Who gets to have an opinion?

[gerald_duck]

There's a lot of bile in the US on the subject of gun control right now, most of it relatively grim and uninteresting

Comments

[woodpijn]

I'm like you; I think it's important to have consistent meta-level views that apply equally and fairly to one's own side and one's opponents.

Whereas a lot of people think their own object-level view on some issue (guns, abortion, or whatever) is so important that they care more about whether the meta-rules favour that view than whether the meta-rules are fair.

I'm not even sure if abortion vs. gun control is a great example, because it begs the question of whether they are equivalent, which both sides would probably disagree with. A better example is whether the same rules should apply to pro-X and anti-X rhetoric and protests, for pretty much any X.

(See also: http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/03/08/the-slate-star-codex-political-spectrum-quiz/ )

[gerald_duck]

It's not the purest example that could exist in the abstract. However, it is an example I actually observed.