Libertarians: You fire fighter lovers sure are good at debate!

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Doktor Avalanche: Dec 30, 2008

RealTalk posted:

Do you know why the ACLU defended the right of Nazis to march in Skokie in 1978 and again defended the right of alt-right white nationalists to organize in Charlottesville a year ago?

They know something that you apparently do not.

The legal battles over the first amendment are never over popular speech. The cases that form the basis of law that is used as precedent in future cases often involve vile and hateful speech.

But if you concede that the right to hateful speech isn't protected by the first amendment, further encroachments on freedom of speech that this allows eventually threaten all of our speech.

And no one with any sense thinks that the Nazis in Skokie or the white nationalists in Charlottesville are comparable to Ann Coulter speaking at Berkeley.

But the ACLU thought that the Nazis had free of speech so why shouldn't Coulter be allowed to speak at Berkeley without protesters trying to forcefully shut down the event?

By the way, I'm well aware that it was not the government that is threatening to shut down the speech of people like Coulter, but the principle is much the same. If popular sentiment is that people like Coulter don't have speech that is worth protecting, then it lays the groundwork for the government to restrict speech.

I don't give a poo poo about who the ACLU defended and yes, Ann Coulter is deifinitely comparable to the white nationalists in Charlottesville.

# ? May 24, 2018 08:57

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# ? May 15, 2024 17:34

RealTalk: May 20, 2018; by R. Guyovich

reignonyourparade posted:

The first amendment, while not explicitly mentioning it, has been held to protect Freedom of Association. Part of freedom of association is freedom of DISASSOCIATION, unilateral disassociation even. Legally you can't be compelled to associate with anyone. So not only is it not a first amendment violation to not hand Ann Coulter a microphone, even in the event that they had previously invited her, DISinviting her at any time is ITSELF protected by the first amendment.

If a bunch of students use their Freedom of Speech to complain about a university planning to host Ann Coulter, and in response that university uses Freedom of Association to instead, not host Ann Coulter, the only one attacking anyone's rights is YOU, because you want to make them host her anyway.

Nah.

In principle I agree with this. You clearly don't have a right to trespass on private property and speak in a way that the owners don't approve. They have the perfect right to disassociate with you at any time by asking you to leave.

If the school is completely privately funded, you'd be completely correct.

However, if the school receives government grants which the overwhelming percent of colleges do, then the situation changes considerably. Every person in the country is forced to pay taxes. So colleges that receive government grants are akin to public property.

What happens at colleges is that a conservative student group reserves an auditorium and invites a conservative speaking. Leftist students here about this and they protest and try to force the college administrators to intervene and stop the event from taking place.

Usually the form this takes is through the express or implicit threat that they will be violently disruptive. Then the school cancels the event because they cannot afford sufficient security to ensure the event can even take place logistically.

The leftist protesters don't have this right. In the first place, the dis-inviting of libertarian or conservative speakers is often a response to the threat of violence by protesters or the anticipation of violent protesters if the event proceeds as planned.

It's a little ironic that you use these arguments against me. If you truly believe that the first amendment implies both freedom of association and disassociation, then you logically have to oppose all anti-discrimination laws. After all, property owners have the right to choose who they want to associate with and who they want to disassociate with.

I actually believe this, but I doubt that you do.

# ? May 24, 2018 09:02

reignonyourparade: Nov 15, 2012

RealTalk posted:

However, if the school receives government grants which the overwhelming percent of colleges do, then the situation changes considerably. Every person in the country is forced to pay taxes. So colleges that receive government grants are akin to public property.

First amendment doesn't say anything about auditoriums, so nah.

RealTalk posted:

It's a little ironic that you use these arguments against me. If you truly believe that the first amendment implies both freedom of association and disassociation, then you logically have to oppose all anti-discrimination laws. After all, property owners have the right to choose who they want to associate with and who they want to disassociate with.

The property owner can still freely disassociate by now running that business anymore (if it's not a business, then they are in fact legally allowed to not invite any black people into their house.)

# ? May 24, 2018 09:26

reignonyourparade: Nov 15, 2012

The first amendment also doesn't say anything about microphones, speaker systems to plug those microphones into or campus security.

# ? May 24, 2018 09:30

Caros: May 14, 2008

large adult son posted:

Motherfucker nobody's gonna read that let alone answer it.

Nah, I got brain problems, so I got this.

RealTalk posted:

Wow. First you say "conservatives and libertarians almost universally are racists or bigots".

And then you say "Short of outright violence I support any and all attempts by left wing protesters to shut down what amount to hate speech rallies by conservatives."

Here's another tactic that one might take. First, affirm the right of conservatives and libertarians to hold rallies, or speak on college campuses. Then go to those rallies and ask tough, challenging questions that logically refute the arguments they are making. Or, in a calm and non-disruptive manner, pass out fliers outside the event that inform attendants of a contrary argument. Without disrupting the speech or intimidating people who want to hear the speaker.

I don't mean to be glib, but my grandfather firebombed a city to prevent the spread of these ideals. Why on earth should I treat a white nationalist ideology with anything short of outright contempt? Men like Richard Spencer would happily commit mass genocide in pursuit of their preferred ethnostate, yet we're supposed to sit there and try and have a meaningful discussion with a person who thinks you'd look good on the other end of a bullet? gently caress off with that nonsense.

Jean Paul-Sartre has a wonderful quote about the purposeless of arguing with Nazis:

"�Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.�

You are literally falling into the trap set by fascists. The people you are defending, as I quoted with the wonderful Ms. Coulter, do not believe in free-speech excepting where it benefits them and allows them to push for their bigoted, hate-filled ideology. They aren't seeking to have a meaningful conversation, they are seeking to tell people how great it would be to live in an ethnostate resulting from mass murder. Their ideology should be opposed by any means necessary.

Giving fascists a polite platform to speak from legitimizes their disgusting beliefs. And that ends with firebombs and an eighty year old man who terrifies his grandson with night terrors. You gently caress.

quote:

Is this a novel concept to you? If your position is that virtually all of your political opponents are racists (meaning irredeemably odious people who must be ostracized) and it is the duty of all decent people to shut down their events and mercilessly mock them in public, this seems both unethical in its own right and counterproductive.

The republican party is the party of racists. It is the party that holds white nationalist rallies to protest the taking down of statues of slave owners that were put up as a gently caress you to the civil rights movement. They are the party that gets upset by black athletes kneeling, and who elected a racist orange characture as president based on his promise to build an enormous monument of hate and intolerance between the US and Mexico. Not all republican voters are hood wearing klansmen, but ignoring reality and trying to pretend that the republican party isn't racist makes you look like a loving moron.

And no, again, I don't think that every single republican speaker should be shut down when they speak in public. The speakers who are being opposed are the worst of the worst of the alt-right. No one gives a poo poo when some middle of the road conservative gives a speech at a college. They do give a gently caress when a straight up white nationalist books an event to talk about how great it would be if the US was a white nation. Stop equating the two.

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I actually don't have any intention of spending much more time defending Jordan Peterson, not because I think you are characterizing his views accurately but rather that I like to speak for myself. If we are going to parse every errant tweet or comb through every statement Peterson has ever made when it's not possible for me to verify the veracity of every statement or put it into context, this seems like a recipe for a very futile discourse.

But seriously, why would you use a quote taken from an obvious hit piece and character assassination attempt in the New York Times, without suspecting that it was intentionally misleading?

Read as: Holy gently caress some of that is offensive as poo poo and I'm having a hard time defending it so lets move along.

Peterson is a misogynistic piece of crap. You do not become the darling of the loving Incel community because you have rational and measured views on women.

quote:

I don't doubt that the New York Times interviewed him for several hours at least. Anyone knows that people can be made to sound any way a person wishes to portray them as if they simply cherry pick quotes out of context.

Plenty of public figures get interviewed by 'hostile' sources every day. How many of them propose 'Enforced Monogomy', and talk about how witches are actually real. This is a supposedly educated man.

quote:

Imagine if you posted hundreds or thousands of hours of lectures and gave hundreds of in depth interviews with media outlets around the world on the most challenging and controversial topics. You'd make your share of mistakes and misstatements, but you'd give your opponents a lot of ammunition with which to misquote you.

What if Peterson said instead that "it's good for society that our culture values monogamy and disapproves of polygamy and infidelity". Would there be anything controversial about the comment?

Except he isn't being misquoted. Having a long history of material pointing to misogynistic tendencies isn't an example of people misquoting him, or misstating him. If I am out there 24/7 talking about how awful black people are, I'm a racist. If I have hundreds of tweets talking about how women are the problem in society and they just need to get back in the kitchen and have babies by 30, that isn't a mistake, it is a pattern.

quote:

But since he said "enforced", everyone pretended as if Peterson was advocating that the government enslave women and grant every loser man a sex slave.

I can't accept that people are that loving stupid.

Yeah, words mean things. It is almost like a professor ought to know that. He does, by the way, and when he says things like Enforced Monogamy (which having done some more research is a somewhat common phrase for him) he is doing it with a purpose. The purpose is that he thinks our society sucks because we don't 'enforce' monogamy, which, in his worldview, involves brutal societal punishment for women (and lets be honest, it'll be women) who stray.

quote:

What's interesting is that you cite some libertarians as examples of racists. You mention Walter Block, who was also misquoted and misrepresented by the New York Times. You said that he said "Slavery wasn't so bad, apart from the forcible association they were singing songs and picking cotton." That is not exactly right, but it's better than what the Times reported.

The New York Times simply said "Walter Block, who says that slavery wasn't so bad" and they left it at that. If you take the worst thing imaginable, and remove all the bad things about it, it's not so bad anymore. But if you omit "remove all the bad things about it" you convey the precise opposite of what the full statement actually said.

Actually, now you're misquoting him to make it look good, what he said was:

quote:

Free association is a very important aspect of liberty. It is crucial. Indeed, its lack was the major problem with slavery. The slaves could not quit. They were forced to �associate� with their masters when they would have vastly preferred not to do so. Otherwise, slavery wasn�t so bad. You could pick cotton, sing songs, be fed nice gruel, etc. The only real problem was that this relationship was compulsory. It violated the law of free association, and that of the slaves� private property rights in their own persons. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, then, to a much smaller degree of course, made partial slaves of the owners of establishments like Woolworths.

