I’m not America. I’m a left-liberal South African. But I do have an interest in America’s politics since it still has an cultural/economic imperial role in the world (albeit a declining one). And I read both Democratic Underground and Free Republic fairly regularly along with other sites to gauge the spectrum of US political opinions.

And the comparison is simply nuts. The presence of hysterical and extreme views on DU does not equate to a similar proportion of views, nor the reception they receive from other members of the same site. Without question, DU has a massively greater diversity of views and far more members willing to argue for measured responses and take radically differing positions on many issues.

Bar one or two issues, Free Republic posters seem to march in lockstep and disagreement is largely centered around exactly how evil those evil libruls are and whether Americas internal and external enemies, real and imagined, should be shot, tried for treason or silenced by more civilised means (the Free Republic version of a “centrist”).

Functionals post buys into the myth of “balance” that appears to have successfully permeated mainstream American political dialog. But there is no balance between the self-defined “right” and self-defined “left/liberal/progressives” in the USA. 80% of the actual, healthy debate, discussion and evolution of ideas is happening in the latter camp while the former only appears to be evolving the tactics which it uses to foist the politics of hate, exclusion and exploitation on other Americans and the rest of the world.

Certainly, leftists and progressives should deplore any individual purporting to share their aims that advocates methods like assassination to further their aims. And most do. But being reasonable and civilised in dealing with the incoherent, intolerant and selfish ideas of the American movement conservatives who’s tactics and prescriptions border on fascism, should not equate to acceptance that their bile and venom enjoys some status as some equal but alternative way of running a country (or attempting to run other countries).

Rather, it behooves intelligent, informed and compassionate people to view their ideology with the contempt it deserves and try to bring about its demise through education, honest reporting, demands for accountability and so on.

Orin, #124, in toto.

Orin: You seem like a thoughtful and civil person, so I sincerely hope you won’t take offense. But your suggestion that everyone on both sides is in good faith is not merely preposterous, it is utterly preposterous.

I absolutely agree that such a position would be utterly preposterous. Fortunately I have not taken such a position.

Anyway, this is an interesting thread—I may try blogging about these issues over at the VC.

That doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. This thread is about why Internet polarization occurs. If you read on the Internet the messages of a bunch of torturers who were saying how they should kill even more people, you’d be disgusted by them even if you couldn’t immediately do anything about it.

I think you are right, but I’d say its more a close majority than a very wide range of agreement. For example, the world values survey shows a pretty broad range of values on gender equality, secularism vs. religion etc.

But if you are right that there is a broad consensus that norms are being violated, then I think you would have to conclude that the enforcement of norms by the people of civilized countries is fairly impotent.

In other words, you have to concede that the majority you refer to is either not that committed to enforcing its norms or it is fairly powerless.

In the long run we’re all barbarians.

People should really read what John Quiggin wrote and not get distracted by the trolls. People from all over the world read the English-language part of the Internet, and those people have a very high degree of buy-in to some form of human rights. The GOP is forthrightly against human rights—remember the recent candidate debate for the Presidential primary at which everyone cheered when the candidates promised to double Guantanimo? So of course there is “polarization”; polarization of the world against a corrupt ideology that serves a rogue regime.

“Viewed through any kind of civilized norms…”

This is hyperbole.

I will try to be less so. MANY civilized civilizations have been warmongering, some racist, a few even real live theocracies.

And only a very, very few have had norms that were neither torture-supporting nor warmongering nor racist nor theocracy-friendly. I mean by those standards, the chamber of civilizations is so small you can’t even get an echo.

Would you give me partial credit if I agreed with a re-phrased version like

“Those of us that believe that ideals such as peace, racial equality, government free of religious superstition, and the progress of universal human rights find the Bush Administration contemptible”?

Also True Scotsmen.

As far as I’ve seen, no one around here has enough basic self-awareness to even think about that point.