How fortunate you are to have been born at exactly the right time to be able to say correctly that there’s nothing left worth protesting, in contrast to all your predecessors who have historically incorrectly said that there was nothing left worth protesting, and gotten in the way of the progression of civilization.
You’re never going to get anywhere with that approach. Try, “We want evidence NOW, and we won’t settle for anything less!”
Honestly, I think this is a case of rose-colored glasses in hindsight. Protesters of yesteryear mostly wanted change to issues that are now considered mainstream. Protesters of today want changes that won’t be mainstream for another 40 years.
That great thing is, 40 years from now, we can have another “kids these days” discussion about how good the 2010’s were.
My main complaint is that seems like we’re more hesitant to pull out the fire hoses. 
Why do I get the sense that 50 years ago you would have told civil rights protestors that they should stop complaining since they aren’t slaves?
I think college protesters generally want and encourage discussion but they act this way because they are convinced that discussion has already produced a definitive result.
My personal example would be that abortion has already been proven to be safe, reliable, and a human rights issue and those opposing it are intolerant religious people. I don’t care for, nor want to discuss this issue, because I’m right. It is up to people convinced that they are right in opposition to me to convince me that I’m wrong. In that sense, I can understand the frustration of people who thinks these students are wrong, but they should look to see what kind of dialogue would be appropriate if they want to get through to them. Facts usually help.
Aren’t we all practically drowning in debate these days? The whole Internet is basically a giant, 24-hour debating hall (attached to a giant, 24-hour porno theater). You can’t even get on Twitter or Facebook to brag about your bourgeois lifestyle without getting dragged into some kind of interminable “discussion” about “important issues”. Maybe we would all be happier if we all just shut the hell up for a while.
I knew there was something I liked about the internet.
And a whole room in the middle for those who debate as a mental exercise, and who are overly enthusiastic in the theatre. I wonder what we could call that.
You mean like Missouri where requests for the Administration to take the racist acts seriously got no result?
I went to college in the late '60s early '70s and we all knew the SDS was just a debating society. :rolleyes:
Actually, the way the Thread Title reads, it’s hardly even debatable. I’m sure “many” university students can be characterized pretty much any way possible. The OP wording, though, is probably not even testable.
Direct action is never about debate. It’s about making life painful for people in power so they do what you want. Getting sidetracked into debate is how protests FAIL.
Indeed. There’s certainly a place and a time for debate. But there’s also a time for requiring people to do what you believe is the right thing to do.
This is hardly an idea unique to leftist activists. When I go to a restaurant, I don’t want discussion with my server about whether I should eat meat. When I tell my students to clear their desks for a test, I don’t want a discussion about whether math tests are developmentally appropriate. When my employer asks me to show up at work at 7:30, he’s not interested in a discussion about the power dynamics of required schedules. In all these cases, the person making the demand wants compliance, not discussion.
You may note that in all my examples, the people expecting compliance are in positions of traditional authority over those from whom they’re expecting compliance. This is true, and it’s probably what people find so upsetting about students expecting compliance from administration: how dare those in an inferior position act like they’re in a superior position?
The real upset isn’t over whether it’s okay to ask for compliance; of course it is. The real upset is over the upending of the social order.
University students are almost as stupid and immature as high school students, except that they are more impressionable because they don’t have their parents’ guidance, hence this negative trend for liberal indoctrination…
You will restrain yourself from this sort of post in the future. Is that clear?
What is so hard about post-not-poster?
That is a direct response to his post, which minimized the seriousness of the issues that today’s protestors are addressing. I don’t know the poster from Adam.
You mean this positive trend for liberal ideals 
Of course when that happened it resulted (along with several other factors), in a series of riots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the rise of right-wing backlash politics, Richard Nixon in the White House, and the stalling out of the New Deal/Great Society programme for the next generation.
That’s how it tends to work, yes.
Very few of those issues are being protested about and even when they are, they tend to go about in an utterly moronic manner that fails to build any sort of lasting movement-witness Occupy Wall Street.
See the link in post #6.
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
– Not Really Gandhi But Who Cares
Can’t find that quote anywhere in the article nor in the comments. Where is it?