12 Comments

The irony is that "virtue signaling" is not only not virtue, it's not signaling -- which term means putting something on the line to show you mean something. To take an example from comics, when Power Man tracked down Doctor Doom to Latveria to say, "Where's my money, honey?" it would act as signaling: any other would-be deadbeats would know that if Doom didn't get away with it, they were just wasting their time.

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I don't think this is like signally to a potential victim.

This is like signaling to a potential bully. They are "signalling" to each other that they are wearing the gang colors and should not be picked on.

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Hmm, yeah, in the broader definition of signaling.

Which makes it vice signaling, actually: cowardice.

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lol

I love the example.

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My spouse has been calling the Left the "new Puritans" for years. It’s all about browbeating or shunning to get you to agree with their increasingly deranged world view.

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He and I are in complete agreement.

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Mencius Moldbug argues in a related vein when he talks about the "clerisy," I think.

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LGBTQ is the new government-backed religion

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Fischer's book Albion's Seed has the New Englanders as one of the four groups that brought a regional British folk culture to the United States—one a lot of whose elements are still present, even though the ideologies have changed. A predilection for witch hunts seems to be part of theirs, though their "witches" are a different group.

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To add insult to injury, the sins today aren’t even fun. I can’t imagine anyone actually enjoying the types of vice being pushed now. I remember seeing posts claiming the lack of (heterosexual) sexual depictions in movies and the reduced promiscuity are conservative “victories.” Those aren’t victories. Those aren’t signs of virtue. They’re the signs of a population so damaged, so messed up and lacking in vitality that it can’t even recognize and pursue something good (albeit a good thing in excess or pursued in the wrong way).

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That idea is worth an article of its own.

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Agreed. Severian at FQ blog argues the the gorillion pronouns of bespoke sexualities are designed to prevent sex (you do not match my increasingly arcane subtype) while acting / signalling aggressively hyper-sexual.

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