Middle Nation Podcast (E:2) -- Liberal Intellectual Sadism

The sort of radical liberal trends that we're seeing throughout the West and that are spreading around the world, including where I am here in Malaysia, I would like to be able to address what I think should be the response of people with conservative traditional values. If you're a conservative person, then you may feel under attack because this movement that's really a lot of it is just spreading on social media, and I don't even know the extent to which it's really, impacting people in their daily lives and society, but it's very loud on social media, these these radical liberal positions. And it it it goes even beyond political correctness. But it's a it's a whole perspective that's being sort of thrust upon us, and it's very challenging to our values. And I think it's important to have a measured response to it, and that's part of, again, why I called the podcast Middle Nation because there's a danger that we will respond to it by becoming radical ourselves, by becoming extreme ourselves, in response to the radicalism that is sort of thrusting itself upon us.

And I don't think that that's useful, and I don't think that it's necessary. I think that we have to be careful not to overreact to what's happening. What I'm talking about when I say this radical sort of, agenda that's being pushed in the West and around the world, the list of things that we're supposed to believe, if we wanna be regarded as modern, sophisticated, educated, you know, progressive, fair minded people, the list just gets longer and longer every day. Just like the acronym community keeps adding letters. You know, I think at this point, they've just added a plus sign at the end of LGBTQI.

I know it's a is there, but then I think they just put a plus sign on the end because they know that it's actually gonna be an endless process of adding more letters. I mean, I come from a family that was always left leaning. I come from a family of Democrats. My parents were Democrats. My grandparents were Democrats back when the Democratic party was actually politically distinct from the Republican party.

It's not anymore. I mean, my family supported the civil rights movement, the labor movement, equal opportunities for women, fair treatment of farmers, all of these kinds of things. And the idea that government had some responsibility to take care of the poor in society, the poor in workers. These were the basics of left wing liberal politics in America in my parents' and my grandparents' generation and in my early life. And the good thing one of the good things about this was whether you agreed with it or didn't agree with it, it was more or less consistent throughout.

You know, the the basic principles that guided these positions were all consistent. The theories behind them were all consistent. They didn't conflict with each other. But within the last several decades, being a liberal has increasingly required a lot more than those basic things, and it's become extremely complicated with so many interdependent ideological dogmas that you can't be an independent thinker as a liberal. It's like trying to maintain a house of cards in a strong wind.

If you express an opinion that somewhere in the in the intersectional landscape, someone is offended, then you lose your liberal credentials and, you know, you're canceled. I mean, it's gotten to the point that the things that used to be the core concerns of the left, have been almost abandoned. I mean, there's not that much talk now about workers. There's there's almost no discussion of class struggle, anything like that. It's all this identity politics.

And who can keep that straight, honestly? And the thing is is that, you know, it's not necessarily a bad thing that it has become more complicated as long as those complexities don't conflict with one another, but they do. The architecture of liberal thought at this point is so rife with contradictions that I don't think it's sustainable. I mean, you're literally required to believe simultaneously in ideas that simply cannot coexist in a rational mind. And what it means is that you're supposed to believe in things you're supposed to believe in things without thinking them through to their logical conclusion because you're not supposed to notice these contradictions.

You're supposed to take the ideas at face value, but you're supposed to commit to them at the deepest possible level. This is not sustainable. It's intellectual sadism. It really is because you're imposing upon people cognitive dissonance. You're expecting people to commit to ideas and to beliefs that require them to suspend logic, to suspend rationality, to suspend, deliberation, to suspend contemplation.

They're not supposed to look too deeply. They're not supposed to analyze or examine these ideas too deeply, but they're supposed to commit to them very deeply. That's sadistic. That's intellectually sadistic. I don't even know where to begin to talk about all of the contradictions in liberal theory, in the in liberal ideas.

You don't have to deliberate very long to recognize that third or fourth wave feminism that rails against the patriarchy while at the same time basically demanding that men coddle women and treat them deferentially and preferentially is self contradicting on so many levels. It doesn't take much contemplation to see that the body positivity movement that we're all supposed to be sensitive about essentially champions the objectification of women which feminists have for so long fought against. If you're a traditionally attractive woman, you are not supposed to be treated as an object of desire. But if you are an obese woman, it would be discriminatory to not treat you as an object of desire. How does that make sense?

And, you know, among the liberals, we've heard about marriage that it's an obsolete and oppressive institution, but that's only the case if it's heterosexual marriage. But if it's a same sex marriage, then it's a beautiful expression, you know, of mutual commitment. There's a contradiction. They tell us that gender is not determined biologically, but homosexuality is, even though it isn't. They'll say that gender is not binary, but, I mean, sex reassignment surgery has only one of two options.

That's binary, we're supposed to believe that it's not. They'll tell us that gender is a social construct, but at the same time that a man can be born in the body of a woman and a woman can be born in the body of a man, so that's not a social construct. And they'll tell us that gender stereotypes, gender roles, traditional gender roles, all of that's bad unless you are biologically different gender living as the opposite gender, in which case you should conform to gender stereotypes as much as possible in exaggerated way as possible, and you should be celebrated for that. The more you conform to the stereotype, then the more you are presenting as that gender. This is a contradiction.

