A Pro Free Speech, Multiculturalism, Nationalism Perspective
Through the socialization process, a group identity and a sense of duty is established in the child. This group identity provides direction, and ideally moral guidance, to the child by saying, “This is how we do thing here.” Security and protection are other benefits of group membership.
However, there are costs of group identity as well. The problems and the guilt of the group become your problems and your guilt. To the individual, this can be perceived as a sort of moral injury. In a free society, a morally concerned person is prone to de-identify with any group(s) which harms their moral self image and identify with a group they see as morally superior.
Throughout history, nations have tried to control for this by enforcing a strong national identity and limiting freedom in order to establish and preserve a monoculture. While this strategy has obvious short term benefits, over the longer term it results in moral stagnation of its people due to living in an echo chamber.
Multiculturalism and free speech bring judgment and critique. This is a moral good. Still, there is the issue of morally concerned citizens crafting their group identity in a way where they start believing they have reached the end of moral development. Then, they begin to seek power for the purpose of enforcing their morality on the other morally inferior groups.
This is where national identity becomes useful and even necessary. National identity says, “You know that other group who you don’t want to identify with and take on their problems / guilt, well they are you too.” For the people who primarily care about their moral image rather than actual moral development, they will resist this. But for the nations and people who take on this responsibility, they will gain the benefits of moral progress.
The above is, in my mind, the position the political left should be promoting.
13 Replies
Instead, the left’s current view of moral progress seems to be filtered through the lens of power: The marginalized and disempowered groups need more power and those groups who have wielded power must be stripped of power.
This is misguided. Power doesn’t drive moral progress. Identity and identification drives moral progress.
Craig, please correct me if I’m wrong, but this appears to be a very thinly veiled attempt to discuss the moral “pros” of white nationalism, and we’re not going to have a thread for that.
Really? Seems like completely impenetrable gobbledygook to me. I'll take your word for it.
Craig, please correct me if I’m wrong, but this appears to be a very thinly veiled attempt to discuss the moral “pros” of white nationalism, and we’re not going to have a thread for that.
You are assuming incorrectly. I don’t view the fundamental identity of America through race. The fundamental idea of America is the pursuit of the moral high ground in my view.
The Declaration of Independence has nothing to do with white nationalism and everything to do with the moral high ground.
Ok. Would you mind condensing your thesis, Craig, down to a single sentence so I can understand your point more accurately?
Multiculturalism + free speech to critique + national identity to assume the problems / guilt of other groups leads to moral progress, not power dynamics.
Free speech to critique what/whom?
Problems/guilt of which groups specifically?
Again, there is no point attempting evade guidelines via vagueness. I will just lock the thread.
Basically he's saying that the left should try to backdoor internationalism through nationalism.
I’m saying there is no moral progress if there is no relationship / identification among groups within a country. IDK what you mean by internationalism. I’m focused on the country wide rather than global scale. The idea is to focus on your own country first.
Basically he's saying that the left should try to backdoor internationalism through nationalism.
That's what he's posturing, but what he's actually said is that the left is trying to enforce a "monoculture" and create an "echo chamber" that will limit moral progress via stagnation. (Lol)
What he appears to actually be mad about is the "limiting of freedom" from the left, which again is code for not tolerating hate speech etc. and the societal shift of no longer being as accepting to bigoted opinions. We already have multiculturalism and national identity here. What we do not have is the "freedom to critique", ie repeat derogatory stereotypes about specific groups or members of a group, which is forbidden under the guidelines of this website, although not quite yet society as a whole.
We will not be allowing him to do that here, or to frame it otherwise via the intentional usage of vague wording and sophistry.
It is not difficult to anticipate where this thread will go with certain posters on this forum, and it is not welcome.
Craig, this isn't the place for these opinions. Please do not make another thread like this.
