I could be misunderstanding this statement entirely: "This threat comes from both the left and the right. Two-thirds of sanction attempts from the left of the professor result in some form of sanction. The same is true for 42% of attempts from the right of wherever the professor is politically." but it seems to me this is one of many such statements I see in Common Sense articles lately that tries to claim a false equivalency. There's always this weak attempt to say that this isn't a problem unique to Democrats by pointing to an example of Republicans behaving similarly. For one, the quote above fails to mention how often such threats come from either side. It's far too vague to mean anything.
Bari's excellent speech on the new founders America needs included a similar statement when she compares the minority of conservatives who recently expressed admiration for "European autocrats " (Putin) to the Biden Administration trying to establish a Ministry of Truth.
In American institutions, in universities, and in corporations, the demand for total ideological conformity stems entirely from modern Progressives. Within the Republican party there is a sizable segment that demands such adherence to whatever the Orange Man decrees, but I challenge you to find one example of a professor, government official, or private sector employee losing their livelihood because they suggested they might not like Trump. It's simply not the same.
I agree with you completely, but you have to understand what Common Sense is. Common Sense is not really an independent-thinking liberal publication. It is still first and foremost a Democrat-sympathetic publication working a Democrat angle. For this reason, it cannot fully condemn the left on this most basic of issues (free speech) because to do so would be to suggest that there might be something momentarily unsalvageable about the left and its political arm (the Democrat Party). Their goal is not to actually discuss the seriousness of the issue among Democrats and the left that makes them all but impossible to support at this point. Instead, they frame this as simply a "minor" problem that just affects certain institutions and is a problem on both sides. In this way, they won't be seen nor do they feel like they are giving people a reason to abandon the party that created this situation.
I like reading Common Sense because for a Democrat-sympathetic publication it is a palatable way to keep up on the insanity of the mainstream narrative, but there are better liberal publications that are liberal without being Democrat-sympathetic (Freddie DeBoer, Matt Taibbi, Michael Tracey, and Leighton Woodhouse to name a few).
Thanks for the references to other publications. I like Common Sense very much, also, and Taibbi, and have abandoned the Democratic party myself, yet I do not see CS as protecting that party. I do not see a) supporting the new university in Austin, b) Bari Weiss resigning a job at the NYT, and c) almost alone at the beginning, reviled, sounding the alarm against media and cultural indoctrination ... to be treating this as a '"minor" problem.' I see these difficult, courageous, committed, life-changing actions as treating the problem as being extremely serious.
I have not seen an article about the systemic effect that such acceptance of censorship has on society as a whole. For example in this article, they jokingly treat Yale as a "lost cause," but how many of our leaders and Supreme Court Justices have their degrees from Yale, Harvard, and Columbia? If that is the culture we are educating our future leaders in, and I don't mean that even figuratively, how does that affect the survival of our nation? It's no small thing to laugh off with a "censorship award." It's dangerous.
And then there's the TDS, yesterday's article about Blake Masters being a prime example. Independent liberals do not have TDS. They might not like Donald Trump. In fact, they may hate the man. But they have a realistic attitude about him: everything that he's done has been done by presidents from both parties, and with far more acceptance by the media and party at large, which makes it far more dangerous. He makes himself a nice scapegoat for them, but that's all he is, a shiny object to point at to distract from the really bad things they're doing and from the very real complaints of the population at large that they don't want to address.
I forgot about Glenn Greenwald! Yes, him as well. I'd put Dave Rubin more on the right anymore, just because of the drift in the spectrum, but I know he was on the left and, yes, I enjoy listening to him as well. He is funny and he makes good points.
I'm with Alice. It's fine if Bari is, or wants to be, a Democrat, but she never hesitates to unload on the left when they deviate from Classic Liberal philosophy. (Which unfortunately they do daily... which is why millions of us have left the party.)
Bari stands mostly not for party dogma, but for... Common Sense.
I don't care much about Bari's personal politics, and in fact appreciate that she often discloses her view of issues she's covering.
I care mightily about whether she reports objectively, and in this regard she has few peers.
I see how you might think that, and we'll have to agree to disagree, but as I said I have yet to see articles on any of the following: the corruption in Ukraine, the weaponizing of our security state, or the propagandistic nature of our current media to the point that it threw the last election. COVID is still the tragedy of the last two years, not the *reaction* to COVID and misuse of "emergency powers." Trump is still some sort of singularity, just not openly what every other president has been behind closed doors, and perhaps a bit more benign even if more embarrassing than the rest. The Republicans range from buffoonish to bigoted fascists (see the article put out on Sunday about CPAC and Viktor Orban). And I rarely see anything on the dangers of twisting language and cancellation for "wrong think" other than this might not be good for the kids, it cost X, X's job, but they're doing fine, or it's some kind of embarrassing quirk of the Democrats that will cost them come election time, rather than a terrifying trend that has never led to anything good anytime it's happened in history. If they really wanted to be evenhanded, they would have JD Vance write an article about modern populist conservatism or invite Pedro Gonzales to write an article about what Karl Marx got right (rather than Douglas Murray hold Gonzales up as "dabbling" in anti-Semitism because he made a tasteless joke about someone's "physiognomy"). You might not care for Gonzales's taste in humor, but a conservative who has read Marx and sees validity in some of his theories about the mistreating of workers? Now that's interesting. She might also invite Aaron Mate to write an article about US machinations behind the scenes in Ukraine that caused the conflagration we have now (and how they're being repeated in Taiwan) to counter the soft hawkishness of the emotional stories they have printed about refugees.
So to me, the articles she allows on her platform might be objective (though not even all of them are). It's the overall picture that isn't. She's only "objective" if you're comparing her to the mainstream media. She still very much won't go certain places because those place won't reflect well on the Democrats or the establishment leadership.
You make a good point that this is being treated as time filler and entertainment. I am about to make the next step to action. Public speaking out of some sort.
"Recovering" regressives and "former" political loonies will fall off the wagon. Don't forget most of 'em suckled on Kool-Aid rather than their mum's milk!
Well said. It does seem like they want to acknowledge problems, but they won't really go after it without at the same time pointing out right wing issues which are supposedly equally as bad. Which in effect excuses the initial problem they're talking about. If everyone is guilty then nobody is guilty.
Both Sides statements are a nullification - like an equation of 'one minus one equals zero.' You're left there stuck in neutral, not getting anywhere. It's a deflection, not a valid attempt at discussion. However, when trying to talk to a leftist it's a good way to give them a dose of their own medicine.
Yep, I think Hitchens had a comment about partisanship not being so bad as people say. It's highly unlikely that you're actually somehow halfway between two positions. So just argue for what you think is right instead of trying to win plaudits by acting like you're above both. Maybe neither party is perfect but unlikely that one isn't better than the other.
In a "democratic" system you don't use "superdelegates" and have everyone arrange to drop out to subvert the will of the voters. The plurality of voters wanted Bernie Sanders. Twice his efforts have been sabotaged, first by Hillary and then by Biden. No, it is not the "democratic" party. The Republican system is much closer to democratic.
But, yes, that is one way of looking at him. I don't, but I can understand calling him a "millionaire grifter." That's kind of what it feels like he's become.
Of course the right has flaws. No one is saying that. What we are saying is that on this particular subject, you're comparing a case of chest congestion on the right to full blown metastasized lung cancer on the left. And in doing so you allow the left to dismiss the issue as limited or "just a problem both sides have." It's not. The problem on the right is no threat to society at large for a number of reasons I could go into. The problem on the left however is bleeding into the mainstream and threatening our very system and the things that make this country work and threaten, in the long run, to destabilize it entirely.
I’m inclined to agree with you in general but I don’t think that 95% of House Republicans voting against the recent contraception bill is merely “chest congestion.” That is terrifying and outrageous for women in states now banning abortion and closer to your lung cancer analogy.
It is totally F-ed up to bring up sexual identity in schools AND it’s F-ed up to refer a 10 year old getting pregnant as a woman who is now destined to be a mother.
Ive lived outside of the US for 5 years and it’s is much easier to see the insanity on both left and right without being triggered by it. So in this sense I completely disagree with you and think you are too stuck on your own team to actually accept some of its very real failings.
And yes 95% of House Republicans voting at the *federal level* against a contraception bill that was probably filled with god knows what and is a token move is chest congestion compared to having medical information censored, as has, for example, taken place with COVID treatments and statistics. People cannot make informed decisions and you make a joke of science and the institutions we need to function as a society if you censor what later turns out to be truth for any reason, but most especially for political reasons. And no, banning abortion is more akin to pneumonia, completely treatable and the patient will most likely recover. If we can't talk about things and get information out and we allow people to continue to live in their bubbles so we can't even agree on a shared baseline reality, nothing--and I mean absolutely nothing--else matters.
“Probably filled with god knows what”. A comment that just shows that your have 100% made up your mind and are obviously 100% correct about it. You’re interested in talking only, not listening.
And I didn’t actually focus solely on abortion, rather on the strong support to ban abortion AND ban contraception by Republican law makers.
This actually could be very interesting for gender identity treatments - Section 6b2: shall not be construed … “to permit or sanction the conduct of any sterilization procedure without the patient’s voluntary and informed consent.“
Roe was "settled law" until it was wasn't. If there is no threat to contraception, then it should be the easiest thing in the world for Republicans to codify that into law. Why are they reluctant?
'The problem on the right is no threat to society at large for a number of reasons I could go into...'
Well, Lillia, if a very large portion of the Republican Party adheres to or declares fealty to an ex President who (and I'm being generous here), appeared to want the certified results of the previous election in certain states rescinded by false Electors and/or upended by thousands of supporters trashing the Capitol - would that not be construed as a 'threat' to society? At least society as we know it?
Never mind our 6-3 conservative majority at SCOTUS, whereby giving the states back their jurisdiction over abortion rights is now, as we speak, in real time, pitting states against each other as to who offers these rights and who denies them..
Doesn't look too good for our already frayed society (in my eyes anyway, no matter how you feel about abortion, as women have to cross states' lines to get the service they need..) either legally, financially or emotionally as chaos ensues.
I agree on your 'lung cancer' analogy for the uber Left. But only 'chest congestion' on the Right?
They trashed the Capitol (and by "trashed" we mean they broke a couple windows, stole a podium, and picked up their own water bottles) and delayed the vote by what hours? They didn't burn down the Capitol, and the vote took place. There was never any serious doubt that it would. (On the other hand, I think most people in Minneapolis *wish* the BLM riots had "trashed" their city like the "insurrectionists" "trashed" the Capitol.) It was, compared to the other riots across the country, a non-event. The only reason it became an event was where it happened and for what reason and how the Democrats have used it and the focus the media has given it.
The states are frequently pitted against each other. We are a republic. That is the beauty of a republic. You find a state to live in that shares your beliefs. That way everybody gets a little of what they want and can vote with their feet and have a layer of representation between them and the federal government in what is a highly diverse nation in thought (not just as far as skin melanin goes). This is true even on an issue such as abortion. It's not going to "tear" society apart. If abortion is so repulsive to you you can't handle its existence, go to Ohio. If you support it, move to New York or California. And as for getting one, heck, it sounds like Oregon will even give you a "vacation" to come to their state to have one. I don't think this is a real problem.
So, no, it is not a heart attack. Indigestion at best, relatively speaking. It's inconvenient, a little ugly, but nothing that we won't be over in the morning.
That might be so but for the other actors in your 'House of Cards': the Critical Theorists; your de facto "Third Party". A party seeking to subvert and overthrow your Republic and put its' boots on your faces - forever.
All this discussion just makes me think yet again that political labels more often get un the way than are helpful. Glenn Greenwald said this recently on Michael Malices show. Political labels are too vague and malleable, and often aid tribalism and get in the way of simply discussing issues.
"Political labels are too vague and malleable, and often aid tribalism and get in the way of simply discussing issues."
Spot on! I re-registered after the GOP allowed Trump to be their nominee after the 2016 election. At first, I was overjoyed that Clinton was rejected, but when Trump began his Tweet storms he lost me, although I appreciated most of his actions as President. The "person" of Trump was just too repellant.
I don't like the person either. But I think overall he did a good job, better than Hillary would have and clearly better than Biden and would be doing better than him now. I think the consideration should be will the actions and results of the actions of the potential president result in more good for more people than their opponent. That's a complex calculation obviously, but to me it goes far beyond whether they said something offensive. And as we've seen, the media machine will defend the Dem candidate from outrage so that must be considered too.
Maybe labels get in the way. But I can’t help but think that this disavowal of traditional labels is somewhat evasive. Leftists should be examining how their ideas and political party were hijacked by crazy people. A flaw in their philosophy, perhaps?
What I mean is they are inexact. I mean how pissed off are you, say you're a conservative, if someone presents something stupid another conservative said or did halfway across the country? People are unique and these broad labels mash together legitimate differences that exist.
Agree, in the sense that AOC should not be viewed as representative of the views of all “leftists”. But there’s no doubt that the craziness arose on the left. It didn’t happen overnight, or by a total repudiation of leftist philosophy. I think leftists need to recognize that somehow this arose organically in their midst, and some self-reflection is needed.
Conservatism was hijacked by MAGA; liberalism was hijacked by the Woke. Neither hard wing is good for our society, which needs moderation in order to function properly. Will we get that moderation? Nope. Not as long as hate sells ad space.
I have trouble equating, as our current regime does, banning “To Kill a Mockingbird” (a left book “banning” in school) to banning a text math book that teaches regression with fake data plotting being on the left as being less bigoted and being on the right as being highly bigoted (a right book “banning” in school).
I agree. I, too, had been a Progressive until the Progressives became unprogressive, intolerant, and somewhat insane. I am now an Independent. Like you, I keep the blinders off and look at both sides as objectively as I can. To adhere strictly to the left or to the right is akin to being in a cult.
What do you mean "became"? They always were intolerant, demented loons, you became older and wiser and they just became more blatent and desparate in their demented, intolerant, lunacy.
You deserve great credit for letting the light of reality shine brighter than political partisanship. That's wonderful news. But when did anyone assert that "the Right does not also have some problems"? Please give me some examples of "the Right". I just do not see them or know who they are. Once "the Right" has been identified and I know who they are, it will be much easier to see their problems.
