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DeVliegendeHollander comments on Open Thread, Apr. 27 - May 3, 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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What on earth are you talking about? Take a typical left-wing position from ~50 years ago (or heck ~10 years ago). Transport it to today, and it would be considered unacceptably radically right-wing. Hence the reason left-wing polititians constantly have their positions "evolve".
For example, the parent said:
That is, nearly the whole political spectrum from as recently as ~15 years ago is now considered "evil" by 'mainstream' leftists.
Look, policies are the least important part of political identities. Personality, tone, mood, attitude, and so on, people's general disposition are the defining features and in this sense yes the Michele Malkin types today are far, far more radical than the Whitaker Chambers types back then.
It is a huge mistake to focus on policies when understanding political identities. Something entirely personal, such as parenting styles are far, far more predictive. A policy is something that can be debated to pieces. It is far too pragmatic. People can come up with all kinds of clever justifications. But if a person tells me their gut reaction when they see a parent discipline a child with a light slap and I know pretty much everything I need to know about their political disposition and attitude, philosophy, approach to society and life in general, views of human nature and so on, so everything that really drives these things. Or, another example, the gut reaction they have to a hunter boasting with a trophy. This pretty much tells everything.
And in both your examples, what today comes across as the "conservative" reaction was the standard reaction of everybody except parts of the far left ~50 years ago.
Okay, that's true... but you cannot deny the tone changed, became more, how to put it, aggressive or paranoid? Compare Chambers in the article vs. Ann Coulter or Malkin.
That's not a valid comparison. Coulter and Malkin are people whose success is basically measured by how much outrage can they generate, so they generate a lot.