[beepbooptheory]

I totally get wanting to stray away from the empty signifier of "woke", but doesn't just calling it "social justice" make you kind of sound like the baddie if your opposing yourself to it?

"The scourge of social justice must be stopped!"

From a grim tactical point of view, it is smart to start finding ways to force an antagonism between your evil teens and regular liberals. I think that will work very well in the long run.

Because gosh darnit we must keep those statues standing up! Literally can't think of anything more important.

[willis936]

The term social justice has been in popular use for at least a decade. "Woke" is just a dogwhistle. "Social justice warrior" had already been a polarizing term that came and went in popularity.

[neallindsay]

It's probably best to name political ideologies for the ideal they believe in rather than whatever criticism their opponents hold for those ideas.

Conservatives want to conserve the status quo. Progressives want to see society progress. Liberals want liberty. Authoritarians want strong authority. "Social justice ideologists" doesn't roll off the tongue, but it does a decent job of conveying who we are talking about.

[beepbooptheory]

Liberal/conservative or progressive/authoritarian work because they describe a dichotomy of sorts (even if these are kind of clumsy in this regard). But what could possibly be the opposite pole to "social justice"?

Social injustice ideology?

[neallindsay]

Among your examples I actually think that "liberal"/"authoritarian" are mostly opposite each other. But "conservative" in its simplest form is resistance to change, so it ends up being one end of almost any political dimension. That's why in most two-party political systems you can point at one of the parties and call it "conservative". "Progressive" is also very generic and can mean very different things depending on the society, but it's generally in opposition to "conservative".

[DonHopkins]

Yes actually. How else would you describe considering empathy a weakness?

[lelanthran]

> Progressives want to see society progress.

No, they want to see it change. Not all change is progress.

[DonHopkins]

Changing society back to 1950's and 1860's values is what conservatives want, and that's not progress, so your definition is wrong. When progressives finally succeed at canceling slavery and making racism unacceptable in public discourse (at least until Trump came along), conservatives aren't suddenly progressive just because they want to change that. They're fundamentally regressive.

[lelanthran]

Two, three, or even 500 examples of change being progress does not in any way mean that all change is progress.

Which is what I said

[the_third_wave]

> Conservatives want to conserve the status quo. Progressives want to see society progress

Nope, that is not what conservatives and progressives want. Conservatives want to keep that which is proven to work and only want to change things which are proven not to while progressives want to change that which has been done for a long time because not doing so leads to stagnation. Society works best when there is a balance between conservative and progressive attitudes. When things work well they are better left alone - this is where conservatism gets it right - but when the situation changes those things which used to work may need to be replaced with something else, traditions be damned. That does not mean all traditions need to be kicked to the curb - they often form the glue which holds society together - which is why a balance between conservative and progressive attitudes works best.