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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/08/opinion/sunday/a-confession-of-liberal-intolerance.html?_r=0
WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren't conservatives. Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We're fine with people who don't look like us, as long as they think like us.
O.K., that's a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical. "Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black," he told me. "But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close."
I've been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.
"Much of the 'conservative' worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false," said Carmi. "The truth has a liberal slant," wrote Michelle. "Why stop there?" asked Steven. "How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?"
To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal arrogance — the implication that conservatives don't have anything significant to add to the discussion. My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.
The stakes involve not just fairness to conservatives or evangelical Christians, not just whether progressives will be true to their own values, not just the benefits that come from diversity (and diversity of thought is arguably among the most important kinds), but also the quality of education itself. When perspectives are unrepresented in discussions, when some kinds of thinkers aren't at the table, classrooms become echo chambers rather than sounding boards — and we all lose.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Monday August 29 2016, @02:13AM
Much of the 'conservative' worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false
That's actually not far off, as long as we are rigorous in defining the domains we're describing. If conservative here means US politics of the evangelical Christian Right then it's a totally valid observation. They are confused about a great many things. The metaphysical claims made by their religion are false. The neodarwinian synthesis is a powerful scientific tool that accurately accounts for the origin of species and the mechanism of speciation. Geology correctly places the age of the Earth in the billions; the Bible incorrectly suggests an Earth that is merely thousands of years old. The Flood story is a myth that never happened and is so laughably implausible that a grown adult should feel embarrassed admitting they believe otherwise. Climate change is happening, it's primarily caused by human activity, and economic regulations can and should be used to stop and reverse it. Since our society is secular and explicitly non-theistic by our very Constitution, any argument that relies on dualism or the existence of immaterial souls as a premise is automatically invalid. This collapses almost every argument against early-term abortions.
That's not even an exhaustive list, but you get the picture. So yes, conservatives believe many things that are false.
Now I'll do the liberals. There's a lot I could talk about but the worst and really the only thing worth focusing on is the sad situations that many liberals (I'm not one of them) have been seduced by moral and cultural relativism. This leaves them with no ethical arguments to make against how The Taliban treat women and girls. It's just their culture, who are we to judge? This is moral cowardice done out of misplaced fear of appearing racist or insensitive. To hell with that. Some cultures are worse than others. It really is worse to deny girls an education. It really is worse to mutilate the genitals of children (boy or girl) than to not mutilate them. It really is worse to kill apostates than to respect their right to freedom of conscience. In short, liberals suffer from an overabundance of tolerance for the intolerant.
(Score: 2) by Jiro on Monday August 29 2016, @02:56AM
That's a policy question and certainly isn't "known empirically to be false".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @06:34AM
> This leaves them with no ethical arguments to make against how The Taliban treat women and girls. It's just their culture, who are we to judge?
Oh bullshit. Show us even one mildly prominent "liberal" who has excused the Taliban for their mistreatment of females.
I think the closest you might find is a "let them wear whatever clothes they want" because "liberals" have figured out that preaching without standing is inherently selfish. It doesn't convince anyone to change their ways, it just serves to give the preacher that warm feeling of smug self-satisfaction. Not that there aren't plenty of "liberals" who haven't figured that out yet (Bill Maher and the so-called new atheists being chief among them).
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 29 2016, @12:26PM
That warm feeling of smug satisfaction is what defines today's liberals.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @04:45PM
> That warm feeling of smug satisfaction is what defines today's liberals.
Your posts constantly drip with smug satisfaction. Case in point, that very post
Who knew you were a liberal?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 29 2016, @11:03PM
You're mistaking trollish glee for liberal haughtiness. The difference is not subtle.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 29 2016, @02:13PM
Every single liberal who opens his pie hole to espouse the notion that extremists don't represent Islam. All of them. In regards to Islam, pretty much all American liberals are idiots. Well - for the sake of inclusiveness, pretty much all European liberals are idiots as well.
If you allow rattle snakes to nest in the crawl space beneath your house, you can't complain when you get bitten by a rattle snake.