I always wonder why the over representation from low population states always point to Wyoming or Montana as problematic....but never Rhode Island, Vermont or.....Delaware.
Republicans have Cruz, Boebert, Greene, Jordan, and Gaetz, who are as batshit and/or useless as any of the Democrats you mention. Get rid of your losers and I'd be happy to throw Talib and Co. overboard.
We are no longer interested in that line of shite. Say what you will about TCtuz et al they are American. Bat shit crazy? Maybe, but devoted to America as they see her. You clean your stable. If we see you as sincere, we will clean outs.
All the Democrats listed are as American as your Republicans, Lynne, and are just as devoted to this nation. So what line of shite are you no longer interested in?
What fundamental rewrite of the Constitution are you referring to, Golfer? I'm not aware of any being proposed by Democrats, but let me know if there is. The "Green New Deal" is not a rewrite of anything, it's a series of policy proposals that might be good or might suck. The concept is the same as Newt Gingrich's "Contract for America"--policy proposals with a catchy name.
“The same is true for 42% of attempts from the right of wherever the professor is politically”.
That seems a clever play on words intended to sate the lefties Bari and crew identify with. Consider that some professors are so far left that any one to the right of them politically can still be safely ensconced on the left. It’s kind of like a socialist bad mouthing a Marxist.
The above comments cut thru the fog of the "partially red-pilled" version of fighting the left: we will fight the left but we must equally fight the right. I used to support this approach, but not now, not in 2022. That ship sailed ten years ago. Greg Lukianoff and FIRE are wonderful - they are the ACLU of the 1950s. But today other than a scattering of admittedly conservative Christian schools, I do not believe there are any longer schools in which the right has any significant power.
In approximately 2012, I may have been the "instigator" of one of the "rightwing" attempts to penalize a Marxist prof at UCSB. I and others asked Chancellor Yang to investigate the prof because he compared the Israeli military to the Nazis with photos and narrative sent to his class, and implying Martin Luther King would have approved, all on MLK's birthday. MLK loved Israel, but the real issue we raised was that the material had nothing to do with his sociology class. It was a technical legal issue to be adjudicated according to the university regulations.
Two Israeli women in the prof's class objected. I am on the board of of an org that helps Jewish students fight anti-Semitism (a battle that is overwhelming today). So we supported the two students. Yang agreed and investigated. The full weight of the left came to the Marxist prof's defense, it was pretty overwhelming. But it appeared to me, the nail in the coffin was when FIRE wrote a powerful letter demanding that Yang stop the investigation - I remember it was a very serious letter. At this point, Yang, probably the most courageous of the University of California chancellors, capitulated.
After eight years of pro-America, pro-Israel activist/philanthropy with an emphasis on universities, this was the final straw when I concluded the universities were unreformable as they are currently constituted.
Today it is obviously much worse. I encourage people to support FIRE if they believe in "academic freedom" per se as they are they are a formidable legal advocate of "academic freedom."
However, they will fight the right as hard as they fight the left. Given that conservatives are virtually invisible on college campuses, and classical liberals do not dare to speak out as evidenced by the essay above, I believe when they fight the "right" they are fighting people who are already victims of horrendous bigotry. In my opinion, FIRE are advocates of a principle that only applies in an a non-totalitarian environment. That is not what we are in.
Terrifying that you may be correct when you say "In my opinion, FIRE are advocates of a principle that only applies in an a non-totalitarian environment. That is not what we are in."
My hypothesis is that from the right, people call for professors to be silenced. From the left institutions call for it. How many right wing run colleges and universities are there really? Institutions trying to get rid of their own employees. In how many right wing institutions has that happened?
There are no such institutions, barring those that are fledgeling or in utero. ALL have fallen. Where do you think the screaming loonies in their thirties and forties were taught? The 'Woke' virus coincided with the 1st Roosevelt Administration. It parasitised the US Civil Rights Movement; why do you think the "Great Society"; Affirmative Action; and such, didn't work as intended? Your wide-eyed liberals and "progrssives" were already co-opted.
The article links an extensive data base of the scholars targeted, including the presumed political motivation of the attack. I don't have the time, but I hope someone finds the time and motivation to parse this data. Here's the link to the database: https://www.thefire.org/research/scholars-under-fire-database/#home/
I’ve come to expect this false equivalency offering to the progressive gods in most of the Common Sense writings these days. I get this same sort of thing from family and friends attempting to be evenhanded. It falls flat each time because the conservatives usually don’t have the institutional power that the “progressives” have. I’d hate to think the CS editor insists on the inclusion of these kinds of weasel statements which stand out as the weakest part of their argument. Everyone is afraid of the crowing cancel crowd. Remember several Popes now have shied away from excommunicating or even warning abortion loving US and European politicians.
It comes with being part of the so-called "elite". They simply cannot give it up. Elitism is really the cancer destroying this country. The unmitigated gall of seeing oneself as "elite" as a human being.
Societal stratification is as old as civilization itself. Elitism can certainly be toxic, but I don’t think we can truly get rid of it. If my musician daughter sets her eyes on auditioning for a competitive music school, should I discourage her because that is elitist? What we have with the woke ideology is the most elitist (a group of mostly economically privileged individuals) sector of society demonizing and ostracizing all those who do not abide by their shallow version of inclusivity. Yes, this is something we should denounce.
I do not think playing devil’s advocate is elitist. When someone is doing a very bad job at it—absolutely—point this out. For the record, I believe many of these criticisms are quite valid.
If the goal is to somehow challenge and/or halt the progression of the woke ideology, isn’t it helpful that many disillusioned liberals have become vocal critics? Further, I don’t think this group (the “red-pilled liberals,” “politically homeless”) will ever entirely align with conservatives on many issues. But, is a liberal voice that is less radical and polarized a bad thing for the country or exacerbating harmful political polarization? I doubt it.
I agree with everything you said. I have no issues with elite talent. My issue is with people who profess themselves to be elite human beings by virtue of living in the right neighborhood, attending the right schools, etc. and then doubling down in buying that type of elitism for their offspring. That is not elitism and it is certainly does not make them superior to you or me. Nor does it entitle them to decide how you and I should live. Elitism, like everything else here, needs to be earned. As for social classes/stratification I am actually okay with that so long as it is not pre-ordained who goes in what class. In other words as long as there is equal opportunity to change one's class. I do not aspire to or admire socialism. How boring if everyone were that kind of equal. Same for political views so I welcome classic liberal thought. I do believe however that the "woke" Ideology is rooted in misplaced elitism and is a cancer in our society.
I concur. I am not one to put down youthful idealism; to rebel and challenge authority/the status quo is a part of growing up and establishing an identity. Nonetheless, what we witness today involves a good degree of elitism, entitlement and a particular type of hubris that comes with absolute moral certainty. Thinking your preferred set of ideas will unquestionably land you on the right side of history requires a person to ignore the many times a vision of “the greater good” was used to manipulate people toward the opposite direction. What really gets me—however—is the imposition: the writing on the wall is clear for non-believers: dissent at your own peril.
I agree with everything You both said. TYTY both-a Youse.
This is a bit off the topic of elitism. There is one, to me, pretty big problem with the ultra-wealthy. The tip top Forbes 400 people and them kind. They will never see any downward mobility for generations.
What we have is hereditary royalty. I don't like it here in America. But, as a practical matter, I don't see how to prevent it by taxing inheritance. It'd just make ex-pats outta them. ?
There are plenty of f-ups amongst the uber wealthy. Always have been and always will be. Human beings are subject to vices and addictions. All human beings and it is not social status that determines the ability to control them. The thing with the class you are objecting to is that mommy and daddy and their legions of lawyers, wealth managers, financial advisers, etc. have done all in their power to protect the principal. People die and heirs are an ugly necessity to pass on the wealth. Thus the creation of trusts. But some of them still eff it up. Hunter Biden, although not of that echelon , is an example. Sort of a best laid plans of mice and men thing. And the law is solidly on the side of not tying assets up into perpetuity - a trust must vest (have an owner of the assets of the trust) within lives in being, plus 21 years. That came to us from the English common law.
As far as elitism I have just come to see those who think of themselves as "elite" because of where they went to school or which neighborhood, or city, or coast they live on, or inherited wealth as a very large part of the problem. That is the definition of privilege. Those people are not qualified to make decisions about how I live my life. They are a cancer on society and should seek treatment. Assuming there is competent treatment in their rarefied strata. The Marin County pre-school.parents pushed me over the edge on this. I see people of that mind-set as needing to be reckoned with. Soon.
I understand that false equivalencies can at times be ludicrous and don’t have an issue when people bring them up. I also see that it is important for a fair minded person to play the role of devil’s advocate. What can we do? Perhaps the answer is to continue to point out these false equivalences in the hopes that the writer refines some of their argument and does a better job playing devil’s advocate…
I agree with you about false equivalencies, although it may be the wrong thing to focus on. For instance i've had times when i've discussed this issue and someone on the left makes some claim about threats from the right against free speech. And I can argue the point with them, but at the end of the day it might just be best to tell them 'ok, still we can agree that we should always defend free speech, no matter where the threat comes from right?' Get that agreement, and then get into the nitty gritty of individual cases.
I disagree. If you get them to agree that free speech must be affirmed always no matter what then they won't have a leg to stand on to defend whatever the left is doing to threaten free speech. Get that agreement first, then focus on the specific cases.
I came to the comments to see if anyone was asking the question that formed in my mind when I read the passage, "This threat comes from both the left and the right." Since the overwhelming vast majority of university professors and administrators are on the left or far left, being in the right nowadays is more like being in the center - at least in that setting. Threats from what's perceived as "the right" are no doubt happening, but it's hardly the right as most of us would see it. More like the center left or center.
I, too, do not see authoritarianism as equivalent at this time, and am far more troubled by the authoritarianism of the left, its pervasive reach throughout academia. In those ways I agree with your thoughtful comment.
I also accept that it may be important to note that authoritarianism can appear from both right and left, as in long-dead McCarthyism.
For pragmatic reasons, many people are so partisan, that to present a concern in exclusively partisan terms could cause them to dismiss an argument in its entirety. Emphasizing division will not be helpful in changing hearts and minds.
In logical terms, it is logical to illustrate that the issue is beyond partisanship, is an issue in its own right. There are already signs that reaction from the right to woke indoctrination could be similarly authoritarian. Prohibitions of all sorts are in the air.
It may be fairly left to the reader to conclude that authoritarianism is most urgently a problem as embedded in the progressive belief system.
So I see reason in FIRE's approach of remaining steadfastly noncritical of opponents and their affiliated groups, while standing up against specific instances in a general trend of authoritarian restriction of freedom. I send money to FIRE.
I understand your point and I think in a less partisan world you would be right that pointing out the issue on both sides help brings people together, but at the moment, I think that it simply gives the very people who need to hear the message, even if only to understand why independents are abandoning the party, an excuse to excuse the behavior or minimize it.
And from what I've heard, FIRE is a great organization and does what the ACLU used to do, so it is well worth supporting, and these are only two of its representatives.
Except MacArthy was proven right. The US WAS massivley infiltrated. Why do you think Marxism as a political philosophy got a bye when National Socialism didn't? Both are equally disgusting and evil. Large parts of the US public have been taken in by various metastized Marxisms for a century or more, and this proportion only grew larger by the decade. If it weren't for the Worlwide Web, you'd STILL be steadfastly looking the other way. Marxism and its' children are evil. If you are steadfastly non-critical of evil you have no morals and are partaking of it yourself.
Interesting points with some validity. It seems to me that the problem with McCarthyism and similarly, cancel culture, is the response to infiltration of "evil" ideas.
If a mob does not like what one person says, one speaks in return. One does not try to deprive a person of their livelihood when that person has not done the same to one. The response is not commensurate; it escalates. One does not respond to a repressive philosophy with repression.
This is an age old debate. Witness the example of the New Testament, which even as an atheist, amazes me.
"There are already signs that reaction from the right to woke indoctrination could be similarly authoritarian. Prohibitions of all sorts are in the air." -- Spot on. People are rightly terrified by what they see happening. It is expected to see extreme reactions to the extreme actions on the left. A way out is if enough regular people start standing up for what the West actually stands for.
A playbook in what way? I was an English Catholic; one of my aunties had a Provo Active Service Unit - a cell of terrorist bombers - for neighbours. I'm also a life-long ENGLISH nationalist; so I'm FORCED to take the evils of both sides head-on. I enjoyed several of Leon Uris' books way back when; but there are very few Americans whose views of Anglo-Hibernian antagonisms aren't warped.
A playbook of what is playing out in the good ole USA at this time with our so-called leaders and the so-called press. I think the same tactics were employed in Ireland in the lead-up to 1916. Divide and conquer. I would expect nothing less of you given your heritage. I admire loyalty to one's heritage. I admire loyalty period. It seems to be in short supply.. I do not know about warped views of "Anglo-Hiberian" relationships. Much as I don't equate the Chinese people with their government, I fo not equate the British people with their goverments, past or present. But if you are implying that the British government treated the Irish people fairly I beg to differ.
Nationalists are for nations. I can't be for England as a nation and against Ireland as a nation. That would be hypocrisy.
There is a lot of mythology on both sides.
The sectarianism was almost as bad to just as bad on Merseyside and Glasgow-way. The Ulster Plantation is almost entirely of Scots Presbyterian derivation; South-West Scotland in turn owes its settlement to Ulster in the 5th-6th century: the Scotti were an Irish tribe.
I'd've exchanged the populations. Still would.
Originally the army was welcomed by the Catholic community in Ulster. Then the Stupids deployed a sectarian Protestant Scottish regiment during Op Motorman...
The history of these islands is littered with such stupidity as is the history of the British Army and its forebears.
FIRE and reason mag have made strong attempts to create this narrative. They point to Desantis and anti-woke laws as censoring and illiberal. Conservatives used to be the cultural prudes but their province was religious schools. Nowadays they hold very little institutional power and the bulk of academic cancellations are from the left.
Funny thing is, when the conservatives were prudes they were CORRECT; ignoring them led to tons of problems.
