Actually the French revolution discredited many of the ideals it claimed to have for generations, it happened though that emperors still wanted to be irresponsible as before and had a knack of leading all to genocide or big wars. Later, like Hegel could tell, people just realized the French revolution had a point, so the better ideals were brought back, and less of the guillotine.
And so it is today, a lot of what the extreme right wing wants to protect or turn back the clock to, has been already being seen as a thing that the emperors or dictators of the past preferred to use. Nationalism, xenophobia, bigotry and racism do not deserve to be picked up from the dustbin of history were many already had put it in.
As HMHW, noted, the process of moving towards a more just society is a journey, not a destination. It is a failure of those I consider to be my fellow liberals to abandon allies and fellow travelers on the roadside because they fail to meet purity tests. Particularly when the course curriculum and passing grade continues to change without prior notice or vetting.
Also, it is too easy and convenient to dismiss legitimate objections because they are coming from the “rich and powerful”. And even if they are, it is wrong to immediately dismiss them for that reason alone. Ideas should stand and fall on their merit. Not be automatically dismissed because because their originator is not perfectly ideologically in line with the prevailing thinking.
Well, IMHO there is an issue that should be taken into account, that is that as evidence shows, a lot of that ammunition is manufactured by exaggerating the issue thanks to the same ones that want it to make it a talking point.
It is like when I see many conservatives in power make a mess of government and later ask voters to vote for them again because government is now a mess and only them can make it great again.
You didn’t ask me, but my feeling is that you ought not wait until we’ve achieved the goals you seek. That day may never come. Meanwhile you’ll have missed important opportunities to make other equally important differences that I believe will serve to bring about outcomes you (we all) seek.
No. You refuse to see that undermining basic fundamental liberties in order to stifle free thought and free speech because those concepts are harmful to a radical agenda weaken the moral legitimacy of a constitutional form of government and shifts power to the most violent.
You all, and it’s not surprising based on moderation and how folks behave and comment on various pro-freedom topics, just don’t get the seriousness of undermining actual peaceful not ‘mostly peaceful’ debate as a means of change or of governance is. And if you do realize how serious it is and choose to engage in suppression of freedom for short term political gain then that is vastly more dangerous and evil than anything Trump has done.
So, I’m glad to see infighting on the left. It means not all so-called liberals are members of the regressive left.
Cite free, fact free, gibberish. Nothing that actually even attempts to address my actual words. Just a bunch of nonsense assumptions, straw men, and right wing buzz phrases.
Again not true, regardless of how you try to spin or trivialize the dangerous, violent, illiberal left. Hell, at this very moment there is a peaceful riot in Seattle. Think you’d be free or safe to exercise your first amendment rights anywhere near that mob?
But no one is trying to stop the researcher that wants to research the contentious subject, or the journalist that wants to write on a controversial subject. The universities and publishers are simply refusing to give their financial support and endorsements to such effort. Why should they pay for something they don’t want to buy?
The journalist can write all he wants and shop the story to publications afterwards. If there aren’t any magazines that want to pay him to write that story, so what. And no one is obligated to give out a research grant, if no universities want to fund his research, there’s no prohibition against him funding it himself.
And as to the whining about boycotts, how are you going to stop me? I certainly have the right to spend or not spend my own money however I want. And if I choose to forego a mediocre chicken sandwich because I don’t like the politics of the guy that owns the company, so what? And if lots of other people agree with me, whatcha gonna do?
This is the essence of free market supply/demand capitalism. In general, I believe in the free market economy even though I think most corporations are essentially amoral. I like it when consumers consolidate some power within the free market system in order to incentivize companies to make moral decisions.
Funny how the right wing is in favor of the invisible hand of the free market until it starts bitch-slapping them.
To be clear, I’m also a big fan of the US free speech laws and I don’t agree with using mob tactics to literally shout down speakers. If the speaker is that objectionable to everyone, work to convince people not to fund their appearances or buy tickets. And I certainly don’t want somelse being the arbitrator of what I can and can’t listen to. In fact, when someone tells me I shouldn’t listen to something because is nothing but “hate speech”…well, that’s a good way to get me to listen to at least a little bit of it. And while I usually find the content objectionable and maybe disgusting, I frequently find that the person that told me not to listen misrepresented the content.
If you don’t support the rights of those to engage in basic freedom such as freedom of speech because it’s so-called offensive or racist or hateful and instead you support violent suppression of speech then your actions undermine the concept of freedom. That’s bad because it leads to the situation where one only needs to label someone a heretic, a witch, a racist, a fascist, a person right of Stalin in order to justify silencing that person via any means necessary.