So in context, it is actually much, much worse. Slavery is only bad because slaves couldn't quit, you see. You'd sing songs, eat nice gruel, you just couldn't quit. Also they beat you, raped you, sold you, split up your families and on occasion straight up murdered you. But you couldn't quit. Which is bad.

Oh, and the civil rights act is slavery. Yeah. So much better in context, isn't it fuckface?

quote:

It's as if I were to quote Winston Churchill as saying "Democracy is the worst form of government" while omitting "except for all the others". In context, Churchill really meant "Democracy is the best form of government that has yet been tried" but selectively quoting him gives the impression that he said the precise opposite.

If this is the known history of how the Times selectively quotes conservatives and libertarians, what reason would you have to accept at face value a quote pulled from an obvious hit piece?

The NYT got the gist of his argument, that slavery wasn't so bad, across. And lets be clear, that is the point of his argument there. The thrust of his argument is that slavery was only bad because of forced association, which is summarized as "The daily life of the enslaved was 'Not so bad' which is horseshit.

quote:

You just being a dishonest and malevolent person would explain it, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

You certainly seem to be giving racists, bigots and misogynists a whole lot of that, yeah.

quote:

About Peterson being a horrible misogynist...

What I read about Peterson is that he's trying to get angry and disaffected young men to shape up and take responsibility for their lives so that they can attract a good woman.

And also get women back in the kitchen, yes. His opinion on gender roles is best described as taliban-lite, yes.

quote:

I'm not entirely sure what Peterson means by the tweet you cited (if it is indeed a Peterson tweet), but the first part of it is "Men: if you treat women as disposable sex objects..." Implying that you shouldn't treat woman as sex objects.

It is from his loving twitter account, dude.

quote:

Shouldn't a misogynist be taking the opposite view? Something like woman are here to serve men and be sex objects?

His point is that you should treat women as wives. Something to posess and to give you babies. Because they are stupider than men and are only happy when they are in the kitchen. Also, didn't you say upthread that you didn't want to talk about this dumbfuck?

quote:

Why would he be spending so much energy trying to get men to shape up and get their act together rather than focusing on the failures of women?

Because being an open misogynist who insults transgender folk earns him 61,000 a month on Patreon.

quote:

Okay, enough about Peterson. I want to talk about libertarians and conservatives all being racist.

You say: "Now you yourself might not be racist, but when the people you identify with politically are, that puts you in a difficult spot."

I don't know if it puts me in a difficult spot. After all, according to your definition, you cannot be a libertarian or conservative of any stripe without being a racist by definition.

Your words: "conservatives and libertarians almost universally are racists or bigots".

Your throw me a small concession by using the word "almost". Maybe not all conservatives are racists and bigots, maybe only 90-95%. Everyone at Reason, Cato, conservative columnists at the Washington Post and New York Times, racist (almost) every man jack one of them.

This is silly.

Nah. I clarified upthread that I don't think that everyone is a hood wearing klansman, but I think if you support republican party politics you are in practice agreeing with a party that holds racism among its core tenants. All you need to do is look at republican behavior towards, say, immigration and you can see it. There are rational arguments to be had in opposition to immigration, but republican arguments on that front are based almost entirely on a hatred of the other. Trump, a racist hategolem forged in the shape of a man out of spray-tan, won the republican primary by being the most racist guy in the room. You do not win a primary by being a racist if your party does not reward racism.

And yeah, everyone at Reason and Cato for sure. I'd say msot of the WaPo ones. Don't read enough NYT to comment.

quote:

It goes without saying that I don't agree with this characterization, but I'll leave that aside. My duty now is to tremble in my boots and fret that I may be seen as associating with racists. What does it say about me that I'm willing to overlook such overt bigotry?

Uh, yeah. Pretty much. Well, I mean not as a scare tactic, but what does it say that you are willing to defend overt racism? I think it doesn't say anything bad.

quote:

Well, let me ask a very pointed question and I expect an honest answer.

Who did you vote for in the last election?

Jack Layton?

quote:

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd bet that you voted for Hillary Clinton if only to stop the monster Donald Trump.

The question I'd ask is what does this say about YOU?

Oho!! You got me! If I'd been in the US I would have indeed held my nose and voted for the lesser of two evils over a man fundamentally unsuited to hold public office in the US. This is entirely because I support her 100%, not because I recognize the political realities of the US electoral system and am forced to acknowledge that the flawed candidate I do not like is still better than voting for a figurative hyper-satan.

quote:

No doubt saying something racist is not nice. Nor is associating too closely thirty years ago with the John Birch Society. Unforgivable. Making an off-color joke that disparages women? Shameless.

Let's see how these horrible offenses stack up with the public record of a centrist Democrat like Hillary Clinton.

During the 1990s, Bill Clinton enforced brutal economic sanctions against Iraq, and periodically bombed the middle east, most grotesquely as a distraction from his impeachment hearings in 1998. Credible reports suggest that 500,000 children died in Iraq as a direct result of our sanctions.

And I mean died in the most horrific manner possible. They literally starved to death or were ravaged by treatable illnesses until their frail bodies failed them because they were denied access to the medicine that could have saved them.

Madeleine Albright famously said that the price of 500,000 small corpses was "worth it".

In 2003 Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War despite the fact that any thinking person could figure out that the "intelligence" that purported to prove that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda was pure, unadulterated propaganda.

She chose political expediency over concern for the welfare of millions of innocent Iraqis. She has moral culpability for all the horror our government unleashed upon the Muslim world the wake of the Iraq invasion.

Hillary continued to defend her vote as late as 2008, when Barack Obama forced her to backtrack.

As Secretary of State, Hillary openly supported Obama's drone program across the Middle East.

She pushed for Obama to strike Syria, but thankfully Obama caved to public pressure and refused.

Most disastrously, she is responsible for invading Libya and toppling Muammar Gaddafi. Libya was one of the most prosperous African countries and the nation was thrown into squalor and chaos. ISIS and other radical fundamentalist groups took over and hundreds of thousands have been displaced or killed.

Gaddafi, a popular leader who never threatened the United States, was sodomized with a knife in the streets. Slowly tortured to death.

These disastrous Middle East wars are primarily responsible for the migrant crisis that is affecting Europe at the moment.

Whataboutism.txt

Now right off the bat I'd love to point out how awesome it looks for you to blame a woman for actions taken during her husband's presidency. A real loving class act there. I'd also love to give an honorable mention to the fact that you called Muammar Gaddafi, a strongman dictator whose final acts as he clung to power were to order his military to open fire on unarmed civilians, killing hundreds in a public square. Really brings home his 'popularity'. Also, just fyi, but I think the responsibility for disasterous Middle East wars can be laid more at the feet of either George W. Bush for the 2003 invasion of Iraq (Syria) or a series of suicides in Tunisia that resulted in the Arab Spring.

I mean, it is nice to see that your view on foreign policy basically boils down to 'hilldawg bad' but really, you need to stop reading whatever idiot magazine repeats a lot of this stuff to you. The Madaline Albright quote in particular, while horrifying, doesn't reflect the reality. You say there is 'credible' evidence, but there is none. The myth you're talking bad comes from a 1995 letter to The Lancet which was based on a survey done in Baghdad. After errors were pointed out to her, the original author of the survey rechecked her work and found that it was inaccurate and the claim was pulled. Unicef did another survey and found the incorrect result due to making the same loving errors as Zaidi's original survey. In the end, Unicef the UN and the WHO each did a round of survey which found no evidence of a spike in child mortality during the sanctions period. It is a false and misleading claim, and the fact that you're repeating it two decades after the fact goes to show how even the dumbest loving ideas can stick around long after they are disproven.

Oh, and your wag the dog poo poo is retarded. The bombing in Kosovo was a NATO operation that stopped a genocide. Even if I accepted your premise, which I don't since it is dumb, Clinton 'trying to distract from impeachment' saved hundreds of thousands of lives and eventually led to the political overthrow of a genocidal autocrat. That is a good thing, btw, I know you don't seem to care about the whole race or genocide thing.

But yeah, all of that aside, Hillary Clinton bad. I agree. I'd have preferred plenty of alternatives to HC, but if I'm in a crazy saw game where you ask me whether to pick a doctor who has a number of fuckups and a huge image problem, or a guy who is hiked up on meth screaming at immigrants who has never finished medical school, it isn't exactly a loving choice, now is it?

quote:

Call me crazy, but the mass murder that Hillary Clinton is culpable for is a little worse morally speaking, than anyone who utters peaceful speech that you consider to be bigoted.

Not that you're actually right here, but welcome to foreign policy in a country who largely uses a big stick for foreign policy. Remember that old saying that every president is a war criminal? Well, yeah. I don't think you can find a US president or secretary of state since the first world war who doesn't have an ocean of blood on their hands.

quote:

And I don't concede that the conservatives and/or libertarians that I like are bigots by any reasonable definition of that term. But even if they were, I'd still argue that they'd be far better ethically than a war criminal like Hillary Clinton.

Of course you don't, because your pattern recognition is non-existent. If you can't see that Ann Coulter is a racist then I legitimately think you'd have a hard time pointing a finger at an actual klansman next to a burning cross. Also, wahhh, hillary.

quote:

So her role as a mass murderer certainly wasn't a deal-breaker for you.

Mass murdering innocent Muslims by the millions? That's just a sober policy disagreement. But gently caress man, if you ever spoke at the John Birch Society or were spotted in front of a Confederate Flag, that's grounds for being a social pariah. There's never any reasonable rationale for voting for someone who committed those grave atrocities.

Millions, huh? Also, did it ever occur to you that my concern (had I been able to vote mind you) might be that a man temperamentally unfit to be president might actively throw a tantrum and put us on the path to war? Like... I dunno, hiring a guy for national security advisor whose sole goal is the overthrow of the Iranian regime? Or letting Qatar get blockaded because they didn't give his son in law a loan? Or any of the other fun national security or domestic issues we've had, such as dismantling the state department, EPA, HUD and so forth?

But nah, Hillary clinton is the devil!!!