If you allow Muslims to move into your country, you can't complain when they start beheading your relatives who refuse to worship Allah.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @03:11PM
Because a couple thousand certainly do represent 1.6 billion people perfectly. Thats definitely not a false generalization fallacy, nope nope, not even close!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 29 2016, @03:42PM
Where in HELL do you get the idea that there are only thousands of Islamic extremists? One out of every four human beings are Muslim. By the most simplistic estimates, then one in four extremists are Muslim. We might go a step beyond simplistic statements here, and try to come up with a better estimate. Let us just grab one of the idiotic liberal/progressive claims that "only 1% of Muslims are extremists!" I rather like that claim. As of 2010, there were 1.6 BILLION Muslims in the world. So, 1% of that would be 16 MILLION extremists. That is one fucking HUGE army!
And, I believe that crazy, wild estimate. Islam is waging war in Asia, Africa, Europe, Micronesia, Asia Minor, the South Pacific - Islam is waging a global war against all unbelievers.
Now, aren't you happy to know that you've pulled a ridiculous number out of your ass? ISIS alone has more than a few thousand actively militant members.
1 600 000 000 x .01 =
16 000 000
I know there's a lot zeros there, but they are separated by spaces so you can count them easily.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @04:53PM
> Where in HELL do you get the idea that there are only thousands of Islamic extremists?
> One out of every four human beings are Muslim.
> By the most simplistic estimates, then one in four extremists are Muslim.
Wow, you really are innumerate aren't you?
I mean, bigots are defined by sucking at math, but holy fucking shit do you suck at math.
I'll spell it out: Even if it is true that 25% of extremists muslim, that says nothing about how many muslism are extremists.
> So, 1% of that would be 16 MILLION extremists. That is one fucking HUGE army!
You are right. That would be a huge, world-conquering army. The entire world would be FUCKED.
And yet there is no such army. Nothing even remotely close to that.
Funny how your "facts" disprove your own thesis.
That's what happens when you put ideology ahead of logic.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 29 2016, @05:31PM
You're an idiot. I threw numbers at you to show how stupid your statement of a few thousand extremists is. I threw more numbers at you to show how stupid the liberal claim is that "only 1%" are extremists.
The FACT of the matter is, that few thousands statement is moronic, and so is that "only 1%" statement.
The truth? I don't know how many "extremists" there are. Maybe it's less than a million - depending on how you define "extremist". But, one thing is certain - there are literally millions of people who support, directly, the expansion of Islam. And, there are more millions who support it indirectly. And, there are multiple governments that support jihad, both directly and indirectly.
As you might imagine, it's damned near impossible to find any firm number of ISIS fighters, but estimates were between 20,000 and 31,000 active fighters. Conflicting reports say that the numbers have been decreasing this year, and that the numbers have been INCREASING. Take your pick. We start at a base of 2 or 3 infantry divisions, then try to figure out who is lying, and who has the most insight. So - between 1 and 4 infantry divisions?
Mind you, that is active infantry troops, located in one area.
Then, we have Afghanistan/Pakistan, where at least that many active infantry are making life miserable for everyone in reach.
Then we have all the support lines for those active infantry.
Plus all the "extremists" who aren't active duty in an organized structure. Guerilla warfare, all around the world.
There are easily a million people actually fighting for Islam, and easily another million actively supporting those fighters. You won't find any credible estimates that are any smaller than that.
Of course, you can make up your own numbers, like you did above, and try to convince yourself that there are only a couple thousand people causing all the problems around the world.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday August 30 2016, @05:28AM
Regardless of how many extremists exist -- the real question is: since they're vastly outnumbered by the nice normal peaceful Muslims, why don't those nice normal peaceful Muslims put the brakes on their own extremists?
Could it be because under the sum of Quran, Sunna, and Hadith, and in emulating Mohammed as the perfect man, "extremism" is actually correct Islam??
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 30 2016, @08:21AM
You are on to something there. You're not very far from the truth with that last question.
The "moderate" Muslims are afraid to speak out. For starters, their holy book explicitly calls for jihad. Now, reasonable people realize that there are several different kinds of jihad - or they have rationalized jihad into several different kinds. A kid struggling with math in school can be said to be waging a form of jihad, for instance.
Second, the so-called extremists have those verses and commandments in the Quran to justify their violent jihad. So, go back to "afraid to speak out" - few if any can be sure that the extremists aren't right. What surer way of going to hell, than to struggle against another man who is struggling to perform Allah's will?
Third - just as with Christianity, no matter what a verse means, or how clear it might be, there are those who will twist that verse into a pretzel so that it says whatever he wants it to say.
