↪Landru Guide Us You believe they were intimidating minorities. That is just that, your opinion, and I understand you believe like that. I don't think all conservatives in the world intimidate minorities. You seem to think all do. That remains to be proven. — Agustino

The students on the campus, many of them minorities, believe that. So I'm going to listen to them.

In addition to that I have heard enough of hateful conservative rhetoric to know it is all dog whistling intent on attacking minorities and inciting violence and discrimination. So bravo to those students for speaking out against the conservative bullies.

Yeah right, and I recommend the West to take on Iranian homosexuals, because I'm so anti-gay. I'm not anti-gay, I'm pro freedom. There's regions of the world where homosexuals obtain all the liberty they want. There's also regions where they don't. Why don't we all collaborate with each other to make sure homosexuals are in such a region, instead of attempting to make all regions accept homosexuals? — Agustino

Because people should be able to live in their own country without being persecuted for having gender preferences? History shows that when hatred and discrimination is allowed to hound people out of country, that country is probably going to find other people to oppress, even if that means going to war.

Your post would have been well received by Nazis, who said the same thing about Jews.

But now you've changed the subject, another conservative trope.

Yes, because I think the Left is wrong in attempting to universalise the values it shares. Those values aren't all universal, and people should be allowed to be different and choose different ways of organising themselves as well... — Agustino

They are. What does that have to do with being invited to a campus to speak and to intimidate minorities?

↪Landru Guide Us Okay, give proof please, I'm willing to listen and give counter evidence to you. — Agustino

No you won't. After one of your meme is exposed (something I and others have done), you'll go to the next one. There is no factual content to anything that you've said, starting with your labeling the issue as a ban on free speech, a total lie.

If the proposition is: should colleges be selective about who is invited to speak on campus, because it suggests an endorsement, and in particular colleges should not allow speakers who attack or demean minorities, then I fail to see how any rational person would disagree with the proposition.

But I bet you'll gloss it as a "ban".

↪Landru Guide Us That's rather extreme don't you think? It's the equivalent of me saying leftists are all communist. And I'm sorry, but I haven't watched the debate, so I wouldn't know, thus I'll take your word for it. — Agustino

So now you're pretending to be reasonable after 30 posts dripping vitriol about the Left.

Won't work with me.

A strange statement to make when I personally agree with most of the current liberal values ... I don't know which minorities you were referring to. — Agustino

No you don't. That's a trope conservatives often use.

So those speakers were odious? Peter Hitchens is the equivalent of a jihadist? — Agustino

Rightwingers are odious, yes. HItchens was mostly just dumb. Gallaway really wiped him out in his debate with him over Iraq.

But you seem to be saying that people you find odious shouldn't appear on campus, but people others find odious should.

I sense an entitlement issue here.

Yep and the issue is whether particularly odious speaker should be allowed to be invited onto a campus, which give some credence to their views, and which promotes their obvious intended purpose of intimidating miniorities.

That's not a ban of free speech. So the fact that you used that to describe the issue shows how dishonest you are.

If you don't think so, then you should be OK with Muslim students inviting ISIS to the campus to discuss how to behead infidels. So stop pretending you care about free speech. You care about using the campus to intimidate people you don't like -- apparently minorities, et. al.

So were these conservative speakers going to discuss the toppling of England's government, or how to undermine England's national security? Really? How can you compare the two? On what basis? — Agustino

On the basis that your premise is false from the start. Nobody is being banned from speaking. The issue is who is invited to speak. If conservative weirdos want to spout their homophobia on street corners, they have a perfect right. Nobody has a right to speak on a campus at an event unless invited.

See the difference yet? Or are you going to pretend not to because you've used inflammatory and false lingo to describe the issue. I.e., you used a meme

So in the name of freedom of speech, they have a right to ban freedom of speech of individuals who promote different values than they believe in? You for real? — Agustino

So you're for allowing people to appear on campuses and recruit jihadists to kill Christians right? Because you're for free speech, right?

Stop pretending. There is no absolute right to speech and speakers speak by invitation of the universities that invite them. Nobody is banning anybody from speaking. They are protesting who the college invites to speak.

This isn't even a free speech issue. It's who the college invites and why.

Look mate... they can love freedom all they want to. But to insult people for not believing like them, to want to BAN others from speaking out their ideas... is that tolerant to you? — Agustino

BWHAHHAHAHAHHA. Conservatives never insult people who don't agree with them! BWHAHAHHAHHAHAH!