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And even if you didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, I'm positive that many people here who would lecture me about the so-called misogyny of Jordan Peterson or the racism of various conservatives and libertarians certainly did.

It's almost like the two are unrelated.

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You know who I voted for? Jill Stein.

Of course you did.

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I voted for her despite my profound disagreements with her on economics and many other issues. I voted for her because I think that war is the worst thing that governments do and therefore should be the thing that I should focus on stopping first.

I'm willing to overlook other disagreements to further the goal of ending the empire, slashing the military budget and ending the surveillance State, all issues that Jill Stein was very good on. She was also very good on warning against making Russia into an enemy and igniting a new Cold War.

Cool, so, to be clear. You feel so strongly anti-war (which is fine), that you voted for an incompetent joke candidate who knows nothing about how to do the job. And you think that Jill Stein, a woman who would have no allies in congress, no experience in government, would somehow end all US wars. Cool.

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I feel like I've got my moral compass attuned perfectly while yours is hopelessly mis-calibrated.

I'd have voted for Bernie Sanders, a candidate who also would drawdown our military and end wars, but who would have had allies in congress to work with, a functional understanding of government (and a functional brain), and who would have also at least had a chance at the polls. When that no longer becomes an option, I'd vote for the qualified candidate who isn't an openly misogynistic bigot who talks about how we should invade countries for their oil. Because I understand the concept of a two party system, since I'm not a moron.

quote:

Chew on that for a while.

Sick burn, bra.

Seriously, though, you know the one thing I haven't seen you do once in your posts so far? Condemn any of the bigotry of the speakers you're so vigorously defending.

You'll whine about the first amendment, even though it isn't really applicable and the speakers are only being 'held back' by other, louder speakers. You'll whine that they're being misinterpreted. Hell, you'll even try to change the topic entirely into how much of a devil Hillary clinton is. But at no point do you seem to be willing to engage with the fact that the conservative right, and most importantly, the speakers you are defending in particular, are being singled out for protest because their beliefs are the worst of an already bad group.

What this signals to me is that you don't care. You must know by now, but you can't be bothered to actually care that what they're saying is, in many ways, straight up white nationalism. At best that doesn't bother you, and me personally? I'm very bothered by a person who doesn't see that straight up fascism is something worth voting for.

Then again, you're a Jill Stein voter, so maybe you're just a loving idiot.

Caros fucked around with this message at 09:53 on May 24, 2018

# ? May 24, 2018 09:43

Weatherman: Jul 30, 2003; WARBLEKLONK

RealTalk posted:

Wow. First you say "conservatives and libertarians almost universally are racists or bigots".

And then you say "Short of outright violence I support any and all attempts by left wing protesters to shut down what amount to hate speech rallies by conservatives."

Here's another tactic that one might take. First, affirm the right of conservatives and libertarians to hold rallies, or speak on college campuses. Then go to those rallies and ask tough, challenging questions that logically refute the arguments they are making. Or, in a calm and non-disruptive manner, pass out fliers outside the event that inform attendants of a contrary argument. Without disrupting the speech or intimidating people who want to hear the speaker.

Is this a novel concept to you? If your position is that virtually all of your political opponents are racists (meaning irredeemably odious people who must be ostracized) and it is the duty of all decent people to shut down their events and mercilessly mock them in public, this seems both unethical in its own right and counterproductive.

I actually don't have any intention of spending much more time defending Jordan Peterson, not because I think you are characterizing his views accurately but rather that I like to speak for myself. If we are going to parse every errant tweet or comb through every statement Peterson has ever made when it's not possible for me to verify the veracity of every statement or put it into context, this seems like a recipe for a very futile discourse.

But seriously, why would you use a quote taken from an obvious hit piece and character assassination attempt in the New York Times, without suspecting that it was intentionally misleading?

I don't doubt that the New York Times interviewed him for several hours at least. Anyone knows that people can be made to sound any way a person wishes to portray them as if they simply cherry pick quotes out of context.

Imagine if you posted hundreds or thousands of hours of lectures and gave hundreds of in depth interviews with media outlets around the world on the most challenging and controversial topics. You'd make your share of mistakes and misstatements, but you'd give your opponents a lot of ammunition with which to misquote you.

What if Peterson said instead that "it's good for society that our culture values monogamy and disapproves of polygamy and infidelity". Would there be anything controversial about the comment?

But since he said "enforced", everyone pretended as if Peterson was advocating that the government enslave women and grant every loser man a sex slave.

I can't accept that people are that loving stupid.

What's interesting is that you cite some libertarians as examples of racists. You mention Walter Block, who was also misquoted and misrepresented by the New York Times. You said that he said "Slavery wasn't so bad, apart from the forcible association they were singing songs and picking cotton." That is not exactly right, but it's better than what the Times reported.

The New York Times simply said "Walter Block, who says that slavery wasn't so bad" and they left it at that. If you take the worst thing imaginable, and remove all the bad things about it, it's not so bad anymore. But if you omit "remove all the bad things about it" you convey the precise opposite of what the full statement actually said.

It's as if I were to quote Winston Churchill as saying "Democracy is the worst form of government" while omitting "except for all the others". In context, Churchill really meant "Democracy is the best form of government that has yet been tried" but selectively quoting him gives the impression that he said the precise opposite.

If this is the known history of how the Times selectively quotes conservatives and libertarians, what reason would you have to accept at face value a quote pulled from an obvious hit piece?

You just being a dishonest and malevolent person would explain it, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

About Peterson being a horrible misogynist...

What I read about Peterson is that he's trying to get angry and disaffected young men to shape up and take responsibility for their lives so that they can attract a good woman.

I'm not entirely sure what Peterson means by the tweet you cited (if it is indeed a Peterson tweet), but the first part of it is "Men: if you treat women as disposable sex objects..." Implying that you shouldn't treat woman as sex objects.

Shouldn't a misogynist be taking the opposite view? Something like woman are here to serve men and be sex objects?

Why would he be spending so much energy trying to get men to shape up and get their act together rather than focusing on the failures of women?

Okay, enough about Peterson. I want to talk about libertarians and conservatives all being racist.

You say: "Now you yourself might not be racist, but when the people you identify with politically are, that puts you in a difficult spot."

I don't know if it puts me in a difficult spot. After all, according to your definition, you cannot be a libertarian or conservative of any stripe without being a racist by definition.

Your words: "conservatives and libertarians almost universally are racists or bigots".

Your throw me a small concession by using the word "almost". Maybe not all conservatives are racists and bigots, maybe only 90-95%. Everyone at Reason, Cato, conservative columnists at the Washington Post and New York Times, racist (almost) every man jack one of them.

This is silly.

It goes without saying that I don't agree with this characterization, but I'll leave that aside. My duty now is to tremble in my boots and fret that I may be seen as associating with racists. What does it say about me that I'm willing to overlook such overt bigotry?

Well, let me ask a very pointed question and I expect an honest answer.

Who did you vote for in the last election?

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd bet that you voted for Hillary Clinton if only to stop the monster Donald Trump.

The question I'd ask is what does this say about YOU?

No doubt saying something racist is not nice. Nor is associating too closely thirty years ago with the John Birch Society. Unforgivable. Making an off-color joke that disparages women? Shameless.

Let's see how these horrible offenses stack up with the public record of a centrist Democrat like Hillary Clinton.

During the 1990s, Bill Clinton enforced brutal economic sanctions against Iraq, and periodically bombed the middle east, most grotesquely as a distraction from his impeachment hearings in 1998. Credible reports suggest that 500,000 children died in Iraq as a direct result of our sanctions.

And I mean died in the most horrific manner possible. They literally starved to death or were ravaged by treatable illnesses until their frail bodies failed them because they were denied access to the medicine that could have saved them.

Madeleine Albright famously said that the price of 500,000 small corpses was "worth it".

In 2003 Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War despite the fact that any thinking person could figure out that the "intelligence" that purported to prove that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda was pure, unadulterated propaganda.

She chose political expediency over concern for the welfare of millions of innocent Iraqis. She has moral culpability for all the horror our government unleashed upon the Muslim world the wake of the Iraq invasion.

Hillary continued to defend her vote as late as 2008, when Barack Obama forced her to backtrack.

As Secretary of State, Hillary openly supported Obama's drone program across the Middle East.

She pushed for Obama to strike Syria, but thankfully Obama caved to public pressure and refused.

Most disastrously, she is responsible for invading Libya and toppling Muammar Gaddafi. Libya was one of the most prosperous African countries and the nation was thrown into squalor and chaos. ISIS and other radical fundamentalist groups took over and hundreds of thousands have been displaced or killed.

Gaddafi, a popular leader who never threatened the United States, was sodomized with a knife in the streets. Slowly tortured to death.

These disastrous Middle East wars are primarily responsible for the migrant crisis that is affecting Europe at the moment.

Call me crazy, but the mass murder that Hillary Clinton is culpable for is a little worse morally speaking, than anyone who utters peaceful speech that you consider to be bigoted.

And I don't concede that the conservatives and/or libertarians that I like are bigots by any reasonable definition of that term. But even if they were, I'd still argue that they'd be far better ethically than a war criminal like Hillary Clinton.

So her role as a mass murderer certainly wasn't a deal-breaker for you.

Mass murdering innocent Muslims by the millions? That's just a sober policy disagreement. But gently caress man, if you ever spoke at the John Birch Society or were spotted in front of a Confederate Flag, that's grounds for being a social pariah. There's never any reasonable rationale for voting for someone who committed those grave atrocities.

And even if you didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, I'm positive that many people here who would lecture me about the so-called misogyny of Jordan Peterson or the racism of various conservatives and libertarians certainly did.

You know who I voted for? Jill Stein.

I voted for her despite my profound disagreements with her on economics and many other issues. I voted for her because I think that war is the worst thing that governments do and therefore should be the thing that I should focus on stopping first.

I'm willing to overlook other disagreements to further the goal of ending the empire, slashing the military budget and ending the surveillance State, all issues that Jill Stein was very good on. She was also very good on warning against making Russia into an enemy and igniting a new Cold War.

I feel like I've got my moral compass attuned perfectly while yours is hopelessly mis-calibrated.

