> What we’re talking about is the notion of what constitutes good or “being a good person”.

For most people it follows pretty basic principles that are based on notions of "goodness" which might include humility, fairness, generosity, courage...

Under those circumstances, almost all humans believe that treating everyone as equals is aligned with those principles and therefore makes you a good person. Having to square that with conflicting dehumanised views of others, means that the easiest way to do it is to simply pretend that you are treating everyone the same while subjecting those you discriminate with a harshness that isnt applied equally.

> In reality there is nothing inherently wrong with discrimination itself,

You are using two different definitions of the word in a way that is sophist and not sophisticated.

Discrimination of humans is the mistreatment of others based on characteristics that are protected (those that are predetermined). Discrimination as the noticing differences and evaluating them based on taste is a second definition of the word, used in very different contexts.

That is not "liberal sensitivity" that is just polysemic words.

In the same way that standing in a room with a very powerful light bulb would not make your argument any brighter.

> We are talking about modifications to what constitutes bad vs good forms of discrimination.

No. We were talking about the psychological tools used by conservative people to deal with the cognitive dissonance of wanting to believe themselves as moral and accepting of inherently good precepts like the equal value of all human life while they want to not accept the consequences of the police state they set up to control people they believe inferior.

YOU tried to make it about the semantic similarity between two of the three meanings of the word discrimination. Which is the kind of parlour trick that only works if your audience is stupid.

Liberalism does neither uniquely hold the axiom that all humans are equal, nor does it shape the minds of people to hold it as a universal principle. It is a pretty universal tenant of almost all ethical systems, the only exceptions being system where some humans are not considered human (to avoid the everyone should be treated the same principle still being upheld), or systems that are openly discriminatory in which case they hardly call themselves moral.

Systems that say "we win because we are more powerful" do not do it based on ethics, and systems that have an underclass tend to dehumanise it (slaves not being citizens in rome). Everywhere else people are "equal", where the upper class are exempt from the worst consequences of legal frameworks (see sunset towns in jim crow america only affecting black people).