Going to start my day with a thread but then I'll need to go and work so I probably won't catch most of the replies.

When I used to focus mostly on criticising religion, religious people would tell me that religion is not the biggest problem in the world & that irrationalism, illiberalism, violent extremism, homophobia, antisemitism & sexism wouldn't go away if religion did.

This is quite clearly true & I would respond that if religion disappeared, it would only rid the world of religiously motivated irrationalism, illiberalism, violent extremism, homophobia, antisemitism & sexism but that that would still be worthwhile.

Now I focus on Critical Social Justice, people endlessly tell me that it's not the biggest problem in the world and ending the social dominance & prestige of CSJ won't make irrational, illiberal, antiscientific authoritarian thought control go away.

This is again true. Ending the social dominance & prestige of CSJ would only make the CSJ-motivated irrational, illiberal, antiscientific authoritarian thought control go away but that is still a worthwhile thing to aim for.

Whether or not you believe that religion or CSJ are major causes of illiberalism & irrationalism that harm people who don't comply with their rules, you should note that 'Other bad things will still exist so don't bother addressing this one' is a bad argument.

I'm quite sure that everyone who focuses their attention on racism whether CSJ versions or liberal ones would immediately spot the problem with "Ending racism won't stop people from being prejudiced & bigoted" & would say "Yes, but it'd end racist bigotry & that's worthwhile."

Well, liberals who focus specifically on racism would say that & then make further arguments about why addressing specific problems specifically is a good thing. CSJ anti-racists would probably just call them a white supremacist & try to get them fired.

It really is OK to be a person who focuses on a specific problem specifically. It really doesn't mean that you don't believe any other problems to exist or that they are less important & don't require other people to focus on them.

People who want those of us who have a particular focus to address other problems equally are misguided, I believe. If I tried to address CSJ, right-wing populism, climate change, antibiotic resistance & poverty equally, I'd end up not doing any of them proper justice.

Of course, there can be valid criticism of imbalance if someone who focuses on one problem never acknowledges the same kind of problem occurring on the other side of the same coin.

eg, I believe feminists are quite within their rights to focus their attentions solely on women's issues but if they condone prejudice & discrimination against men when it rears itself in their space, I'd question their commitment to equality of the sexes.

Similarly, I think those of us who focus on cancel culture when it comes from Critical Social Justice sources need to ensure they don't condone it when it comes from other groups they are more sympathetic to.

For example, I seem to remember a big deal being made of somebody having said black people were biologically superior because of their higher levels of melanin many years ago when she was a student.

I don't remember the details. Maybe she still believes it so can be rightly criticised for it but maybe she grew up & rejected that racist idea & if so, consistency demands that we don't cancel people for past ideas they've since come to realise are stupid & unethical.

I expect many of you will update me on the story now, but for now, let's consider it a hypothetical scenario. A liberal should consistently object to people being cancelled for having said stupid and horrible things years ago & before their frontal lobes had fully developed.