And also, of course, they weren't nearly as authoritarian as the Left has always been and always will be. The Left presents right-wing criticism as the equivalent of left-wing violence.
Religions have ALWAYS been wrong. Gods? Show me some evidence. Whereas there is evidence by the boatload religious leaders screw you for money and screw your kids.
Science, Universities and free speech as we know it wouldn't even exist without the catholic church. You don't have to believe in God to acknowledge judeo christian history was stabilizing and a net moral force.
This same thing has been my main issue with “Common Sense.” The message often seems to be “The Left is going crazy…but let’s not forget that the Right is even worse. And yet, let’s not admit that the crazies on the Right are fewer, and have not captured ANY major American institutions.”
It’s almost like making the threat from the KKK (which exists, but with fewer than 5K members) equivalent to the threat of the Communist Chinese Party.
Tom, I felt the same way until the Jericho march in December 2020. For Lefties, Jan 6 was a huge day, but for me, it was the Jericho March that showed me just how crazy the crazies on my own side are. Prior to that, I would have said the loons are mostly on the Left, but when the MyPillow guy gets on stage and says God personally told him that Donald Trump would remain President in 2021 and tens of thousands of my fellow Republicans cheered and believed him... that was a watershed moment for me.
I agree that the threat today comes from the left almost entirely because they are in control of EVERY major cultural institution in America. But would the Right do better, or would they just use the institutions to attack different people. Heck, I'm a "live and let live" liberal mostly, but after the way the left has used its cultural power to hurt my tribe, it would feel pretty good for them to get a taste of their own medicine. I know I shouldn't feel that way, but I do.
Brian, I certainly agree that the right has its crazies, and I want nothing to do with them. But but my one problem with "Common Sense" is their apparent view that the crazies on the right represent the same level of threat to democracy as the those on the left. I don't believe it's even close. The media, the universities, the unelected Washington bureaucracy (there's one no one seems to want to talk about) and education from K through Ph.D., all belong firmly to the left. The left has the microphone and almost all the power. Jan 6, in my opinion, was deplorable. It also happened to show how weak and pathetic the far-right is, if that's all they had left to resort to.
Full disclosure - I'm an Independent myself, neither D nor R, but I lean conservative.
For religious people all positive inspiration is from God. God speaking to them isn't proof of being crazy it's the language of evangelicals. My Pillow Guy is a rehabilites drug addict. He represents the deplorables well but he is a massive outler. Most have no power at all. Compare this "stop the steal" folk to the woke and it's clear who controls the most powerful private sector companies and public sector institutions. All sides are shafted by the wing nuts but the right inhabits flyover country, hardly a threat to institutional power.
That's why I'm increasingly Orthodox (capital O). Protestantism in general, and American Evangelicalism in particular, is built on sand.
I agree about the relative threat at the moment - 100% from the Left. But after listening to Trump and Mike Lindell and Mike Flynn (I think he was setup by the FBI, but thank God he was never NatSec Advisor), I have less confidence that "my tribe", if placed in power again, wouldn't act just as crazy. To be clear, I want my tribe back in power, but my blind confidence in the character of conservative leaders has been seriously shaken.
KKK hasn't been a thing in several decades. National Socialist Movement is the dominant white supremacíst movement in the US and it is nothing more than a loosely affiliated set of prison gangs. None of them do anything outside of their criminal circles. Nevertheless Dems have been screaming that white supremacy is everywhere since Trump was elected. It's nothing more than hysteria in the elite classes.
FIRE isn't partisan, so this is standard language they use to underlie that. Recently, most of the threat has been from the Left. But 20 years ago, threats against free speech came from the Right (outing himself as gay and lambasting the war on drugs are examples cited in the article that this professor engaged in during his career.)
They're a great organization though. In many respects, they have picked up the mantle of nonpartisan, nonpolitical defense of freedom that the ACLU dropped.
We agree religious conservatives used to be the dominant cancel culture warriors. A notable exception was Affirmative Action. Anyone in academia or in gov who critiqued it was roundly demonized and cancelled from liberal circles.
FIRE is more left leaning than you think and so is Greg Lukianoff. He is currently incapable of even critiquing where the ACLU has gone wrong for fear of alienating his base.
There is some quite obvious rubbish in that article. Substitute pseudo-liberals for "liberals" and power for "politics" and the article(s) would be more accurate.
Hi Steven, I’m not sure I understand your point. It’s not very considered to malign Hanania’s article as “rubbish”. Are you suggesting Hanania should have used the word “progressive” instead of “liberal” for example? And if politics isn’t about power, how would you describe its essence? It’s a fine article and I hope your comment has more depth than it appears to have, and isn’t mere name-calling, which is all-too-common.
Who is actually restricting speech at this point, I ask. Is it the right? No. Now you can argue that they would if they could, but they aren't. No, it's the left, the supposed champions of speech and a free exchange of ideas.
Yes, at this moment in time, the right gets a pass because they *are not* the current problem.
If that is true, then I'll still blame the left for setting the precedent.
But since the right does not control Twitter, Facebook, or Google and doesn't even really seem to control the FBI or CIA nor most of the media, and doesn't look to do so for the foreseeable future, they still get a pass, simply because they are *not* at the moment nor for the foreseeable future the problem. I'd rather focus on the problem.
As a bonus, if we understand, acknowledge, and deal with the problem on the left in an efficient enough way that breaks up the influence and partisanship, the right *won't* be able to use the same tactics. That seems like enough for me to focus on what is going on rather than some lame attempt to downplay what is going on, on the left by imagining what the right *might* do if it gains that much power. You're just trying to excuse the inexcusable.
You make me tired. (1) No serious person has to debate using the words "fuck off" and "dipshit." (2) The previous discussion was about censorship. While I agree that Snowden, Assange, et al. is the fault of many elites in Washington who wear different labels (they aren't really on different sides), that's sort of a wash and not our most immediate problem.
The whole point of my comment is that’s it’s not slightly, not even close. The left is implementing society wide demands for adherence to whatever their latest dogma is. Again, name a person whose been fired for not agreeing with the Right. It doesn’t happen. The two sides aren’t comparable
I find it always funny that woke left focus all their actions on virtue signaling and no real action or change. For example these "land acknowledgments", they will be more than happy to say them, happily ignoring that those tribes were slaughtering each other (as did rest of humanity at that period) for that same land long before Europeans showed up. But all their action will end up at that virtue signaling, no real change. Rich universities will gladly do acknowledgments, but god forbid they give the land back and thus in their own eyes correct this injustice, or use their big fat endowments to pay for the land that they are using. Same as our "woke" celebrities who will preach how it is important to protect environment reduce pollution but minute after the speech is over, they will sit in privat jets with no issues.
I feel very sad when I see what has "woke" ideology done to our Universities, sometimes I think that foreign occupation would be more merciful to our higher education than the current "church of woke" that runs majority of our universities.
I slowly start to believe, that we need to abolish tax exemption for universities, and hit those endowments, maybe that would make the to awake from this woke nightmare we are in.
It always upsets me when ignoramuses wail about how we stole land from the stone age tribes called American Indians. Show me one place on this Earth that was not settled by invaders, just one. By todays morals such practices are wrong. Russian is doing it today, invading Ukraine and seizing its land.
You cannot judge the past using todays moral standards. Morals are relative and change with the times. For centuries slavery was considered morally correct. At one time, ancient Rome had more slaves in the City of Rome than Roman citizens. And that is just one example for what was OK then is repugnant to us now.
I suggest those who are beating their chests and whining over how badly we treated the Indians to read "Empire of the Summer Moon". It is a history of the Commanche Peoples. It was the duty and amusement of the Plains Indian women to torture captured enemy warriors. The Apache Indians would hang a captured enemy upside down and build a small fire under his or her head and that is just one small example of what all the American Indians did to enemies. They weren't just sitting around making pottery and weaving rugs. War and killing their enemies was a tribal pastime.
Yeah, we stole their lands. Get over it. Normandy France is called Normandy because the Northmen invaded and settled it. Invaders back then they slaughtered and enslaved the previous landowners. It's what they did.
Don't whiners both left and right ever read a history book? Good grief!
Yes! This exact thought a million times over! And, if I may throw this thought in, we NEVER should have created separate "nations" for American Indians to live in. Show me another country that has done that. They should have learned to live with everyone else and we all could have moved on.
Eastern Ukraine is majority Russian. pre-war the Ukranians were indulging in discriminatory legislation against their Russian minorities. The Indé and nʉmʉnʉʉ are not "all" "American Indians". Don't generalise from the particular and don't take the behaviour of devastated and dislocated peoples in the 18th and 19th centuries for what their behaviour was previous to the Spanish; French; and English showing up raping and pillaging. There is a whole lot of exculpalatory bollocks passing itself as history. Don't be a parrot.
Try reading a history of the North, Central and South American Indians. It is written in blood and that was before the white man came. The Aztec, Toltecs, Mayans and the Incas, bloody, bloody, bloody.
"I feel very sad when I see what has "woke" ideology done to our Universities"
It is important to understand that "woke" is not some foreign entity that is attacking universities from the outside. Universities are the birthplace of "woke" and have been promoting it for more than 50 years (with their products to be seen in most MSM, politicians and more and more teachers that are filtering down into pre-university education). The blame does not go to "woke", the blame should go to the universities themselves for creating and nurturing it for decades.
I agree to a point. The universities are the birthplace of this monster. But there's plenty-a blame to go around. If the kids weren't so stupid, they wouldn't fall all over themselves to do all that "stuff."
Many of the people who uncritically accept indoctrination are demonstrably and measurably bright, above the average, alas. My guess would be that genuinely stupid people don't think or care about any of it.
Yes, and many who spend a few years after college in what we call "the real world" develop a certain skepticism about the truths they were expected to parrot for good grades in the academy. You may not encounter these people in HR or DEI jobs, but there are plenty of them nonetheless.
Poor choice of words then. How better to phrase things?
I'm reading the book M. Lukianoff wrote with Jonathan Haidt called "The Coddling of the American Mind. I'm only about half-way through. The way I'm reading it is that these Woke kids are, basically, psychologically damaged. They fear normal day-to-day happenings. I'm getting to part about the six reasons our polarized world has turned out this this way.
Three of them involve the the kids reactions. The bulk of it comes down to how they were raised. So are the kids blameless? I think that's likely where the book is gonna lean towards. Dunno yet.
But are they? I think that's a longer story still...
Helicopter parenting and participation trophies destroyed a huge swath of a generation. The children raised that way cannot function without external direction, because they have never been allowed to make mistakes or figure out anything on their own. They expect to be rewarded merely for showing up; or often, based on the behavior of new hires at the company where I work, for merely *signing* up, with actually *showing* up being optional.
And even if they go to the trouble of showing up physically, which You say is too much trouble for some, that's not quite the same as showing *up.* Everyday. Everything. Just showing up *completely.*
They were trained they got a trophy whether they "made a showing" or not, right?
I blame my generation (late Boomer). I think we were the first generation to have a childhood to a certain extent - not working the farm, or small job to help the family that detracted from available time to play ball, etc. We (at least me) tried to have our children have an even better childhood than we (I) did. We didn't enforce doing chores as much as our generation, started leaning away from the discipline we might have experienced, and possibly that has been to the detriment of subsequent generations,
MDM, I am also a boomer, and I agree with you to a point. But I think back on my youth, and wonder why our elders seemed to abdicate authority. They were so eager to participate in the youth culture instead of guiding it. Even Jimmy Carter had sideburns and hair almost to his collar! Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, Pierre Trudeau, etc etc. They were falling all over themselves trying to be “cool” to the young people. Why did adults let kids run things??
The "kids" aren't stupid; just kids, ignorant and naive. They don't expect adults to mislead them; they go to school to be educated; instead they are "educated"=indoctrinated. We all think our Dad got more intelligent as he aged, when in fact we came to realise that he'd come to realise what we had realised by the time we came to the age he was at when we, in our ignorance, thought him stupid. We are the adults in the room; we sent them to school and paid silly money to put them through college; just as our parents did for us. Every generation repeats the same stupid. It is only now we see that as consequential.
But I"m not so sure that these younger generations ever *did* learn that their parents weren't as stupid as they'd first thought. In fact, it seems that they take the attitude that they hafta make sure that everything their parents fought for is destroyed. IMO.
We need a new rule - every time someone makes a land acknowledgment statement they have to make a donation of $1000 to the tribe or nation that they're acknowledging.
I have felt that way for a long time. The children of the rich-we used to call the limousine liberals in the 1960s-don't bear the consequences of such stupid policies. It's the poor, law abiding or working class that have suffered under the very blue regimes and universities are the bastions of such b.s. Kim Kardashian now fashions herself to be an expert on civil rights but when does she have the time to read dense legal briefs between fittings and glam squad sessions? I expect she'll be a law professor in the fall. The world is truly insane.
You can laugh; but Ms. Kardashian appears to be walking the walk; not just talking the talk; and putting her money where her mouth is to boot. The daughter of a noted lawyer becomes a lawyer herself. What a shock. Not. /s. A Democrat who worked with President Trump and was moderately successful an'all. Got President Biden to do something sane.
Not anyone's narrative and doesn't fit anybodies pigeonhole. I can appreciate her. You should leave your prejudices at the door.
Oh...so now this is prejudice. You didn't address my point; how does she travel with a carbon footprint of over 100,000 individuals; oversee all her businesses; film a reality show; make countless appearances; take selfies of every moment of her day; raise her four children AND read dense legal briefs for these cases. Let her admit that she has hired a legal team to do the work and stop the I-am-a-lawyer b.s.
lets see those univesities give the land and monies back enough with the bs , do something and let the indians go back to canoes and horses and medicine men
Remenber the Weathermen; the Symbionese Liberation Army; the Red Army Faction; and Paris '68? The unis have been spweing terrorists and bomb-makers for over fifty years.
While it is true that most Indian nations engaged in war, and slavery, they did not recognize private ownership of land. And if current theory is correct (at this point I question everything) they came from elsewhere anyway. But I agree wholeheartedly with your point. The land acknowledgers are like the Indian hunter giving thanks for the prey he just slaughtered.