Projection? You're soaking in it.

I'm glad you're working so hard to get rightwing purveyors of hateful rhetoric off the airwaves. Wait, you're not!

Yep, people have a right to call for a ban from people using the university system to promote their hatred and plans for discrimination.

Of course where were conservatives when "communists" (I.e., freedom loving Americans) were banned from speaking on college campuses. Oh, they were leading the charge for the ban!

Total hypocrisy.

As if the above was anything but a blatant counterfactual ... We can go on pointing fingers like this all day long, but it's not gonna solve anything... — Agustino

I love it when conservatives, flummoxed by having their memes exposed, have to start quoting me and my vocabulary.

Of course the history of campuses being used by the right (and the current attempt of corporations to stifle real free speech on campuses) is something you want to distract from by claiming a handful of freedom loving students are the real problem

Ahistoricity? You're soaking in it!

As for not giving examples, I've given quite a few. If you opened that article about hard-line leftist students, you would see that, since Student Unions can and do decide who comes up on a university campus, they have banned or stopped certain speakers - — Agustino

So the ridiculous idea -- the meme being propagated by most of the rightwing noise machine right now -- is that students who protest unfair selection of speakers who attacks minorities, the poor, women as part of their rightwing agenda -- are "dangerous" to free speech by expressing their right to free speech by protesting.

What's wonderful about rightwing memes is that since they have no real factual content, they get more and more convoluted. You're like a tea partier who calls Obama a Muslim, Fascist, Marxist, Wall-Street Insider. The factual incoherency of your claims never occur to you because they aren't factual at all -- just ugly little narratives.

Cato's words spring from the same source as the words of those who claim that ending the oppression of certain groups (non-heteros, women etc) oppresses them. That is to say, it springs from (fear of losing) privilege. Fear of being unable to oppress.

Islam is not a homogeneous "culture". Cultures are not homogeneous either. Practices and customs within cultures are always contested. I have no problem to answer your ahistoric question: No, in principle I do not have a problem with any culture because it chooses a different social arrangement. Although, I find this ahistoric question vacuous and, therefore, any answer to it is vacuous as well. If you want to be concrete, yes, I have a problem with Iran hanging homosexuals as long as Iranian homosexuals do not like it. — Πετροκότσυφας

Good point. Ahistoricity is another motif of conservative memes. The idea is that history started yesterday.

So conservatives argue we should get rid of regulations that protect the environment because the environment isn't threatened - because of the regulations.

It also is a convenient excuse for dog whispering. For instance conservative will call Obama a monkey and pretend that there is no racist history involving that iconography, whining stuff like "but leftists called Bush a chimp." All in all there is a profound dishonesty to the little narratives the right propagates in lieu of real arguments.

I did. It's in the post above — Agustino

No, you didn't. You related bizarre rightwing memes with no factual content, and pretended that you were "in danger" from the left That's the poor put upon conservative meme. It has no content. I asked you for an example, and you can't give it. Instead you ranted that students who protest rightwing agendas are a threat to you.

In contrast, the right has armed militias, a vast network of media outlets, a pernicious ideology that calls on killing people, billionaire supporters and minions like Planned Parenthood shooter.

So your posts are typical rightwing reverso-memes - projecting on normal people the reality of the Right's violence and dangerous activities.

It's what conservative do.

Classical, another instance of labeling :) Also another instance of attempting to get a reaction out of me. Curious that those tactics written of long ago by Saul Alinsky have become so well in-grained into left activists. So let me put things straight. What you wrote above is no argument, but an unsupported generalisation backed up by labeling aimed at marginalisation through ridicule and rhetoric. — Agustino

Oh God, I love the reverso-meme. You've just spent I don't know how many posts making bizarre coutnerfactual claims with loaded language against "leftist", and now you alleged I'm labeling you.

Perfect projection.

You even threw in the Alinsky meme - classic rightwing memery.

And still no factual content after all these posts. It's all conservatives can do.

And no, I won't "argue" with your bizarre counterfactual memes. They have no factual content. Rather I will identify them as ugly little narrative - the rightwing meme. It is how the rightwing mind functions.