Chew on that for a while.

# ? May 24, 2018 10:20

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

RealTalk posted:

In principle I agree with this. You clearly don't have a right to trespass on private property and speak in a way that the owners don't approve. They have the perfect right to disassociate with you at any time by asking you to leave.

If the school is completely privately funded, you'd be completely correct.

However, if the school receives government grants which the overwhelming percent of colleges do, then the situation changes considerably. Every person in the country is forced to pay taxes. So colleges that receive government grants are akin to public property.

What happens at colleges is that a conservative student group reserves an auditorium and invites a conservative speaking. Leftist students here about this and they protest and try to force the college administrators to intervene and stop the event from taking place.

Usually the form this takes is through the express or implicit threat that they will be violently disruptive. Then the school cancels the event because they cannot afford sufficient security to ensure the event can even take place logistically.

The leftist protesters don't have this right. In the first place, the dis-inviting of libertarian or conservative speakers is often a response to the threat of violence by protesters or the anticipation of violent protesters if the event proceeds as planned.

It's a little ironic that you use these arguments against me. If you truly believe that the first amendment implies both freedom of association and disassociation, then you logically have to oppose all anti-discrimination laws. After all, property owners have the right to choose who they want to associate with and who they want to disassociate with.

I actually believe this, but I doubt that you do.

By your logic I should be allowed to enter and give a speech in any house with federally-subsidized solar panels on the roof, because those homeowners benefited from my tax dollars so that's a totally open public space now

Likewise, by your logic I should be able to waltz into the offices of just about any major corporations that receives any federal grants at all and just start shouting racist poo poo at the top of my lungs

you keep ignoring my posts and all of the great points I make that completely destroy whatever shaky ground your ideas stand on, via praxeology I must conclude that my words are so powerful and true that they cause your idiocy-addled brain to begin bleeding profusely, resulting in you passing out for awhile and forgetting what you've learned before moving onto the next post

# ? May 24, 2018 10:39

Caros: May 14, 2008

QuarkJets posted:

By your logic I should be allowed to enter and give a speech in any house with federally-subsidized solar panels on the roof, because those homeowners benefited from my tax dollars so that's a totally open public space now

Likewise, by your logic I should be able to waltz into the offices of just about any major corporations that receives any federal grants at all and just start shouting racist poo poo at the top of my lungs

you keep ignoring my posts and all of the great points I make that completely destroy whatever shaky ground your ideas stand on, via praxeology I must conclude that my words are so powerful and true that they cause your idiocy-addled brain to begin bleeding profusely, resulting in you passing out for awhile and forgetting what you've learned before moving onto the next post

Have you considered the existence of Hillary Clinton? Your argument is clearly invalid.

# ? May 24, 2018 10:41

QuarkJets: Sep 8, 2008

Caros posted:

Have you considered the existence of Hillary Clinton? Your argument is clearly invalid.

I have, but based on deontological ethics I must inform you that *fart*

# ? May 24, 2018 10:43

Weatherman: Jul 30, 2003; WARBLEKLONK

QuarkJets posted:

I have, but based on deontological ethics I must inform you that *fart*

*rapidly opening and closing the door* For heaven's sake, stop breaking the NAP, QuarkJets!

# ? May 24, 2018 10:59

RealTalk: May 20, 2018; by R. Guyovich

Caros posted:

Nah, I got brain problems, so I got this.

I don't mean to be glib, but my grandfather firebombed a city to prevent the spread of these ideals. Why on earth should I treat a white nationalist ideology with anything short of outright contempt? Men like Richard Spencer would happily commit mass genocide in pursuit of their preferred ethnostate, yet we're supposed to sit there and try and have a meaningful discussion with a person who thinks you'd look good on the other end of a bullet? gently caress off with that nonsense.

Jean Paul-Sartre has a wonderful quote about the purposeless of arguing with Nazis:

"�Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.�

You are literally falling into the trap set by fascists. The people you are defending, as I quoted with the wonderful Ms. Coulter, do not believe in free-speech excepting where it benefits them and allows them to push for their bigoted, hate-filled ideology. They aren't seeking to have a meaningful conversation, they are seeking to tell people how great it would be to live in an ethnostate resulting from mass murder. Their ideology should be opposed by any means necessary.

Giving fascists a polite platform to speak from legitimizes their disgusting beliefs. And that ends with firebombs and an eighty year old man who terrifies his grandson with night terrors. You gently caress.

The republican party is the party of racists. It is the party that holds white nationalist rallies to protest the taking down of statues of slave owners that were put up as a gently caress you to the civil rights movement. They are the party that gets upset by black athletes kneeling, and who elected a racist orange characture as president based on his promise to build an enormous monument of hate and intolerance between the US and Mexico. Not all republican voters are hood wearing klansmen, but ignoring reality and trying to pretend that the republican party isn't racist makes you look like a loving moron.

And no, again, I don't think that every single republican speaker should be shut down when they speak in public. The speakers who are being opposed are the worst of the worst of the alt-right. No one gives a poo poo when some middle of the road conservative gives a speech at a college. They do give a gently caress when a straight up white nationalist books an event to talk about how great it would be if the US was a white nation. Stop equating the two.

Read as: Holy gently caress some of that is offensive as poo poo and I'm having a hard time defending it so lets move along.

Peterson is a misogynistic piece of crap. You do not become the darling of the loving Incel community because you have rational and measured views on women.

Plenty of public figures get interviewed by 'hostile' sources every day. How many of them propose 'Enforced Monogomy', and talk about how witches are actually real. This is a supposedly educated man.

Except he isn't being misquoted. Having a long history of material pointing to misogynistic tendencies isn't an example of people misquoting him, or misstating him. If I am out there 24/7 talking about how awful black people are, I'm a racist. If I have hundreds of tweets talking about how women are the problem in society and they just need to get back in the kitchen and have babies by 30, that isn't a mistake, it is a pattern.

Yeah, words mean things. It is almost like a professor ought to know that. He does, by the way, and when he says things like Enforced Monogamy (which having done some more research is a somewhat common phrase for him) he is doing it with a purpose. The purpose is that he thinks our society sucks because we don't 'enforce' monogamy, which, in his worldview, involves brutal societal punishment for women (and lets be honest, it'll be women) who stray.

Actually, now you're misquoting him to make it look good, what he said was:

So in context, it is actually much, much worse. Slavery is only bad because slaves couldn't quit, you see. You'd sing songs, eat nice gruel, you just couldn't quit. Also they beat you, raped you, sold you, split up your families and on occasion straight up murdered you. But you couldn't quit. Which is bad.

Oh, and the civil rights act is slavery. Yeah. So much better in context, isn't it fuckface?

The NYT got the gist of his argument, that slavery wasn't so bad, across. And lets be clear, that is the point of his argument there. The thrust of his argument is that slavery was only bad because of forced association, which is summarized as "The daily life of the enslaved was 'Not so bad' which is horseshit.

You certainly seem to be giving racists, bigots and misogynists a whole lot of that, yeah.

And also get women back in the kitchen, yes. His opinion on gender roles is best described as taliban-lite, yes.

It is from his loving twitter account, dude.

His point is that you should treat women as wives. Something to posess and to give you babies. Because they are stupider than men and are only happy when they are in the kitchen. Also, didn't you say upthread that you didn't want to talk about this dumbfuck?

Because being an open misogynist who insults transgender folk earns him 61,000 a month on Patreon.

Nah. I clarified upthread that I don't think that everyone is a hood wearing klansman, but I think if you support republican party politics you are in practice agreeing with a party that holds racism among its core tenants. All you need to do is look at republican behavior towards, say, immigration and you can see it. There are rational arguments to be had in opposition to immigration, but republican arguments on that front are based almost entirely on a hatred of the other. Trump, a racist hategolem forged in the shape of a man out of spray-tan, won the republican primary by being the most racist guy in the room. You do not win a primary by being a racist if your party does not reward racism.

And yeah, everyone at Reason and Cato for sure. I'd say msot of the WaPo ones. Don't read enough NYT to comment.

Uh, yeah. Pretty much. Well, I mean not as a scare tactic, but what does it say that you are willing to defend overt racism? I think it doesn't say anything bad.

Jack Layton?

Oho!! You got me! If I'd been in the US I would have indeed held my nose and voted for the lesser of two evils over a man fundamentally unsuited to hold public office in the US. This is entirely because I support her 100%, not because I recognize the political realities of the US electoral system and am forced to acknowledge that the flawed candidate I do not like is still better than voting for a figurative hyper-satan.

Whataboutism.txt

Now right off the bat I'd love to point out how awesome it looks for you to blame a woman for actions taken during her husband's presidency. A real loving class act there. I'd also love to give an honorable mention to the fact that you called Muammar Gaddafi, a strongman dictator whose final acts as he clung to power were to order his military to open fire on unarmed civilians, killing hundreds in a public square. Really brings home his 'popularity'. Also, just fyi, but I think the responsibility for disasterous Middle East wars can be laid more at the feet of either George W. Bush for the 2003 invasion of Iraq (Syria) or a series of suicides in Tunisia that resulted in the Arab Spring.

I mean, it is nice to see that your view on foreign policy basically boils down to 'hilldawg bad' but really, you need to stop reading whatever idiot magazine repeats a lot of this stuff to you. The Madaline Albright quote in particular, while horrifying, doesn't reflect the reality. You say there is 'credible' evidence, but there is none. The myth you're talking bad comes from a 1995 letter to The Lancet which was based on a survey done in Baghdad. After errors were pointed out to her, the original author of the survey rechecked her work and found that it was inaccurate and the claim was pulled. Unicef did another survey and found the incorrect result due to making the same loving errors as Zaidi's original survey. In the end, Unicef the UN and the WHO each did a round of survey which found no evidence of a spike in child mortality during the sanctions period. It is a false and misleading claim, and the fact that you're repeating it two decades after the fact goes to show how even the dumbest loving ideas can stick around long after they are disproven.

Oh, and your wag the dog poo poo is retarded. The bombing in Kosovo was a NATO operation that stopped a genocide. Even if I accepted your premise, which I don't since it is dumb, Clinton 'trying to distract from impeachment' saved hundreds of thousands of lives and eventually led to the political overthrow of a genocidal autocrat. That is a good thing, btw, I know you don't seem to care about the whole race or genocide thing.

