On the subject of the Left’s incapacity to accept the slightest departure from the dogma, I have an illustrative story.
We all know my opinions on abortion. I have been pro-abortion rights forever. I probably haven’t held any other belief for longer. I’m outspoken and sincere. But I do depart from the leftist orthodoxy on abortion in that I believe it’s a tragedy. It’s nothing to be celebrated. Abortion, I believe together with my sisters from 30 years ago, should be safe, legal and extremely rare. The whole society, I believe, is functioning incorrectly if every pregnancy is not celebrated like the wonderful miracle that it is.
When I deliver the above speech to people who are pro-life, the reaction is never to scream at me or call me names. We end up having a conversation where nobody is mean to each other. I talked to Matushka (the priest’s wife) about this, in these very words. Obviously, she disagrees but it was a great, very peaceful, enlightening conversation.
When, however, I say these exact words at a leftist gathering, I get called names on the spot. “But wait,” I say, “I’m on your side on this. I support this right that you say you hold very dear. Why do you call me a fascist?” Especially since fascists were very much pro-abortion for undesirable categories of women, but that’s another story.
Where are liberal middle-of-the-road people? Where are the people on the Left who can say, “I believe in dignity and respect for trans people. But men can’t give birth, teenage girls shouldn’t have their breasts cut off, and nobody is transphobic for saying this”? Or, “gay marriage is good, no discrimination against gays is good, but men shouldn’t be able to purchase babies, and it’s not homophobic to say that”? Why do you have to embrace the most extreme position 100% or you are a Nazi or a psycho?
I shared the link below with a liberal friend, and her immediate and sincere response was, “well, I told you Kirk was a Nazi!”
People read the most middle-of-the-road, mainstream beliefs as Nazi and fascist. And they are utterly unaware of what they are doing and how radicalized they’ve become.
Clarissa's Blog 
“Where are the middle-of-the-road liberal people?”
They’re Tim Pool, Joe Rogan, Scott Adams. They got hounded out of the left years ago. They’re still liberals, but if you don’t vocally support the most vile things imaginable, you’ve either been hiding your beliefs and hoping nobody notices, or you got the axe years ago.
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That’s exactly what I’m saying. The Left doesn’t recognize moderation in others because it lost any semblance of it a very long time ago. It’s a zero-sum game for the left. Not having 100% of power means losing. Having one person bleat something mildly divergent from the dogma somewhere in the corner is a victory of Nazism.
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I am someone who is personally pro life but politically pro choice, I personally could not get an abortion for religious and personal reasons. I personally do not want kids and I don’t care if some random woman in Missouri gets an abortion, it ought to be a decision between the woman and her doctor.
I agree that women having babies and pregnancy ought to be celebrated and be seen as a catastrophe or a failure, I hate seeing posts about how kids suck and how they are evil and ought to be banned. I am not at all interested in having kids or even having sex or dating, so becoming pregnant would be a near impossible thing. But I am glad when someone announces a pregnancy or birth, it ought to be a joyful occasion
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I am not engaging in in-person political discussions often, but once upon a time I was told that centrists like me are “enabling the right”…
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I have it on good authority that centrists are ON the right, now.
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while watching some Kirk videos, I came across this (non-Kirk) gem:
https://www.facebook.com/reel/184984414253922
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This is hilarious, thank you!
Unfortunately, everybody I know who’s like this is 40+, so there’s no chance they’ll get over it.
