Substack cometh, and lo it is good. (Pricing)

Open Thread, 1/11/2015

I’m pretty busy now with non-internet related stuff (i.e., life), so not giving much thought to what’s going on in the big wide world. But I do want to say something about the goings on in France.

First, it’s really fucking offensive to me that social-justice-warrior types decide to tell me what’s offensive and/or racist every fucking day every fucking way. Or as they would say “gross” and “problematic”. The reality here is that a certain element of the far cultural Left is really only interested in persuading everyone else on the Left. There’s no attempt to communicate with someone who doesn’t already share their values/axioms/priors. People often ask me why I identify as conservative. It’s because of people like Jacob Canfield, who wrote In the Wake of Charlie Hebdo, Free Speech Does Not Mean Freedom From Criticism. In it Canfield renders judgement on what is, and isn’t, racist in terms of critiquing Islam. The question is who the fuck is Jacob Canfield to make this sort of judgement? He’s free to express his opinion, but why the hell is this bullshit lighting up my Facebook feed? A guy who graduated from a $50,000-tuition-a-year Carleton College must be able to school everyone about privilege from on high I suppose. He knows all about Islam and racism, since he’s neither from a Muslim background nor non-white. Of course neither of those are necessarily germane, but from Canfield’s perspective they are…except if you’re a social-justice-warrior, and all those issues about “whitesplaining” go out the window, because you mean well or whatever, and have paid to sit in seminars where you learn to say all the stupid catchphrases that suggest to insiders you are one of them. I’m sick of this. It makes me want to retch. This is what passes for “progressive”? Yep, I’m definitely a conservative.

Second, a lot of readers here think that they’re awesome geniuses because they’ve read a lot of Artkos‘ books (or perhaps they have been exposed to Mencius Moldbug). Don’t worry about explaining all that to me, I know most of those ideas. I’m broadly sympathetic to skepticism of democracy, and even some aspects of modern liberalism. Second, me censoring on this website isn’t at all the same as the government censoring. Anyone claiming equivalence is stupid. You don’t read this website to listen to everyone’s opinion on everything. Most people have stupid opinions. Why listen? Also, there’s a difference between social sanction for opinions and killing someone (or to a lesser extent imprisoning them) for an opinion. That’s obvious. There are some similarities between the zeal with which the cultural Left censors on politically correct grounds, and religious blasphemy, but as I’ve stated for years I am not convinced that the idea of political religion is coherent, though I’m still open to the idea.

I do appreciate original thoughts though, so keep them coming. Though they are few and far between from what I can see. Finally, remember that “open thread” means you can talk about anything topically.

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