Our value systems—all of them—are artificial.

They were created by us, humans, so that we could live in a world that’s as pleasant for as many of us as possible.

How do I know? Well, before courts, banks, schools, houses, countries… before everything apart from humans existing in the wild with other animals… there were no rules.

Well, there was one rule—survival. And to that end, people did some fucked up shit (into which I will not go).

But no one went to court and got tried. There was only one form of justice—again, survival. So, if you could do it and get away with it, you did.

Over time, we realised our tendency to do fucked up shit, if left unchecked. So, we started creating value systems… to keep ourselves in check.

Why is this important? Well, I believe it gives some context as to why two reasonable, intelligent people can hold fundamentally conflicting ideas.

Why one intelligent woman can be racist and another can be for multiculturalism—without this being a signal that one of them is dumber, worse or less “moral” than the other. It comes down to values.

The values that matter most to an individual affects which aspects of society that individual will fight hardest to protect, and how much of themselves that individual is willing to compromise to win the fight.

If “family” is my number one value, I may compromise my intellectual openness to protect that value. If “multiculturalism” is your number one value, you may compromise your intellectual honesty to protect that value.

We are indoctrinated into our values, whether or not we want to be, because we are born into them. They get to work shaping us, long before we’re conscious of the process.

So, when you encounter someone who holds fundamentally different views from your own, I believe the liberal-minded thing is to try to understand their values—not to judge and dismiss them.

Understanding each other’s values is what allows us to coexist. It’s why I know not to blaspheme around my muslim friends, even though I am not a muslim (and vehemently disagree with many muslim beliefs).

It’s not about me—it’s about them.

Every time we’re trying to influence an outcome that is dependent on how other people behave (e.g. voting), it’s not enough to understand only ourselves. We must make the effort to understand others too.

To a true liberal, this is not a choice.

We must decide what our goal is—to prove that we are superior or to create a superior world?

So when we enter discussions with people who disagree with us (especially when they number almost half of the active electorate), it behoves us not to treat them like our inferiors.

Again, the fact that some of our opponents may choose to treat us or others like inferiors should not affect our principles. We should play by our liberal rules—not their non-liberal ones.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald said:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”

A true liberal leaves their mind open, at all times, to the possibility that they might be wrong. They do not try to coerce people into adopting ideas—without listening to the other side—which they’ve already determined are best.

Remember that despite the labyrinthine nature of the liberal ideology, the one thing that immediately disqualifies you from being a liberal is the belief that it’s OK to force people to do something, if it’s “for their own good”.

P.S. Can you stop with the ridiculous Nazi Germany comparison? It proves the opposite of what you think it does

A German child building stacks of worthless German currency (thanks to hyperinflation)

Many things led to the rise of the Third Reich… but open and free speech was, categorically, not one of those things.

The financial responsibility for WWI was pinned on Germany through the Treaty of Versailles, which focussed on (you guessed it)… blame.

Blame by an elite power that had a moral superiority complex.

Then this power took away (you guessed it)… wealth. France occupied the coal-rich Saar region for years. Combine this with heavy repatriations and the advent of The Great Depression and you get (you guessed it again)… disenfranchisement.

People had no jobs, no prospects, no hope. The Weimar Republic (predecessors of the Third Reich) was failing as a democratic body, elected to serve its populace.

Is this all beginning to sound familiar?

No one (especially on the international political stage) listened to the plight of the German people, because they believed the German people were at fault for and deserved their plight.

So, when a crazy man with ridiculous (facial) hair told the German people:

“Hey, I won’t ignore you. And it’s not your fault—it’s the jews!”

The German people were more than ready to follow him. He was the only one willing to lend an ear. He was the only one not telling them they deserved what they were getting. He was the only one not turning a blind eye.

After Hitler came to power, the way he consolidated that power was not by encouraging free speech—it was by taking it away.

And when Hitler finally got aggressive, Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy and other international political failures are what allowed his dominance… not (again) free speech.

Hitler flouted the rule of law and should have been dealt with accordingly, by the force of the law… but this has nothing to do with free speech.

Allowing people to be able to “say” whatever they want is not the same as allowing people to “do” whatever they want.

Suggesting that protecting the freedoms of citizens is somehow tantamount to endorsing fascism is… just plain wrong.

The shutting down of avenues of dialogue is what led the German populace to become so hopeless and angry, that it turned to extremism—it was not too much open debate and free discourse which did that.

Pseudo-liberals with a superiority complex are repeating the same damn mistake in America and all over the world.

Take away their trendy causes and you’ll find that these armchair activists have more in common with extremist preachers than not.

We’re dealing with our societies the way people deal with bad marriages.

We’re so desperate to believe that these ugly, complicated issues don’t exist that we’d rather sweep them under the rug than confront them through civil conversation.

But as any divorcee knows, things swept under the rug don’t go away—they fester until the infection rots from the inside out.

Milo Yiannopolous speaking at university campuses, and Tobias Lütke and Shopify (rightly) refusing to censor Breitbart aren’t the things which will hand us over to fascism.

Forcing people with whom we disagree to disappear is what will.

To clarify—as citizens, we are free to systematically silence other citizens. To have double standards. To encourage censorship. We just can’t do all these things and still claim to be liberal.