Discendo Vox posted:

I'm wondering if there'd be interest in a close reading thread for Professor Kermit.

Captain_Maclaine posted:

To his very core Hitler was a fan of opera

aware of dog posted:

A Let's Read thread of Maps of Meaning would be hellish. That said, I'd probably read it because I hate myself

mojo1701a posted:

No, they're totally cool with war, provided it's fought by and paid for by private interests.

Have we gone so far as to forget the stories of Valhalla DRO?

Mr Interweb posted:

Wait, so neo-Jrod is against protesting right-wingers on universities, but also is fine with the NFL punishing its players for not kneeling? Seems the distinction here* is that the latter is a private organization.

So that being the case, I'm curious what his thoughts are on the Google memo guy being fired. from said private organization and why Google shouldn't have done that.

*note: rationale subject to change at a moment's notice

VitalSigns posted:

How do you reconcile the apparent double standard here. Is there a significant difference between protesters who don't value free speech and free discussion trying to curb where someone can speak and NFL team owners who don't value free speech and free discussion trying to curb where someone can speak, because you only describe one as a 'worrying trend' while the other is apparently just responsible exercising their rights? Is this concern for free speech and free discussion only for people who agree with you?

RealTalk posted:

There's no double-standard. I'm distinguishing between what people have the right to do, and what they ought to do.

Private property owners have the right to restrict what type of speech is permitted on their property. I couldn't go into your living room and start ranting about socialism, right? You'd curb my speech by making me leave.

RealTalk posted:

My sympathies lie with the players who kneel for the anthem. But I recognize that owner's right to restrict that behavior, especially if it torpedoes their ratings and their profitability.

RealTalk posted:

There's no double-standard. I'm distinguishing between what people have the right to do, and what they ought to do.

Private property owners have the right to restrict what type of speech is permitted on their property. I couldn't go into your living room and start ranting about socialism, right? You'd curb my speech by making me leave.

Similarly, NFL owners have the right to require certain behavior or restrict certain speech as a consequence of their property-ownership.

You and I could protest this decision, or boycott NFL games as a response.

There is a distinction between this legal right based on property, and the cultural value of free speech.

When I criticize people who try to get private organizations to cancel controversial speakers from speaking at private or public venues, I am not denying their free speech right. I'm criticizing their value-judgments in supporting the curbing of certain viewpoints.

My sympathies lie with the players who kneel for the anthem. But I recognize that owner's right to restrict that behavior, especially if it torpedoes their ratings and their profitability.

Mr Interweb posted:

Wait, so neo-Jrod is against protesting right-wingers on universities, but also is fine with the NFL punishing its players for not kneeling? Seems the distinction here* is that the latter is a private organization.

So that being the case, I'm curious what his thoughts are on the Google memo guy being fired. from said private organization and why Google shouldn't have done that.

*note: rationale subject to change at a moment's notice

RealTalk posted:

My sympathies lie with the players who kneel for the anthem. But I recognize that owner's right to restrict that behavior, especially if it torpedoes their ratings and their profitability.

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.

RealTalk posted:

There are no two standards. I have a difference between human rights and human rights. Owners have the right to restrict their owners. I can not get to where you live, and start socialism. This is true? When he called me, my voice rose. In addition, NFL owners need some services or have the right to limit certain problems due to ownership. You and I can face the NFL or worrying problems. The difference between the rights of rights and freedoms manifestation of our property. I do not like this word when it comes to someone who is trying to justify private laws in a private or public council. I calculate the speed by distributing it to each level. The best players on the tour. However, I know about the Lord's right to ban this work, even if I can not break my agreement with my games.

RealTalk posted:

There's no double-standard. I'm distinguishing between what people have the right to do, and what they ought to do.

Private property owners have the right to restrict what type of speech is permitted on their property. I couldn't go into your living room and start ranting about socialism, right? You'd curb my speech by making me leave.

