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Jul 14, 2022Liked by Arnold Kling

I was titillated by the phrase “coalition of the sane.”

Yes it is an interesting idea, and your definition of ‘sane’ in philosophical terms is apt, however I don’t think the clinical definition should be ignored - in essence, an absence of psychopathology.

The more I observe those who promote ‘woke’, transgender issues, climate doom, the way they screech at and defame any who don’t agree and/or do not actively promote their delusions, their lack of ability to reason or be rational, their rage when they do not get what they want, their willingness to destroy lives, reputations, society, the economy, the more it seems to me this is not political or ideological, but it is clinical - the result of mental illness.

As for a coalition of the sane, maybe it is a virtual coalition, but certainly it is not physical with any direction or plan.

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Jul 14, 2022Liked by Arnold Kling

Passionate intensity wins in politics pretty much always in the long run. How much popular support do you suppose the Bolsheviks really had in 1917-1918, or the Nazis had in 1933 forwards? That kind of intensity allows for a degree of ruthlessness that is difficult to defeat in electoral politics, and damned near impossible in despotic systems.

The illiberal Left, which is basically the core base of the Democratic Party, is far more passionate about politics than any other group in the US. This wing of the Democrat Party isn't even a fringe minority any longer- they make up almost half the voter support of the Democrats. A coalition of the sane will gut the Democrat Party, thus it will never really happen. To continue to win, the enablers of this in the party will continue to compromise their ethics away. I like Bari Weiss, but she is still incredibly naive.

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Jul 14, 2022Liked by Arnold Kling

Coalition requires coalescence, but the parts can't cohere against a rival coalition when those parts are too different from each other in ways that match the rival.

The problem with 'sane' (at least in this usage) is that it's multidimensional and people who are sane on one thing are often insane on at least one and often many things.

The high-status left has reliably been able to use this fact to play divide and conquer and the 'strange new respect' games and peel off slices to defect from any potential coalition for any particular topic. While predictable, it remains true that the speed with which those slices hurry to loudly signal they aren't sticking with the nasty coalition and instead they side with the progressives (i.e., 'insane') on some hot button issue of the moment is often quite astonishing.

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Great note, and "coalition of the sane" is a good phrase.

But Bari herself became well known as a NY Times Enabler of the non-sane.

One sane issue is that ALL children come from the union of a male and a female, so no child can come from a same sex union - like Bari has with her wife. Sane folk know that same-sex raising of a child is sub-optimal for that child. ( "Morals" was a way to achieve, without science, "optimal" rules for living, optimal to society, not the individual.)

The coalition idea is the right idea - to fight woke, all against woke should be united against it.

If some coalition members are against woke 4 out of 5 times, welcome them for their support when they give it. But note that many in the remaining coalition will oppose whatever impurity any coalition member has.

In European parliaments, most gov'ts, most of the time, are coalitions - no one party (of many) wins a majority and can govern alone. Such a gov't can end soon, like Israel's just did (due for a 5th election in 4 years).

Arnold, if one uses your list of "sane" positions, Trump would be evaluated the most sane President since Reagan.

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Implementing any of your desires is going to require laws to be passed, executive orders to be written, and judges to issue verdicts (and politicians to appoint those judges).

The only coalition with any hope of doing any of those things is the Republicans. You know it. So you're really just telling people to join the Republican coalition and try to steer it towards these ends.

Maybe after a decade in the political wilderness the Democrats will come to their senses the way they did in the 1990s, but the idea that the modern Democratic Party can reform unless forced to is just a pipe dream.

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Fine analysis. There is clearly a degree to which contemporary American liberals (libs) are reaping the woke whirlwind they have been sowing since the cultural revolution of the 60s. The radical chic spawned the conformist left and now some on the pre-woke left are willing to trend right just enough to mitigate the destruction of the woke generation.

So for conservatives and libertarians the anti-woke libs are the inverse of "sunshine patriots". They are rainy day patriots who would probably abandon the right and dissolve any coalition once it was safe for them to go back in the water -- to safely occupy their seats at the table of modern liberalism in journalism, academia and fortune 500 companies. But this is a plan based on self-delusion that minimizes the woke threat. I think anti-woke leftists are useless coalition members in any event.

On the other hand, how would you categorize B. Weiss herself? A reformed enabler? A skeptic with a soft spot for enablers who are sympathetic to most of her propositions? Does she represent the current version of a neo-con and rather than being a former lib mugged by reality she is a former lib canceled by the NYT? What if she were to be convinced that the scope of the coalition needs to be narrowed to exclude practicing libs. Then the only thing new about the coalition is that it includes converts from the left and to the right.

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The problem isn't so much that certain people are "Enablers" but that they're not truly members of the "coalition".

Almost all of us are enablers to some degree or another. The people mentioned, obviously moreso, but expecting nobody to be an Enabler is unrealistic.

Rather, I'd say If they were truly coalition members, their enabling would turn to enabling the members of the coalition they joined.

If, instead, they just continue to enable the clowns the coalition is against, they're not really members of the coalition at all.

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