But yeah, all of that aside, Hillary Clinton bad. I agree. I'd have preferred plenty of alternatives to HC, but if I'm in a crazy saw game where you ask me whether to pick a doctor who has a number of fuckups and a huge image problem, or a guy who is hiked up on meth screaming at immigrants who has never finished medical school, it isn't exactly a loving choice, now is it?

Not that you're actually right here, but welcome to foreign policy in a country who largely uses a big stick for foreign policy. Remember that old saying that every president is a war criminal? Well, yeah. I don't think you can find a US president or secretary of state since the first world war who doesn't have an ocean of blood on their hands.

Of course you don't, because your pattern recognition is non-existent. If you can't see that Ann Coulter is a racist then I legitimately think you'd have a hard time pointing a finger at an actual klansman next to a burning cross. Also, wahhh, hillary.

Millions, huh? Also, did it ever occur to you that my concern (had I been able to vote mind you) might be that a man temperamentally unfit to be president might actively throw a tantrum and put us on the path to war? Like... I dunno, hiring a guy for national security advisor whose sole goal is the overthrow of the Iranian regime? Or letting Qatar get blockaded because they didn't give his son in law a loan? Or any of the other fun national security or domestic issues we've had, such as dismantling the state department, EPA, HUD and so forth?

But nah, Hillary clinton is the devil!!!

It's almost like the two are unrelated.

Of course you did.

Cool, so, to be clear. You feel so strongly anti-war (which is fine), that you voted for an incompetent joke candidate who knows nothing about how to do the job. And you think that Jill Stein, a woman who would have no allies in congress, no experience in government, would somehow end all US wars. Cool.

I'd have voted for Bernie Sanders, a candidate who also would drawdown our military and end wars, but who would have had allies in congress to work with, a functional understanding of government (and a functional brain), and who would have also at least had a chance at the polls. When that no longer becomes an option, I'd vote for the qualified candidate who isn't an openly misogynistic bigot who talks about how we should invade countries for their oil. Because I understand the concept of a two party system, since I'm not a moron.

Sick burn, bra.

Seriously, though, you know the one thing I haven't seen you do once in your posts so far? Condemn any of the bigotry of the speakers you're so vigorously defending.

You'll whine about the first amendment, even though it isn't really applicable and the speakers are only being 'held back' by other, louder speakers. You'll whine that they're being misinterpreted. Hell, you'll even try to change the topic entirely into how much of a devil Hillary clinton is. But at no point do you seem to be willing to engage with the fact that the conservative right, and most importantly, the speakers you are defending in particular, are being singled out for protest because their beliefs are the worst of an already bad group.

What this signals to me is that you don't care. You must know by now, but you can't be bothered to actually care that what they're saying is, in many ways, straight up white nationalism. At best that doesn't bother you, and me personally? I'm very bothered by a person who doesn't see that straight up fascism is something worth voting for.

Then again, you're a Jill Stein voter, so maybe you're just a loving idiot.

I'm not going to answer all of this right now but I'll touch on a few points.

I'm not "vigorously defending" anyone. I'm saying that the people I mentioned should have the right to speak on college campuses without violent and disruptive protests shutting down the event. Students should be exposed to different viewpoints, even if some of those viewpoints may offend them.

Remember that the reason this subject was broached in the first place is that we were discussing Jordan Peterson. I think his criticism of the radical Left has merit and the anti-free speech stance of many on college campuses adds credibility to the claim.

In order to defend Peterson's position, I cited a few high profile cases of public speakers whose events were shut down entirely by violent protesters.

You're response amounts to "well those people are bad people". They may well be bad people, but that's not the point.

The only person I've actually defended as far as his actual views are concerned, is Jordan Peterson. The other names I've mentioned, from Ann Coulter to Milo Yiannapolos to Paul Gottfried and Charles Murray, I strenuously disagree with on all sorts of issues. But they should be allowed to speak.

Must I emphatically virtue-signal that I don't agree with all of Ann Coulter's views on Muslims or immigrants (which I don't) to satisfy you?

What if a card-carrying Communist was scheduled to speak at Berkeley? Would you even bat an eye if someone defended their right to free speech?

But Communism killed more people than Fascism did in the 20th century. There is at least as much rationale for being as offended and/or threatened by Communist speech as there is from Fascist or White Nationalist speech.

Look, it's not that I don't understand the rationale of voting for the lesser of two evils.

I'm just stunned by the irony of you supporting someone like Hillary, but affecting such indignation that I could possibly like or support someone who is a libertarian or a conservative since I supposedly am overlooking their horrible racism.

Hillary's got some racism to atone for as well. Everyone knows her infamous "super predator" comment from the 1990s. Since she ran largely on the record of her husband, and was a visible and vocal proponent of many of his policies, it is not unfair to hold her accountable in some measure for them. She and her husband were big drug warriors until it became politically unfashionable in the 2000s. They were also instrumental in pushing through the GOP-led "tough on crime" bills that have destroyed countless black families.

In contrast, if I said that I was voting for Ron Paul because I thought his policies were the best, you'd chide me for overlooking his "racism" in the newsletters that appeared under his name in the early 1990s.

I'd respond that I don't think he wrote them, or even if he did his other policies far outweigh the fact that he has/had a blind spot on some issues of race. I'm not conceding this, mind you, but I'll accept it for arguments sake.

My primary argument then would be that Ron Paul wants to end the wars and bring all the troops home. He wants to stop the mass murder that our government is committing each and every day. He wants to release everyone who is currently rotting away in prison for a non-violent crime.

This would be a pretty compelling argument for voting for a libertarian like Ron Paul over a democrat like Hillary Clinton or a Republican like John McCain or Mitt Romney.

I just think it is odd how easily mass murder can be overlooked and excused. Hillary voters, and Trump voters for that matter, are not hectored every day about how they don't care about war crimes because of who they vote for.

But if you vote for someone like Ron Paul, it's "why don't you care about the newsletters" or "don't you know all libertarians are racists?"

Some conservatives on the far-Right tilt towards fascism, and a very small group of people like Richard Spencer openly advocate for fascism. But libertarians are about as far away from fascism as it is possible to be.

If you can define fascism broadly enough to include libertarians within their ranks, I'd be stunned. The entire ideology is anathema to the ideas libertarians espouse.

A problem I have with you is that you insinuate that many, if not most, people to the right of you are racist fascist white supremacists not unlike the actual Nazis your (and my) grandfather fought in World War 2. You don't seem to draw distinctions between different groups of people to your political right.

# ? May 24, 2018 11:15

Jazerus: May 24, 2011

quote:

A problem I have with you is that you insinuate that many, if not most, people to the right of you are racist fascist white supremacists not unlike the actual Nazis your (and my) grandfather fought in World War 2. You don't seem to draw distinctions between different groups of people to your political right.

so i want to unpack this a little

do you think anyone on the right is fascist at all? because it's pretty clear that there is a growing fascist movement in the US, and that it is drawing from both mainstream conservatism and the alt-right, and most of the folks you cited as having their speech shut down unjustly are part of it. are there non-fascists to the right of me/Caros/etc.?

yes, obviously; first of all, hillary/obama/etc. are to our right and are not fascists, though they suck for other reasons. then you have the classical gop establishment, which is also not really fascist, just imperialist and usually racist - so, john mccain types. these aren't the people going out and pushing for platforms for nazism, so there has been no real reason to address them so far in responding to you. the folks you are bringing up as examples are fascist or quickly trending toward it, not because they're simply to the right of us but because they espouse the literal tenets of fascism.

your sentiment here is commonly used to imply that there are no nazis trying to sway public opinion, that the left is just calling regular conservatives nazis to justify their supposed crusade against free speech. this is false. the nazis exist. not all non-leftists are nazis, which seems so obvious that you wouldn't think you'd have to explicitly declare it, but there are nazis and recognizing them as such is perfectly valid.

# ? May 24, 2018 12:18

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Unoriginal Name posted:

RealTalk, do you have a reason for finishing sentences that are clearly phrased as statements with question marks?

He babbles a lot between his question-statements in an attempt to look like he's saying something but he brought up some random conservative idiot to talk about for no reason other than pot-stirring as far as I can tell. He registered days ago and responds exclusively to things that allow him to ask further questions.

Basically, are you guys really going to bite on this weak troll?

More like FakeTalk, amirite??

# ? May 24, 2018 12:28

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

large adult son posted:

Motherfucker nobody's gonna read that let alone answer it.

I think Caros will tbh.

e:f,b

# ? May 24, 2018 12:29

reignonyourparade: Nov 15, 2012

RealTalk posted:

You're response amounts to "well those people are bad people". They may well be bad people, but that's not the point.

YOU brought up the assertion that the left was calling people racists because they didn't like what they say. Demonstrating that they are in fact racists implies that perhaps the reason they're getting called racist is because of the racism they're constantly espousing.

# ? May 24, 2018 12:33

Symbolic Butt: Mar 22, 2009; (_!_); Buglord

RealTalk posted:

Must I emphatically virtue-signal that I don't agree with all of Ann Coulter's views on Muslims or immigrants (which I don't) to satisfy you?

I guess I got a new insight about you guys and "virtue signaling", it's like you guys are allergic to expressing yourselves as not bigots. I mean, what's the deaaal

If you're defending a bigot then yes, naturally people expect you to take a stance on this. Why are you so afraid of expressing this as if it's some kind of weakness?

# ? May 24, 2018 12:59

Juffo-Wup: Jan 13, 2005; Pillbug

RealTalk posted:

The only person I've actually defended as far as his actual views are concerned, is Jordan Peterson.

Have you, though? Hasn't most of your contribution on this subject amounted to 'no, he didn't say that'?

So far, the most you've presented by way of positive exposition of Peterson's actual views is: we should focus more on the individual rather than their group identity, and young men should get their poo poo together. Okay. But neither of those is particularly concrete, right? Suppose I understood that first idea to mean that Peterson thinks we should abolish the CRA because it grants protections to people by virtue of their group identity. I'm pretty sure your response would be 'no, you've interpreted him uncharitably!' But then, like, I'm not sure what he's saying at all.