"The land acknowledgers are like the Indian hunter giving thanks for the prey he just slaughtered."
I really like the way you put this, thanks.
Land acknowledgements don't bother me because they don't call for anyone to do anything to anyone else. No good reason not to acknowledge those who came before; it doesn't mean the land is theirs anymore, just that they once owned it.
This case, like many others, is about the Right to Dissent (to hold viewpoints other than that ordained or sanctioned by the Establishment). The right to dissent as Edward R Murrow said back in the 1950s during the height of Mccarthyism is always the first right to go when a nation stumbles down the route to totalitarianism.
Land acknowledgements are not performative politeness/good manners but a statement of a controversial political belief whose ultimate aim is the subversion of the US Constitution. Is stolen land/property protected under the Constitution? Is it right to compel an employee to state a controversial political belief as if it were fact? Or is this an overreach of the free expression clause in the 1st Amendment (the part of the Constitution which protects philosophical beliefs)?
It is excellent that FIRE is fighting back against the erosion of the free expression clause.
In related news: Allison Bailey won her discrimination case against her Chambers in the UK -- her belief that extreme gender ideology as articulated by the charity Stonewall UK harms women and girls is now a 'protected belief' in the UK. It means people can not be discriminated against for holding this belief. It was not up to the court to decide if the belief was right or wrong, merely that it was a sincerely held belief. The Chambers is having to pay out aggravated damages. They had claimed that they were merely following Stonewall's advice.
She lost in her claim against Stonewall -- mainly because Stonewall claimed that their employees were acting a private capacity when they organized a series of complaints against her. In other words, Stonewall had no wish to control the thoughts and actions of its employees even though it counselled other companies to do so.
It shall be interesting to see what happens in the future to the various DEI programmes Stonewall was running.
In short there is protection in the US Constitution under the free expression of religion clause (this is where philosophical beliefs are protected. in 18th century parlance a religion is a series of philosophical beliefs) for contested political beliefs. Universities should stop compelling their employees to utter philosophical beliefs which the employees do not believe in.
Yes. Consider Harvard's decision to change its law school shield last year. The previous shield acknowledged the significant gift of university land from a donor who made his fortune on the labor of slaves in the Caribbean. The decision was symbolic and understandable.
A more appropriate reaction would have been for the university (whose endowment is more than $50 billion) to have assessed the donated property's current value and to have devoted that amount to people or schools now in the area of the donor's plantation.
It's pretty clear by now that there are two fundamental differences between progressive leftists and normal people, whether conservative or classically liberal.
First, unlike the latter, progressives are constantly up your butt, demanding that you do and say precisely what they demand, even as what they demand changes almost daily (witness the addition of X's etc to almost every definition or witless slogan). The latter are mostly content to go about their lives in a laissez faire manner, as long as one's peculiarities don't impinge upon society or underage children.
Second, progressives are entirely humorless. They are the least mirthful, unhappiest and loathsome creatures on this planet.
In fact, I'm now convinced that the only proper reaction to their incessant and dreary hectoring is a mirthful snort of indifference or a swift punch in the nose.
Excellent comments, these, Bruce. I love your definition of wokes vs. liberals, and I find humorless people the bleakest creatures I've ever known. Those who can't laugh at themselves or the little absurdities in life should not be allowed near a policy position.
I often wonder why administrators and faculty at places like UW do not reassign say 20-30% of their generous salaries to support their noble causes. Much cheaper to just signal virtue?
Institutions of higher education are, in my mind, voiding their social contract. They should be churning out intelligent, productive citizens. They appear to be instead doing their level best to build militant infants. Most professions do not require a college education to be successful. In some cases, I would argue that all a degree does is increase the degree holder’s debt, with no related way of paying off said debt.
My wife and I are both products of a time when high schools were scrapping vocational programs and preaching that the only way to success and prosperity was through a college education. That philosophy is emphatically and almost laughably false. From the tone of these articles in Common Sense that I keep reading (seems there’s at least one per week), it seems that many colleges have become little more than woke tent revivals. People are slowly beginning to realize what enormous grifters most of these universities have become. All those little militant infants that they’ve released on the world now want the rest of us to pay off their loans as well. Hard-working decent people don’t want to shoulder the financial burden of some woke zealot who got an education in how to hate them. I wouldn’t give them a penny. Forget about just dropping the donations to your alma mater. Wake up. Stop sending your kids there. They’ll probably be better off.
To say that any Professors in this country are threatened by right leaning administrations is laughable. I can think of only a few right leaning universities in the whole country.
I think the authors sources are likely confusing left wing threat with right wing. For example anything perceived as racist is traditionally considered right wing. Something that may have had some small merit 50 years ago but the vast majority of racist thought today is a result of left wing ideology.
How different are these 'land acknowledgements' and other 'woke' rules from any other religion? These LA statements sound like prayers to me, not that there's anything wrong with that, but the people uttering them would be appalled by starting a meeting with a prayer.
The America I was raised in prepared us to be independent, thick skinned and strong. Woke seems to say that all of those things are bad, and instead we should guard against the weakest in our society from having their feelings hurt, or be left behind.
The latter is not a formula for a successful society.
I'd be curious to see how these institutions would respond to calling their bluff by getting a majority of students to demand these colleges sign over the land to the native tribes.
Thank You, M. Lukianoff. I can't say enough about how much I appreciate FIRE and "The Coddling..." which I'm reading right now. TYTY. (I'll continue to make donations, tho money's a little tight this year.) TY again and again.
It is important to recognise that many on the Right are more interested in just attacking the Left (which is easily justifiable, to be fair) than actually promoting Free Speech (the Right often just wants to have the Right make the decisions rather than have the Left do it). So I certainly appreciate the "This threat comes from both the left and the right." line from FIRE because although it is the Left that is the CURRENT threat, they don't hold any historical monopoly - the world has a Free Speech problem, and that is not exclusive to the Left as the only culprit.
If you (Mr Lukianoff) have not already done so, I would suggest you get in contact with FSU (the Free Speech Union https://freespeechunion.org/) in the UK for mutual benefit.
So true. The right, at least doesn’t seem to have a global agenda. The left is way scarier right now. It has taken all of us a while to see that this is a global coordinated effort attacking everything that makes us free. The UK is suffering equally. Australia, Canada and others. Thank you Mr. Lukianoff for this precise rendering of the moment we are in and all of your heroic work!
So not true. The 1950s are long gone. Can you name an effort by conservatives to suppress free speech today? And, even in the 1950s, the hunt for commies was not wrong. As the KGB archives have long established, they had infiltrated many American institutions, including our government.
It's depressing to realize that, even though McCartyism was a horrific attack on freedom of speech and freedom of association, the threat it tried (and evidently failed) to mitigate was very real.
True and to this day people still swear that Hiss or the Rosenbergs were innocent despite the KGB archives. They weren't. Nor was Harry Dexter White and a host of others who were in the service of the Soviet Union or were fellow travelers. It's why I simply can't watch The Crucible without giggling. McCarthy was a thug. But not entirely wrong.
Well said. Republicans are being handed a gift with these kinds of incoherent ideologies and I cringe whenever I see them do things like, going after Disney over the sexual orientation of a character.
I am familiar with the ridiculously nicknamed “don’t say gay” legislation (which says nothing of the sort), and have seen nothing from republicans remotely calling for anything like they are being accused of with that nickname. I have not seen anything “going after Disney over the sexual orientation of a character”. Disney has many gay characters by now and I have not seen republicans commenting on any of them. Could you cite the specifics on this?
The reason I’d like to know, and I am willing to hear it, absolutely, is that so much “truth” being bandied about is verifiably not truth. Once a lie is out there, it’s out there and never fully goes away. E.g. “The View” ladies were just caught flat footed lying about protesters outside Turning Point and had to issue a formal apology for their lie. But, of course far many more people heard and believed the lie than will ever hear the apology or correction to their lie.
I'm referring to Ron DeSantis petty culture battle with Disney. The actual catalyst of a specific character wasn't really the point. What is relevant is that it's an attack on Disney's free speech (if I remember correctly, it had to do with something they tweeted about FL) and proof that the Republicans don't value free speech as much as they value winning. The "don't say gay bill"--which I agree is mischaracterized-- is in fact very problematic as it's poorly written and could cause a teacher to be fired for answering perfectly appropriate questions concerning his/her partner....which again, is Republicans attacking free speech.
The "petty culture battle" was actually a result of Disney threatening to use its corporate power to dismantle a bill that was intended to prevent teachers from teaching very young children sexual ideology in the classroom. Since parents wanted this bill, what Disney was actually threatening was to overwhelm parents' free speech with corporate money.
I thought Leftists were all about hating corporations and their money? Evidently, like everything else for Leftists, it depends on the corporation's ideology.
As is their right to spend their money on whatever they want. Politicians do not have the right to use their power to bully their political opponents. If you're ok with Ron DeSantis bullying your political enemies, than you have to be ok with Gavin Newsom bullying you. These emotional culture battles, cause us to lose sight of our values.
Thank you for the clarification, Tom. I have not scrutinized the actual bill, don’t know about a tweet and cannot speak to DeSantis’s “pettiness”. I think the broader story should be considered as there’s clearly much more to it than the meme allows. It’s certainly not a FL only issue. I too am opposed to teaching falsehoods and/or unscientific data about human biology and sexuality to little children, in the same way I am opposed to public school teaching religion or other subjects traditionally the purview of parents. I agree it would be terrible for a teacher’s words to be misinterpreted when answering a child’s questions and for her/him to be fired as a result.
Whether or not republicans don’t value free speech as much as winning is a debatable opinion that can only be answered by the individual. As a party, I suppose it may look like that and you may be right. However, if they don’t win, their speech will still be ignored! 🫤
If a teacher is fired for answering a child's question, I think it will be just like doctors not treating a miscarriage for fear of anti-abortion laws -- they are reacting to misinformation about these laws which is rampant on fora such as MSNBC right now. The left is doing no good by pretending reasonable laws are draconian.
If everyone is a child molester, than nobody is a child molester. You're doing the exact same thing Leftists do: "All republicans are racist!" absolutely no difference.
I'm refering to Disney the corporation; not necessarily the people working in it. Who are as likely to have been taken in by the guff as everyone else. Nor am I writng of anyone else than Disney; and certainly not everone else. Don't be that prat.
I teach at a high school. I live in a liberal state and so what I (recently) see is the muzzling of students and parents if they don't adhere to the 'progressive' agenda. It's very scary. I find it difficult to have a nuanced debate because most students are afraid and some will not even admit that their parents are Republicans for fear of being 'different' from their peers. I don't know what it's like in more conservative states-- maybe it's the same but reversed. We are doing a disservice to these young people to not encourage real REAL critical thinking. That said, I could be "sent to the principal' if I try to encourage more open dialogue.
I could be misunderstanding this statement entirely: "This threat comes from both the left and the right. Two-thirds of sanction attempts from the left of the professor result in some form of sanction. The same is true for 42% of attempts from the right of wherever the professor is politically." but it seems to me this is one of many such statements I see in Common Sense articles lately that tries to claim a false equivalency. There's always this weak attempt to say that this isn't a problem unique to Democrats by pointing to an example of Republicans behaving similarly. For one, the quote above fails to mention how often such threats come from either side. It's far too vague to mean anything.
Bari's excellent speech on the new founders America needs included a similar statement when she compares the minority of conservatives who recently expressed admiration for "European autocrats " (Putin) to the Biden Administration trying to establish a Ministry of Truth.
In American institutions, in universities, and in corporations, the demand for total ideological conformity stems entirely from modern Progressives. Within the Republican party there is a sizable segment that demands such adherence to whatever the Orange Man decrees, but I challenge you to find one example of a professor, government official, or private sector employee losing their livelihood because they suggested they might not like Trump. It's simply not the same.
I agree with you completely, but you have to understand what Common Sense is. Common Sense is not really an independent-thinking liberal publication. It is still first and foremost a Democrat-sympathetic publication working a Democrat angle. For this reason, it cannot fully condemn the left on this most basic of issues (free speech) because to do so would be to suggest that there might be something momentarily unsalvageable about the left and its political arm (the Democrat Party). Their goal is not to actually discuss the seriousness of the issue among Democrats and the left that makes them all but impossible to support at this point. Instead, they frame this as simply a "minor" problem that just affects certain institutions and is a problem on both sides. In this way, they won't be seen nor do they feel like they are giving people a reason to abandon the party that created this situation.
I like reading Common Sense because for a Democrat-sympathetic publication it is a palatable way to keep up on the insanity of the mainstream narrative, but there are better liberal publications that are liberal without being Democrat-sympathetic (Freddie DeBoer, Matt Taibbi, Michael Tracey, and Leighton Woodhouse to name a few).
Thanks for the references to other publications. I like Common Sense very much, also, and Taibbi, and have abandoned the Democratic party myself, yet I do not see CS as protecting that party. I do not see a) supporting the new university in Austin, b) Bari Weiss resigning a job at the NYT, and c) almost alone at the beginning, reviled, sounding the alarm against media and cultural indoctrination ... to be treating this as a '"minor" problem.' I see these difficult, courageous, committed, life-changing actions as treating the problem as being extremely serious.
I have not seen an article about the systemic effect that such acceptance of censorship has on society as a whole. For example in this article, they jokingly treat Yale as a "lost cause," but how many of our leaders and Supreme Court Justices have their degrees from Yale, Harvard, and Columbia? If that is the culture we are educating our future leaders in, and I don't mean that even figuratively, how does that affect the survival of our nation? It's no small thing to laugh off with a "censorship award." It's dangerous.
And then there's the TDS, yesterday's article about Blake Masters being a prime example. Independent liberals do not have TDS. They might not like Donald Trump. In fact, they may hate the man. But they have a realistic attitude about him: everything that he's done has been done by presidents from both parties, and with far more acceptance by the media and party at large, which makes it far more dangerous. He makes himself a nice scapegoat for them, but that's all he is, a shiny object to point at to distract from the really bad things they're doing and from the very real complaints of the population at large that they don't want to address.
But we can agree to disagree.
Even better, I agree with your comments about independent liberals and their attitude toward Trump.
