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What was it that one learned through a great books curriculum? Certainly not "conservatism" in any contemporary American sense of the term. We were not taught to become American patriots, or religious pietists, or to worship what Rudyard Kipling called "the Gods of the Market Place." We were not instructed in the evils of Marxism, or the glories of capitalism, or even the superiority of Western civilization.
As I think about it, I'm not sure we were taught anything at all. What we did was read books that raised serious questions about the human condition, and which invited us to attempt to ask serious questions of our own. Education, in this sense, wasn't a "teaching" with any fixed lesson. It was an exercise in interrogation.
To listen and understand; to question and disagree; to treat no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind — this is what I was encouraged to do by my teachers at the University of Chicago.
It's what used to be called a liberal education.
The University of Chicago showed us something else: that every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea.
Bret Stephens's speech warrants a full read. It makes valuable points that we all need to hear, even on SN.
(Score: 4, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @02:17PM (6 children)
Corollary: the left do not tolerate themselves. :)
Therefore, if in practice they do, they are just pathological liars. So sad.
"Fighting intolerance" by inciting more intolerance is perfectly like "dousing a fire" with a flamethrower. An arsonist doing the latter does not a firefighter become, and a bigot doing the former remains a bigot just the same.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @04:11PM
While explosives are not a flame-thrower, there may be situations where a flamethrower is the proper firefighting gear. Explosives are used to put out flaming oil wells in some situations(remember the Gulf Wars? Around then there were a number of clips showing this.)
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @06:43PM (4 children)
I, for one, regret that the right has to suffer so! It must be terrible to not be intelligent enough to comprehend the con job that the RightStream Medial is put on you! There are people who think Fox is news, O'Reilly is moral, Newt is smart, or the Donald is wealthy? Just amazing! And there are people who believe Britbarf, who think Gellar is an expert on Islam, and think SJWs exist! Inconceivable!
As for this:
Let me use a car analogy, no, wait, that would be too subtle. Ah, here it is! An arsonist becomes a fire-fighter when he does not start the fire, but starts another fire to put out the fire the actual arsonist started. It is called a "back-burn" and is a time honored technique amoungst fire-fighters. So your entire point is, well, idiotic.
Liberals could teach you that intolerance is wrong, but you would probably just complain about censorship and "political correctness" and all that. So I think it would be better, both for you and society at large, if you were just set on fire. I know that this sounds kind of like a "Final Solution" to the Alt-Right Problem, but evidently we have no choice.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @07:36PM (3 children)
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:15PM (2 children)
Taking a tongue-in-cheek comment as some sort of validity is pretty weak, shows how desperately you're searching for cracks in the ideological armor.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:48PM
I think we found a witch He's made 'o wood! 'Cause 'e weighs the same as a duck. So, logically, conservatives burn! See, that wasn't that hard, was it! Thinking can be fun!
(Score: 1, Disagree) by khallow on Thursday September 28 2017, @01:49AM