As a bit of academic philosophy (which is my field), it's like trying to grasp smoke in your hand. So, I guess, if everybody here is badly mistaken as to what Peterson is actually saying, maybe you should put some effort into distilling what he actually says into some concrete claims to anchor the discussion. Or, you know, you could keep complaining about 'campus leftists' (am I one??? Not sure)

Juffo-Wup fucked around with this message at 14:48 on May 24, 2018

# ? May 24, 2018 13:00

Caros: May 14, 2008

RealTalk posted:

I'm not going to answer all of this right now but I'll touch on a few points.

I'm not "vigorously defending" anyone. I'm saying that the people I mentioned should have the right to speak on college campuses without violent and disruptive protests shutting down the event. Students should be exposed to different viewpoints, even if some of those viewpoints may offend them

May offend them.

See, this is why I'm sort of defaulting to calling you a piece of poo poo at this point. Because it really feels like you aren't actually bothered by say, Richard Spencer talking about how great fascism is. The point of many of these speeches is to offend, while the point of others is to spread white nationalist ideologies in a public forum paid for by the students that are protesting. Those students have every right to be disruptive, just up to the point where they punch these nazi motherfuckers in the face.

quote:

Remember that the reason this subject was broached in the first place is that we were discussing Jordan Peterson. I think his criticism of the radical Left has merit and the anti-free speech stance of many on college campuses adds credibility to the claim.

It doesn't, though. The campus' where these protests are occuring are left wing campus'. Turns out left wing campus' don't want to hear from actual literal nazis, and they come out in opposition to actual literal nazis when those actual literal nazis attempt to come to their campus for the express purpose of picking a fight. Like, to be clear, Ann Coulter doesn't give a poo poo about speaking at Berkley. She specifically chose that location in order to pick a fight with liberal students who were understandably pissed the gently caress off that an actual literal nazi was showing up at their campus to brag about how great being a nazi is. It is a real life version of your posting, basically.

quote:

In order to defend Peterson's position, I cited a few high profile cases of public speakers whose events were shut down entirely by violent protesters.

You cited a bunch of fascists and one girl who got yelled at by her teachers for bringing up gender politics in a grammar class.

quote:

You're response amounts to "well those people are bad people". They may well be bad people, but that's not the point.

Yes, actually, it is. Freedom of speech does not equal freedom to speak anywhere for any reason. The University campus' in all of your examples are limited public forums. They are not outdoor areas where anyone can walk in and start talking, but actual buildings that need to be rented out to speakers. People at those schools do not like the speakers who are coming to their schools, and they are vocally opposed to those speakers. You are ignoring the free speech of thousands of students in favor of one nazi, because you are upset that pressure from the students can get these events cancelled or moved. In most cases the actual literal nazis are cancelling their events because of public backlash, which is exactly how it should work.

It is also worth noting that in the majority of cases of violence at these protests, the violence is actually propagated by the supporters of the right wing troll protests. Despite the fact that you see headlines of 'antifa protesters clash with x', the reality is that in the majority of these cases, the point of the protest is to get a big angry crowd that they can provoke. So no, I don't think real life concern trolls need super special treatment. Ironically, for all your rambling about safe spaces, your argument basically boils down to the idea that we should give preferential treatment to extremely unpopular speech.

quote:

The only person I've actually defended as far as his actual views are concerned, is Jordan Peterson. The other names I've mentioned, from Ann Coulter to Milo Yiannapolos to Paul Gottfried and Charles Murray, I strenuously disagree with on all sorts of issues. But they should be allowed to speak.

Right to speech does not have to equal enabling speech. I don't have to give you a microphone to spout hateful poo poo.

quote:

Must I emphatically virtue-signal that I don't agree with all of Ann Coulter's views on Muslims or immigrants (which I don't) to satisfy you?

The fact that you won't is awfully telling. If for some reason I ever had to invoke Ann Coulter outside my warding spells, I would always preface it with something along the lines of "Well yes Ann Coulter is a piece of poo poo who will thankfully die alone since she is so repugnant she can't get a date, but..."

I would do this because when you defend really loving awful people, it is reasonable of an onlooker to stop and ask "Well, is he approving of those really awful people", which you really seem to be, tbh.

quote:

What if a card-carrying Communist was scheduled to speak at Berkeley? Would you even bat an eye if someone defended their right to free speech?

But Communism killed more people than Fascism did in the 20th century. There is at least as much rationale for being as offended and/or threatened by Communist speech as there is from Fascist or White Nationalist speech.

Whataboutcommunism! Don't you want someone to care about you! Whataboutcommunism! Don't let it slip awaaaaaay.

If someone came to a college campus and advocated full on Stalinesque communist ideology, I imagine they'd get roundly mocked. I'm guessing you're trying to use 'communism' as a catch all cudgel for socialism, but yeah, if someone wanted to tell me about how great Chairman Mao is I'd tell them to get hosed too. Of course, it is worth noting the context as well, the US doesn't currently have a big problem with Neo-Communists, but we do have a full on resurgence of fascist, white nationalist or full on neo-nazist ideals. When a Neo-Communist kills a girl by ramming her with his car at a protest, we'll talk about comparing them and about whether people should protest.

Also, while you didn't give a number, I'm going to assume you pulled that bullshit comparison from the Black Book of Communism. The idea that Communism led to more deaths than Fascism is absurd on its face even before you stop and realize that it is an apples and oranges comparison. First off, the big book, which again is almost certainly where you get that number, even if you don't realize it, compares 100 million communist deaths to 20 million fascist deaths. The problem, of course, is that the communist death count is counting basically anything under the sun. It counts deaths caused by the 1921 famine, which resulted from a drought. It blames famine related deaths during the world war, which is obviously absurd, but my favorite is when they count things like german concentration camp guards as 'victims of communism'.

So the communism numbers are bullshit, what about the fascist numbers. Well the obvious answer is bullshit. Total casualties of the second world war were somewhere in excess of eighty million. Whether you want to get into arguments about the inevitability of the second world war due to the stab in the back myth and other fun post WWI talk, the simple fact is that fascist aggression is directly responsible for roughly eighty-six million deaths in a twelve year period, and that the only reason these deaths stopped is that we killed enough Nazis to make them stop.

Yeah, as with your last garbage post, you are making sweeping historical claims that aren't remotely backed by evidence. Maybe you are Jrod afterall.

quote:

Look, it's not that I don't understand the rationale of voting for the lesser of two evils.

I'm just stunned by the irony of you supporting someone like Hillary, but affecting such indignation that I could possibly like or support someone who is a libertarian or a conservative since I supposedly am overlooking their horrible racism.

You voted for Jill Stein, which suggests you really don't.

As I pointed out in my last post, I don't agree with your characterization. I don't think that Hillary was particularly warlike, nor that anything in her policies were particularly more vile as far as that subject when compared to any president or other elected official within my lifetime. I disagree with the US MIC, but I don't remotely think that Hillary Clinton of all loving people embodies it, or that it is even a top ten item on things that were wrong with her. The blatant racism of candidates like Trump are part and parcel of who they are. Racism is a big part of what makes trump appealing to his voters, which makes your attempt to wave it off as just some minor thing a bit silly.

quote:

Hillary's got some racism to atone for as well. Everyone knows her infamous "super predator" comment from the 1990s. Since she ran largely on the record of her husband, and was a visible and vocal proponent of many of his policies, it is not unfair to hold her accountable in some measure for them. She and her husband were big drug warriors until it became politically unfashionable in the 2000s. They were also instrumental in pushing through the GOP-led "tough on crime" bills that have destroyed countless black families.

Okay?

quote:

In contrast, if I said that I was voting for Ron Paul because I thought his policies were the best, you'd chide me for overlooking his "racism" in the newsletters that appeared under his name in the early 1990s.

No, I'd chide you for overlooking his blatant, overt racism as recently as 2011 when he said that he would have opposed the civil rights act. Or when he was Stormfront's candidate of choice in 2008 (and accepted their money), or when he had a straight up Klansman as a campaign coordinator. Or when he talked about secession in front of a confederate flag. See the difference? Someone having lovely opinons in the past doesn't make them lovely now. Someone letting racist newsletters go out in their name (at best), then talking about how he would have supported allowing people to keep being racist, while taking money and support from racists... bit different, yeah?

quote:

I'd respond that I don't think he wrote them, or even if he did his other policies far outweigh the fact that he has/had a blind spot on some issues of race. I'm not conceding this, mind you, but I'll accept it for arguments sake.

He doesn't have a blindspot. He is in fact a racist. Just fyi.

quote:

My primary argument then would be that Ron Paul wants to end the wars and bring all the troops home. He wants to stop the mass murder that our government is committing each and every day. He wants to release everyone who is currently rotting away in prison for a non-violent crime.

So does Bernie, but I'm guessin you sure as gently caress didn't go primary for him, now did you bitchboy? Having one or two unique opinions is not unique to these fuckfaces, and there are numerous good politicians on the left who have all of these same ideas but don't also thing segregation was a-okay.

Also, ha. Rand Paul is basically Ron Paul the younger, with all his father's positions and Rand Paul will happily keep the wars going until kingdom come, just like he hates drone use unless it is to stop (black) convenience store robbers.

quote:

This would be a pretty compelling argument for voting for a libertarian like Ron Paul over a democrat like Hillary Clinton or a Republican like John McCain or Mitt Romney.

Not really. They are unelectable candidates, and if elected they would almost certainly fail in their ideology, even if they are serious about it. The Paul campaign is basically a once every four years grifting tour where the Paul family sucks money out of gulible fuckheads.

quote:

I just think it is odd how easily mass murder can be overlooked and excused. Hillary voters, and Trump voters for that matter, are not hectored every day about how they don't care about war crimes because of who they vote for.

Welcome to the Military Industrial Complex. If you want something done about it, vote in your democratic primaries for far-left wing candidates, because they are the only ones who are going to do poo poo about it.

quote:

But if you vote for someone like Ron Paul, it's "why don't you care about the newsletters" or "don't you know all libertarians are racists?"

