Agreed that the anti-capital-punishment stance exemplified by “capital punishment is murder” is more attached to the American left than the American right, as are accusations of sexism in general (including but not limited to those applied to evo-psych).
“Genetic engineering is eugenics” seems trickier to me.
In the U.S. at the moment, I’d say Republican voters are more likely to endorse a “science can’t be trusted” argument than Democratic ones, and Democratic voters are more likely to endorse a “corporations can’t be trusted” argument than Republican ones. “Genetic engineering is eugenics” can be spun both ways, I think.
That is, if I wanted to convince a randomly selected Democratic voter to vote against genetic engineering, I could use rhetoric along the lines of “evil corporations want to use genetic engineering techniques to breed a so-called superior race of food crops, which will eradicate the food crops ordinary consumers know and trust and leave us at their mercy. Don’t let them get away with it!” pretty effectively. (Though less effectively than they could have 30 years ago.)
If I wanted to convince a randomly selected Republican voter, I could use similar rhetoric with “corporations” replaced by “scientists” and “consumers” replaced by “ordinary people”.
Both of those, I think, would be invoking the spectre of eugenics, the only change would be how the eugenicists are characterized… that is, are they elite academic eugenicists, or greedy corporate eugenicists?
All of that said, I endorse eugenics, so I’m probably not a reliable source of information about the rhetorical charge of these words for the mainstream.
Different perspectives, probably. In most European countries, I dare to say, everything associated with genetics is suspect to the left and the left also more often sides with the anti-science rhetoric in general. This is partly because the European right-wingers are less religious than in the U.S. (although I have heard creationism had become political issue in Serbia few years ago) and perhaps somehow related to the differences between Continental and analytic philosophy, if such intellectual affairs have real influence over practical politics.
Yeah, that’s been a significant shift over the last few decades in the U.S. There’s still a significant anti-scientific religious faction within the American left (New Agers and such) but they’ve been increasingly joined by factions that thirty/forty years ago would have been considered right, making the coalition as a whole a lot more secular than it was. Meanwhile the right’s power base has increasingly moved towards more rural states, and the . anti-scientific religious faction within the American right (evangelical Christians and such) have gained more relative power within it.
Three or four decades ago I think were were more aligned with the European model.
I have no idea whether the distinctions between continental and analytic philosophy have anything to do with it, and am inclined to doubt that the philosophical schism is causal if so, but I’d love to hear arguments supporting the idea.
It gets more complex once you include other groups, too — such as libertarians. In the ’60s and ’70s, the libertarian movement was closer to the New Left than to the Right, for instance.
I would tend to put “Genetic engineering is eugenics” in as a left-wing argument, because the left seems more likely to compare the right to Nazis, call them racist, etc. (with the right, of course, comparing the left to Stalin).
But on the other hand the American Right seems to have been up in arms about “Death Panels” or something, so I gotta admit I’m uncertain; I don’t follow the minutiae of politics on your side of the Atlantic.
Yeah, I think in a global context I would agree with you. The U.S. Left and Right are at this point their own beasts.
Also, at this point in the U.S., pretty much everyone compares everyone else to Hitler, and pretty much nobody remembers exactly who Stalin was. Actually, I suspect that >60% of the population, if asked whether the Soviet Union was allied with the U.S. or with Nazi Germany during WWII, would state confidently that it was allied with Nazi Germany.
I would say that “USSR was an ally of Nazi Germany for a time” is an example of WAitW. They had a non-aggression pact for a while, but both side knew it was just a matter of time before they will fight each other, and they didn’t do anything to actually help the other—USSR mostly used all the bought time to prepare itself for war against Nazi Germany. For borderline values of “ally” you can call them allies, but that’s sneaking in the usual connotation of being allies (actively helping each others) which was just not present.
This is far off-topic, but Stalin certainly expected the non-aggression pact to last. The whole tone of the Soviet press at the time changed to avoid criticizing fascism much, and there were trade ties and even (gasp!) cultural exchanges. There were no indications that the Soviet regime had any inclination of starting a war with Germany, though ti would probably not have joined the Axis either. Well, maybe, if Hitler changed the rhetoric enough to exclude the Russians from the Untermensch classification and found his Lebensraum elsewhere, though this is a pure counterfactual speculation.
There were no indications that the Soviet regime had any inclination of starting a war with Germany, though ti would probably not have joined the Axis either.
The Soviets actually tried to join the Axis in October-November 1940. The sticking point was that the Germans wanted the Soviets to agree to a split in spheres of influence along the Dardanelles and Bosporus, while the Soviets wanted a share of the Balkans.
Throw in things like Basis Nord, the massive amount of war-critical natural resources the Soviets shipped the Nazis 1939-1941, the German shipments of weapon systems (cruisers, aircraft, naval guns) and technical drawings to the Soviets, German diplomatic support for the invasion of Finland . . . well. The Soviets and Germans were awfully cooperative until Barbarossa, even if one stops short of saying they were allied.
Feel free to substitute “fought a shared enemy with” for “was allied with” if you think that improves the question. I trust you understood my point, though.
I thought the standard left-wing argument against genetic engineering was that only the rich will be able to afford it, with an implication that the rich will be able to unfairly stabilize their advantages.
