I’m curious how you would label him if not (classic) liberal.
Cranky old contrarian fuck
He’s definitely a classical liberal. Problem is, to the progressive left, a classical liberal is Nazi-adjacent.
What was considered a liberal idea a generation ago is by definition no longer liberal if you haven’t changed with the times.
It’s no longer a liberal idea that women and minorities deserve a place at the table. It’s no longer a liberal idea that capitalism, by itself can’t fix everything. What was once novel is no longer.
“Classical Liberalism” is an oxymoron.
But, most importantly, performers are just that. They play a part. Sometimes they are true believers, but often they are just panderers.
“Mysogynist, anti-vax, bitter old egotistical asshole” more or less covers it.
I thought he self-identified as a libertarian?
Don’t know for sure. I can’t stand the guy.
You are right about what was a liberal a generation ago is not a liberal today. A liberal 20 years ago wouldn’t have been a segregationist.
Liberals today aren’t segregationists either. We’ve explained to you very clearly the difference between segregation and the practice of traditionally white institutions including minority-affirming events and areas that white people are in no way excluded from.
Do you see that very important point about white people not being excluded? Do you understand the difference between that and actual racial segregation, which was all about officially excluding people, specifically non-white ones?
If you’re still confused about that quite clear distinction, feel free to ask for further elucidation, and we’ll do our best to help you. But you aren’t making any progress by continuing to erroneously assert that such practices are “segregationist”.
I KNEW it! I was watching this on Bill Maher and the whole time was thinking, “I bet it will take me two seconds to find out his whole premise is a crock of shit.”
Bill Maher is basically what we’d call a troll, if he was on an Internet forum of some kind. That’s his whole schtick- to basically say provocative stuff with the express intent of pissing people off.
That’s what irritates me the most about him; he’s far less about making points that make you think, and far more about making points intended to inflame people.
The author of that piece seems to have misspelled “trolling assholes” as “white students”.
They went in there displaying offensive stickers and shirts for the express purpose of causing a confrontation. That kind of behavior would earn you at least a mod warning on this board.
There is nothing objectively offensive about “Police Lives Matter” or " I didn’t vote for Biden", IMHO.
Maybe not at a MAGA rally. Displaying those items in a space that’s deliberately intended to be a safe place for multicultural cooperation and goodwill is an act of aggression, and the behavior of these two shows that they wore it in there specifically to provoke a response so they could cry out “Help! Help! I’m being repressed!”
Yeah, it’s not the “being white” part that they were being chastised for, it’s the trolling part.
Nor, of course, is there any suggestion whatever of any institutional policy of excluding white people from multicultural spaces.
But hey, they got themselves into the news with a controversial story that conservatives will be able to gleefully mischaracterize as “segregation”, so well played them, I guess.
There’s nothing objectively offensive about stating your support for the police. But taking a phrase that has been used to promote awareness of the struggles of a certain group, and turning it around to support the perceived oppressors, is at least dangerously ignorant and at most purposefully antagonistic. And doesn’t belong in a space designed to be free from that type of antagonism.
The whole concept of “safe spaces” for adults is nonsense, on its face.
Then maybe people who feel that way shouldn’t go to them. Problem solved!
I don’t disagree with that. But, allow me to point out that college students are newly minted adults who are just finding their way.
And just because you and I think safe spaces are unnecessary, doesn’t make it true.
eta: and what Smapti said.
What are safe spaces meant to protect people from?
It seems to me that it’s never threat or violence but protection from ideas and opinions you don’t like. Newly minted college adults should have no expectation of being provided with that kind of protection. It sets unrealistic expectations and makes for fragile adults. Bill Maher is hardly the only “contrarian”, “cranky”, “classic” liberal that is saying this. He is not saying anything substantively different than Lawrence Krauss and Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais, among many others. Bill Maher is wrong about things like his wishy washy position on vaccines, and other things I’m sure. But he’s not wrong about his criticism of the irrational positions on the left. In addition to sunlight, I think satire is an excellent disinfectant. I know there are folks here who consider ridicule fair game for exposing bad ideology. I don’t disagree. But they’re triggered when it’s used to expose the failings on their own side.