And, the community accepts this status quo. They understand that there are many "ways" to paradise, and that some ways are harder, more violent, or whatever. The "way" of the martyr seems wonderful to them. Exert yourself and suffer for a short period, and go straight to heaven? Why not? The alternative is a lifetime of work and suffering. Let's take the easy way - or at least, if I'm to cowardly to take that easy way, I certainly shouldn't stand in the way of another man who is brave.
That is the "moderate" Muslim for you. He is a conformist, and he will conform to community expectations. In a community where Muslims are a tiny percentage, he obeys the laws of the unclean heathen. Get a few more Muslims, and he begins to obey the laws of Allah. A few more Muslims in the community, and he conforms with demands for Sharia, and to punish unbelievers, etc ad nauseum.
Conformism can be deadly.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday August 30 2016, @03:33PM
I just read something the other day about how through the tolerance exercised by the majority, a tiny minority can exercise a tyranny of change on the majority. That's pretty much what we're doing across the board right now, because most of us are tolerant, reasonable people. Fundamentalists change moderate Muslims (look at formerly-secular Turkey); Muslims change Westerners; eventually we're all fundamentalist Muslims, like it or not.
Intolerance is a GOOD thing, if you want to preserve Western freedoms.
As to jihad, Islam defines four kinds: war, economic, spoken word, and written word; migration is one of the accepted ways of spreading Islam. Why go to the bother and expense of a shooting war if pouring money into the right hands will get your creed shouted to the rooftops and your missionaries invited everywhere?
Do you know Bill Warner's videos? (Political Islam) Very informative and objective analysis.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @07:34PM
And because of the 1%* you are willing to war with the 99%? Or persecute them? If you're not willing to go to war or eliminate the Muslims, then what are you trying to achieve**? Tell people to go about hating them? How is that going to help? You yourself should know how well Islam handles haters. If you war with them it's literally a gift of God to the extremists. They'll be able to get more of the "more moderate" to follow them.
Can't we use your same arguments and reasonings about Muslims against human males too? Speaking as a male, more than 70% of terrorists are males. The percentage of terrorists being males is higher than the percentage of terrorists being Muslims. Most of the violent stuff is done by males. Most of the mass murderers are males. More of the crazy nutters are males. Most of the evil dictators are males. A lot of the pioneering and great stuff is done by males too, but from the species perspective, we don't need that many males to keep the species going. So using your arguments perhaps we should start concentrating on eliminating the bad ones from the gene pool. You don't have to kill them, just sterilize/castrate every violent offender, every single murderer, rapist and robber or genocidal sociopath (no need to sterilize me - I don't ever intend to breed). Then the rest of the better domesticated human males can go spend their time making love and not war, got to keep the species alive you know ;). Go look up on how a species is domesticated (not the same as tamed). There's evidence that humans are one of those species that can be domesticated, however we aren't that well domesticated due to haphazard breeding.
* p.s. I know way more than 1% are extremists. I live in one of those Muslim countries where more than 70% of them stupidly want Sharia law.
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/#sharia-as-the-official-law-of-the-land [pewforum.org]
And more than 60% of those that want Sharia Law are in favor of killing apostates: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/#penalty-for-converting-to-another-faith [pewforum.org]
** p.p.s. Assuming you're in the USA if you want to kick the Muslims out of your country perhaps you should first ask why your country has been repeatedly screwing up the Muslim world. Many of those countries weren't under the control of Islamists till your country messed them up. Given your country shares a lot of responsibility for the mess, it's your country who should actually take in a lot of Muslims refugees.
While you're at it go ask why your country is such great friends with the evil Saudi Arabia. They have a habit of looking for bad ways of interpreting Islam and implementing it. I'm not saying overthrow them but wow you and your friends are actually selling them arms and they go on to sell/give them to extremists (don't tell me your government doesn't know what happens to them, it's just like your gov somehow "not knowing" why the ISIS has so many Toyota trucks).
(Score: 2) by julian on Monday August 29 2016, @04:34PM
Show us even one mildly prominent "liberal" who has excused the Taliban for their mistreatment of females.
The woman in this conversation is an advisor to President Obama on bioethics. So that should be prominent enough. The "me" is Sam Harris. Taken from this article. [huffingtonpost.com]
She: What makes you think that science will ever be able to say that forcing women to wear burqas is wrong?
Me: Because I think that right and wrong are a matter of increasing or decreasing well-being--and it is obvious that forcing half the population to live in cloth bags, and beating or killing them if they refuse, is not a good strategy for maximizing human well-being.