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well, this may get long… Watched more Kirk videos, and I still stand by the thing I said earlier – he did not promote dialogue. His audience was not the undecided, but those who think like him already and who came for the “Kirk owning the libs” show. And he did not tell anything new or interesting for me… But for that I guess I should credit this blog. 🙂
anyway, I’ll share one thought, which is based on both things Kirk said and things some participants on this blog said over the years. Disclaimer – I am not calling Kirk Nazi, I just find the following example will help bring the point across. I do not know if this is intentional on conservatives’ (Kirk and many on this blog) part, but you appear to place extraordinary value on “unity”, which often has a strong flavor of “uniformity” to it. This unity becomes the end in itself. Any anybody who ever watched any Nazi documentaries, with those huge crowds, with flags, torches, etc, eager to greet Hitler, and obviously ecstatic in their unity, should, in my opinion, understand that unity is not a value in itself. It is merely means to an end, and whenever one speaks of “unity”, one should very clearly specify the end goals of this “unity”. What are the common values around which we are going to be uniting? And as long as some degree of freedom (limited by freedoms of other people) is among those values, then you get into internal contradiction if you try to decide for others what values they are supposed to be united around. You see this is not working for the Left, this attitude on the Left side is repelling you… Why do you think your version of it is going to work any better? And then the doubts sneak in that you actually do not care if it is going to work any better, you are just going to use the moment when you have power to force your agenda onto others.
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I don’t have much use for unity myself but I haven’t noticed any conservatives policing each other’s speech or stopping one when one expresses a thought that doesn’t conform to some dogma. To give a simple example, I can easily tell conservatives that I support abortion rights but I can’t dream of hinting to liberals that I don’t support Obergefell. They have the kind of unity on the issue that doesn’t need the torches to be quite total.
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Kirk mentioned unity in a couple of videos, and based on the context he meant that both too much immigration and the left are diluting that unity. Also, based on my limited knowledge of him, I assume he would like that unity to be based on his reading of Christianity, pretty traditional family values, importance of second amendment, etc. I am not sure yet which particular version of capitalism he preferred, more libertarian or the one where someone has to restrain the corporations that do too far (e.g. big pharma)…
Maybe you personally did not use the word unity, but your vision of the nation-state implies that the population of that nation-state has to be united about something. Since in the US (or Canada) we are well past the possibility of being united by genetic heritage, I am assuming you had in mind some unifying values…
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Unity is dead:
https://x.com/willchamberlain/status/1966707952363917433?t=315X1ROR1gkC6KK3WZRaqw&s=19
I went on social media 10 minutes ago and in that time, without looking for this specifically, came across 4 people wishing death on Erika and the children.
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and I did not encounter any. Have you considered a possibility that social media companies are engaged in some accelerationism (maybe not deliberate, but just to increase traffic), by showing to people things that whey would find the most infuriating? Showing conservatives some posts from those (very real people) wishing death to Erika and the children, showing trans people stuff from several (also real) craziest crazies on the right who actually do want them dead, etc…
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Whether social media promote or conceal them, these are real people who think it’s a good look to say such things publicly.
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Have you considered that social media algos hide that from you, because your profile is already number-crunched into the “doesn’t want to know” bucket?
My inlaws have no idea, and haven’t seen any of it. Because they live in the CNN bubble and are impervious to outside sources of information.
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Given that the only diversity of thought anymore seems to belong to the right (if only by virtue of the left booting out anybody who diverges even minutely from the party line)… where are you getting this idea that the right is the common-values-unity side here?
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—where are you getting this idea that the right is the common-values-unity side here?
a) from all this talk about social cohesion. Unlike some on the left, I do not interpret this kind of talk as “the right just found a safe way to express their underlying racism”. But I do see it as this strong yearning for unity and uniformity for unity’s and uniformity’s sake. I am also familiar with how certain type of nation-states (Quebec, Baltic States, etc) functions in reality, so I know what are the practical implications of making uniformity a desirable goal. Basically, this leads to the dominant group trying to stifle all cultural competition. For instance, Francophone wannabee nation-state trying to destroy anglophone education in Quebec.
b) there is a difference between a group of prominent people on the left who made it their career and therefore have to compete with each other and police each other, and normie-left aka half the country that voted for Dems.
c) there is a lot of denunciation of political violence coming from the left. The Right is not even denying that there is, they are just accusing the Left of hypocrisy of denouncing what they helped to create. As if the left is some one uniform entity and everyone on the left is collectively responsible for everything anyone on the left ever said or did. If we want to play THIS game, fine, but then every individual person on the right is also responsible for everything the right has ever done of said. This is absurd and this logic leads to civil war.
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Have you seen the actual research on diversity of thought on the right vs the left recently, though?
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