It is not just some though. It is a whole lot of people.

Or, at least, this is what it is in online discourse. The overwhelmingly loud voices of the intolerant drown out anyone who is even attempting to be nuanced.

But perhaps that says more about online discourse than it does about any left vs right debate.

By Jove! I think you've got it!

Btw, any time I used to try to contribue to bona-fide conservative, right wing media (e.g. redstate), my account would be cancelled as soon as I asked any question that indicated I might be not completely bought into the nominal worldview of the medium. I hate whataboutism, but let's not pretend that this sort of thing is the preserve of the left/progressive part of "online discourse".

> Conservatives believe that even if we are all human, we do not all have enough in common to be able to form a cohesive, coherent society. Conservatives believe that there are good and bad people and that they can identify and assign people to each group.

You're assigning beliefs and motives to other people's actions.

Looking beyond the internet groups (which are a whole other issue on both sides) I know plenty of conservatives, including some people who voted for Trump. Not a single one of them has the beliefs you're assigning. They all fundamentally believe that people should be treated equally regardless of their race, creed, gender, sexual orientation, viewpoint, etc. They believe that the differences among people makes our society great and that everyone should be welcome/included.

They often disagree about the best way to achieve an open, inclusive, successful society but the end goal is the same.

Assigning a belief or morality to other people and then ostracizing them for it is part of the problem, not a solution.

Yes, there are conservatives who lean towards an inclusive, tolerant society. But in this they are at odds with the political philosophy generally called "conservatism".

The fundamental concepts of conservatism are generally at odds (to some extent) with everything you've said above. Can there be people who believe everything you've said above and call themselves conservative? Absolutely. They have a definite political philosophy, and it may overlap with conservatism in various ways, but in some critical senses, it is anti-conservative.

Conservatism as a political philosophy is not easy to characterize, but core components are generally held to include:

* a preference for the status quo (whatever that happens to be) in culture, politics, social order, religion and more. * a belief that heirarchical societies reflect a natural heirarchy of the human condition * a belief that shared culture is required for social cohesion * a belief that moral relativism (or the idea that all cultures are equal in standing) is wrong * a belief that faith-based morality (whatever faith or morality that might be) should play a role in politics * a belief that there are good people and bad people, and that the differences are not (all) circumstantial

These things have been at the core of "modern" western conservatism since Edmund Burke, and continue to underpin the positions of media conservatives today. They were the core of "intellectual conservatism" in the 60s and 70s (Buckley et. al). They are the key beliefs that differentiate conservatism from both libertarianism and progessive ideology.

So sure, I also know people who would call themselves conservatives who don't buy into every one of these, or do so only to varying degrees. They're perfectly entitled to do that, just as I don't consider myself to be someone who agrees with every tenet of progressivism (for example). And who knows, perhaps some of their views do in fact represent a viable and sensible path forwards for society.

But to whatever extent they refute or disavow any of these ideas, they are refuting and disavowing conservative political philosophy and instead creating their own smorgasborg. This is a very American thing to do (c.f. US Catholics and their take-it-or-leave-it approach to papal edicts) and it's a fine way to live your life. But it doesn't change what conservative political philosophy is, in the same way that progressives who feel that perhaps black people should get their own country or something do not define progressive political philosopy.

I don't find this description of right vs. left accurate at all. Or perhaps more specifically I don't feel like the people I have interacted with "on the right" communicate a sense of "intolerance" or "exclusivity". Certainly not to the extent that I would generalize that as a group characteristic. Nor have I encountered more academic definitions that would choose to differentiate based on this metric.

I just read the Wikipedia article on left/right and found it completely out of sync with my internalized model. I wouldn't go as far to say it is 'wrong' but I certainly didn't find it as a useful description of what I've experienced.

So much of the divisiveness we see today seems to be predicated on entirely false understandings of the "other" and a complete lack of agreement on basic terms and concepts. Left/Right is just one example.

As is often the case with semantic arguments, it's probably not very useful to debate terms, and you're probably just better off to say "cancelling is abhorrent and anyone who does it deserves criticism and condemnation irrespective of their 'tribe'" and move on.

I acknowledge in another comment below that there are people who call themselves "conservatives" whose behaviour and/or beliefs do not align with the general understanding of conservative political ideology.

Neither of these facts about the world changes the difference(s) in the nature of progressive and conservative political ideologies. Among those differences is the general trend for progressivism to be inclusive and tolerant of difference, and for conservatism to be exclusionary and less tolerant of difference. And who knows, conservatives might be right - perhaps stable societies do need a conservative stance (unclear). That doesn't mean that the two philosophies are the same, which in turns makes the behavior of people who attach themselves to those philosophies likely to skew in different directions.

For me, what matters are policies enacted that have the power to affect thousands or millions of people. Whether or not I approve of or even believe in "cancel culture", it's a marginal affair whether it's affecting conservatives or progressives.

Progressive policy vs. conservative policy? There's no contest, no comparison between the two that does not differentiate heavily between them on the basis of inclusivity, tolerance, egalitarianism and so forth.

As Atrios notes (a lot; Eschaton) "oh noes, those crazy powerful college kids have gotten another conservative speaker to go away while meanwhile there's been another tax cut, another step toward voting disenfranchisement, another shift towards even greater wealth/income inequality etc. etc".

In short, given the scale of the impact actual policy, I'm not sure how much I care whether there actually is a "cancel culture" or not.