Defence of principles vs ends justify the means.

I have a question from a conservative, for conservatives.

The Milo uproar highlights, I think, a major difference in party philosophy between the left and the right. The right, with good reason, has made it quite clear that Milo's views on sex with children have no place in the party. Once his views were made clear to the public at large, there has been widespread condemnation from both sides. Again, rightly so. The right have cut the rope to make it clear they don't support his views on sex with children. He's not going to be allowed to speak in the capacity of conservative leadership as a result. It's a swift and clear condemnation of a violation of conservative principles. I have seen this type of behavior repeatedly within the Republican party.

It doesn't appear to me to take place with the same fervor within the left leadership as it does on the right. (Maybe someone from the left can provide good examples I've overlooked)

You would think the principles of the left would have a big problem with misogynists like Bill Clinton & Anthony Weiner , or with racists like Robert Byrd, or with multi-billionaires or whatever it is that violates leftist dogma. But the left seems quite willing to suspend these individual affronts to principle among its leadership, as long as the person can effectively promote some other leftist cause. In short, they protect their own against their own principle as long as it furthers their overall cause. Heck even Bernie did an about face on Hillary's behalf and he made it clear during his campaign that she represented just about everything he hated about his own party.

I bring this up because of what I heard on a local conservative talk show today. A few callers were concerned that Milo's views on sex would be used to condemn all of Milo's views. They were worried that our desire to protect principle would hurt the conservative cause. And that's certainly is the case. After all, that's why the race card, the sexist card, and the bigot card exist. It's so that arguments against a person's specific views are no longer necessary. The left's argument appears to be in these instances: If you invalidate the person, you invalidate all their views.

In light of this tactic: How does the right combat the Ad Hom. argument & preserve their principles at the same time? What's our best shot of convincing the left that the ends don't justify the means?

 

You've asked a pretty good series of questions, but I think I have responses to them you may not care for.

First, there is no chance of convincing the left that the ends don't justify the means because that's been wildly successful for them. Your Milo example shows that. Milo was the victim in his description of what happened, and he's lost everything. Meanwhile Lena Dunham, wrote in her book that she was the predator on her sister in an incestuous sex abuse incident (her sister is now a lesbian by the way). Did Dunham face charges, or even lose credibility? Nope. We're at the point in our political journey that principles are less a factor than raw power, so there is no way the left is giving up on that; it works.

Secondly, the Milo incident was a hit job from the right. That loony tune nutcase Evan McMullin, who ran as an independent, has a group that was behind the research to get Milo. So now the right has successfully taken out it's most effective free expression advocate, someone who was making a real difference in the pop culture arena against the left's fascist attack on the First Amendment. And he had the ability to make the left go crazy, exposing it's ugliest side, such as the riot at Berkeley. With Milo removed from the board, the right is going to be weaker in the actual battle of ideas and the left is going to be stronger.

So what principle did the right just stand up for?

 

Alinsky wrote as one of his rules: "make the enemy live up to their own book of rules". Sexual abuse of children is wrong, and someone who condones it would be rightly discarded by the right. The left knows this, so they hold conservatives accountable and demand they disown Milo completely. However, if Milo had been a progressive activist, this revelation wouldn't have done the same level of damage. The left wouldn't have disowned him. His comments would have been obfuscated to the point of being innocuous. They would have been justified. People on this site would be deflecting attention away from them onto some Christian conservative pervert from 30 years ago. There is no way they would have shunned him like this. Besides, it's not like there isn't a contingent on the left that believes adult-child sex is acceptable. NAMBLA has been supported by several of the civil rights icons in the LGBT movement, and nobody has ever condemned them for doing so.

I'm a firm believer in fighting fire with fire. The left needs to be confronted in a very direct way, using whatever tactics are available, regardless if they are below the moral standards of the right. The right won't win taking the high road with the left. It's a numbers game, and the left appeals to humanity's nastier innate qualities, like greed, sexual perversions, no inhibitions, a lust for power, and a need to control.

 

You may be wrong about who took out Milo.

BREAKING: Organizers That Took Out Milo Linked to Far Left George Soros Groups

 

I had posted elsewhere on the forum that it was a hit on Milo from Evan McMullin along with coordinating groups on the left. Someone had noticed that Salon had taken down it's pro pedophilia articles just before this came out. Your link seems to confirm this was a McMullin group. Of course they are allied with the left. McMullin didn't think he was going to be President after all, he was angling for a Hillary win.

 

Your real question should be how the right wing can tolerate Breitbart being a central element of their world view.

That's more important than the problem of one morally corrupt individual.

We see over and over again how individuals on both sides of the aisle turn out to be human. In fact, we've seen the Catholic church priests and the debouched TV pastors - surely far more shocking, given the nature of those institutions.

What is FAR worse is associating Breitbart with anything related to America's direction - not because they chose a debouched child moron as a leader, but because of what Breibart stands for.

 

So I see your point. What did the right stand up for. I would say it is what they have been doing for some time. Running from the authoritarian left that needs to be stood up to.

 

Was Milo ever a conservative in the first place? Seemed more like another drama queen who found a niche to me...