Look up Glenn Greenwald as well. The Rubin Report is also great. Lefties meeting reality is good for our society.
I forgot about Glenn Greenwald! Yes, him as well. I'd put Dave Rubin more on the right anymore, just because of the drift in the spectrum, but I know he was on the left and, yes, I enjoy listening to him as well. He is funny and he makes good points.
I'm with Alice. It's fine if Bari is, or wants to be, a Democrat, but she never hesitates to unload on the left when they deviate from Classic Liberal philosophy. (Which unfortunately they do daily... which is why millions of us have left the party.)
Bari stands mostly not for party dogma, but for... Common Sense.
I don't care much about Bari's personal politics, and in fact appreciate that she often discloses her view of issues she's covering.
I care mightily about whether she reports objectively, and in this regard she has few peers.
I see how you might think that, and we'll have to agree to disagree, but as I said I have yet to see articles on any of the following: the corruption in Ukraine, the weaponizing of our security state, or the propagandistic nature of our current media to the point that it threw the last election. COVID is still the tragedy of the last two years, not the *reaction* to COVID and misuse of "emergency powers." Trump is still some sort of singularity, just not openly what every other president has been behind closed doors, and perhaps a bit more benign even if more embarrassing than the rest. The Republicans range from buffoonish to bigoted fascists (see the article put out on Sunday about CPAC and Viktor Orban). And I rarely see anything on the dangers of twisting language and cancellation for "wrong think" other than this might not be good for the kids, it cost X, X's job, but they're doing fine, or it's some kind of embarrassing quirk of the Democrats that will cost them come election time, rather than a terrifying trend that has never led to anything good anytime it's happened in history. If they really wanted to be evenhanded, they would have JD Vance write an article about modern populist conservatism or invite Pedro Gonzales to write an article about what Karl Marx got right (rather than Douglas Murray hold Gonzales up as "dabbling" in anti-Semitism because he made a tasteless joke about someone's "physiognomy"). You might not care for Gonzales's taste in humor, but a conservative who has read Marx and sees validity in some of his theories about the mistreating of workers? Now that's interesting. She might also invite Aaron Mate to write an article about US machinations behind the scenes in Ukraine that caused the conflagration we have now (and how they're being repeated in Taiwan) to counter the soft hawkishness of the emotional stories they have printed about refugees.
So to me, the articles she allows on her platform might be objective (though not even all of them are). It's the overall picture that isn't. She's only "objective" if you're comparing her to the mainstream media. She still very much won't go certain places because those place won't reflect well on the Democrats or the establishment leadership.
Yesterday some one else commented that people come here for anti woke porn. and when they read anything except that get disappointed and triggered.
You make a good point that this is being treated as time filler and entertainment. I am about to make the next step to action. Public speaking out of some sort.
Really curious what you mean
Thinking about making art addressing the issues, elaborate political cartoons in a way. The art world is uber woke.
But I think Lillia's point is that BW is still aligned. Just maybe no longer in lock-step.
"Recovering" regressives and "former" political loonies will fall off the wagon. Don't forget most of 'em suckled on Kool-Aid rather than their mum's milk!
Ohhh! Regressive. I like that!
Well said. It does seem like they want to acknowledge problems, but they won't really go after it without at the same time pointing out right wing issues which are supposedly equally as bad. Which in effect excuses the initial problem they're talking about. If everyone is guilty then nobody is guilty.
Both Sides statements are a nullification - like an equation of 'one minus one equals zero.' You're left there stuck in neutral, not getting anywhere. It's a deflection, not a valid attempt at discussion. However, when trying to talk to a leftist it's a good way to give them a dose of their own medicine.
Yep, I think Hitchens had a comment about partisanship not being so bad as people say. It's highly unlikely that you're actually somehow halfway between two positions. So just argue for what you think is right instead of trying to win plaudits by acting like you're above both. Maybe neither party is perfect but unlikely that one isn't better than the other.
Honest partisanship is fine and productive. The partisanship we suffer now gives us migraines, not good policies.
Thanks for info I know Freddie and Matt but didn’t know Michael and Leighton will do more research into them
Thanks for the recommendations! I already subscribe to Taibbi but will check out the others
Democratic Party, not Democrat Party.
I prefer "Democrat" Party as lately there is not much "democratic" about them. Just ask Bernie Sanders.
Isn't he a Dem only when he wants to be President and otherwise is a raving commieloon millionare grifter who caucuses with the Dems as a figleaf?
In a "democratic" system you don't use "superdelegates" and have everyone arrange to drop out to subvert the will of the voters. The plurality of voters wanted Bernie Sanders. Twice his efforts have been sabotaged, first by Hillary and then by Biden. No, it is not the "democratic" party. The Republican system is much closer to democratic.
But, yes, that is one way of looking at him. I don't, but I can understand calling him a "millionaire grifter." That's kind of what it feels like he's become.
People who took holidays in the Soviet Union always were.
Of course the right has flaws. No one is saying that. What we are saying is that on this particular subject, you're comparing a case of chest congestion on the right to full blown metastasized lung cancer on the left. And in doing so you allow the left to dismiss the issue as limited or "just a problem both sides have." It's not. The problem on the right is no threat to society at large for a number of reasons I could go into. The problem on the left however is bleeding into the mainstream and threatening our very system and the things that make this country work and threaten, in the long run, to destabilize it entirely.
I’m inclined to agree with you in general but I don’t think that 95% of House Republicans voting against the recent contraception bill is merely “chest congestion.” That is terrifying and outrageous for women in states now banning abortion and closer to your lung cancer analogy.
It is totally F-ed up to bring up sexual identity in schools AND it’s F-ed up to refer a 10 year old getting pregnant as a woman who is now destined to be a mother.
Ive lived outside of the US for 5 years and it’s is much easier to see the insanity on both left and right without being triggered by it. So in this sense I completely disagree with you and think you are too stuck on your own team to actually accept some of its very real failings.
I find it funny that you think I'm a Republican.
And yes 95% of House Republicans voting at the *federal level* against a contraception bill that was probably filled with god knows what and is a token move is chest congestion compared to having medical information censored, as has, for example, taken place with COVID treatments and statistics. People cannot make informed decisions and you make a joke of science and the institutions we need to function as a society if you censor what later turns out to be truth for any reason, but most especially for political reasons. And no, banning abortion is more akin to pneumonia, completely treatable and the patient will most likely recover. If we can't talk about things and get information out and we allow people to continue to live in their bubbles so we can't even agree on a shared baseline reality, nothing--and I mean absolutely nothing--else matters.
“Probably filled with god knows what”. A comment that just shows that your have 100% made up your mind and are obviously 100% correct about it. You’re interested in talking only, not listening.
And I didn’t actually focus solely on abortion, rather on the strong support to ban abortion AND ban contraception by Republican law makers.
You can read the law here if you want to actually learn about it instead of casting your knee jerk emotional reaction about it. It has a pretty narrow focus. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/8373/text?r=1&s=1
This actually could be very interesting for gender identity treatments - Section 6b2: shall not be construed … “to permit or sanction the conduct of any sterilization procedure without the patient’s voluntary and informed consent.“
The bill is virtue signalling; there is no threat to contraception. Don't be taken in by smokescreens and waffle-gabble.
Roe was "settled law" until it was wasn't. If there is no threat to contraception, then it should be the easiest thing in the world for Republicans to codify that into law. Why are they reluctant?
'The problem on the right is no threat to society at large for a number of reasons I could go into...'
Well, Lillia, if a very large portion of the Republican Party adheres to or declares fealty to an ex President who (and I'm being generous here), appeared to want the certified results of the previous election in certain states rescinded by false Electors and/or upended by thousands of supporters trashing the Capitol - would that not be construed as a 'threat' to society? At least society as we know it?
Never mind our 6-3 conservative majority at SCOTUS, whereby giving the states back their jurisdiction over abortion rights is now, as we speak, in real time, pitting states against each other as to who offers these rights and who denies them..
Doesn't look too good for our already frayed society (in my eyes anyway, no matter how you feel about abortion, as women have to cross states' lines to get the service they need..) either legally, financially or emotionally as chaos ensues.
I agree on your 'lung cancer' analogy for the uber Left. But only 'chest congestion' on the Right?
How about a full blown heart attack?
They trashed the Capitol (and by "trashed" we mean they broke a couple windows, stole a podium, and picked up their own water bottles) and delayed the vote by what hours? They didn't burn down the Capitol, and the vote took place. There was never any serious doubt that it would. (On the other hand, I think most people in Minneapolis *wish* the BLM riots had "trashed" their city like the "insurrectionists" "trashed" the Capitol.) It was, compared to the other riots across the country, a non-event. The only reason it became an event was where it happened and for what reason and how the Democrats have used it and the focus the media has given it.
The states are frequently pitted against each other. We are a republic. That is the beauty of a republic. You find a state to live in that shares your beliefs. That way everybody gets a little of what they want and can vote with their feet and have a layer of representation between them and the federal government in what is a highly diverse nation in thought (not just as far as skin melanin goes). This is true even on an issue such as abortion. It's not going to "tear" society apart. If abortion is so repulsive to you you can't handle its existence, go to Ohio. If you support it, move to New York or California. And as for getting one, heck, it sounds like Oregon will even give you a "vacation" to come to their state to have one. I don't think this is a real problem.
So, no, it is not a heart attack. Indigestion at best, relatively speaking. It's inconvenient, a little ugly, but nothing that we won't be over in the morning.
That might be so but for the other actors in your 'House of Cards': the Critical Theorists; your de facto "Third Party". A party seeking to subvert and overthrow your Republic and put its' boots on your faces - forever.
'(..and by "trashed" we mean they broke a couple windows, stole a podium, and picked up their own water bottles)..
I'm wondering why the FBI doesn't agree with you, after over eight hundred arrests..
Yes!!!
The MSM does a great job on vilifying the Right and I fail to see very many who say that the Right has no flaws! Straw Man Alert!!!
All this discussion just makes me think yet again that political labels more often get un the way than are helpful. Glenn Greenwald said this recently on Michael Malices show. Political labels are too vague and malleable, and often aid tribalism and get in the way of simply discussing issues.
"Political labels are too vague and malleable, and often aid tribalism and get in the way of simply discussing issues."
Spot on! I re-registered after the GOP allowed Trump to be their nominee after the 2016 election. At first, I was overjoyed that Clinton was rejected, but when Trump began his Tweet storms he lost me, although I appreciated most of his actions as President. The "person" of Trump was just too repellant.
I don't like the person either. But I think overall he did a good job, better than Hillary would have and clearly better than Biden and would be doing better than him now. I think the consideration should be will the actions and results of the actions of the potential president result in more good for more people than their opponent. That's a complex calculation obviously, but to me it goes far beyond whether they said something offensive. And as we've seen, the media machine will defend the Dem candidate from outrage so that must be considered too.
Aren't we precious. You can say President Donald J. Trump Jr; you won't die, and he won't jump out of the mirror and grab your dangly bits.
Ben... i do like your points. Also, "vague and malleable" Words that are used, get in the Way and produce empty calorie...
Maybe labels get in the way. But I can’t help but think that this disavowal of traditional labels is somewhat evasive. Leftists should be examining how their ideas and political party were hijacked by crazy people. A flaw in their philosophy, perhaps?
What I mean is they are inexact. I mean how pissed off are you, say you're a conservative, if someone presents something stupid another conservative said or did halfway across the country? People are unique and these broad labels mash together legitimate differences that exist.
Agree, in the sense that AOC should not be viewed as representative of the views of all “leftists”. But there’s no doubt that the craziness arose on the left. It didn’t happen overnight, or by a total repudiation of leftist philosophy. I think leftists need to recognize that somehow this arose organically in their midst, and some self-reflection is needed.
Conservatism was hijacked by MAGA; liberalism was hijacked by the Woke. Neither hard wing is good for our society, which needs moderation in order to function properly. Will we get that moderation? Nope. Not as long as hate sells ad space.
Shane, with all respect, I refer you back to the beginning of the conversation and the many comments about false equivalence.
To insist on talking about insignificant flaws on the Right when the Left is threatening to destroy us all is not merely childish; it's insane.
I have trouble equating, as our current regime does, banning “To Kill a Mockingbird” (a left book “banning” in school) to banning a text math book that teaches regression with fake data plotting being on the left as being less bigoted and being on the right as being highly bigoted (a right book “banning” in school).
I agree. I, too, had been a Progressive until the Progressives became unprogressive, intolerant, and somewhat insane. I am now an Independent. Like you, I keep the blinders off and look at both sides as objectively as I can. To adhere strictly to the left or to the right is akin to being in a cult.
Lillia's profile tag: "A big believer that "they" will never tell you the truth, but if you're watching, "they" will always show you the truth."
What do you mean "became"? They always were intolerant, demented loons, you became older and wiser and they just became more blatent and desparate in their demented, intolerant, lunacy.
You deserve great credit for letting the light of reality shine brighter than political partisanship. That's wonderful news. But when did anyone assert that "the Right does not also have some problems"? Please give me some examples of "the Right". I just do not see them or know who they are. Once "the Right" has been identified and I know who they are, it will be much easier to see their problems.
I always wonder why the over representation from low population states always point to Wyoming or Montana as problematic....but never Rhode Island, Vermont or.....Delaware.
The not so subtle 'flyover states' dismissiveness
The problem is the progressives are no longer content to fly over. They are landing here in droves.
Republicans have Cruz, Boebert, Greene, Jordan, and Gaetz, who are as batshit and/or useless as any of the Democrats you mention. Get rid of your losers and I'd be happy to throw Talib and Co. overboard.
We are no longer interested in that line of shite. Say what you will about TCtuz et al they are American. Bat shit crazy? Maybe, but devoted to America as they see her. You clean your stable. If we see you as sincere, we will clean outs.
Ted Cruz was born in Canada. But he sure passes himself as being from Texas.
All the Democrats listed are as American as your Republicans, Lynne, and are just as devoted to this nation. So what line of shite are you no longer interested in?
What fundamental rewrite of the Constitution are you referring to, Golfer? I'm not aware of any being proposed by Democrats, but let me know if there is. The "Green New Deal" is not a rewrite of anything, it's a series of policy proposals that might be good or might suck. The concept is the same as Newt Gingrich's "Contract for America"--policy proposals with a catchy name.