Well it is intolerance when you assume, without prior demonstration, that "equal rights" is universally a value, and therefore you can impose it on other people. Who are you to fight to impose "equal rights" on me? Maybe I don't like this "equal rights". Am I morally wrong if I don't? If you say yes, then you need to mobilise an argument which explains both the origin of this value "equal rights" and its universality. Something that is sorely lacking at the moment. — Agustino

I honestly don't know what the hell you're talking about. It's more rightwing memes. You seem to have a problem with the Constitution and the values of due process and fairness that underly it. Can't help it if you have ugly self-serving values. Get used to the fact that people you want to oppress aren't going to allow you do so without a fight.

Instead of the leftist position that others must observe rights, I much rather prefer the conservative position that others must not interfere with rights. It seems both more tolerant, and more ethical. Hopefully this is enough to get some discussion started — Agustino

Not so much the leftist position but rather a bizarre conservative fetish about being put upon when the rule of law applies to somebody other than rich entitled people. Get use to the fact that your views are dissociated from reality.

No. I mean that this culturally intolerant Left is dangerous, and it is dangerous to the world, as well as to the West itself - because they think they absolutely have the right values, and therefore must enforce these values by force and ostracisation if necessary. It's not the homosexuals, or other races, or etc. who are dangerous. It's the Left. The Left has ensured that across the Western world, one will be treated as a social outcast if they dare not submit in belief towards mantras such as "equality for all", "equal rights for homosexuals", etc. It's good to have discussions and talk about whether gay marriage should be legal or not, and of course vote on it, and perhaps even approve it. But to attempt to impose it, and consider anyone who disagrees to be a monster morally speaking - that is terribly wrong, and terribly dangerous. — Agustino

This is the poor persecuted conservative meme. All rightwing memes are counterfactual, but this one is a doozy.

Of course you can't even give an example of this alleged "intolerance." It's purely a fabrication of the Right. I'll demand you provide a citation now, just to watch you squirm and gloss. You'll probably end up whining about some college kids protesting some homophobic college administrator, which will expose the counterfactuality of the meme - as if college kids hold political power.

This is also the reverso-meme. A classic. Progressives work for political equal rights for various minorities, and rightwingers claim that fighting for equal rights is "intolerance." A perfect example of the pathological projection of the conservative mind. Freaky.

Pretty silly thinking you could get away with this lumpen conservative underclass rhetoric here. You might want to post this at Hannity.com . You'll find a receptive audience.

Donald Trump isn't merely babbling nonsense. In his person and in what he has to say he represents something particular to a certain aggrieved strata of white, losing-class Republican. He represents a hope to several million of these people because he is uttering statements which resonate with the aggrieved Republican's frustrations. These aggrieved people have real aspirations, real desires, preferences, and so on, and they feel like they are really getting stepped on left and right. I may not feel like they feel, you may not feel like they feel, but neither of us is one of them. — Bitter Crank

These are a minority, and always will be. The problem is they vote. The logistical problem for progressives is getting the majority of people, who support progressive policy, to the voting booth. The way you do that is to lead, to fight, to bash the other side and show people that you're angry and you're on their side and something is at stake.

I attribute the rise of the rightwing agenda in this country less to the rightwing (they have always used their odious rhetoric and techniques) but to progressives who fail to oppose that agenda with passion and vehemence and even with white-hot hate.

If progressive leaders aren't willing to take on the weirdos of the Right, then why should they expect young people and minorities and women to follow them.

Carville knew how to win an election: you attack, and then you attack and then you attack again. It's what the GOP does. It works. It was pitiful watching hapless Kerry being swiftboated and not having the balls to call Bush an AWOL coward whose Daddy got him out of Vietnam. Honestly, if you want to be a leader, you gotta bash the opposition's head.

So, attempting to win MEME VS. MEME, is not very different than trying to win by slinging sticky, stinky, slimy mud at one's opponent. — Bitter Crank

Yeah, exactly. That's how you win modern elections, not to mention the broader agenda of the "universe of discourse" about what vision we have of the future. It's not for wussies. There are no Vulcans voting in our elections.

This is a political thread and the usual suspects have posted their memes. I have no argument with you if you want to respond to gunnuttery with factual studies. Be my guest. It won't get you anywhere, if experience is a guide. Meantime I'm going to address memes as memes not as real arguments. It's a disservice to reason to treat them any other way.

Do you think that this statement is going to help or hurt your credibility (and, by extension, that of your movement) with people here? — Pneumenon

Sorry, Pneu, but credibility is an archaic term in the world of modern politics in the digital age. How much credibility did Bush have? And he won the election. How much credibility does Trump have with his bizarre boorish counterfactual comments? None. Doesn't bother his supporters. I predict he'll win the GOP bid handily. And of course his competitors are equally freakish.