Similarly, NFL owners have the right to require certain behavior or restrict certain speech as a consequence of their property-ownership.

You and I could protest this decision, or boycott NFL games as a response.

There is a distinction between this legal right based on property, and the cultural value of free speech.

When I criticize people who try to get private organizations to cancel controversial speakers from speaking at private or public venues, I am not denying their free speech right. I'm criticizing their value-judgments in supporting the curbing of certain viewpoints.

My sympathies lie with the players who kneel for the anthem. But I recognize that owner's right to restrict that behavior, especially if it torpedoes their ratings and their profitability.

Juffo-Wup posted:

Libertarians shift their focus between high-minded ideals and narrowly applied legalisms entirely on the basis of rhetorical convenience.

Juffo-Wup posted:

Libertarians shift their focus between high-minded ideals and narrowly applied legalisms entirely on the basis of rhetorical convenience.

Disinterested posted:

It happens in all areas of libertarian rhetoric.

Jrode used to routinely claim that utilitarian philosophy was antithetical to an ethical political ideology, but then would only offer utilitarian arguments. Then, if you showed empirically that state-controlled healthcare (for example) produces better social outcomes for all: 'But utilitarianism is immoral!'.

RealTalk posted:

There's no double-standard. I'm distinguishing between what people have the right to do, and what they ought to do.

Private property owners have the right to restrict what type of speech is permitted on their property. I couldn't go into your living room and start ranting about socialism, right? You'd curb my speech by making me leave.

Similarly, NFL owners have the right to require certain behavior or restrict certain speech as a consequence of their property-ownership.

You and I could protest this decision, or boycott NFL games as a response.

There is a distinction between this legal right based on property, and the cultural value of free speech.

When I criticize people who try to get private organizations to cancel controversial speakers from speaking at private or public venues, I am not denying their free speech right. I'm criticizing their value-judgments in supporting the curbing of certain viewpoints.

My sympathies lie with the players who kneel for the anthem. But I recognize that owner's right to restrict that behavior, especially if it torpedoes their ratings and their profitability.

Caros posted:

CommieGIR posted:

"I sympathize with the players taking a knee, but I'm going to still cite a known racist piece of poo poo." - RealTalk

paragon1 posted:

Wait, but didn't RealTalk say that a venue that receives public/government funds is "more complicated" aka can't actually be allowed to restrict speech they disagree with?

Because if so, I have some news about the vast majority of NFL stadiums.

Caros posted:

No no, those are still owned by the teams. Because we are retarded.

paragon1 posted:

Wait, but didn't RealTalk say that a venue that receives public/government funds is "more complicated" aka can't actually be allowed to restrict speech they disagree with?

Because if so, I have some news about the vast majority of NFL stadiums.

fishmech posted:

Thank god you showed up to act as the strawman Jortypete et al whine about.

Mornacale posted:

Leave it to fishmech to be scared of the possibility that fascists might be correct when they whine about their propaganda and recruitment being suppressed.

WrenP-Complete posted:

I could be in for a close reading of JPeterson. I gave his peer-reviewed publications a cursory look a week ago and his work seems solid. Did you have another impression, Fienne? He's not the first author on a lot of it, which could mean any number of things. And it's extremely not what he's speaking about to the general public, not what he's famous for.

paragon1 posted:

The joke is that the stadiums are the recipients of public funding by virtue of being mostly built with public funding, even if we very stupidly essentially gift them to the billionaire owners later.

Disinterested posted:

I could be persuaded to let's read one of his poo poo books.

WrenP-Complete posted:

I could be in for a close reading of JPeterson. I gave his peer-reviewed publications a cursory look a week ago and his work seems solid. Did you have another impression, Fienne? He's not the first author on a lot of it, which could mean any number of things. And it's extremely not what he's speaking about to the general public, not what he's famous for.

quote:

I abhor the values of socialism and radical egalitarianism. I would consider the teaching of communism, or sympathy toward communism in a public space to be as offensive as speech by a white nationalist.