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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: 5, Disagree) by VLM on Wednesday September 27 2017, @12:37PM (9 children)
That's a huge mistake in that regardless of what something IS, NAMING and calling out something as hate speech is a mere propaganda tactic to censor speech regardless of what it IS.
In practice a democrat calling republican ideas "hate speech" doesn't mean its hate speech, in fact it has nothing to do with what the speech is, it merely means they have enough government and media control to have the government forcibly censor the speaker. Historically that always backfires and results in guillotines, showers and gas chambers, etc.
There's also the big lie effect. If I'm claiming the world will end for biblical numerical code reasons tomorrow, no one will believe me, thats dumb. It doesn't need censorship. Or even crazier, VIM is superior to EMACS or systemd is great, those ideas don't NEED state sponsored violence to censor them. On the other hand take a political movement from the 60s (although going back much further) and it no longer usefully models or predicts reality yet it controls the government and media. You have to violently censor opposition to shut opposition down, because, after all, the opposition is currently correct. Nothing says an idea is true, its fundamentally verified and proven and useful, like the only remaining weapon against it being violence, or even worse, state sponsored violence. Nothing admits the death of left wing political opinion like its demand that the only defense it has against modern right wing thought is state violence. It no longer has a moral or ethical justification, its no longer useful predicatively, the general public has lost its faith other than the occasional social striver types... The left demanding state supported violence as its only remaining argument means they're done, obsolete, stick a fork in them, kaput. All the left wing has anymore as an argument is a boot stomping on a human face forever. No remaining moral or ethical arguments, mere violence. Which of course will eventually be responded back to in kind times a hundred, which of course leads to eye for eye stuff which never turns out well. Calls for violence are intellectually cowardice of a dying belief system. The right doesn't need violence to be wildly popular, that is what terrifies the left into demanding violence against them.
There's also the truly weird meta observation that its somehow seen as good to have the state use violence against non-violent speech, and the state should use violence against stupid opinions. The first problem is it eliminates non-violent civil disobedience as an option. Bye Bye Ghandi, hello assassins and death squads. The wheel always turns and now that the precedent has been set to violently punish non-violent right wing people, after the wheel rotates some more, we have precedence to give antifa people free helicopter rides, or send them to death camps. An eye for an eye, like that ever works. What would someone gain by cranking up the volume control on political violence for no really good reason? The second issue is even weirder big brother like. If its good for the government to use violence against dumb opinions, then we have a world where football sportscaster commentators and economists will be dragged out on live TV and beheaded by our own police when their predictions are wrong. That cooking recipe on the TV show has the wrong ratio of liquid fats for an ideal chocolate chip cookie? The police will blow her head off on national TV. Again it just seems idiotic to increase the level of political / police violence for no apparent good reason.
There's also the dog whistle effect that leftism, being intellectually bankrupt, is merely racist and sexist anti-white-male ranting in the modern era. Calling for violence against the right is "really" just genocidal calling for violence against a race and gender. That will be responded to in kind; note who has historically brutally ruled the earth. It wasn't Somalians and feminist lesbians setting up gas chambers in Germany. Go ahead, if you're brave, go tickle the dragon and see what the response is. Its not gonna be fun, but its gonna be ... effective ... In that way, calling for racist oriented violence against historically the worlds strongest and most ruthless race of warriors is somewhat suicidal.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 27 2017, @02:20PM (3 children)
Score 4:disagree - that's impressive, in and of itself.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:04PM (2 children)
Your post really should be modded Disagree.
An infinite amount of Disagree mods can be applied because they don't change the score. The comment gets labeled with the mod reason with the highest number of occurrences. In the case of a tie, the last mod reason of the tied reasons get applied. So a comment that gets modded Disagree, Insightful, Insightful, Disagree, and Funny in that order should be labeled Disagree. If it then gets modded with Funny again, it will be labeled Funny.
4 Disagree beats 2 Insightful on VLM's comment.
The only exceptions appear to be Underrated and Overrated. No comments can get labeled that. You can't even mod a comment as Underrated or Overrated unless some other mod has been applied first (including Disagree, oddly enough).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:20PM (1 child)
Doh! Bug.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday September 27 2017, @09:09PM
Which part? I think I have mentioned the Disagree + Underrated/Overrated combo before but I never filed a bug on it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Disagree) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday September 27 2017, @05:51PM (3 children)
So basically your entire post boils down to "Don't fuck with the worst of us, it'll go badly for you. Don't use our methods against us. We're bigger assholes than you." Lovely. I really like how people like you just utterly spill your guts unintentionally when you say things like this. Just come out and say you want to be a big man in your new right-wing utopia already. We get it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @10:43PM
It really is eye opening. I tend to give people too much benefit of the doubt, it really REALLY helps me to see the unfiltered bullshit people believe in. "Why yes, there are evil fuckers who would throw you into a concentration camp if they could." I wonder how much is from their persecution complex, maybe in the 1830's VLM would be regarded as a sophisticated intellectual with quite the liberal sensibility.
I couldn't even read his rant, but apparently they are learning from us liberals and trying to coopt "dog whistle" like we did with snowflake. Little late to the game, typical beta.
(Score: 1, Troll) by VLM on Thursday September 28 2017, @01:34AM (1 child)
So what exactly is your point, holocaust denial, or some kind of moral argument against "beware of dog" signs?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday September 28 2017, @04:10AM
My point, VLM, is that you have repeatedly on this site, and more blatantly as time goes on, shown yourself to be an ally and fellow-traveler of fascists. You essentially just said "hey lefties, don't try to out-Nazi us, we do it better 'cause we're the originals."
And you're right about that, in a way: very few liberals I've ever met are anything like the staring, wild-eyed, twitching genocidal fanatics all too many right-wingers I've seen turn out to be. You've just added yourself to that list. Go (back?) to whatever Hell you want, just leave us decent humans alone.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 27 2017, @06:46PM
Oh Noes! Not the "White Genocide"? Actually, VLM, it is more just about you, not whites in general. So not really genocide in any coherent sense.