👏👏👏👏👏
Spot on golfer.
I noticed that as well. Is 2/3 of 1000 events as serious as 42% of 100 events. We are missing some data to draw a meaningful conclusion.
“The same is true for 42% of attempts from the right of wherever the professor is politically”.
That seems a clever play on words intended to sate the lefties Bari and crew identify with. Consider that some professors are so far left that any one to the right of them politically can still be safely ensconced on the left. It’s kind of like a socialist bad mouthing a Marxist.
The above comments cut thru the fog of the "partially red-pilled" version of fighting the left: we will fight the left but we must equally fight the right. I used to support this approach, but not now, not in 2022. That ship sailed ten years ago. Greg Lukianoff and FIRE are wonderful - they are the ACLU of the 1950s. But today other than a scattering of admittedly conservative Christian schools, I do not believe there are any longer schools in which the right has any significant power.
In approximately 2012, I may have been the "instigator" of one of the "rightwing" attempts to penalize a Marxist prof at UCSB. I and others asked Chancellor Yang to investigate the prof because he compared the Israeli military to the Nazis with photos and narrative sent to his class, and implying Martin Luther King would have approved, all on MLK's birthday. MLK loved Israel, but the real issue we raised was that the material had nothing to do with his sociology class. It was a technical legal issue to be adjudicated according to the university regulations.
Two Israeli women in the prof's class objected. I am on the board of of an org that helps Jewish students fight anti-Semitism (a battle that is overwhelming today). So we supported the two students. Yang agreed and investigated. The full weight of the left came to the Marxist prof's defense, it was pretty overwhelming. But it appeared to me, the nail in the coffin was when FIRE wrote a powerful letter demanding that Yang stop the investigation - I remember it was a very serious letter. At this point, Yang, probably the most courageous of the University of California chancellors, capitulated.
After eight years of pro-America, pro-Israel activist/philanthropy with an emphasis on universities, this was the final straw when I concluded the universities were unreformable as they are currently constituted.
Today it is obviously much worse. I encourage people to support FIRE if they believe in "academic freedom" per se as they are they are a formidable legal advocate of "academic freedom."
However, they will fight the right as hard as they fight the left. Given that conservatives are virtually invisible on college campuses, and classical liberals do not dare to speak out as evidenced by the essay above, I believe when they fight the "right" they are fighting people who are already victims of horrendous bigotry. In my opinion, FIRE are advocates of a principle that only applies in an a non-totalitarian environment. That is not what we are in.
Terrifying that you may be correct when you say "In my opinion, FIRE are advocates of a principle that only applies in an a non-totalitarian environment. That is not what we are in."
My hypothesis is that from the right, people call for professors to be silenced. From the left institutions call for it. How many right wing run colleges and universities are there really? Institutions trying to get rid of their own employees. In how many right wing institutions has that happened?
There are no such institutions, barring those that are fledgeling or in utero. ALL have fallen. Where do you think the screaming loonies in their thirties and forties were taught? The 'Woke' virus coincided with the 1st Roosevelt Administration. It parasitised the US Civil Rights Movement; why do you think the "Great Society"; Affirmative Action; and such, didn't work as intended? Your wide-eyed liberals and "progrssives" were already co-opted.
The article links an extensive data base of the scholars targeted, including the presumed political motivation of the attack. I don't have the time, but I hope someone finds the time and motivation to parse this data. Here's the link to the database: https://www.thefire.org/research/scholars-under-fire-database/#home/
And what were the sanctions in response to? What was the actual nature of the sanction, as in what did it result in? How were they decided?
And how are they distinguishing between censorship from the left vs the right?
Left vs right in this instance is a judgement call unless there is a professor fired for being pro abortion which I doubt
"Judgement call", is that a new euphemism for "bollocks"?
I’ve come to expect this false equivalency offering to the progressive gods in most of the Common Sense writings these days. I get this same sort of thing from family and friends attempting to be evenhanded. It falls flat each time because the conservatives usually don’t have the institutional power that the “progressives” have. I’d hate to think the CS editor insists on the inclusion of these kinds of weasel statements which stand out as the weakest part of their argument. Everyone is afraid of the crowing cancel crowd. Remember several Popes now have shied away from excommunicating or even warning abortion loving US and European politicians.
It comes with being part of the so-called "elite". They simply cannot give it up. Elitism is really the cancer destroying this country. The unmitigated gall of seeing oneself as "elite" as a human being.
Societal stratification is as old as civilization itself. Elitism can certainly be toxic, but I don’t think we can truly get rid of it. If my musician daughter sets her eyes on auditioning for a competitive music school, should I discourage her because that is elitist? What we have with the woke ideology is the most elitist (a group of mostly economically privileged individuals) sector of society demonizing and ostracizing all those who do not abide by their shallow version of inclusivity. Yes, this is something we should denounce.
I do not think playing devil’s advocate is elitist. When someone is doing a very bad job at it—absolutely—point this out. For the record, I believe many of these criticisms are quite valid.
If the goal is to somehow challenge and/or halt the progression of the woke ideology, isn’t it helpful that many disillusioned liberals have become vocal critics? Further, I don’t think this group (the “red-pilled liberals,” “politically homeless”) will ever entirely align with conservatives on many issues. But, is a liberal voice that is less radical and polarized a bad thing for the country or exacerbating harmful political polarization? I doubt it.
I agree with everything you said. I have no issues with elite talent. My issue is with people who profess themselves to be elite human beings by virtue of living in the right neighborhood, attending the right schools, etc. and then doubling down in buying that type of elitism for their offspring. That is not elitism and it is certainly does not make them superior to you or me. Nor does it entitle them to decide how you and I should live. Elitism, like everything else here, needs to be earned. As for social classes/stratification I am actually okay with that so long as it is not pre-ordained who goes in what class. In other words as long as there is equal opportunity to change one's class. I do not aspire to or admire socialism. How boring if everyone were that kind of equal. Same for political views so I welcome classic liberal thought. I do believe however that the "woke" Ideology is rooted in misplaced elitism and is a cancer in our society.
I concur. I am not one to put down youthful idealism; to rebel and challenge authority/the status quo is a part of growing up and establishing an identity. Nonetheless, what we witness today involves a good degree of elitism, entitlement and a particular type of hubris that comes with absolute moral certainty. Thinking your preferred set of ideas will unquestionably land you on the right side of history requires a person to ignore the many times a vision of “the greater good” was used to manipulate people toward the opposite direction. What really gets me—however—is the imposition: the writing on the wall is clear for non-believers: dissent at your own peril.
I concur entirely with You, M. Alejandra.
I agree with everything You both said. TYTY both-a Youse.
This is a bit off the topic of elitism. There is one, to me, pretty big problem with the ultra-wealthy. The tip top Forbes 400 people and them kind. They will never see any downward mobility for generations.
What we have is hereditary royalty. I don't like it here in America. But, as a practical matter, I don't see how to prevent it by taxing inheritance. It'd just make ex-pats outta them. ?
Conversation came up on different article.
There are plenty of f-ups amongst the uber wealthy. Always have been and always will be. Human beings are subject to vices and addictions. All human beings and it is not social status that determines the ability to control them. The thing with the class you are objecting to is that mommy and daddy and their legions of lawyers, wealth managers, financial advisers, etc. have done all in their power to protect the principal. People die and heirs are an ugly necessity to pass on the wealth. Thus the creation of trusts. But some of them still eff it up. Hunter Biden, although not of that echelon , is an example. Sort of a best laid plans of mice and men thing. And the law is solidly on the side of not tying assets up into perpetuity - a trust must vest (have an owner of the assets of the trust) within lives in being, plus 21 years. That came to us from the English common law.
As far as elitism I have just come to see those who think of themselves as "elite" because of where they went to school or which neighborhood, or city, or coast they live on, or inherited wealth as a very large part of the problem. That is the definition of privilege. Those people are not qualified to make decisions about how I live my life. They are a cancer on society and should seek treatment. Assuming there is competent treatment in their rarefied strata. The Marin County pre-school.parents pushed me over the edge on this. I see people of that mind-set as needing to be reckoned with. Soon.
I understand that false equivalencies can at times be ludicrous and don’t have an issue when people bring them up. I also see that it is important for a fair minded person to play the role of devil’s advocate. What can we do? Perhaps the answer is to continue to point out these false equivalences in the hopes that the writer refines some of their argument and does a better job playing devil’s advocate…
False equivalencies are the same as 'Look, a squirrel!'
I agree with you about false equivalencies, although it may be the wrong thing to focus on. For instance i've had times when i've discussed this issue and someone on the left makes some claim about threats from the right against free speech. And I can argue the point with them, but at the end of the day it might just be best to tell them 'ok, still we can agree that we should always defend free speech, no matter where the threat comes from right?' Get that agreement, and then get into the nitty gritty of individual cases.
If you can’t agree on the cause you’re not going to come to an agreed upon solution
I disagree. If you get them to agree that free speech must be affirmed always no matter what then they won't have a leg to stand on to defend whatever the left is doing to threaten free speech. Get that agreement first, then focus on the specific cases.
Maybe you’re right :)
I came to the comments to see if anyone was asking the question that formed in my mind when I read the passage, "This threat comes from both the left and the right." Since the overwhelming vast majority of university professors and administrators are on the left or far left, being in the right nowadays is more like being in the center - at least in that setting. Threats from what's perceived as "the right" are no doubt happening, but it's hardly the right as most of us would see it. More like the center left or center.
Anyone who actually is in the center is a "right-wing extremist" in the eyes of our institutions.
Exactly. That's what I think too.
I, too, do not see authoritarianism as equivalent at this time, and am far more troubled by the authoritarianism of the left, its pervasive reach throughout academia. In those ways I agree with your thoughtful comment.
I also accept that it may be important to note that authoritarianism can appear from both right and left, as in long-dead McCarthyism.
For pragmatic reasons, many people are so partisan, that to present a concern in exclusively partisan terms could cause them to dismiss an argument in its entirety. Emphasizing division will not be helpful in changing hearts and minds.
In logical terms, it is logical to illustrate that the issue is beyond partisanship, is an issue in its own right. There are already signs that reaction from the right to woke indoctrination could be similarly authoritarian. Prohibitions of all sorts are in the air.
It may be fairly left to the reader to conclude that authoritarianism is most urgently a problem as embedded in the progressive belief system.
So I see reason in FIRE's approach of remaining steadfastly noncritical of opponents and their affiliated groups, while standing up against specific instances in a general trend of authoritarian restriction of freedom. I send money to FIRE.
I understand your point and I think in a less partisan world you would be right that pointing out the issue on both sides help brings people together, but at the moment, I think that it simply gives the very people who need to hear the message, even if only to understand why independents are abandoning the party, an excuse to excuse the behavior or minimize it.
And from what I've heard, FIRE is a great organization and does what the ACLU used to do, so it is well worth supporting, and these are only two of its representatives.
Except MacArthy was proven right. The US WAS massivley infiltrated. Why do you think Marxism as a political philosophy got a bye when National Socialism didn't? Both are equally disgusting and evil. Large parts of the US public have been taken in by various metastized Marxisms for a century or more, and this proportion only grew larger by the decade. If it weren't for the Worlwide Web, you'd STILL be steadfastly looking the other way. Marxism and its' children are evil. If you are steadfastly non-critical of evil you have no morals and are partaking of it yourself.
Interesting points with some validity. It seems to me that the problem with McCarthyism and similarly, cancel culture, is the response to infiltration of "evil" ideas.
If a mob does not like what one person says, one speaks in return. One does not try to deprive a person of their livelihood when that person has not done the same to one. The response is not commensurate; it escalates. One does not respond to a repressive philosophy with repression.
This is an age old debate. Witness the example of the New Testament, which even as an atheist, amazes me.
Acts 5: 1-11
"There are already signs that reaction from the right to woke indoctrination could be similarly authoritarian. Prohibitions of all sorts are in the air." -- Spot on. People are rightly terrified by what they see happening. It is expected to see extreme reactions to the extreme actions on the left. A way out is if enough regular people start standing up for what the West actually stands for.
I just finished Trinity by Leon Uris about the Irish Troubles. It is a playbook for what we are watching play out. I recommend it.
A playbook in what way? I was an English Catholic; one of my aunties had a Provo Active Service Unit - a cell of terrorist bombers - for neighbours. I'm also a life-long ENGLISH nationalist; so I'm FORCED to take the evils of both sides head-on. I enjoyed several of Leon Uris' books way back when; but there are very few Americans whose views of Anglo-Hibernian antagonisms aren't warped.
A playbook of what is playing out in the good ole USA at this time with our so-called leaders and the so-called press. I think the same tactics were employed in Ireland in the lead-up to 1916. Divide and conquer. I would expect nothing less of you given your heritage. I admire loyalty to one's heritage. I admire loyalty period. It seems to be in short supply.. I do not know about warped views of "Anglo-Hiberian" relationships. Much as I don't equate the Chinese people with their government, I fo not equate the British people with their goverments, past or present. But if you are implying that the British government treated the Irish people fairly I beg to differ.
Nationalists are for nations. I can't be for England as a nation and against Ireland as a nation. That would be hypocrisy.
There is a lot of mythology on both sides.
The sectarianism was almost as bad to just as bad on Merseyside and Glasgow-way. The Ulster Plantation is almost entirely of Scots Presbyterian derivation; South-West Scotland in turn owes its settlement to Ulster in the 5th-6th century: the Scotti were an Irish tribe.
I'd've exchanged the populations. Still would.
Originally the army was welcomed by the Catholic community in Ulster. Then the Stupids deployed a sectarian Protestant Scottish regiment during Op Motorman...
The history of these islands is littered with such stupidity as is the history of the British Army and its forebears.
FIRE and reason mag have made strong attempts to create this narrative. They point to Desantis and anti-woke laws as censoring and illiberal. Conservatives used to be the cultural prudes but their province was religious schools. Nowadays they hold very little institutional power and the bulk of academic cancellations are from the left.
Funny thing is, when the conservatives were prudes they were CORRECT; ignoring them led to tons of problems.
