I was just taking issue with some of your own rhetoric. We both observed the increase in numbers of young people taking military rule seriously. You called this ipso facto “good evidence people are veering more and more to the right-wing, authoritarian side.” I didn’t think so. As I said, most authoritarian regimes, governments, in the 20th century were left-wing, i.e., they were communist. There were occasional right-wing authoritarian regimes like Chile. Then again there were various banana republic regimes that were sometimes called “left-wing” or “right-wing,” but really what they were was just kleptocratic and had nothing clearly to do with right or left. There were fascist regimes in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Japan, which you’ll no doubt want to call right-wing, but they were merely militant, nationalist, and racist, three things you probably associate with the right — but in every other respect they were left-wing.

In any event, since the people we’re talking about are young people, who trend decidedly progressive, and since the left is much more prone to big government authoritarianism than what now, today goes under the title “right,” I just don’t know why you think the problem is owing to a shift toward right-wing authoritarianism.

The whole movement toward censorship of hate speech is itself by and large a phenomenon of the progressive left. Just look at the Yalies in that video, enthusiastically signing a petition to get rid of the First Amendment. Charming, eh? How many of those students do you suppose were fans of “right-wing authoritarianism”? Not too many, I’d say.

By all means, summarize Altemeyer’s and Fromm’s arguments for me, if you think they substantiate your point. I’m afraid I can’t take your word for it, as they were both leftists, and I find leftist theorists to be pretty consistently intellectual dishonest and shoddy. (There are exceptions and it depends on what they’re writing about.)

“It’s rather impolite to tell someone to leave friends and family behind and move to a different part of the world just for criticizing the country,” you say, but I didn’t tell you to leave the country just for criticizing it. I am asking why you stay in the U.S. if your position is that the country is so irremediably corrupt that voting for any party (even Socialist or Green parties?) is you don’t want to “endorse the system” by voting. I know and know of people who have moved to Canada and New Zealand and Germany in part because they had your attitude.

My point is that your failure to vote — and the failure of your similar-minded comrades — is part of the reason the country is as conservative as it is. A small part of the reason, perhaps, but definitely part. I’m not meaning to express “concern” for you or your situation personally, I’m arguing that your arguments for not voting are not persuasive.