The reason that we bring this up is that you and I both know that voting for Ron Paul will not get you what you want. With that then said, it becomes a question of 'If you are going to vote for someone who isn't going to win, maybe do so for someone who isn't a horrific loving racist.'

quote:

Some conservatives on the far-Right tilt towards fascism, and a very small group of people like Richard Spencer openly advocate for fascism. But libertarians are about as far away from fascism as it is possible to be.

'Some'. Lol.

quote:

If you can define fascism broadly enough to include libertarians within their ranks, I'd be stunned. The entire ideology is anathema to the ideas libertarians espouse.

I agree, I don't think libertarians are fascists. If you go read my posts in this thread I think the two are largely incompatible, but that there does end up being a weird pipeline where people start libertarian and end up fascist after twisting themselves into absurd knots. The difference is that I think libertarianism in and of itself is also a horrific ideology that basically extolls the absolute worst of capitalism into an ideological framework that reduces human beings down into transactional relationships that is both fundamentally unworkable and utterly horrific. Libertarianism sucks rear end in an entirely distinct way from fascists, its just that lovely people tend to get drawn to either belief and it is easy for one to roll into the other, particularly when libertarianism overlaps so disgustingly with the modern right wing.

quote:

A problem I have with you is that you insinuate that many, if not most, people to the right of you are racist fascist white supremacists not unlike the actual Nazis your (and my) grandfather fought in World War 2. You don't seem to draw distinctions between different groups of people to your political right.

A problem I have with you is that you seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge the uncomfortable truths that undergrid our society. Racism is a big thing in the US. The US congress did not become uniquely gridlocked in the Obama era because Obama was a uniquely terrible president, but because there was something about him, some odd characteristic that just drove the republican base up a tree.

It's cus he was black.

It was bad before, mind you, but since Obama, racial politics have taken a center stage in the US in a way they haven't before. Again, Trump won because he was the loudest voice in the world willing to say 'gently caress people of color'. Not every republican is a Nazi, but the overwhelming majority of the party is at the very least willing to tactly ignore the six hundred pound screaming gorilla in the room, and I don't have any more patience for them than I do for the full out racists themselves. There are 302 republicans in congress. How many of them came forward and said 'enough is enough, I no longer support this president' after Trump declared that there were good people on 'both sides' of Charlottesville?

How many? I'm not asking for people who clutched their pearls and 'denounced' the President's words. When the president claimed that there were very fine people in a white supremacist rally, how many of his staff quit?

If you are unwilling to take a measured stand against someone who supports Nazis, then you are at best a sympathizer, and I don't really make a distinction.

# ? May 24, 2018 13:01

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Oh good, I was waiting for "you're taking things out of context!!" followed by a complete dropping of the subject after more, and more damning, context is provided. Chalk up another bingo square.

E:. Also loving citing the ACLU's support of the rally in Charlottesville, since that event was so clearly an attempt by the Nazis to stifle other people's free speech through intimidation that it got the ACLU to completely revise their stance on supporting the rights of hate groups.

Ravenfood fucked around with this message at 13:26 on May 24, 2018

# ? May 24, 2018 13:23

GunnerJ: Aug 1, 2005; Do you think this is funny?

Dunno what the thread consensus is on ContraPoints, but her video on Peterson was pretty great imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LqZdkkBDas

# ? May 24, 2018 13:38

VitalSigns: Sep 3, 2011

Women: simultaneously too uppity and self-involved to abandon their careers and take their proper place in submission to men, and too tolerant of Muslims because they hope to bring about Sharia law so they can live in seclusion under total male dominance.

Okay give me my tenure now

# ? May 24, 2018 13:59

Zanzibar Ham: Mar 17, 2009; You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.; Grimey Drawer

I'm very concerned about "campus leftists" curtailing the free speech of moderate conservatives

*literally all my examples are of fascist alt-right shitheels*

# ? May 24, 2018 14:03

Captain_Maclaine: Sep 30, 2001

RealTalk posted:

Wow. First you say "conservatives and libertarians almost universally are racists or bigots".

And then you say "Short of outright violence I support any and all attempts by left wing protesters to shut down what amount to hate speech rallies by conservatives."

Here's another tactic that one might take. First, affirm the right of conservatives and libertarians to hold rallies, or speak on college campuses. Then go to those rallies and ask tough, challenging questions that logically refute the arguments they are making. Or, in a calm and non-disruptive manner, pass out fliers outside the event that inform attendants of a contrary argument. Without disrupting the speech or intimidating people who want to hear the speaker.

Is this a novel concept to you? If your position is that virtually all of your political opponents are racists (meaning irredeemably odious people who must be ostracized) and it is the duty of all decent people to shut down their events and mercilessly mock them in public, this seems both unethical in its own right and counterproductive.

I actually don't have any intention of spending much more time defending Jordan Peterson, not because I think you are characterizing his views accurately but rather that I like to speak for myself. If we are going to parse every errant tweet or comb through every statement Peterson has ever made when it's not possible for me to verify the veracity of every statement or put it into context, this seems like a recipe for a very futile discourse.

But seriously, why would you use a quote taken from an obvious hit piece and character assassination attempt in the New York Times, without suspecting that it was intentionally misleading?

I don't doubt that the New York Times interviewed him for several hours at least. Anyone knows that people can be made to sound any way a person wishes to portray them as if they simply cherry pick quotes out of context.

Imagine if you posted hundreds or thousands of hours of lectures and gave hundreds of in depth interviews with media outlets around the world on the most challenging and controversial topics. You'd make your share of mistakes and misstatements, but you'd give your opponents a lot of ammunition with which to misquote you.

What if Peterson said instead that "it's good for society that our culture values monogamy and disapproves of polygamy and infidelity". Would there be anything controversial about the comment?

But since he said "enforced", everyone pretended as if Peterson was advocating that the government enslave women and grant every loser man a sex slave.

I can't accept that people are that loving stupid.

What's interesting is that you cite some libertarians as examples of racists. You mention Walter Block, who was also misquoted and misrepresented by the New York Times. You said that he said "Slavery wasn't so bad, apart from the forcible association they were singing songs and picking cotton." That is not exactly right, but it's better than what the Times reported.

The New York Times simply said "Walter Block, who says that slavery wasn't so bad" and they left it at that. If you take the worst thing imaginable, and remove all the bad things about it, it's not so bad anymore. But if you omit "remove all the bad things about it" you convey the precise opposite of what the full statement actually said.

It's as if I were to quote Winston Churchill as saying "Democracy is the worst form of government" while omitting "except for all the others". In context, Churchill really meant "Democracy is the best form of government that has yet been tried" but selectively quoting him gives the impression that he said the precise opposite.

If this is the known history of how the Times selectively quotes conservatives and libertarians, what reason would you have to accept at face value a quote pulled from an obvious hit piece?

You just being a dishonest and malevolent person would explain it, but I like to give people the benefit of the doubt.

About Peterson being a horrible misogynist...

What I read about Peterson is that he's trying to get angry and disaffected young men to shape up and take responsibility for their lives so that they can attract a good woman.

I'm not entirely sure what Peterson means by the tweet you cited (if it is indeed a Peterson tweet), but the first part of it is "Men: if you treat women as disposable sex objects..." Implying that you shouldn't treat woman as sex objects.

Shouldn't a misogynist be taking the opposite view? Something like woman are here to serve men and be sex objects?

Why would he be spending so much energy trying to get men to shape up and get their act together rather than focusing on the failures of women?

Okay, enough about Peterson. I want to talk about libertarians and conservatives all being racist.

You say: "Now you yourself might not be racist, but when the people you identify with politically are, that puts you in a difficult spot."

I don't know if it puts me in a difficult spot. After all, according to your definition, you cannot be a libertarian or conservative of any stripe without being a racist by definition.

Your words: "conservatives and libertarians almost universally are racists or bigots".

Your throw me a small concession by using the word "almost". Maybe not all conservatives are racists and bigots, maybe only 90-95%. Everyone at Reason, Cato, conservative columnists at the Washington Post and New York Times, racist (almost) every man jack one of them.

This is silly.

It goes without saying that I don't agree with this characterization, but I'll leave that aside. My duty now is to tremble in my boots and fret that I may be seen as associating with racists. What does it say about me that I'm willing to overlook such overt bigotry?

Well, let me ask a very pointed question and I expect an honest answer.

Who did you vote for in the last election?

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd bet that you voted for Hillary Clinton if only to stop the monster Donald Trump.

The question I'd ask is what does this say about YOU?

No doubt saying something racist is not nice. Nor is associating too closely thirty years ago with the John Birch Society. Unforgivable. Making an off-color joke that disparages women? Shameless.

Let's see how these horrible offenses stack up with the public record of a centrist Democrat like Hillary Clinton.

During the 1990s, Bill Clinton enforced brutal economic sanctions against Iraq, and periodically bombed the middle east, most grotesquely as a distraction from his impeachment hearings in 1998. Credible reports suggest that 500,000 children died in Iraq as a direct result of our sanctions.

And I mean died in the most horrific manner possible. They literally starved to death or were ravaged by treatable illnesses until their frail bodies failed them because they were denied access to the medicine that could have saved them.

Madeleine Albright famously said that the price of 500,000 small corpses was "worth it".

In 2003 Hillary Clinton voted for the Iraq War despite the fact that any thinking person could figure out that the "intelligence" that purported to prove that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaeda was pure, unadulterated propaganda.

She chose political expediency over concern for the welfare of millions of innocent Iraqis. She has moral culpability for all the horror our government unleashed upon the Muslim world the wake of the Iraq invasion.

Hillary continued to defend her vote as late as 2008, when Barack Obama forced her to backtrack.

As Secretary of State, Hillary openly supported Obama's drone program across the Middle East.

She pushed for Obama to strike Syria, but thankfully Obama caved to public pressure and refused.

Most disastrously, she is responsible for invading Libya and toppling Muammar Gaddafi. Libya was one of the most prosperous African countries and the nation was thrown into squalor and chaos. ISIS and other radical fundamentalist groups took over and hundreds of thousands have been displaced or killed.

Gaddafi, a popular leader who never threatened the United States, was sodomized with a knife in the streets. Slowly tortured to death.

