DeepThought: Traditionalism and the disputed right to be an asshole

By Tyler Clarke

Most liberals in America love talking about how conservatives are brainless bigots who think Jews, queers, and women are inferior. I have participated in this too, unfortunately, although now I realize the problem with the conservative party is the same problem everywhere: traditionalism. Traditionalism is, in a nutshell, the belief that traditional practices are better than modern ones - that, say, laws described in the Bible are better than laws today, or that slavery was a damn good idea and we never should have stopped it, or that women are objectively inferior to men; any such things. I will be blunt here: traditionalism is a cancer against humanity and should be eradicated as mercilessly as slavery or polio. It is a disease of the mind that makes people act inhuman - pretending innocence all the while, it convinces them that black people should be subverted, that women shouldn't have legal rights, that homosexuals should be tortured because they go against the tenets of some deity. While many of these symptoms don't manifest, they tend to hide under the surface, making people's smallest behaviors biased and cruel. For instance, I have a religious friend who is a self-professed traditionalist, who occasionally rants about how Reddit banned him for being bigoted against transgenders ("Every opinion should be heard!"), and another equally religious friend who is not radically traditionalist and easily accepts the homosexuality and bisexuality of his friends, the rights of women, and the need for fair employment. They're equally devout, religiously speaking, but the traditionalist one is a bigot. If you look closely, you'll find these parallels everywhere.

Oftentimes these people augment their idiotic narratives with the argument that they deserve free speech. This is perfectly true. They do. Everyone does. However, they're forgetting the most important part of free speech: If you have the free speech to be an asshole, I have the free speech to tell you to stop being an asshole. Your free speech is to tell everyone transgenders are morally wrong? My free speech is to ban your sorry ass. "I'm being censored!! WAHHH!" means a whole lot less when you agreed to a Terms of Service. I don't care if God smote the city of Sodom - God was totally fine with Lot prostituting his daughters in the same chapter of the same book, so clearly God is working through some personal problems right now. I know Catholics and Mormons and Presbyterians and probably a whole lot more members of a whole lot more sects who are totally fine with LGBTQIA+ people, with women's rights, with the abolition of slavery. When you justify your super-traditionalist views by saying they're aligned with your church, you make your entire church look bad. The worst thing that happened to the the conservative party was traditionalism - it makes conservativism look stupid, which is very unfortunate. I know a lot of conservatives who aren't ridiculously traditional, and they tend to be good and intelligent people.

You don't have to be progressive to be a good person; just don't be super traditional and you're fine. To be religious requires a little bit of traditionalism. When you start being radically traditionalist is when you start making yourself, your political party, and your religion look stupid. You have the right to be an asshole? I have the right to mute you.