They are also breathing the same air and wearing the same fabric blends and eating the same varietals of goat cheese that evil folks of the past and present have used. Your argument is a very silly one.
Unbelievable. You know, when your position depends on equating a guy in a bar calling you a faggot to a TV talking head spouting things you don’t agree with or like or don’t believe, it’s time to find a new position.
And what gives you the right to determine who can speak at a campus? Coulter debates people often. Why don’t you put on some big boy pants and debate her? Do you find it too trying to even hear what she has to say? Even if you have the opportunity to show everyone how much smarter you are than the ex-editor of the Cornell Law Review? Hell, maybe you are, but not from what I’m seeing.
There used to be a time when the left believed that the answer to speech you don’t like is more speech. Instead, now we have people like you ridiculously trying to equate apples and lawn mowers to justify taking the low road and fooling yourself that you’ve taken the moral high ground.
It’s a sad state of affairs.
I did not equate the two. I merely gave a range of people who are not looking for an honest debate, nor should one waste one’s time giving them one.
I wouldn’t debate Ann Coulter for the same reason I wouldn’t debate David Gish. She isn’t here to hear or even listen to me. She’s here to troll and saying whatever the most offensive shit comes to mind in order to rile people up. She doesn’t believe a word of what she’s spouting, much like Glenn Beck or the Infowars guy it’s all an act in order to sell books to spiteful cretins who think she dunks on librulz. It’s asinine and a waste of time.
You do seem to be a fan, though 
Sometimes it is. Often, even. And sometimes it isn’t.
But it is funny to watch internet tough guys praise debate and speech when it’s the very thing they mock academics and liberals for. Often in the same breath. Partisanship - it’s a hell of a drug.
(BTW, I didn’t say Coulter should be banned from giving speeches on campuses. Just so we’re clear on that. She absolutely can. It’s also absolutely fair to protest her coming in return, and she shouldn’t act surprised if she is since that’s pretty much her shtick and she is, in fact, lapping that shit up to “prove” librulz be so hateful.)
Assholes will be assholes. Thankfully, the vast majority of the left and liberals don’t do this.
I took the time and effort to read and respond to every one of your cites, magellan01… But perhaps reasonable discussion isn’t as much fun for some as finding new ways to broad brush all liberals for the views of a tiny fraction.
Too late to edit : after self-doubt and quick check, that’d be Duane Gish, not David.
And aside from your Nazi punching who in this thread is acting like an internet tough guy?
2017 and people still don’t understand why empowering the powerful to label and suppress/punish speech is a bad idea.
But I was under the opinion that I as a Liberal was a pussy beta male who couldn’t tolerate a joke or simple insult, that I should fuck my feelings and stop being a snowflake about right wing “jokes”.
Are you saying that we Liberals are being mean by labeling and laughing at conservatives and we should stop it?
I was mocking his use of “put on your big boy pants”. Which was risible to me in the context, or any context really.
You’ve pretty much missed any news of the past ten/twenty years, have you ? They’re not defeated. They’re voting for Trump.
So you dislike Trump doing it, correct ? And you strenuously oppose and rise against, say, the entire right-wing spectrum currently shitting on Michelle Wolf and trying to get her new show canned or to discontinue the tradition of having roast comedians at the WHCD, yes ?
I’m saying the tool many are using is more dangerous than they think. Think of the consequences of blasphemy in Saudi Arabia. That’s not a good thing. Who decides what is and isn’t blasphemy? How can that concept be abused?
If every Trump voter is a Nazi then the Nazis have won.
Concerning Trump, there is a lot about Trump that I do not like.
WHCD? I watch about an hour of tv a week so I haven’t paid attention to that. I’m consistently against mob justice in general. So I’m not a fan of mob justice in this case. That said, if we are going to be a dystopic world of mob justice it’s only fair to employ it against everyone who offends anyone.
Here we go again with the measure and not extrapolatin’ from people’s words :rolleyes:. Kindly set fire to yon strawman, sir.
So, to clarify : no, not every Trump voter is a Nazi, but there are bona fide Nazis in modern day America (and France, and Italy, and the UK…), and most of the US ones are vocal Trump supporters.
See, here’s the thing : if it’s wrong for your opponents to do a thing, IT’S WRONG FOR YOUR SIDE TO DO IT TOO. It’s doubly wrong when you’re actually making the whole thing up as an excuse for enabling your doing the thing. Which a certain fringe of the US right has become past masters at.
Still waiting for examples of such mob justice, BTW.
I dunno about mob justice, but I can think of an apt comparison of someone IN AMERICA using emotional phrases to manipulate the American people against others for words that were TERRIBLE.
But octopus doesn’t want to talk about McCarthy, because it doesn’t fit his narrative that liberals are evil thugs.
Dude, you’re the guy who laughs and enjoys it as your side does this stuff every day, but stands by prepared to attempt to guilt the other side out of doing the same in return, because you know, “this stuff is dangerous”.
