When The Left Goes Too Far - Bonus

By Leo Gura - October 24, 2022

Here are some additional points to my When Does The Left Go Too Far? series that I forgot to mention:

Trolling:

The left goes too far with trolling the right. Way too many progressives have created a cottage industry of trolling and ridiculing the right, which greatly contributes to toxic polarization, demonization, and strawmanning. And the left is in denial about this because it feeds their egos and gets them millions of click-bait views. But it is destructive to our political discourse as it radicalizes the center.

At least what CNN and mainstream media does not do is trolling and ridiculing, which the alternative, progressive media employs way too much.

Of course the right wing loves to troll the left, but that does not mean the left is correct in stooping to the right’s level. The left must hold itself to a higher standard if it wishes to consider itself more developed and more conscious than the right. Trolling is not compatible with high levels of consciousness.

Immigrants Have Lower Development:

This is a really important point that leftists overlook, which is a huge factor for immigration policy. Generally speaking, immigrants from 3rd world countries will be significantly less developed cognitively, morally, and culturally than Americans or Western Europeans. This is not at all a racist or xenophobic thing to say. This developmental deficit is not genetic or racial, it is cultural and educational. For example, the average fundamentalist Muslim will be significantly less spiritually and morally developed than the average Scandinavian. It is not Islamophobic to say this.

It is legitimate to be concerned that too many immigrants at low stages of Spiral development will dilute and drag down the center of gravity of development of a 1st world country. Of course far right-wingers will love to seize on this point to justify their racism and xenophobia, nevertheless, the point is factually true and presents problems for unrestricted immigration. Northern European and Scandinavian countries have experienced the effects of this recently with a flood of immigrants from Syria and the Middle East who are not bad people, but they ARE less developed than your average Scandinavian. Scandinavia is stage Green while Syrian refugees are stage Purple, Red, and Blue. This presents significant integration problems. It is not racist, xenophobic, or bigoted to be concerned about these integration challenges, but leftists will make the mistake of assuming it is.

One of the reasons we cannot have open boarders like some extreme far leftists want is because there would be too many immigrants with such low stages of development that it would create serious problems for 1st world countries. We would not be able to maintain 1st world standards of living because people at low stages of development do not even accept basic liberal ideas such as freedom of speech, freedom of religion, women’s rights, children’s rights, gay rights, etc. For example, for a fundamentalist Muslim to integrate in the US he would have to be okay with people criticizing and drawing cartoons of the prophet Mohammad. But he will not be okay with that, which will create chaos.

Note: I say this as an immigrant from Russia. Russia definitely has a lower level of development than America.

Anti-Abortion As Means To Control Women:

The left loves to demonize the right on abortion by saying that abortion restrictions are merely a fig-leaf for the true agenda, which is the control and domination of women. This is an unfair characterization and a misunderstanding of the conservative worldview. Just because someone finds abortions morally repugnant or unethical does not mean they want to control or dominate women. Although, of course, some far right-wingers do. But I don’t think most moderate conservatives want to dominate women.

Speaking of which, it is incorrect to portray conservatives as wanting to dominate women. Traditional cultures in which women are subservient to men are not primarily about domination or exploitation of women, they are about protection of women, division of labor, and very traditional gender roles which are very useful for raising lots of children. In such traditional cultures it is not unusual for women to give birth 5-15 times, which is a full-time job. And many women do enjoy playing this role. This role comes with many pros and cons. As does the traditional male role. In traditional cultures men take on great burdens as providers, warriors, and manual laborers.

Moralism Resulting In Blindness To Systems Thinking:

The fundamental disease that leftists and progressives suffer from is that they are so morally self-righteous that their morality and sentimentality clouds their ability to do serious, realistic systems thinking. Systems thinking requires a more cool and dispassionate attitude. Leftists fall into the trap of thinking that righteous morality will solve everything, when in practice it solves little and tends to backfire easily because what we’re dealing with are complex systems which work in counter-intuitive ways, and people disagree about what is moral a great deal. High compassion, morality, and good intentions are not enough to make complex systems work well.

Making Everything About Race & Patriarchy:

Of course not all leftists do this, but some on the left go way too far making race, gender, and patriarchy the root of all social problems. Definitely there are systemic inequalities on matters of race and gender that need to be addressed, but they are not as significant as some leftists would like you to believe. Leftists tend to fall into the classic trap of: when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Our problems are much deeper and more epistemically subtle than racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia. Also, constantly focusing on race and sex starts to create a self-fulfilling prophecy effect. Our ideal should be to evolve to a colorblind attitude towards others, such that race and sex are not even an issue worth debating. But by making it a big deal all the time this cannot happen. It is proper to talk about race and gender sometimes, but don’t start to glorify it as an end in itself.

Quotas:

The left goes too far when they demand hiring based on race and gender to meet artificial quotas. Some affirmative action and diversity programs are okay and proper, but mandates for HR to hire a 50/50 split of men to women executives, or engineers, for example, is going too far. Hiring and candidate recruitment should be diverse, but merit, qualifications, and experience should trump any strict diversity quotas. You do not want to hire 50% female programmers for your department just because you want to meet such a quota in the name of “equality”. This would be an example of equality actually being unequal and counterproductive because the percentage of female programmers is very low in general, and for good reason: because programming is not characteristically suitable for most women. Nor would you want to aim for a quota of 50% male nurses or elementary school teachers. People should be allowed to special into whatever positions suit their character and temperament the most. With that said, it is important that we ensure the hiring or recruitment process is not discriminatory against minorities. A qualified minority should be able to get the job without having to be exceptional. But also, a minority should not have the bar lowered for them just because they are a minority, AKA, the bigotry of low expectations.

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