 

contrary to popular belief more than conservatives make up the GOP now. We have the Trumpian nationalists and libertarians like Milo who feel the left smothers free speech.

I still maintain that if you listen to the actual conversation milo said nothing wrong.

 

what is happening is the old right like mcmullin is trying to reclaim the GOP and push out all the newcomers aided by the left who benefits for this.

 

I'm really not. I'm a firm believer in the truth being a self evident reality. The basic principle of logical argument is that A can't be A and not A. I can't a abide by the do as I say not as I do code of ethics. That's how any code of ethics falls all apart.

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I don't think he was. Nor did he claim to be. He espoused views of classic liberalism on social issues. We would call those views libertarian these days I think.

 

Well, I think the issue isn't Beitbart per se. The issue is the cult of personality argument vs the actual argument they are making. It's not the "who is talking" we should focus on. It's the "what they are saying" that should matter most.

 

Milo is to conservatism what Lena Dunham is to feminism. Both sides wish they'd go away.

 

It seemed as though the media was painting him as right-wing or conservative more than once, which is why I was wondering because I've never listened to him or read anything by him, nor do I care to...

 

The problem is Leftists believe they are compassionate and tolerant but that such tolerance need not apply to people who aren't compassionate and tolerant themselves--the catch being that they define the intolerant as anyone who doesn't already agree with them.

In this they are like radical Muslims who think they are good worshippers of the teachings of Islam but none of those teachings apply to infidels, in which case they can lie, behead, rape, etc to their hearts content---the catch being once again anyone who doesn't agree with them is automatically an infidel.

We are the infidels to the Left and all their teachings can go straight to hell as far as they are concerned when dealing with us. They are radicals, through and through, happy to rage and riot if their default attacks of racism and bigotry don't work.

There is no reasoning with radicals. Plenty on this board have tried over many years.

 

That depends on what you mean by conservative. He was a tireless anti PC and pro Free Speech advocate, and these days those issues are firmly conservative issues. I don't know about his tax positions however.

 

My point is that I don't want all of his speech to go away. While he said things that are abhorrent, he also said things that are valid and true. So how do you condemn the condemnable, without throwing out the baby in the bathwater?

 

Libertarianism up against Marxism is like Woody Allen stepping into the ring with Mike Tyson. There is only ever going to be one winner in that matchup. Now, if we take an Evander Holyfield (far right nationalism) and put him in the ring, then we have a chance.

 

Milo? Libertarian?

http://reason.com/blog/2017/02/21/cpac-organizer-tries-to-pawn-off-milo-yi

But yeah, the GOP is a pretty big tent. You've got libertarians, neocons, nationalists, paleoconservatives, social/religious conservatives etc. etc. Within each of these camps, there are those who defend their views on principles and those who defend it based on consequentialism. The whole cons = deontologists and libs = consequenalists thing isn't actually based in reality. I'm more on the deontological side, but there are plenty of my fellow libertarians are purely consequentialists. If anything, I've probably encountered more of the "ends justify the means" types on the right than I have on the left.

I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, so I'll reserve judgement until then. The last few times I've read about "so and so supporters pedophilia," it turned out that they either supported only the free speech aspects or supported behavioral therapy for pedophiles. I'll have to see.

 

If it can't win, then it's not true. I don't believe that. Especially since it's had such a good run so far. Despite the attempts to corrupt from the left, it's the basis for the American experiment, and it's responsible for the prosperity that we currently enjoy.

 

"The American experiment" is failing because non-Americans who do not believe in it, and are not willing to carry it on, are replacing those who do. These enlightened concepts that you are spouting do not translate very well into Spanish. They are the result of the evolution of European enlightenment era thinking.

 

Alison Tieman from Honeybadgerradio argues that they have become puritans, which in a way invalidates my premise.

 

If you believe that, then you must believe that Islam is the one true religion, since it's the fastest growing religion on earth.

 

Yes, the idea that being tolerant means one has to accept hate speech is sadly mistaken.

Being tolerant doesn't mean there are no longer any lines, no longer any moral principles, no longer any directions that are better than other directions, etc.

On the one hand, the right says the left is far too intolerant, because of objecting to moral decrepitude.

On the other hand, the right says the left is far too tolerant, because they don't object strongly enough to moral decrepitude.

In the end, the actual subject has to get discussed rather than just saying "tolerant", "intolerant", "radical", or playing with "cards".

 

I disagree. I think that those who believe it in are having difficulty explaining it in an environment where screaming "racist" is seen as a valid disproof. The problem isn't foreigners. It's our own children on our own campuses that we're having trouble convincing.

Take the concept of innocent until proven guilty. This concept requires a belief that it's more important for an innocent person to remain free, than it is to ensure that a guilty person is convicted. To believe this you have to concede that guilty people will remain free in order to protect the freedom of the innocent.

The liberal counter argument, like say from the feminists is: "Listen and believe." They find it less egregious for an innocent person to be convicted of the crime of rape, as long as all rapists are convicted. In effect, they believe all men are rapists. To them it's okay if a man is wrongly accused of a specific instance of rape, since they probably would have raped or have already raped. This is an argument we can win

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You believe we can't win against Islam? I don't.