They'll tell us that trans women, trans women are actual women, even if they have X, Y chromosomes, even if they have testicles, and that, you know, we're supposed to overlook the fact that if self identifying as a woman makes you an actual woman, then that destroys everything that feminists have ever fought for. So so that means that that all of the patriarchal CEOs and politicians, all they have to do is self identify as women, and then suddenly the problem is solved. I mean, it's the same the same problem comes when you when you try to say that gender is fluid. I mean, that utterly capsizes feminism and the so called patriarchy because men and women apparently don't exist. So how can you argue for gender equality when there's no such thing as gender or when someone can change their gender throughout the day?

I mean, are they privileged in one moment of the day and oppressed in another moment of the day? At 10AM, they're part of the patriarchy, and at 11AM, they're oppressed by the patriarchy. I mean, these these contradictions, it's it's irreconcilable. And this and this holds true to, like, any issue that you find that is a leftist or liberal issue. Take female genital mutilation.

First of all, there's no talk about male circumcision being the unspeakably horrific thing that FGM is referred to as. But at the same time that they're saying FGM is this horrible crime committed against children, they will advocate pumping children with puberty blockers and surgically altering or removing their genitalia, and that that's something beautiful and progressive and should be applauded. They'll say that when Muslim girls, children, wear the hijab because they wanna look like their mamas, that that's Muslims sexualizing young children. But at the same time, they advocate to have classes in public schools teaching four year old children how to masturbate, and they advocate letting children at that age decide what gender they want to be. That's somehow preserving the purity and innocence of childhood.

That's contradiction. And I mean, on the LGBT issue, there are just too many contradictions to even wrap your head around, especially because of the t's of the LGBTs. All of the mental contortions necessary to explain and justify transgender theory, never mind the suspension of scientific fact, is simply too much to reconcile. Or another issue about race. Again, there's so many contradictions there.

There's so many things that you're not allowed to examine. Black lives matter, but only when black lives are taken by white police officers, but not so much when being taken by other black people. We can't talk about that. It's just endless. All the contradictions.

The architecture of modern liberal thought is going to collapse from all these flaws in its design. And I guess this is what I'm trying to say. What we're witnessing is not going to be a long lasting civilizational changing trend. This is what this is the main message that I wanna get across here. The trajectory of this kind of thinking can only be short before it crashes and burns.

It's just too radical, and it's too erratic. And from their own perspective, it's too ambitious to have longevity. They call themselves progressives. They've been branded by conservatives as regressives, And I think that's more accurate. I I really do.

Because real progress does not occur when you try to change fundamental values and beliefs. That's not progress. These values and beliefs were developed over the course of millennia. History was a long laboratory test to determine what sorts of ideas, morals, and principles are reliable for the maintenance of society. Progress occurs, Real progress occurs when you identify ways in which the existing fundamental values that we hold are not being actualized.

They're not being manifested in society with equanimity and consistency. So then you have movements to extend the application of those values into areas that have been neglected. That's what happened with the abolitionist movement. That's what happened with the suffragette movement. That's what happened with the civil rights movement, for example.

But what's happening now is something very, very different. In some ways, we're seeing an attempt to destroy fundamental values, and a lot of us are reacting to that. In other ways, what we're seeing is an attempt to misapply those values by extending them to address ideologically defined rather than actually existing issues of civil liberty and human rights. And this is why liberals have become really notorious for shunning discussion and debate. Because they're so often arguing on a purely subjective basis, which requires you to be an adherent of their ideology for their points to even make sense.

You know? It's like their arguments their arguments have to remain inside the oxygen tank of their own narrative for it for it to even work. But if you get inside that tank with them, you won't be able to breathe. And that at that point, they'll say that you understand. Because the only way that you can understand what they're saying is if you're locked in the chamber of their narrative.

Because outside of their very ideologically driven narrative, what they're saying makes no sense, and it can't be supported intellectually, factually. What I'm saying is that this is not sustainable. I mean, according to polls, the next generation that's coming up, they're already starting to express a level of estrangement from the ideas of millennials. And I think that even the millennials themselves, as they get older, they'll turn away from this madness. The experiment with radicalism will end, and I think a lot of people are gonna look back with embarrassment at the positions that they took and the extent to which they acquiesced to this nonsense.

So I would encourage you not to acquiesce. It's okay to not bow down to liberal radicalism. Hold on to your traditional fundamental values. They are tried and true, and they've survived every challenge that each unruly generation, mounted against them. That's the middle path for us as a middle nation and for any conservative minded people.

The continuity of these values is unbroken from time immemorial and it will remain so for as long as any of us are here. These are eternal values. So hold on to them because the challenges that we're facing now will not last. Subjana Zakumalaahu khayran, thanks again for, tuning in.