These disastrous Middle East wars are primarily responsible for the migrant crisis that is affecting Europe at the moment.

Call me crazy, but the mass murder that Hillary Clinton is culpable for is a little worse morally speaking, than anyone who utters peaceful speech that you consider to be bigoted.

And I don't concede that the conservatives and/or libertarians that I like are bigots by any reasonable definition of that term. But even if they were, I'd still argue that they'd be far better ethically than a war criminal like Hillary Clinton.

So her role as a mass murderer certainly wasn't a deal-breaker for you.

Mass murdering innocent Muslims by the millions? That's just a sober policy disagreement. But gently caress man, if you ever spoke at the John Birch Society or were spotted in front of a Confederate Flag, that's grounds for being a social pariah. There's never any reasonable rationale for voting for someone who committed those grave atrocities.

And even if you didn't vote for Hillary Clinton, I'm positive that many people here who would lecture me about the so-called misogyny of Jordan Peterson or the racism of various conservatives and libertarians certainly did.

You know who I voted for? Jill Stein.

I voted for her despite my profound disagreements with her on economics and many other issues. I voted for her because I think that war is the worst thing that governments do and therefore should be the thing that I should focus on stopping first.

I'm willing to overlook other disagreements to further the goal of ending the empire, slashing the military budget and ending the surveillance State, all issues that Jill Stein was very good on. She was also very good on warning against making Russia into an enemy and igniting a new Cold War.

I feel like I've got my moral compass attuned perfectly while yours is hopelessly mis-calibrated.

Chew on that for a while.

Been a while since I've seen Gish Gallop in the wild.

# ? May 24, 2018 14:03

Danger: Jan 4, 2004; all desire - the thirst for oil, war, religious salvation - needs to be understood according to what he calls 'the demonogrammatical decoding of the Earth's body'

As someone who seems to have zero idea what post-modernism nor Marxism broadly entails, let alone that they are mutually exclusive on their basic premise, I�m glad he�s out there fighting the good fight against Marxist postmodernism something or others.

# ? May 24, 2018 14:07

Caros: May 14, 2008

GunnerJ posted:

Dunno what the thread consensus is on ContraPoints, but her video on Peterson was pretty great imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LqZdkkBDas

I prefer Chapo, but Contra is decent, with a nice helping of the fact that it probably irks him to no end to have her rag on him.

Also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSp18hKV7DQ

# ? May 24, 2018 14:14

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

RealTalk posted:

In principle I agree with this. You clearly don't have a right to trespass on private property and speak in a way that the owners don't approve. They have the perfect right to disassociate with you at any time by asking you to leave.

If the school is completely privately funded, you'd be completely correct.

However, if the school receives government grants which the overwhelming percent of colleges do, then the situation changes considerably. Every person in the country is forced to pay taxes. So colleges that receive government grants are akin to public property.

What happens at colleges is that a conservative student group reserves an auditorium and invites a conservative speaking. Leftist students here about this and they protest and try to force the college administrators to intervene and stop the event from taking place.

Usually the form this takes is through the express or implicit threat that they will be violently disruptive. Then the school cancels the event because they cannot afford sufficient security to ensure the event can even take place logistically.

The leftist protesters don't have this right. In the first place, the dis-inviting of libertarian or conservative speakers is often a response to the threat of violence by protesters or the anticipation of violent protesters if the event proceeds as planned.

So in other words, the freedom of speech is sacred, but not if it's anywhere that recieves public funding?

You know, that sounds like you're pretty anti-freedom of speech in practise to me.

# ? May 24, 2018 14:36

Ravenfood: Nov 4, 2011

Cerebral Bore posted:

So in other words, the freedom of speech is sacred, but not if it's anywhere that recieves public funding?

You know, that sounds like you're pretty anti-freedom of speech in practise to me.

poo poo, I benefit from federal subsidies. Guess I have to let you come into my home and yell abusive poo poo at me for hours now. It's my duty as a taxpayer, you see.

# ? May 24, 2018 14:40

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Freedom of speech has always been circumspect in any case- while technically it exists, the realities of a property-respecting focused system mean that it is quite limited by those who control the means of propogating speech.

So, an ideology that worships property rights as the only thing that matters(Libertarianism), is definitively against free speech for most people.

# ? May 24, 2018 14:45

Cerebral Bore: Apr 21, 2010; Fun Shoe

So you wanna go protest to any government building ever? Welp, no can do, your rights don't apply there you see.

Why is it always the people who claim to be the most pro-free speech that end up arguing for literal authoritarianism?

# ? May 24, 2018 14:47

the bsd boys: Aug 8, 2011; Can't post for 376 days!

lol RealTalk you're not even on the right side of your own drat argument. The group whose rights to free speech you're wringing your hands over not only disagree with their political opponents having the same rights, but wave torches and guns and murder them with cars to prevent them from speaking.

also it's insanely gross how these worries over your headcanon version of free speech seems to mostly amount to a defense of hate speech

# ? May 24, 2018 14:49

Zanzibar Ham: Mar 17, 2009; You giving me the cold shoulder? How cruel.; Grimey Drawer

Libertarianism is all about personal freedom ie freedom for me, not for thee.

# ? May 24, 2018 14:49

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

Zanzibar Ham posted:

Libertarianism is all about personal freedom ie freedom for me, not for thee.

It is an essentially incoherent ideology, at least in so far as its normative claims.

# ? May 24, 2018 14:50

Red and Black: Sep 5, 2011

Is this the place to talk poo poo about Elon Musk's meltdown yesterday?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999369623484039168

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999374720368689153

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999591624521940993

He's mad that some news outlets have been covering Tesla critically, lol

# ? May 24, 2018 14:51

Keeshhound: Jan 14, 2010; Mad Duck Swagger

Crumpet Strumpet posted:

lol RealTalk you're not even on the right side of your own drat argument. The group whose rights to free speech you're wringing your hands over not only disagree with their political opponents having the same rights, but wave torches and guns and murder them with cars to prevent them from speaking.

also it's insanely gross how these worries over your headcanon version of free speech seems to mostly amount to a defense of hate speech

I'm not sure I get what you're saying here, do you mean that you think that because a group is explicitly calling for the restriction of free speech they should have their own speech restricted? Because that doesn't really work in within the concept of universal rights.

Chomskyan posted:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999374720368689153

quote:

Create a media credibility rating site (that also flags propaganda botnets)

[] Yes, this would be good

[] No, media are awesome

"This certainly doesn't make me look like a petulant child." - a grown rear end man

# ? May 24, 2018 15:15

Calico Heart: Mar 22, 2012; "wich the worst part was what troll face did to sonic's corpse after words wich was rape it. at that point i looked away"

Three pages and not one incoherent rightwing cartoon except Realtalk

EDIT: Whoops, this wasn't the politoon thread, I rescind my lame burn

Calico Heart fucked around with this message at 15:35 on May 24, 2018

# ? May 24, 2018 15:28

CommieGIR: Aug 22, 2006; The blue glow is a feature, not a bug; Pillbug

Did this dunbass actually try to argue Milo was being censored?

Because gently caress you.

# ? May 24, 2018 15:34

Panzeh: Nov 27, 2006; "..The high ground"

CommieGIR posted:

Did this dunbass actually try to argue Milo was being censored?

Because gently caress you.

IMO capitalism brings about a level of censorship that affects all that is subject to it(which makes calls for free speech on campus seem myopic to me), so in a sense they are censored in some ways, but censorship is a part of the capitalist regime, see: youtube, etc.

To say that the left represents the most censorious political force atm is bizarre to me in the age of corporate media.

# ? May 24, 2018 15:40

mojo1701a: Oct 9, 2008; Oh, yeah. Loud and clear. Emphasis on LOUD!
~ David Lee Roth

Wait, someone is still citing Bill C-51 as an abridgment of free speech? Wow.

# ? May 24, 2018 15:42

Feinne: Oct 9, 2007; When you fall, get right back up again.

Chomskyan posted:

Is this the place to talk poo poo about Elon Musk's meltdown yesterday?

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999369623484039168

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999374720368689153

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/999591624521940993

He's mad that some news outlets have been covering Tesla critically, lol

Waaah the media won't stop talking about how much money we're losing and how Model 3 production is still sunk deep into the Molasses Swamp FAKE NEWS FAKE NEWS.

# ? May 24, 2018 15:44

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 15, 2024 17:34

ToxicSlurpee: Nov 5, 2003; -=SEND HELP=-; Pillbug

WampaLord posted:

She doesn't have that right, at least, not in the way you think she does. If she wants to walk onto the campus quad and speak aloud, she's more than entitled to, but she does not have a right to a venue with a microphone and an audience.

Students protesting until the campus decides to cancel her venue is not a limitation of free speech, it is an exercise of free speech.

Having an invitation to speak somewhere rescinded is not violating anyone's right to free speech you loving drooling idiot.

What the right wants is the ability to force their talking points into any given venue. A venue is allowed to book or not book the speakers they want. More importantly people are more than free to refuse to attend a speech, to protest it, or to just not loving listen. People like Ann Coulter are worthy of nothing more than scorn and being ignored because they're terrible. In her case she doesn't believe everything she says by her own admission and sometimes just says the most insane things she can to "stir the pot." Even so she's still a hideous person, a horrible racist, and just overall should be ignored.

She can keep saying her terrible nonsense all she wants. The rest of us are free to go "lol nah, you're a racist" and refuse to listen.

The right wing version of free speech isn't free speech at all. It's forcing people to listen to right wing bullshit whether they want to or not. One of the reasons college campuses are so drat hostile to right wing thought is because right wing thought as it stands right now falls apart under the tiniest bit of logic, facts, and scrutiny.

Yes, you are free to be a racist poo poo head and spout your opinions at anybody who will listen. Everybody else has the right to consider you terrible for being a racist poo poo head while ignoring whatever you say. You have the right to make your views known; you do not have a right to make your views be accepted and right now right wing thought is becoming increasingly unacceptable. It's openly pushing actual, literal loving Nazism.

# ? May 24, 2018 15:50

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Libertarians: You fire fighter lovers sure are good at debate!

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