I have seen a lot of posts comparing leftist “snowflakes” to people who get offended on the right, or libertarians. These can make for some cute memes, but there is a qualitative difference.
Many of the college leftists, “snowflakes” or “SJWs” (I’m not a fan of any of these terms, but I don’t have an adequate replacement) believe that the fact that they are offended ought to silence you and stop you from doing something. While flag burning offends people on the right, their argument for while you ought not do it, is usually not that it offends them. Everyone gets their sensibilities offended. Finding one of these sensibilities and comparing them to the aforementioned leftists can be kind of cute, but it isn’t accurate.
The left is trying to use hurt feelings as the root of the problem and as a means to control others. This isn’t comparable to libertarians or even conservatives. Libertarians and conservatives get offended all of the time, but I have never seen that they use their hurt feelings as the basis of argument that you ought not do something. I am sure there are cases where this has happened, but it isn’t really a common thing.
“[C]onservatives get offended all of the time, but I have never seen that they use their hurt feelings as the basis of argument that you ought not do something.”
Really? Try being insufficiently respectful of TEH FLAG or TEH TROOPS or TEH OFFICERZ. Instant meltdown.
They do get offended by those things. They have a high amount of false tribalistic loyalty to violent institutions. However, they respect their flag and military for reasons and they think you ought to respect it for reason. They get very offended when you don’t respect it. We all get offended by things. People can paint libertarians as being offended by taxes or whatever. The fundamental difference I try to point out here is that conservatives don’t assume their offendedness is an argument that is sufficient to restrict liberty. They rather use other bullshit pretenses to do it. It is… Read more »