Recently, I went through my own political evolution, and identified the things that led to major episodes of disappointment and betrayal. My final thoughts were:
We need to avoid building up an emotionally charged discourse, whatever the issue is. We need to avoid tribalism. We need to call out hypocrisy, and not tolerate the justification of even the slightest hint of double standards. We need to be wary of arguments rooted in abstract philosophy or speculation, rather than objective facts. We also need to be particularly wary about political strategists trying to hijack pre-existing movements for their own advantage.
This, in turn, has led me to the conclusion that we need to have a systematic, objective approach to thinking about every issue, that specifically aims to address the aforementioned concerns. Hence, I came up with the RIDE method:
R is for being Rational and Reasonable
As I said, we need to avoid having an emotionally charged discourse. Certain emotions, particularly anger, are simply incompatible with keeping a cool mind, which is required for being rational. This is the reason why we must demand a rational discourse where everyone behaves reasonably. This would include keeping calm, not riling up people's emotions, not encouraging moral panics, and speaking in good faith at all times. Where hypocrisy or double standards have been pointed out but there has been no serious attempt to address it, I think we can assume a lack of good faith. Given emotionally charged moments often lead to increased polarization, tribalism and irrational thinking, failing the R test should be a major red flag. (This is also why I have decided to put R first.)
I is for Independent Thinking
Besides emotion, tribalism is the other major enemy of rationality. The combination of emotion and tribalism is especially dangerous. Therefore, we need to assess whether the viewpoints represented come from independent thinking, or from tribalist regurgitation of talking points invented by media personalities and influencers out to score points in the culture wars. I think there is a very good case to give more consideration to original ideas, or solutions that synthesize multiple points of view across the political spectrum. On the other hand, if it sounds like something we've heard before from partisan media sources or culture war influencers, then it definitely merits a red flag just for a likely lack of independent thought. Ideas that fit the agenda of particular politicians and political parties too well should merit even more red flags.
D is for Defending Freedom
One thing we need to be wary of is a movement for freedom turning into its opposite, often via tribalism, irrationality and/or deliberate attempts by those with hidden (or not so hidden) agendas to hijack it. As I said last time, I've witnessed this happening on both the left and the right. To prevent this happening again, whenever a new viewpoint or talking point is presented, we need to assess whether it can lead to policy outcomes that are against individual freedom. Of course, even if an idea might be used by wannabe authoritarians, this should not disqualify it from being considered in the marketplace of ideas, and we should not be limiting what people can say or think about based on potential danger. However, we need to beware of potentially authoritarian ideas, so that we can give them extra scrutiny, and challenge them with pro-freedom viewpoints to act as a balance against authoritarian tendencies. If such pro-freedom viewpoints have been presented but have not been taken seriously by proponents of a potentially authoritarian idea, this would merit a red flag.
E is for Evidence
Finally, when someone presents an idea that is clearly intended to influence political debates, we need to demand the evidence for it. Depending on what the idea is, we might or might not need scientific grade evidence, but at the very least we need to make sure that it is not rooted in abstract philosophy, force-fitting an oppressor vs oppressed worldview, speculation, guilt by association, unproven conspiracy theories, or a general distrust of particular institutions. While private belief (e.g. religious beliefs) should be given much more freedom (e.g. nobody should demand a religious person proof the existence of God), beliefs that are clearly designed to influence politics need to undergo very rigorous scrutiny, because of the potential danger they pose to society in general and/or particular people within society, as well as the health of our social contract and marketplace of ideas.
Going forward, I will start systematically applying the RIDE method to various controversies in the cultural and political discourse. I will start by applying it to topics we are already familiar with, like the woke vs anti-woke controversies, the discourse over free speech and cancel culture, and critical race theory. It will be interesting to see if we find anything different by analyzing these issues systematically. Later, I will expand the RIDE method to examine more issues, ones that I haven't discussed before, including newly emerging issues.
TaraElla is a singer-songwriter and author, who is the author of the Moral Libertarian Manifesto and the Moral Libertarian book series, which argue that liberalism is still the most moral and effective value system for the West.
She is also the author of The Trans Case Against Queer Theory and The TaraElla Story (her autobiography).
You can also read and follow TaraElla's second substack, focused on political philosophy, here.
A thoughtful article and I admire your abbreviation RIDE here, partly since I have been thinking in similar ways. Arr you familiar with criticism and arguments based on that humans actually do not have a complete free will nor full independent thinking since our opinions and behaviours are also driven by emotions, experiences, inner psychology and basic values as survival and fear?