost seem like more libertarian extremists if that's a thing.

I'm happy to talk about right wing extremism with you, but you've got to admit today the far left tends to be more visible today. I don't like either of them. It's not a matter of choosing to like one as a counterbalance to the other.

If we say the game was a stalemate, then we are changing the rules of chess. A checkmate is only possible if someone wins and loses, so how could the game be a stalemate? — MSC

I feel like you might be a bit confused here. There are only two ways anyone wins a game of chess: 1) Checkmate or 2) Resignation. A stalemate occurs if checkmate is no longer possible or the two players agree to a stalemate.

Chess player here so I gotta jump in.

If you're playing against yourself and one side wins then you're both the winner and the loser. You can think of chess kind of like walking in a very dark forest - a bad player can only see very, very little ahead of them, maybe just a few inches past their feet, while a good player has a much better flashlight or vision (whichever you want to call it) and is able not just to see further ahead, but with much greater precision and detail.

So if you're playing against yourself it's basically like you're trying to find or capture yourself in a dark forest with only a flashlight. You can make the moves that seem good to you, but you're likely gonna screw up at some point and now it's just a matter of whether you - on the other side of the board - can capitalize on that. If you capitalize on your opponent's mistake you should mostly just be winning, that's how chess is.

They're comedians not journalists according to their own patreon page. We are talking about these guys right? https://www.facebook.com/TheColoredCons/ — Benkei

They use to be Operation Coldfront. If you look through their youtube archives they're actually doing journalism/reporting and they report antifa assaults on numerous occasions (some of these are captured on camera). Are you really going to try to push the thesis that the far left just never gets out of hand? Are you really ready to die on the hill that the far left just doesn't assault journalists, ever? What are they, saints?

And we're not talking about the police but we should. You come up with journalists that aren't journalists to prove a point that doesn't exist. I'm pointing you to the actual problem--> a police force that's either dumb enough to attack journalists or so insulated from repercussions that they think they can get away with it. Probably a combination of both. — Benkei

I don't defend the police 100% I think most of the country is on board with some type of reform whether that means more training or better oversight.... It's just a different discussion and tbh this discussion is already super long and I don't really feel like making it longer but I'm definitely on board with some reforms.

The guy is a troll a verified liar and a likely criminal. As a result, I'm on the fence as to whether it was wrong to hit him in the face. Seems fair play to me. The guy who hit him should pay a fine though because he broke the law. — Benkei

And no I didn't see his medical records. But as I explained, if someone claims SHA and is up and about the next day, then he doesn't have SHA, he's simply lying. I don't need to see his medical records for that - all I need to do is google! — Benkei

Alright, we've actually found a difference in values between us here. Even if Ngo is a verified liar and troll I'd never support initiating violence against him. In America we can sue for cases like this. I'm a little alarmed that you seem to support a mob descending on a someone looking to document the far left... but I don't know, if you're fine with mobs initiating violence against people - in this case a physically small gay minority - then I don't know what else to say here. I guess we can move on. Us arguing over the extent of his injuries is somewhat ridiculous. In America you're free to deny the holocaust. You're free to compare antifa to stalinist murderers. It doesn't matter - we don't attack people even if they're maliciously lying.

You're happy to extend a definition to fit your preconceived conclusions. Check. — Benkei

You're chasing ghosts with Antifa. — Benkei

It's not about my preconceived notions, this is about how to best handle the word "antifa". I'm honestly leaving the choice up to you as to how to proceed: If you want me to use "antifa and the far left" because you want to doubt the extent of antifa we can do that. My general target here is really just the militant far left. I don't care if they have an antifa membership card or not.

I don't think antifa is a centrally-organized group. Maybe they have small, local organizations but if we're talking about who shows up at marches and who marches under the banner and who identifies with the ideology our conception of antifa can expand. I think it's best to describe it as more of a movement, with the black clad marchers as a part of the movement rather than an official member of an organization.

I have problems associating "far left" with white supremacy and patriotism. Seems like a typical right wing thing to me. — Benkei

I've never associated the far left with white supremacy or patriotism.