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Everything We Think about the Political Correctness Debate is Wrong

posted by mrpg on Sunday March 25 2018, @08:04PM   Printer-friendly
from the true-or-false dept.

aristarchus writes:

From the Vox:

Many American pundits seem to firmly believe that the country stands at a precipice in which young, left-wing college students and recent graduates are the leading edge of a rising tide of illiberalism that comes in the form of “political correctness” and poses a clear and present danger to free speech and rational discourse.

[...] The alarm about student protesters, in other words, though not always mistaken about particular cases, is generally grounded in a completely mistaken view of the big-picture state of American society and public opinion, both on and off campus.

[...] Since the 1970s, the General Social Survey has posed a question about whether five hypothetical speakers should be allowed to give a speech in your community — a communist, a homosexual, an opponent of all religion, a racist, and a person who favors replacing the elected government with a military coup.

Justin Murphy of the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom aggregated trend data about all five kinds of speakers and found that public support for free expression has been generally rising

Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @09:41PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 25 2018, @09:41PM (#658083)

    I find that it is usually a good idea to check out the original aristarchus submission. Seems the eds have totally replaced not only his snark, but the relevant quotes from the fine article. For example:

    Now what’s true, obviously, is that public support for disallowing racist speech is not rising. Instead, it’s stayed roughly flat over the past 40 years or maybe fallen very slightly. But it’s simply not the case that anti-racist activism is just a particularly salient example of an overall trend toward less tolerance of free expression.

            On the contrary, society has become dramatically more tolerant. If you want to find a disturbing trend here, you should probably look at the increased support for the coup advocate (labeled “militarist”), which is arguably a form of tolerance gone too far.

    So, not the case.
     

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @03:45AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 26 2018, @03:45AM (#658214)

    I find that it is usually a good idea to check out the original aristarchus submission.

    Not something to be done lightly or by those with a weak stomach. You'll usually find a steaming pile that probably should have been scraped off the editor's shoe and discarded.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @10:23AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28 2018, @10:23AM (#659424)

      I find that it is usually a good idea to check out the original aristarchus submission.

      Not something to be done lightly or by those with a weak stomach.

      Ah, but for the adventurous! Those who can step out of their own ideological bubble. For the few, the proud, the philosophers! "Open your mind, Neo!"

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Monday March 26 2018, @07:18AM

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 26 2018, @07:18AM (#658270) Journal

    Seems the eds have totally replaced not only his snark...

    Submissions should be balanced and unbiased. Snark, sarcasm and personal views should be in the comments following the story. The story is not the mouthpiece of the submitter, but a topic for us all to discuss. The comments is where we all have our say.

    The Editor's job is to edit. Despite a long tradition suggesting the opposite is the norm, we expect the story to be read. The original submission was much too long to be printed verbatim.