And also, of course, they weren't nearly as authoritarian as the Left has always been and always will be. The Left presents right-wing criticism as the equivalent of left-wing violence.
I just finished Noah Rothman's "the new puritans".. It speaks to this dichotomy. Religions weren't always right
Religions have ALWAYS been wrong. Gods? Show me some evidence. Whereas there is evidence by the boatload religious leaders screw you for money and screw your kids.
Science, Universities and free speech as we know it wouldn't even exist without the catholic church. You don't have to believe in God to acknowledge judeo christian history was stabilizing and a net moral force.
True, I wouldn't: I'd have to be a loony.
This same thing has been my main issue with “Common Sense.” The message often seems to be “The Left is going crazy…but let’s not forget that the Right is even worse. And yet, let’s not admit that the crazies on the Right are fewer, and have not captured ANY major American institutions.”
It’s almost like making the threat from the KKK (which exists, but with fewer than 5K members) equivalent to the threat of the Communist Chinese Party.
Tom, I felt the same way until the Jericho march in December 2020. For Lefties, Jan 6 was a huge day, but for me, it was the Jericho March that showed me just how crazy the crazies on my own side are. Prior to that, I would have said the loons are mostly on the Left, but when the MyPillow guy gets on stage and says God personally told him that Donald Trump would remain President in 2021 and tens of thousands of my fellow Republicans cheered and believed him... that was a watershed moment for me.
I agree that the threat today comes from the left almost entirely because they are in control of EVERY major cultural institution in America. But would the Right do better, or would they just use the institutions to attack different people. Heck, I'm a "live and let live" liberal mostly, but after the way the left has used its cultural power to hurt my tribe, it would feel pretty good for them to get a taste of their own medicine. I know I shouldn't feel that way, but I do.
Brian, I certainly agree that the right has its crazies, and I want nothing to do with them. But but my one problem with "Common Sense" is their apparent view that the crazies on the right represent the same level of threat to democracy as the those on the left. I don't believe it's even close. The media, the universities, the unelected Washington bureaucracy (there's one no one seems to want to talk about) and education from K through Ph.D., all belong firmly to the left. The left has the microphone and almost all the power. Jan 6, in my opinion, was deplorable. It also happened to show how weak and pathetic the far-right is, if that's all they had left to resort to.
Full disclosure - I'm an Independent myself, neither D nor R, but I lean conservative.
For religious people all positive inspiration is from God. God speaking to them isn't proof of being crazy it's the language of evangelicals. My Pillow Guy is a rehabilites drug addict. He represents the deplorables well but he is a massive outler. Most have no power at all. Compare this "stop the steal" folk to the woke and it's clear who controls the most powerful private sector companies and public sector institutions. All sides are shafted by the wing nuts but the right inhabits flyover country, hardly a threat to institutional power.
That's why I'm increasingly Orthodox (capital O). Protestantism in general, and American Evangelicalism in particular, is built on sand.
I agree about the relative threat at the moment - 100% from the Left. But after listening to Trump and Mike Lindell and Mike Flynn (I think he was setup by the FBI, but thank God he was never NatSec Advisor), I have less confidence that "my tribe", if placed in power again, wouldn't act just as crazy. To be clear, I want my tribe back in power, but my blind confidence in the character of conservative leaders has been seriously shaken.
KKK hasn't been a thing in several decades. National Socialist Movement is the dominant white supremacíst movement in the US and it is nothing more than a loosely affiliated set of prison gangs. None of them do anything outside of their criminal circles. Nevertheless Dems have been screaming that white supremacy is everywhere since Trump was elected. It's nothing more than hysteria in the elite classes.
Great point!
FIRE isn't partisan, so this is standard language they use to underlie that. Recently, most of the threat has been from the Left. But 20 years ago, threats against free speech came from the Right (outing himself as gay and lambasting the war on drugs are examples cited in the article that this professor engaged in during his career.)
They're a great organization though. In many respects, they have picked up the mantle of nonpartisan, nonpolitical defense of freedom that the ACLU dropped.
We agree religious conservatives used to be the dominant cancel culture warriors. A notable exception was Affirmative Action. Anyone in academia or in gov who critiqued it was roundly demonized and cancelled from liberal circles.
FIRE is more left leaning than you think and so is Greg Lukianoff. He is currently incapable of even critiquing where the ACLU has gone wrong for fear of alienating his base.
Tokenist enemy-controlled safety valve to blow off some of our steam before we blow up in their face.
Doesn’t seem right, does it? And for good reason: https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-is-everything-liberal
There is some quite obvious rubbish in that article. Substitute pseudo-liberals for "liberals" and power for "politics" and the article(s) would be more accurate.
Hi Steven, I’m not sure I understand your point. It’s not very considered to malign Hanania’s article as “rubbish”. Are you suggesting Hanania should have used the word “progressive” instead of “liberal” for example? And if politics isn’t about power, how would you describe its essence? It’s a fine article and I hope your comment has more depth than it appears to have, and isn’t mere name-calling, which is all-too-common.
Who is actually restricting speech at this point, I ask. Is it the right? No. Now you can argue that they would if they could, but they aren't. No, it's the left, the supposed champions of speech and a free exchange of ideas.
Yes, at this moment in time, the right gets a pass because they *are not* the current problem.
If that is true, then I'll still blame the left for setting the precedent.
But since the right does not control Twitter, Facebook, or Google and doesn't even really seem to control the FBI or CIA nor most of the media, and doesn't look to do so for the foreseeable future, they still get a pass, simply because they are *not* at the moment nor for the foreseeable future the problem. I'd rather focus on the problem.
As a bonus, if we understand, acknowledge, and deal with the problem on the left in an efficient enough way that breaks up the influence and partisanship, the right *won't* be able to use the same tactics. That seems like enough for me to focus on what is going on rather than some lame attempt to downplay what is going on, on the left by imagining what the right *might* do if it gains that much power. You're just trying to excuse the inexcusable.
You make me tired. (1) No serious person has to debate using the words "fuck off" and "dipshit." (2) The previous discussion was about censorship. While I agree that Snowden, Assange, et al. is the fault of many elites in Washington who wear different labels (they aren't really on different sides), that's sort of a wash and not our most immediate problem.
The whole point of my comment is that’s it’s not slightly, not even close. The left is implementing society wide demands for adherence to whatever their latest dogma is. Again, name a person whose been fired for not agreeing with the Right. It doesn’t happen. The two sides aren’t comparable
I find it always funny that woke left focus all their actions on virtue signaling and no real action or change. For example these "land acknowledgments", they will be more than happy to say them, happily ignoring that those tribes were slaughtering each other (as did rest of humanity at that period) for that same land long before Europeans showed up. But all their action will end up at that virtue signaling, no real change. Rich universities will gladly do acknowledgments, but god forbid they give the land back and thus in their own eyes correct this injustice, or use their big fat endowments to pay for the land that they are using. Same as our "woke" celebrities who will preach how it is important to protect environment reduce pollution but minute after the speech is over, they will sit in privat jets with no issues.
I feel very sad when I see what has "woke" ideology done to our Universities, sometimes I think that foreign occupation would be more merciful to our higher education than the current "church of woke" that runs majority of our universities.
I slowly start to believe, that we need to abolish tax exemption for universities, and hit those endowments, maybe that would make the to awake from this woke nightmare we are in.
It always upsets me when ignoramuses wail about how we stole land from the stone age tribes called American Indians. Show me one place on this Earth that was not settled by invaders, just one. By todays morals such practices are wrong. Russian is doing it today, invading Ukraine and seizing its land.
You cannot judge the past using todays moral standards. Morals are relative and change with the times. For centuries slavery was considered morally correct. At one time, ancient Rome had more slaves in the City of Rome than Roman citizens. And that is just one example for what was OK then is repugnant to us now.
I suggest those who are beating their chests and whining over how badly we treated the Indians to read "Empire of the Summer Moon". It is a history of the Commanche Peoples. It was the duty and amusement of the Plains Indian women to torture captured enemy warriors. The Apache Indians would hang a captured enemy upside down and build a small fire under his or her head and that is just one small example of what all the American Indians did to enemies. They weren't just sitting around making pottery and weaving rugs. War and killing their enemies was a tribal pastime.
Yeah, we stole their lands. Get over it. Normandy France is called Normandy because the Northmen invaded and settled it. Invaders back then they slaughtered and enslaved the previous landowners. It's what they did.
Don't whiners both left and right ever read a history book? Good grief!
Yes! This exact thought a million times over! And, if I may throw this thought in, we NEVER should have created separate "nations" for American Indians to live in. Show me another country that has done that. They should have learned to live with everyone else and we all could have moved on.
PL...agree, "Never should have Separated Nations". Many have separated and have done very well , on their own.
Eastern Ukraine is majority Russian. pre-war the Ukranians were indulging in discriminatory legislation against their Russian minorities. The Indé and nʉmʉnʉʉ are not "all" "American Indians". Don't generalise from the particular and don't take the behaviour of devastated and dislocated peoples in the 18th and 19th centuries for what their behaviour was previous to the Spanish; French; and English showing up raping and pillaging. There is a whole lot of exculpalatory bollocks passing itself as history. Don't be a parrot.
Try reading a history of the North, Central and South American Indians. It is written in blood and that was before the white man came. The Aztec, Toltecs, Mayans and the Incas, bloody, bloody, bloody.
Yeah. As You and others have suggestied, M. Raziel, the endowments and revenues should be taxed. Dunno it'll make them less Woke, but can't hurt.
Taxing kills things. So yes, Universities should not be tax exempt.
"I feel very sad when I see what has "woke" ideology done to our Universities"
It is important to understand that "woke" is not some foreign entity that is attacking universities from the outside. Universities are the birthplace of "woke" and have been promoting it for more than 50 years (with their products to be seen in most MSM, politicians and more and more teachers that are filtering down into pre-university education). The blame does not go to "woke", the blame should go to the universities themselves for creating and nurturing it for decades.
I agree to a point. The universities are the birthplace of this monster. But there's plenty-a blame to go around. If the kids weren't so stupid, they wouldn't fall all over themselves to do all that "stuff."
Many of the people who uncritically accept indoctrination are demonstrably and measurably bright, above the average, alas. My guess would be that genuinely stupid people don't think or care about any of it.
Yes, and many who spend a few years after college in what we call "the real world" develop a certain skepticism about the truths they were expected to parrot for good grades in the academy. You may not encounter these people in HR or DEI jobs, but there are plenty of them nonetheless.
Poor choice of words then. How better to phrase things?
I'm reading the book M. Lukianoff wrote with Jonathan Haidt called "The Coddling of the American Mind. I'm only about half-way through. The way I'm reading it is that these Woke kids are, basically, psychologically damaged. They fear normal day-to-day happenings. I'm getting to part about the six reasons our polarized world has turned out this this way.
Three of them involve the the kids reactions. The bulk of it comes down to how they were raised. So are the kids blameless? I think that's likely where the book is gonna lean towards. Dunno yet.
But are they? I think that's a longer story still...
Helicopter parenting and participation trophies destroyed a huge swath of a generation. The children raised that way cannot function without external direction, because they have never been allowed to make mistakes or figure out anything on their own. They expect to be rewarded merely for showing up; or often, based on the behavior of new hires at the company where I work, for merely *signing* up, with actually *showing* up being optional.
I believe a consequence of the coddling stems from us having fewer children and at a later age.
Yup, You're absotively right. On both scores.
And even if they go to the trouble of showing up physically, which You say is too much trouble for some, that's not quite the same as showing *up.* Everyday. Everything. Just showing up *completely.*
They were trained they got a trophy whether they "made a showing" or not, right?
I blame my generation (late Boomer). I think we were the first generation to have a childhood to a certain extent - not working the farm, or small job to help the family that detracted from available time to play ball, etc. We (at least me) tried to have our children have an even better childhood than we (I) did. We didn't enforce doing chores as much as our generation, started leaning away from the discipline we might have experienced, and possibly that has been to the detriment of subsequent generations,
Or I could be wrong.
MDM, I am also a boomer, and I agree with you to a point. But I think back on my youth, and wonder why our elders seemed to abdicate authority. They were so eager to participate in the youth culture instead of guiding it. Even Jimmy Carter had sideburns and hair almost to his collar! Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, Pierre Trudeau, etc etc. They were falling all over themselves trying to be “cool” to the young people. Why did adults let kids run things??
I don't think You're wrong at *all.*
The "kids" aren't stupid; just kids, ignorant and naive. They don't expect adults to mislead them; they go to school to be educated; instead they are "educated"=indoctrinated. We all think our Dad got more intelligent as he aged, when in fact we came to realise that he'd come to realise what we had realised by the time we came to the age he was at when we, in our ignorance, thought him stupid. We are the adults in the room; we sent them to school and paid silly money to put them through college; just as our parents did for us. Every generation repeats the same stupid. It is only now we see that as consequential.
I pretty much agree.
But I"m not so sure that these younger generations ever *did* learn that their parents weren't as stupid as they'd first thought. In fact, it seems that they take the attitude that they hafta make sure that everything their parents fought for is destroyed. IMO.
We need a new rule - every time someone makes a land acknowledgment statement they have to make a donation of $1000 to the tribe or nation that they're acknowledging.
THAT IS CHICKEN FEED MAKE IT $100,000.00 make it hurt good
I have felt that way for a long time. The children of the rich-we used to call the limousine liberals in the 1960s-don't bear the consequences of such stupid policies. It's the poor, law abiding or working class that have suffered under the very blue regimes and universities are the bastions of such b.s. Kim Kardashian now fashions herself to be an expert on civil rights but when does she have the time to read dense legal briefs between fittings and glam squad sessions? I expect she'll be a law professor in the fall. The world is truly insane.
You can laugh; but Ms. Kardashian appears to be walking the walk; not just talking the talk; and putting her money where her mouth is to boot. The daughter of a noted lawyer becomes a lawyer herself. What a shock. Not. /s. A Democrat who worked with President Trump and was moderately successful an'all. Got President Biden to do something sane.
Not anyone's narrative and doesn't fit anybodies pigeonhole. I can appreciate her. You should leave your prejudices at the door.
