LogFAQs > #973512484

GEKGanon posted...

The left says the right is, among other things, banning books, and yeah, the right does actually seem to be doing that. Why? They'll tell you it is to protect kids.

Meanwhile, the right says the left is, among other things, pushing for schools to keep secrets from parents about their children, and yeah, the left does actually seem to be doing that. Why? They'll tell you it is to protect kids.

Now both sides will look at that statement and say "No, but we're REALLY protecting kids."

The difference, however, is that banning books to protect kids has little to no basis in anything other than a misinformed moral panic spurred on by pundits that exaggerate reality to feed the algorithms that pay them and will therefore almost certainly cause substantially more harm than good, while forcing schools to tell parents about gender non-confirming behaviour against the kids' wishes is a well-documented risk factor for those kids having the shit beaten out of them. That's only "the same" if you take everything you're reading at its most basic face value interpretation and do nothing to actually consider it or research the empirical reality of the matter. There is a single reality. Conflicting opinions on what that reality is are not made equally valid by the mere basis of being "just opinions."

Now, what you can say is that everyone believes they're doing what's best. There's some merit in that mindset, and it's good to keep that in mind when discussing such matters, but if you're presented with evidence that what you believe is best is actually quite harmful, and you still refuse to adjust your beliefs and actions accordingly, you stop being able to hide behind those good intentions because you've made it clear that you're more interested in being right than doing right. If you can't defend your belief that something is best (and especially if you can't refute evidence to the contrary), you shouldn't believe that it's best.