She: But that's only your opinion.
Me: Okay... Let's make it even simpler. What if we found a culture that ritually blinded every third child by literally plucking out his or her eyes at birth, would you then agree that we had found a culture that was needlessly diminishing human well-being?
She: It would depend on why they were doing it.
Me (slowly returning my eyebrows from the back of my head): Let's say they were doing it on the basis of religious superstition. In their scripture, God says, "Every third must walk in darkness."
She: Then you could never say that they were wrong.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @10:01AM
Considering your own obvious, self-righteous intolerance, you're doing a fantastic job of proving the author's point. And it sounds like you'd say that you're proud of it, no less, proving the point further.
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Monday August 29 2016, @01:29PM
This one confuses me beyond words. Where are these liberals you're describing? Most people I know are to the left and I've literally never met anyone with views even in the same universe as that. Are people are so brainwashed with the myth of the "liberal politically correct SJW" that they actually think these people actually exist?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @01:47PM
The metaphysical claims made by their religion are false.
Hey everybody, julian has singlehandedly ended thousands of years of arguing over religion. Guess we can all go home now.
(Score: 2) by julian on Monday August 29 2016, @05:19PM
No need to thank me, I didn't do the work after all. I'm just passing along the good news. If you must thank someone you could try Epicurus, Spinoza, Thomas Jefferson, Darwin, Hitchens, and many others I'm forgetting at the moment
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 29 2016, @02:12PM
It doesn't, though. "Conservative" today means everybody not on the wacko fringe of Communists who support al-Qaeda, those lunatics who control the government, the education system, the mainstream media, and most of the alternative online media so you're not allowed to hear about it. Porn and free love is now "conservative". Protecting gays from Islam is now a "conservative" idea. Science and reason are "conservative" -- asking for evidence is something that only right-wing racist nazis do! Atheism is "conservative" and must be reformed to be subservient to Islam. Rebelling against "The System, Man!" is hella "conservative."
The right-wing evangelical fringe was spot on in blaming the people responsible for this change: The Frankfurt School, The Muslim Brotherhood, George Soros, and Communist college professors. They all allied together and are eating American society from inside. You don't think it's possible that such a conspiracy could survive contact with adults and now your code isn't good enough for Github unless you submit to whatever new party line the Communist Party made up last month, the Democratic Party is running on the idea of outlawing opposition media, and the United Nations is seriously considering international law to make it illegal to say that Anita Sarkeesian has clearly never played some of the games she pretends to criticize. When right-wingers say that something is a Communist plot, listen! You probably don't know how to identify one.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday August 29 2016, @03:40PM
The most accurate predictive model that I've seen (which isn't hard, the warming alarmists have come up with some absurd models which have repeatedly failed) put just under half of the blame on human hands. I don't know if about half counts as "primarily". (Note, the model in question, http://www.coyoteblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Slide52.jpg was explicitly not made to be a predictive model, it's just that he decided to see what happens if you extrapolate forwards from when he first posed it, and it fit remarkably well. So it's predictive by happenstance, not by design/intent.)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday August 30 2016, @07:39PM
It's not that cut and dried. For argument's sake:
The metaphysical claims are non-falsifiable. If the earth was 1000's of years old, it would defy geology, evolution, etc. But it wouldn't have been by a natural process, so that seems like a wash.
And pretty much any argument you could make against infanticide. Any of those can be applied to early-term abortions. I mean, you have to jigger it a little bit, but I'll challenge you to make one that doesn't just hinge on a few continuous variables that could be tweaked to make that case. And double-challenge for late-term abortions
For liberals, I would say that there more immediately worse things than cultural relativism. Factually incorrect things. The anti-GMO panic will someday lead to famine. The anti-vaccination people are going to cause massive resurgences of near-extinct diseases.
(Score: 2) by julian on Tuesday August 30 2016, @08:15PM
The only antivax person I know is a conservative. That's not large enough a sample to make any conclusions. I don't know how this issue breaks down along political lines. I suppose it could be a liberal flaw and I'll acknowledge it as one if that's the case.
As for GMO, my objections to it are not based on food safety concerns. They appear to be just as safe as "traditional" fruits and vegetables and the technology provides a lot of benefits. I object to the business practices and the patent system around the industry. It's part of my larger stance against protections for the fraud of "intellectual property" [gnu.org] in general.