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Comment by scarmig | Hacker News Reader

One of the points Yglesias makes is that judges prejudge certain arguments to be wrong. For instance, one judge says

> Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist... I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging... I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments... Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.

At this point, the status quo (at least in debate, but also more broadly) is simply mouthing liberal pieties. Repeating "Black Lives Matter" a thousand times is neither sharp nor radical, and it's funny to see people whose ideas are incredibly conventional think of themselves as a rebel.

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> > […] I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging... I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments […]

Then why would you waste everyone's time, including yours, in being a judge? It's like being a figuring skating judge and saying "I hate the cold and so think this sport done in a cold environ is dumb so will give everyone a zero."

Well, no, most debate topics are not "is political take X good?" Policy questions could be affirmed by leftist positions and argued against from other leftist positions. I think the judge's stance is boring, but everyone seems to be missing that high school policy debate is not meant to make an actual policy decision. It's meant to teach students how to argue within a frame - which is how lots of arguments necessarily happen! You just don't like this judge's particular frame.

FYI this post was actually written by Maya the intern (Matt only writes the weekday posts).

> At this point, the status quo (at least in debate, but also more broadly) is simply mouthing liberal pieties

A single example chosen specifically because it is extreme isn’t the status quo, and Maoism isn’t (and is opposed to) liberalism.

> A single example chosen specifically because it is extreme isn’t the status quo,

This seems to be the lesson we're slow at learning.

A steady diet of extreme examples tends to shift one's perspective toward a bad position. The position is bad because it struggles to discern reality well - because bad inputs keep skewing the math.

There's liberalism as a political theory (with all its variations, from classical to Rawlsian), which is admirable and distinct from Maoism. But there's also the "liberalism" that's more accurately described as "the set of cultural, social, and political beliefs broadly held by the college educated, urban, professional class." And professing adherence to Maoism is entirely acceptable in that milieu, in a way that professing adherence to e.g. the Religious Right or Trumpism is not. (The fact that this judge's commitment to Maoism is purely symbolic verbal signaling and not linked to any actual activism is besides the point.)

Imagine a judge said he was a committed fascist who would judge students on that basis, regardless of the quality of their arguments. Would that be considered acceptable in the same way the Maoist judge is? Just last night I had dinner with a friend who was telling me about a family member's encounter with Maoist justice: he was murdered by being thrown down a well during the Cultural Revolution.

Or, take the other angle. Suppose you had a staffer on Fox News who spent his off hours writing racist screeds on white supremacist forums (this has actually happened IIRC). Would you take it as a single extreme example that's not worth thinking about, or would you take it as indicative of some deeply troubling aspects of the modern Right?

Then there's liberalism as a political tradition that advocates free markets, laissez-faire economics, civil liberties under the rule of law, and individual autonomy, limited government, economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech.

In liberal democracy, an elected government cannot discriminate against specific individuals or groups when it administers justice, protects basic rights such as freedom of assembly and speech, provides for collective security, or distributes economic and social benefits.

What you called "liberalism" in the first part is probably libertarianism.

You wouldn't be from America, would you, where long-established English terms get corrupted?

Because it's a pretty standard political and social concept -> https://imgur.com/a/BdkeTf4

Not to mention -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism

Indeed I am. Thank you for the context. I wonder if we shouldn't describe these things with more granularity, like how "functional programming" may be used to mean "pure functional abstractions", "pattern matching", and many other things in varying combination.

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