Oh...so now this is prejudice. You didn't address my point; how does she travel with a carbon footprint of over 100,000 individuals; oversee all her businesses; film a reality show; make countless appearances; take selfies of every moment of her day; raise her four children AND read dense legal briefs for these cases. Let her admit that she has hired a legal team to do the work and stop the I-am-a-lawyer b.s.
lets see those univesities give the land and monies back enough with the bs , do something and let the indians go back to canoes and horses and medicine men
Universities should be a hot bed of diverse ideas and that atmosphere of exchanging ideas should be promoted by universities.
Of course, you shouldn't promote violent ideas like murdering your opponents or bomb making.
Remenber the Weathermen; the Symbionese Liberation Army; the Red Army Faction; and Paris '68? The unis have been spweing terrorists and bomb-makers for over fifty years.
While it is true that most Indian nations engaged in war, and slavery, they did not recognize private ownership of land. And if current theory is correct (at this point I question everything) they came from elsewhere anyway. But I agree wholeheartedly with your point. The land acknowledgers are like the Indian hunter giving thanks for the prey he just slaughtered.
"The land acknowledgers are like the Indian hunter giving thanks for the prey he just slaughtered."
I really like the way you put this, thanks.
Land acknowledgements don't bother me because they don't call for anyone to do anything to anyone else. No good reason not to acknowledge those who came before; it doesn't mean the land is theirs anymore, just that they once owned it.
This case, like many others, is about the Right to Dissent (to hold viewpoints other than that ordained or sanctioned by the Establishment). The right to dissent as Edward R Murrow said back in the 1950s during the height of Mccarthyism is always the first right to go when a nation stumbles down the route to totalitarianism.
Land acknowledgements are not performative politeness/good manners but a statement of a controversial political belief whose ultimate aim is the subversion of the US Constitution. Is stolen land/property protected under the Constitution? Is it right to compel an employee to state a controversial political belief as if it were fact? Or is this an overreach of the free expression clause in the 1st Amendment (the part of the Constitution which protects philosophical beliefs)?
It is excellent that FIRE is fighting back against the erosion of the free expression clause.
In related news: Allison Bailey won her discrimination case against her Chambers in the UK -- her belief that extreme gender ideology as articulated by the charity Stonewall UK harms women and girls is now a 'protected belief' in the UK. It means people can not be discriminated against for holding this belief. It was not up to the court to decide if the belief was right or wrong, merely that it was a sincerely held belief. The Chambers is having to pay out aggravated damages. They had claimed that they were merely following Stonewall's advice.
She lost in her claim against Stonewall -- mainly because Stonewall claimed that their employees were acting a private capacity when they organized a series of complaints against her. In other words, Stonewall had no wish to control the thoughts and actions of its employees even though it counselled other companies to do so.
It shall be interesting to see what happens in the future to the various DEI programmes Stonewall was running.
In short there is protection in the US Constitution under the free expression of religion clause (this is where philosophical beliefs are protected. in 18th century parlance a religion is a series of philosophical beliefs) for contested political beliefs. Universities should stop compelling their employees to utter philosophical beliefs which the employees do not believe in.
You're "right as rain," Ma'am.
Another day, another story of lefty witch hunting.
Would like to know more about how he was attacked by the right.
Ditto.
You already know. lol
Not a bit.
Proggies are such twits.
Land acknowledgment is stupid unless the school plans on returning the land. And you know that ain’t happening.
Yes. Consider Harvard's decision to change its law school shield last year. The previous shield acknowledged the significant gift of university land from a donor who made his fortune on the labor of slaves in the Caribbean. The decision was symbolic and understandable.
https://hyperallergic.com/671877/harvard-law-school-ditches-logo-connected-to-slavery/
A more appropriate reaction would have been for the university (whose endowment is more than $50 billion) to have assessed the donated property's current value and to have devoted that amount to people or schools now in the area of the donor's plantation.
GregL and J Haidt are leading lights as we go through our own version of the Dark Ages. Thank you FIRE
It's pretty clear by now that there are two fundamental differences between progressive leftists and normal people, whether conservative or classically liberal.
First, unlike the latter, progressives are constantly up your butt, demanding that you do and say precisely what they demand, even as what they demand changes almost daily (witness the addition of X's etc to almost every definition or witless slogan). The latter are mostly content to go about their lives in a laissez faire manner, as long as one's peculiarities don't impinge upon society or underage children.
Second, progressives are entirely humorless. They are the least mirthful, unhappiest and loathsome creatures on this planet.
In fact, I'm now convinced that the only proper reaction to their incessant and dreary hectoring is a mirthful snort of indifference or a swift punch in the nose.
Definition of a progressive: Someone who is worried that somewhere someone is having a good time.
Hey wait, I used that line a few months ago.
But, yeah, I stole it shamelessly, too.
Excellent comments, these, Bruce. I love your definition of wokes vs. liberals, and I find humorless people the bleakest creatures I've ever known. Those who can't laugh at themselves or the little absurdities in life should not be allowed near a policy position.
I often wonder why administrators and faculty at places like UW do not reassign say 20-30% of their generous salaries to support their noble causes. Much cheaper to just signal virtue?
Or just give back the land they screech was "stolen."
Institutions of higher education are, in my mind, voiding their social contract. They should be churning out intelligent, productive citizens. They appear to be instead doing their level best to build militant infants. Most professions do not require a college education to be successful. In some cases, I would argue that all a degree does is increase the degree holder’s debt, with no related way of paying off said debt.
My wife and I are both products of a time when high schools were scrapping vocational programs and preaching that the only way to success and prosperity was through a college education. That philosophy is emphatically and almost laughably false. From the tone of these articles in Common Sense that I keep reading (seems there’s at least one per week), it seems that many colleges have become little more than woke tent revivals. People are slowly beginning to realize what enormous grifters most of these universities have become. All those little militant infants that they’ve released on the world now want the rest of us to pay off their loans as well. Hard-working decent people don’t want to shoulder the financial burden of some woke zealot who got an education in how to hate them. I wouldn’t give them a penny. Forget about just dropping the donations to your alma mater. Wake up. Stop sending your kids there. They’ll probably be better off.
To say that any Professors in this country are threatened by right leaning administrations is laughable. I can think of only a few right leaning universities in the whole country.
I think the authors sources are likely confusing left wing threat with right wing. For example anything perceived as racist is traditionally considered right wing. Something that may have had some small merit 50 years ago but the vast majority of racist thought today is a result of left wing ideology.
How different are these 'land acknowledgements' and other 'woke' rules from any other religion? These LA statements sound like prayers to me, not that there's anything wrong with that, but the people uttering them would be appalled by starting a meeting with a prayer.
The America I was raised in prepared us to be independent, thick skinned and strong. Woke seems to say that all of those things are bad, and instead we should guard against the weakest in our society from having their feelings hurt, or be left behind.
The latter is not a formula for a successful society.
Agreed. Land Acknowledgments are their Doxology.
I'd be curious to see how these institutions would respond to calling their bluff by getting a majority of students to demand these colleges sign over the land to the native tribes.
That's how you know the entire time-wasting exercise is one giant virtue signal.
It'd be like that coffee shop in Philadelphia....real woke, and then the employees decided they weren't woke enough and demanded ownership.
Coffee shop closed their doors shortly thereafter
An “intersectional “ car wreck
ISWYDT. LOL!!!
Thank You, M. Lukianoff. I can't say enough about how much I appreciate FIRE and "The Coddling..." which I'm reading right now. TYTY. (I'll continue to make donations, tho money's a little tight this year.) TY again and again.
It is important to recognise that many on the Right are more interested in just attacking the Left (which is easily justifiable, to be fair) than actually promoting Free Speech (the Right often just wants to have the Right make the decisions rather than have the Left do it). So I certainly appreciate the "This threat comes from both the left and the right." line from FIRE because although it is the Left that is the CURRENT threat, they don't hold any historical monopoly - the world has a Free Speech problem, and that is not exclusive to the Left as the only culprit.
If you (Mr Lukianoff) have not already done so, I would suggest you get in contact with FSU (the Free Speech Union https://freespeechunion.org/) in the UK for mutual benefit.
So true. The right, at least doesn’t seem to have a global agenda. The left is way scarier right now. It has taken all of us a while to see that this is a global coordinated effort attacking everything that makes us free. The UK is suffering equally. Australia, Canada and others. Thank you Mr. Lukianoff for this precise rendering of the moment we are in and all of your heroic work!
So not true. The 1950s are long gone. Can you name an effort by conservatives to suppress free speech today? And, even in the 1950s, the hunt for commies was not wrong. As the KGB archives have long established, they had infiltrated many American institutions, including our government.
It's depressing to realize that, even though McCartyism was a horrific attack on freedom of speech and freedom of association, the threat it tried (and evidently failed) to mitigate was very real.
True and to this day people still swear that Hiss or the Rosenbergs were innocent despite the KGB archives. They weren't. Nor was Harry Dexter White and a host of others who were in the service of the Soviet Union or were fellow travelers. It's why I simply can't watch The Crucible without giggling. McCarthy was a thug. But not entirely wrong.
They need to trot out The Crucible again with respect to Wokeness and Cancel Culture.
It'd go whoosh! right over their heads.
Good point re: McCarthyism. Socialist beliefs coming from Hollywood didn't just start last year. Socialists have been playing the long game.
Well said. Republicans are being handed a gift with these kinds of incoherent ideologies and I cringe whenever I see them do things like, going after Disney over the sexual orientation of a character.
I am familiar with the ridiculously nicknamed “don’t say gay” legislation (which says nothing of the sort), and have seen nothing from republicans remotely calling for anything like they are being accused of with that nickname. I have not seen anything “going after Disney over the sexual orientation of a character”. Disney has many gay characters by now and I have not seen republicans commenting on any of them. Could you cite the specifics on this?
The reason I’d like to know, and I am willing to hear it, absolutely, is that so much “truth” being bandied about is verifiably not truth. Once a lie is out there, it’s out there and never fully goes away. E.g. “The View” ladies were just caught flat footed lying about protesters outside Turning Point and had to issue a formal apology for their lie. But, of course far many more people heard and believed the lie than will ever hear the apology or correction to their lie.
I'm referring to Ron DeSantis petty culture battle with Disney. The actual catalyst of a specific character wasn't really the point. What is relevant is that it's an attack on Disney's free speech (if I remember correctly, it had to do with something they tweeted about FL) and proof that the Republicans don't value free speech as much as they value winning. The "don't say gay bill"--which I agree is mischaracterized-- is in fact very problematic as it's poorly written and could cause a teacher to be fired for answering perfectly appropriate questions concerning his/her partner....which again, is Republicans attacking free speech.
The "petty culture battle" was actually a result of Disney threatening to use its corporate power to dismantle a bill that was intended to prevent teachers from teaching very young children sexual ideology in the classroom. Since parents wanted this bill, what Disney was actually threatening was to overwhelm parents' free speech with corporate money.
I thought Leftists were all about hating corporations and their money? Evidently, like everything else for Leftists, it depends on the corporation's ideology.
As is their right to spend their money on whatever they want. Politicians do not have the right to use their power to bully their political opponents. If you're ok with Ron DeSantis bullying your political enemies, than you have to be ok with Gavin Newsom bullying you. These emotional culture battles, cause us to lose sight of our values.
So you are fine with corporations using their outsized influence to overturn the will of the people.
Disagree about that bill. I read it and it very clearly states that it’s about “classroom instruction” not casual conversations.
And that’s just one paragraph in a 5 page bill.
Thank you for the clarification, Tom. I have not scrutinized the actual bill, don’t know about a tweet and cannot speak to DeSantis’s “pettiness”. I think the broader story should be considered as there’s clearly much more to it than the meme allows. It’s certainly not a FL only issue. I too am opposed to teaching falsehoods and/or unscientific data about human biology and sexuality to little children, in the same way I am opposed to public school teaching religion or other subjects traditionally the purview of parents. I agree it would be terrible for a teacher’s words to be misinterpreted when answering a child’s questions and for her/him to be fired as a result.
Whether or not republicans don’t value free speech as much as winning is a debatable opinion that can only be answered by the individual. As a party, I suppose it may look like that and you may be right. However, if they don’t win, their speech will still be ignored! 🫤
You should read the bill. It covers a number of topics. The sexual orientation part is a single paragraph of about five pages.
It’s an easy read. The language is simple and IMO very clear that it applies to classroom instruction not casual conversations.
If a teacher is fired for answering a child's question, I think it will be just like doctors not treating a miscarriage for fear of anti-abortion laws -- they are reacting to misinformation about these laws which is rampant on fora such as MSNBC right now. The left is doing no good by pretending reasonable laws are draconian.
I found his actions hypocritical as well. Did he over reach for the wrong reasons? It seemed retaliatory.
Every Republican thinks they have to be Trump
Disney have been terminally as 'woke' as fuck for five to ten years. Just another bunch of kiddie fiddlers and groomers.
If everyone is a child molester, than nobody is a child molester. You're doing the exact same thing Leftists do: "All republicans are racist!" absolutely no difference.
YES, some people do....I don't understand. It's hypocritical.
I'm refering to Disney the corporation; not necessarily the people working in it. Who are as likely to have been taken in by the guff as everyone else. Nor am I writng of anyone else than Disney; and certainly not everone else. Don't be that prat.
Thank you FIRE. Keep fighting the good fight. It seems like this is what the ACLU once did before they went full woke and lost their way.
money corrupts even those with the best of intentions once in a while to bad The ACLU did a lot of good before they jumped on the money train
I teach at a high school. I live in a liberal state and so what I (recently) see is the muzzling of students and parents if they don't adhere to the 'progressive' agenda. It's very scary. I find it difficult to have a nuanced debate because most students are afraid and some will not even admit that their parents are Republicans for fear of being 'different' from their peers. I don't know what it's like in more conservative states-- maybe it's the same but reversed. We are doing a disservice to these young people to not encourage real REAL critical thinking. That said, I could be "sent to the principal' if I try to encourage more open dialogue.
We truly are doomed without the ability to think critically.
I agree.
Grow a pair.
I'm confused by your rude comment.