Believe in borders? Racist. Believe black antisemitism is racist? Nope that makes you the racist. Meritocracy? Racist. Objective standards? Racist. It’s just a word used to shut down debate by inciting the emotionally stunted.
At one point the left actually had useful principles. They challenged, back when they had a spine, the concept of taboo language and imagery. Flag burning, blasphemous or sacrilegious speech and ‘art’, pornography etc were all expansions of free speech which also had the side effect of challenging the powerful institutions. Now the regressive left has lost any sense of classically liberal thought and instead acts the same way radical Islamists do when someone draws Mohammad.
I don’t know about you, but I believe science and journalism have a higher purpose than just making money. Scientists are supposed to discover the truth, journalists are supposed to publish it. Academics are also supposed to teach the next generation of students to think for themselves, not follow some ideology blindly. If a vocal minority of activists or twitter users or students is preventing that, it’s a problem for all of society. Not to mention my tax money helps to fund universities, so I want them to do their jobs and not kowtow to special interest groups.
Boycotts are different, and obviously you are free to boycott what you want. The point is to be selective in these type of actions, because allowing some difference of opinion is healthy and necessary.
I agree with that. When the hate speech laws were passed I wasn’t sure, but I am now convinced they are a bad idea and should be repealed. But the stuff we’ve talked about in this thread mostly isn’t violent suppression of speech, but more like social, or economic suppression. Which is why changing the social climate, and people’s attitudes, seems to be the only way to fix it.
Or do you think calling someone a racist is violent? I’m mighty tired of the idea that saying certain things is ‘violence’, and I hope the right isn’t adopting it too.
Congratulations! You have successfully internalized right wing propaganda about liberals! You really believe this stuff! Fox News, and right wing radio, and the right wing fever swamps of the internet, must be very proud.
Good point. And if you also do not support the rights of people to respond to what they see as offensive or racist or hateful, then you support violent suppression of speech and the basic concepts of freedom.
They are welcome to say offensive things, and I am free to call them out on it.
Why do you think that all of these things are racist? I disagree quite a bit.
And now the left is challenging the notion that when the influential and powerful use their power and influence to project their views into the public sphere, that the people should not use their collective voices to respond if they disagree.
I am OK with the most restrictions on speech as long as the standard is applied equally. It’s not the restriction that bothers me, it’s the inconsistent enforcement or double standard.
If we are going to ban “hate speech,” for instance, then hate from all sides needs to be penalized equally. And there also has to be more substance to hate speech than simply “It’s something I disagree with.”
As I pointed before here or in another recent thread, one should be aware that a lot of the examples about censorship on college campuses that are mentioned by the right are being exaggerated by them also, while they do minimize what it is happening with many speakers or educators from the left.
What the core issues at stake are
Let’s start by recapping the central thrust of my argument. Here’s what I wrote:
There are well over 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States. And multiple attempts to catalog free speech incidents on campus, from different sources, keep coming up with numbers in the dozens. And of those dozens, a fairly large percentage of the targets are liberals, and a fairly large percentage of the others were conservative speakers who seem to have come to campus with the intent of provoking students.
In my piece, I summarized the findings of three studies (not two, as al-Gharbi claims):
An analysis of data from Georgetown University’s Free Speech Project by the project’s director, Sanford Ungar, published on Medium. FSP’s data covers all types of free speech incidents, ranging from professors’ dismissals to university administrators admonishing students over speech. At the time of Ungar’s writing, FSP had cataloged roughly 60 such incidents on college campuses between 2016 and today.
Acadia University professor Jeffrey Sachs’s data on professors being fired for political speech, as published in a piece for the left-libertarian Niskanen Center. This shows “45 cases from 2015 to 2017 where a faculty member was fired, resigned, or demoted/denied promotion due to speech deemed by critics as political,” fewer than a third of whom (13 out of 45) were conservative.
Data on speaker disinvitations from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) which shows 20 to 42 such disinvitations per year between 2011 and 2017.
All of these data sources seem to tell the same story: There are several dozen incidents of speech being suppressed on college campuses per year, and those incidents hardly target conservatives exclusively (more on that below).
Given that there are 4,583 colleges and universities in the United States (the bulk of which are four-year institutions), dozens of incidents is … not a lot. When you limit it to just conservative targets, the number becomes even smaller. Now, some might consider a few dozen incidents a year in a country of 4,583 higher education institutions a national crisis; I would consider it perhaps unfortunate, but not a crisis.