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by FFRefresh 1990 days ago
I understand your viewpoint, but I'm asking where you draw the line for who counts as the intolerant?

If the risk is society's destruction as you say, then I'd imagine you'd be motivated to cast a pretty wide net for who counts as intolerant (who thus should be sanctioned and not given equal access to services until they fall in line). After all, anything can be justified to save our society from destruction, correct? It seems like it'd be better to be safe than sorry, with the stakes so high as you mention.

Are there any conservatives/republicans and their associated organizations that you think should maintain their equal access to services, and shouldn't face some sort of penalty for either directly/indirectly supporting an ideology that led to the events of January 6th?

1 comments

Come on. Anyone who supported the insurrection on Jan 6th should be expelled from Congress and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law for supporting a rebellion against the US. The fact you make me spell that out that to dance around the issue is disturbing.

This is pretty straight forward. If you:

Support violence against other groups because they look different

Seek to restrict someone's rights/voting because of the above

Then you should not be tolerated in our society and you should be punished.

I understand you're emotional about it, and asking for clarification is 'disturbing' to you. I also don't like what happened and would love to figure out ways to ensure a better functioning society.

However, I think where we may differ is how we think about solutions to problems like this. I want solutions that are scalable, and that help maintain a society where a diversity of people can all thrive over the long-term. I don't believe emotional reasoning should be a strong factor in determining punishments for people, as it leads to bias and discrimination.

Most vocal people you see on the internet don't seem particularly interested in long-term/scalable solutions. It's not terribly surprising, we humans are very short-term oriented and tribal by nature. When we see members of the outgroup performing badly, we want to punish them. When members of our own ingroup perform badly, we are more likely to rationalize it away and be more charitable with the interpretation of what they've done.

I don't believe the 'punish the outgroup, forgive the ingroup' thinking is healthy for a functioning pluralistic society. The words you are using and the way you are framing things are signals to me that you may be fairly biased against your outgroup. That's why I was asking you to spell out exactly what rules should govern punishment in your mind.

The next step in critically thinking through your proposed rules is whether you would punish members of your ingroup for violating them, or if you'd add new caveats to ensure they were given some leniency. But that's just a rhetorical question given the nature of this forum.

Note: I am making no claims of equivalence between your outgroup and ingroup in terms of actions they've done. You also likely think I'm part of your outgroup for straying from the status quo by even posing such questions, and may feel inclined to use terms reserved for your outgroup. You'd be mistaken, but I understand the impulse.