The Unvaxinated = the Taliban

[Dill]

(09-01-2021, 12:31 AM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: If you can't criticize conservatives, liberals, or any other such group without resorting to Nazi, Taliban or ISIS comparisons then you're not 1/10th the intellectual academic you try so hard to convince everyone you are.

One can “criticize” anything or anyone without reference to “Nazis, Taliban or ISIS,” sure. And in some cases such reference has no purpose beyond insult—e.g. if I called you an “ISIS supporter,” because I think them the worst “human scum.” But that’s precisely the kind of uncivil behavior I argue against.

If one is concerned to understand how democracies die, especially via legal and social processes normally unremarked, then study of illiberal precedents is indispensable, and not just from one country.

When we do that from an “intellectual academic” perspective, we are studying people like ourselves, not scum.

Like ourselves in the sense that placed in similar circumstances, some, many, or even most of us might exhibit the same illiberal behavior we critique. So what are those circumstances, and are we experiencing them now? If so, to what degree, and what ought we to be doing about it? The goal is understanding, not “division” and “demonization.”