Except that we see clearly that you’re not lifting a finger to condemn your own side’s daily uses of this tactic. In fact, you do it yourself on this board.
As Yoda would say “Discredit you, this does. Disingenuous, it is.”
Bringing out Yoda? That’s some serious escalation.
The thing is your analogy fails because I don’t call for any form of sanction or mob punishment.
Do you consider a call for a boycott, or the act of boycotting, a form of sanction or mob punishment?
Absolutely a consumer exercising choice in the marketplace is a form of mob punishment. The free market is only supposed to be free for the marketers.
First of all, apologies to LHoD – I saw an entire page of octopus-inspired shenanigans and I confess to having not read the last page carefully (or, for the latter part of it, at all).
I didn’t say those cites didn’t support my position. I think they do. I offered them specifically because you asked me to provide court cases which struck down campus speech codes banning being an asshole. NB: I object to codes banning being “rude or disrespectful” an am ambivalent about codes banning “being a magnificent asshole.” I think they might be different!
These are court cases which struck down campus speech codes, chosen not because these are cases I’m particularly knowledgeable about but because I could easily find them and they support my position because they are court cases which struck down codes which prohibited certain types of speech because those prohibitions were too broad – types of speech which constitute, I believe, being a magnificent asshole. If you believe the courts would strike down policies which ban, e.g. hate speech, but would be happy to leave stand policies which ban rudeness, I don’t know what to say.
When I say I am not interested in defending them, what I mean is that I did not spend a huge amount of time deciding whether I believed the court went too far. But even if the court went farther than I would have liked, that still supports my position. In a number line analogy: if you are at 1 and I am at 0 and the courts are at -1, then the courts support me in saying that you need to be below 1, even if they would go even farther than I would, which I don’t think they have done in the cases linked. But I admit that I didn’t actually devote an hour or two to sit down and carefully read the opinions.
Meanwhile, I also provided a link to FIRE’s list of cases on campus speech codes that they think are relevant (linked again) and a link to GMU case (linked again) which ruled that a clause banning “communication that may cause injury, distress, or emotional or physical discomfort” violates the student’s freedom of speech.
Since you apparently want me to go into greater depth, let’s just read the relevant section of the GMU decision – it starts on about page 30 of the linked pdf, under section C. The court clearly concluded that “there can be no doubt that this language is susceptible to an interpretation that penalizes a substantial amount of protected speech” (internal quotations omitted). And it said that “it is clear that that Code 2013.9.B [the clause under discussion], if given a meaning in accord with its plain language, rises to the level of an unreasonable infringement of the freedom of speech wholly unrelated to the university’s interest in performing its educational mission,” i.e. that Tinker does not allow the speech code. It also noted that the clause could be preserved through a reading which limited its scope – and which limited its scope to true threats or fighting words, but then the speech code isn’t one which prohibits typical ways in which one might be an asshole.
So if the court says that you can’t bar students from communicating in a way which may cause distress or emotional discomfort, doesn’t that imply that you can’t bar students from forms or rudeness or disrespect which may cause distress? And if the courts allow you to be rude enough to cause distress, I can’t imagine they would disallow you from being rude enough not to cause distress!
No, that’s it. I didn’t provide the cite – I went straight to FIRE’s section on Johns Hopkins, where they link to the code they actually flagged: the one where JHU prohibits rude or disrespectful conduct. Thanks for the link.
As to why Johns Hopkins is red flagged by FIRE, it appears to be in no small part that the university both says that it permits the expression of views that others find offensive but also says that it does not tolerate rudeness – and that in its view the former is a fig-leaf in light of past behavior and public comments from university officials.
And that’s the argument that I’m making – that if you ban being “rude and disrespectful” that there’s an awful lot of wiggle room to ban behaviors which should be allowed. This is not to say that colleges and universities need to allow all forms of behavior or speech. Just that I think that campus conduct and speech codes need to be narrowly and carefully designed, and that something like “thou shalt not be rude or disrespectful” is neither.
Where I’m going with this is that it may be that I object to those codes which you defend precisely because they allow for abuses – cf court cases linked above and others on FIRE’s list, for examples – and I suspect you may not think those abuses are probable, hence the codes are fine. If I’m reading the tea leaves wrong, I apologize. It was an idle thought.
I think it’s a legitimate act. However, the reach and magnitude of outrage is significantly greater now. So I think the impact of boycotts is quite often disproportionate. Even the threat of boycotts now is chilling and part of a larger problem.
People talk about Russian ‘trolls’ as a bad thing. I think in the long term they are a good thing. People need to be reconditioned/retrained on how they react emotionally to mass media. Critical thinking skills and analysis needs to improve or in some cases newly acquired. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s possible much less likely.
Oh, that’s the whole point of “don’t be a jerk” rule here. It gives the admin/mods the ability to label and sanction without worrying about precision.