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WJM Schools Brother Brian on Why He is an Oppressor Under His Own Definition

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It is amusing to watch WJM hoist a materialist with his own petard. All that follows is WJM:

Brother Brian,

So, if you could, you’d force others to live by your preference – let’s call it the non-oppression of women. Your position is that it is your subjective preference as to how people should behave, and attach no “absolute” value to that preference, and that there is no “absolute truth” as to how people should behave or treat others.

From your perspective, then, the oppressors in your example are also forcing others to live by their preference, even though they mistakenly believe that their preference is an absolute truth.

So, again from your perspective (correct me if I’m wrong), both you and the oppressor group are, ultimately, forcing others to live according to your personal preferences.

Outside of the fact that one group mistakenly believes (under your view) that their beliefs represent absolute truth, isn’t oppression and non-oppression achieved the same way – forcing people to behave in a way that they don’t want to behave?

Let’s look at the definition you provided for oppression:

Oppression is when an identifiable group is forced to do something because another identifiable group says they must.

Aren’t those you’ve identified as oppressors being forced to do something (not behave the way they have been, behave in an acceptable way) because another identifiable group (you and those enforcing your laws) say they must? Does this not make YOU every bit as much an oppressor, by the very definition you provided?

Let’s look at another part of your definition:

Oppressed is being forced to do something that everyone else is not forced to do.

Those whom you have identified as the oppressed are being forced, by you and your law enforcers, to do something that you and your law enforcers are not being forced to do – they are being forced to not act on their beliefs or preference, to stop engaging in their preferred behavior.

Hmm. You might counter here that both your group and the oppressor group are being held to the same specific behavioral standard – you can’t forcefully segregate women at that time of the month. Therefore it wouldn’t meet the second part of your definitional standard of oppression: “Oppressed is being forced to do something that everyone else is not forced to do.”

Let’s illustrate the problem here with a more revealing example: what if the preferred behavior of a group is homosexuality. What if another group creates a law outlawing that behavior and enforces it. Now, they could say “We do not engage in homosexuality so we are not forcing them to give up any activity we ourselves engage in.” But, what the first group would be doing is denying the homosexual group the ability to engage in adult, consensual sexual relationships with their preferred gender, which the first group gets to do.

So, it seems clear logically that you would be just as guilty of oppression as those whose oppression you are seeking to eliminate; in fact, there would be no way to impose enforced behavioral restrictions on anyone with out oppressing them in some way, because you would be forcing them to stop acting on their beliefs and preferences, while other groups can freely act on theirs.

Comments
WJM
For many, reason and logic are just obstacles that can be entirely ignored. The end justifies the means. Rhetoric, emotional pleading, bullying and force are far easier and, unfortunately, usually more effective tools of gaining a political end.
Yes, we have come a long way from the days when logic and emotion played complementary roles in the art of persuasion. In the arena of salesmanship or public speaking, for example, the speaker would [a] provide facts about and benefits of a given product or position so that the listener could justify a purchase or a change of mind (logic) and [b] tell a touching story or create a word picture in the listeners mind to close the sale (emotion). Today the wonderful art of persuasion is being mischaracterized as an aggressive act of “imposing our values on others,” as if the recipient of the message was powerless to simply say no and walk away. Indeed, it is now considered to be a moral crime – and will soon be a legal crime – to try to convince anyone of anything. Fewer and fewer citizens understand that persuasion is the only civil way that a person or group can reach hearts and minds and make changes for the better. Our adversaries on this site, of course, do not have even the first clue about why these things matter.StephenB
February 8, 2019
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WJM The hypocrisy and the self righteousness is what’s worse. BB lectures others about the evils of oppressors oppressing the oppressed and it turns out he is the oppressor!! How crazy must he or she be to contradict their own position? No argument can overcome irrationally. Vividvividbleau
February 8, 2019
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For many, reason and logic are just obstacles that can be entirely ignored. The end justifies the means. Rhetoric, emotional pleading, bullying and force are far easier and, unfortunately, usually more effective tools of gaining a political end.William J Murray
February 8, 2019
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How can you have an honest discussion without an interpersonal standard of honesty? If you are a moral subjectivist such a standard does not exist-- indeed, by definition, it cannot exist. How can we come to an agreement on anything? If you are a subjectivist why should I (or would I) even trust you. Imagine if we applied such a standard to society at large? How would it be possible to find justice in a criminal or civil sense? Would it ever be possible to root out corruption in business or government? How can we even begin to talk about so-called social justice if there is no real standard of justice?john_a_designer
February 8, 2019
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Here's another way of putting this: there will always be a "closet"! IOW, when "gays" were "let out of the 'closet'" of moral shame, what ensued was that the Boy Scouts of America were placed in the "closet." The only way that the BSA could get out of the "closet" was by changing their rules. "Gay" men are now allowed to be Scout Masters, even though there is abundant evidence that this might lead to sexual abuse. And, since "boys" is a misogynist term, a further condition for being let out of the closet was to let "girls" be "Boy" Scouts. Bottom line: whoever is making up the rules enforces the "closet"--that is, behavior deemed unacceptable. It is impossible, then, to live in a world where there are NO "closets." The only question is who is in charge of setting the terms of the prevailing morality. I'll point out to you--speaking of "closets," that when the Bastille was liberated during the French Revolution, there were about 8 people there, half of whom were crazy. Now consider the Left's "closet": think of the Gulag Archipelago.PaV
February 8, 2019
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Deep down, I think most hard left progressives understand that they have no absolute moral basis for their beliefs. That is why they are so eager to censor opposition and stop debate, lest their nakedness be made visible to all. Including themselves.anthropic
February 7, 2019
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Precisely. :)mjoels
February 7, 2019
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