Thursday, February 13, 2014

Debate with Michael Anissimov A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about "neoreaction", a new political ideology that is getting a fair amount of press. So I decided to have a debate with Michael Anissimov, a neoreactionary blogger. I agreed to represent the "Cathedral", i.e. the liberal orthodoxy, but ironically, Bloggingheads wouldn't allow us to have the debate on their site.

So we recorded it ourselves, which is harder than you would think, even with modern technology. As a result, the quality is not amazing, and there's an annoying watermark, and we had to keep switching back and forth between our faces. But I think it turned out OK. You can watch the debate here, or read a very good written summary here.

The four questions we covered were:

1. Which is better, traditional society better or modernity?

2. Are "all men created equal"?

3. Could monarchy work in this day and age?

4. Which is better, traditional gender roles or modern gender roles?

As you'll see, I took a basically libertarian perspective throughout the debate. Liberals and libertarians disagree on a lot of things, but the basic American founding ideas - equality under the law, civil liberties - are things we agree on. The connection froze just as we were getting into the most heated area of disagreement, gender roles. Too bad. But I still think the debate turned out pretty well.
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