Agreed that the anti-capital-punishment stance exemplified by “capital punishment is murder” is more attached to the American left than the American right, as are accusations of sexism in general (including but not limited to those applied to evo-psych).
“Genetic engineering is eugenics” seems trickier to me.
In the U.S. at the moment, I’d say Republican voters are more likely to endorse a “science can’t be trusted” argument than Democratic ones, and Democratic voters are more likely to endorse a “corporations can’t be trusted” argument than Republican ones. “Genetic engineering is eugenics” can be spun both ways, I think.
That is, if I wanted to convince a randomly selected Democratic voter to vote against genetic engineering, I could use rhetoric along the lines of “evil corporations want to use genetic engineering techniques to breed a so-called superior race of food crops, which will eradicate the food crops ordinary consumers know and trust and leave us at their mercy. Don’t let them get away with it!” pretty effectively. (Though less effectively than they could have 30 years ago.)
If I wanted to convince a randomly selected Republican voter, I could use similar rhetoric with “corporations” replaced by “scientists” and “consumers” replaced by “ordinary people”.
Both of those, I think, would be invoking the spectre of eugenics, the only change would be how the eugenicists are characterized… that is, are they elite academic eugenicists, or greedy corporate eugenicists?
All of that said, I endorse eugenics, so I’m probably not a reliable source of information about the rhetorical charge of these words for the mainstream.
Different perspectives, probably. In most European countries, I dare to say, everything associated with genetics is suspect to the left and the left also more often sides with the anti-science rhetoric in general. This is partly because the European right-wingers are less religious than in the U.S. (although I have heard creationism had become political issue in Serbia few years ago) and perhaps somehow related to the differences between Continental and analytic philosophy, if such intellectual affairs have real influence over practical politics.
Yeah, that’s been a significant shift over the last few decades in the U.S. There’s still a significant anti-scientific religious faction within the American left (New Agers and such) but they’ve been increasingly joined by factions that thirty/forty years ago would have been considered right, making the coalition as a whole a lot more secular than it was. Meanwhile the right’s power base has increasingly moved towards more rural states, and the . anti-scientific religious faction within the American right (evangelical Christians and such) have gained more relative power within it.
Three or four decades ago I think were were more aligned with the European model.
I have no idea whether the distinctions between continental and analytic philosophy have anything to do with it, and am inclined to doubt that the philosophical schism is causal if so, but I’d love to hear arguments supporting the idea.
It gets more complex once you include other groups, too — such as libertarians. In the ’60s and ’70s, the libertarian movement was closer to the New Left than to the Right, for instance.
I would tend to put “Genetic engineering is eugenics” in as a left-wing argument, because the left seems more likely to compare the right to Nazis, call them racist, etc. (with the right, of course, comparing the left to Stalin).
But on the other hand the American Right seems to have been up in arms about “Death Panels” or something, so I gotta admit I’m uncertain; I don’t follow the minutiae of politics on your side of the Atlantic.
Yeah, I think in a global context I would agree with you.
The U.S. Left and Right are at this point their own beasts.
Also, at this point in the U.S., pretty much everyone compares everyone else to Hitler, and pretty much nobody remembers exactly who Stalin was. Actually, I suspect that >60% of the population, if asked whether the Soviet Union was allied with the U.S. or with Nazi Germany during WWII, would state confidently that it was allied with Nazi Germany.
But it was, for a time at least!
I would say that “USSR was an ally of Nazi Germany for a time” is an example of WAitW. They had a non-aggression pact for a while, but both side knew it was just a matter of time before they will fight each other, and they didn’t do anything to actually help the other—USSR mostly used all the bought time to prepare itself for war against Nazi Germany. For borderline values of “ally” you can call them allies, but that’s sneaking in the usual connotation of being allies (actively helping each others) which was just not present.
This is far off-topic, but Stalin certainly expected the non-aggression pact to last. The whole tone of the Soviet press at the time changed to avoid criticizing fascism much, and there were trade ties and even (gasp!) cultural exchanges. There were no indications that the Soviet regime had any inclination of starting a war with Germany, though ti would probably not have joined the Axis either. Well, maybe, if Hitler changed the rhetoric enough to exclude the Russians from the Untermensch classification and found his Lebensraum elsewhere, though this is a pure counterfactual speculation.
The Soviets actually tried to join the Axis in October-November 1940. The sticking point was that the Germans wanted the Soviets to agree to a split in spheres of influence along the Dardanelles and Bosporus, while the Soviets wanted a share of the Balkans.
Throw in things like Basis Nord, the massive amount of war-critical natural resources the Soviets shipped the Nazis 1939-1941, the German shipments of weapon systems (cruisers, aircraft, naval guns) and technical drawings to the Soviets, German diplomatic support for the invasion of Finland . . . well. The Soviets and Germans were awfully cooperative until Barbarossa, even if one stops short of saying they were allied.
Feel free to substitute “fought a shared enemy with” for “was allied with” if you think that improves the question. I trust you understood my point, though.
I thought the standard left-wing argument against genetic engineering was that only the rich will be able to afford it, with an implication that the rich will be able to unfairly stabilize their advantages.