Aversion to hearing constructive criticism from people of your own side.

in constructive •  6 months ago 

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One thing that we all know is that nobody likes to hear somebody on the other side of a controversial topic tell you that your argument is bad, and explain to you why it's bad.

It feels like a philosophical attack, because it usually is. Pro-abortion people don't like to hear anti-abortion people tell them that they're making a poor argument. Pro-2A people don't like hearing anti-2A people tell them that they're making a poor argument. This is an entirely non-partisan issue.

What's interesting and more partisan is the aversion to hearing constructive criticism from people of your own side.

What happens when a pro-abortion person tells another pro-abortion person, "I agree with you on policy 100%; but, this argument you're making is full of logical holes, and factually incorrect."? What happens when a pro-2A person says the same thing to another pro-2A person?

I think that people like me, who are outside of the major political teams, and hold views that most people view as right-wing, and views that most people view as left-wing, experience the conversations like the one in the previous paragraph disproportionately often. Especially since we're such a small minority, simply having a social life at all precludes access to an echo chamber.

This is where I think the radical left is shooting itself in the foot or eating its own head.

I'm not saying "all the people" or "none of the people" going either way here; but, the people who are deemed to be to the right of where I stand are overwhelmingly receptive to constructive criticism when I find a flaw in their argument. In contrast, most leftists with whom I interact seem like they wanna bite my head off if I dare to say, "I agree with you; but, your argument has a lot of problems." I've been unfriended by a grand total of one person on the right that I know of due to a discussion -- not on the actual philosophy, politics, or the law -- but on the weakness of his specific argument. If I had ten hands, all with five fingers, and I got a ring for every leftist who decided to cut ties with me, or I'm fully aware decided to disassociate from someone I know, over well-meaning, constructive criticism, I would still have more rings than fingers.

I'll give the real life example of the discussion that finally got the guy on the right to cut ties with me. This seems to be the right way to illustrate the value of these conversations if you want to advance a cause and what you lose when you shut yourself off to these discussions, without rocking the already shaky, leftist boat on a pet, leftist issue.

So, anybody who follows what I say with any regularity knows that I'm pro-gun. In fact, to anti-gun people, I probably make the NRA look like Beto.

My former friend was making that age-old pro-gun argument that "Hitler took the guns."

Now, it's true that most dictatorships make disarming the citizens a high priority. I wasn't saying, and I'm not saying now, that he was broadly wrong in trying to point out that dictators don't like their citizens to be armed.

It was the "Hitler" thing that specifically got to me for a couple of reasons. One reason is that the anti-gun people often point to Hitler as a rather pro-gun dictator and, although they're mostly wrong, they're not entirely wrong. It seems to me that in the overwhelming majority of cases in which Hitler is evoked in these arguments, it's two people shouting at each other without knowing their history. Secondly, getting the history right makes it clear that, on the gun issue, Gavin Newsom and Kathy Hochul are basically modernized copies of Hitler.

  • Universal background checks is just another way of saying, "National Gun Registry." Germany implemented one under the Weimar Republic and it made it easy for Hitler to confiscate guns from whomever he thought shouldn't have them.

  • It's a popular thing among leftist gun- grabbers to want the state to be able to audit your social media to make sure that you're of proper moral character before you get a gun or a carry permit. Hitler had the same policy. Surprise surprise, Hitler deemed every bond-haired, blue-eyed member of the party as an upstanding citizen who can have any gun he wants. The Jews on the other hand... they got ten years in prison if they didn't turn in their guns -- that was before the gas chambers and all that jazz.

I could go on; but, how does this constructive criticism hurt the cause or the activism? To the credit of dozens of people who are on my side of the issue, everybody else has taken that clarification of history and stopped falling into the trap of that argument.

There are bad arguments for good ideas. There are good arguments for bad ideas. It's one thing to lose your cool or composure when an opponent is hacking at an argument that you're making for a policy that's important to you. It's quite another to lose your cool when somebody on your side sees a deadly flaw in your argument that's gonna lead your team down the wrong path.

You should view your arguments like all the pieces on a chess board that are less valuable than your king. Your king is your utmost value. Your king is the thing that you're trying to defend, just like this value that you hold so passionately.

You must be willing to sacrifice every piece before you give up the king. Sure, you don't capriciously throw your pieces away. You protect them too. But, when push comes to shove, sacrificing your knight may suck; but, it's gonna be better than putting your king in jeopardy.

Since I'm not a leftist, most leftists do probably look at me as somewhat of sparring partner at best, an outright enemy at worst. To an extent, since I'm not a radical right-winger, the same applies there.

That said, I would give this constructive criticism to my leftist sparring partners -- stop being so ossified in your methods and your packaging of your ideas. The willingness to kill your darlings in the pursuit of something more important can only make you a better advocate for your causes, it can only expand your numbers, it can only give you a better than zero shot at forming coalitions.

Shutting yourself off can only do the opposite.

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