World gone mad: People angry about "innocent until proven gulty"

[palou]

Aeolus451 said:

palou said:

It is one thing to do so when describing yourself, another when judging others. As a tool to describe your current positions quickly, sure. But unless specifically stated, judging a person based on the actions of a group, without having confirmed their support of these actions, is one of the larger problems, for me. For example, people used the car incident in Charlottesville to accuse *all* on the right of the political spectrum. And that's something that happens constantly, put forward by all sides, and has become a major factor in american political "debate", been reduced to a shouting match, calling each other terrorist-sympatithizers, nazis, etc...

 

I feel that it is crucial to a good political discussion that people criticize the postiton currently being discussed, and absolutely nothing else. When you call Contestgamer a SJW/progressive, it definitely feels like you are attempting to accuse him of more than he specifically stated.

 

On another note, would be curious where you would classify me. I don't believe in any fundemental moral absolutes, including equality or liberty - anything can be morally ok for me in the right context, as long as it clearly improves the lives of people in average, in both short and long term. I'm skeptical on abortion, and would, out of precaution, be against it in practice. I believe that each person has the right *not* to be judged for decisions that only affect himself (homosexuality, transgender), the obligation to accomodate does not exist, however, beyond the usual responsibilities we have to each other. I do believe that we have the right to breach the liberties of others in the context that it improves global life quality, including the person himself (ex: right to stop a suicide, right to stop operations on a person which are not to his benifit.) I'm deeply anti-nationalist, and believe in global cooperation.a I'm against any form of punitive justice. I support the free market in the context of its capabilities to maximize productivity. I support government control in areas where it shows clear benefit to the order of society, including a monopole on violence and (this is a bit of a contreversial one - but my position is quite complex, here, thought about it a lot) censorship.

I agree that people shouldn't misuse labels but not about using labels in general. We disagree on that part. The problem is that people often misuse terms which leads to misunderstanding and the terms being conflated. Also some of the terms are muddy because they're fairly new and it's still being hashed out. That guy with the car incident was alt-right in the loose sense but I don't know specially what he described himself as (white nationalist, kkk or neo-nazi). 

You seem like a moderate or centrist with a leaning to the left to be honest. I'm not familiar with canadian political parties. I agree with a lot of that in the way you worded it and some of it I disagree with. What do you identify yourself as in politics?

I try not to associate myself too strongly to any political term, specifically to avoid preconceptions. The term "political utilitarian" would probably be the most conscice description of my beliefs, though it leaves a lot of ambiguity.

 

I think you can find some pretty good examples of how labels can disrupt debate in the last few replies on this thread. People stop arguing about what makes their suggestions better or worse, instead categorizing each other and then attempting to turn that categorization into an insults. It's hideous.