In any case, I'm not running for anything; I'm just doing my little part to delegitimize the conservative freakazoids who have used their usual memes on this thread and elsewhere. If somebody doesn't like it and wants to do position papers backed by empirical studies, no skin off my nose. Experience shows, however, that that technique fails and is a terrible waste of time.

My view is progressives want a powerful uncompromising critique of the Right, attacking it mercilessly and never accepting the frame of its memes. Besides it's fun. If you think that results in a loss of credibility (I don't see why), that's OK. I don't think credibility matters one wit in modern politics. Just look at Berlusconi and Putin and Trump. This is, after all, a political thread.

I can say something true in a manner, or use a conversational tone, that makes me sound hysterical. You can fight memes with memes, sure, and propaganda with propaganda - but if you sound like you're using propaganda, then you're not an effective propagandist. — Pneumenon

I really don't think propaganda works that way, and I would invoke George Lakoff in that regard, and the fact that conservatives continue to win elections and policy decision saying absolutely crazy things. Gun policy is a case in point.

As long as progressives do the stupid thing and fight memes with facts (Lakoff analyzes why this fails completely and gives the issues to the Right), they will continue to lose on policy. And policies matter in people's lives. It matters whether we have gun control or not. Since the archaic rational debate method doesn't work, and since we even know why it doesn't work, to continue to engage in it seems almost cowardly to me, or even worse, unimaginative.

Fight meme with meme, not meme with reason. Now, progressive memes happen to be factual, but that doesn't matter.

What raving are you talking about? Gun nuts are in fact dangerous freaks. People who think lesbian witches caused 9-11 should be laughed at, not reasoned with. People who propose tax cut for billionaires are morally odious. I could go on.

Give me an example of what isn't true here?

Just as an aside I often hear people say that, yes, conservatives are extremist, but look at all the extreme ideas proposed by "leftist" Democrats. I ask them to name one. They never can.

I just think the kind of rhetoric you're using is very divisive. The other side using the same tactic. The result is to polarize people. But hey, if it wins elections, right? — Marchesk

Yeah, so like the people who think that Obama is a marxist Kenyan Muslim, that lesbian witches caused 9-11, and that scientists are conspiring to impose socialism by faking global warming, need to reasoned with so that they don't get offended and "polarized".

That ship has sailed, my friend. Welcome to tea party America. We either defeat them completely or we'll all be in the Hand Maiden's Tale.

I appreciate and share your commitment to "reasoned discussion" which is appropriate to a philosophy forum. It has no place in politics however. Vulcans don't vote in our elections. They never have and never will.

Instead people do and we really don't need more understanding of the gun issue to act on it -- we all know what the facts are. They're just being ignored and debased by conservatives. You don't fight memes with more fact -- memes are not factual. You fight memes with memes. Every important change in our society - from the end of slavery, to women's suffrage, to the New Deal, to Civil Rights to environmental protections - happened not because of reasoned debate, but because of compelling narratives that moved the voters to vote in an emancipatory and humane way.

I think our situation proves my point: most Americans want gun control. But we don't have it. The reason is not that we don't have enough reasoned debate about it. The reason is we have too much. Reasoned debate in politics is bringing a knife to gun fight. Conservatives bring guns to the fight. Progressives must do so also. (Oh the irony of the metaphor).

No, I'm arguing that you call them that for the same reason conservatives call you evil. — Marchesk

I don't think this matters. But in any case, I do think there is a difference between killing people and not killing people, exploiting people and not exploiting, enriching the rich and empowering the poor. I call the former evil. But I'm happy just to call it freakish conservatism. Same thing.

Apparently you find it difficult to make that distinction. I kind of feel sorry for you that you are unable to commit to an emancipatory view of the world, and are stuck on some abstract rules of debate as if politics were a game.

Jesus man, this is not promoting a healthy democracy. I get it that the other side decided to play mean and dirty in their interest of power, but this kind of framing doesn't help. It divides people. It polarizes. The problem with your average conservative is that they hear too much of that crap on their radio and TVs. Then they end up thinking liberals are their enemies, and an evil amongst them that needs to be dealt with somehow. That goes nowhere good. — Marchesk

And that's why although the majority of Americans want gun control, they don't vote that way, because gun control advocates need to be more "reasonable" and provide more facts. Jeez.

I'm sorry I don't think you know how politics works in a democracy. It's more like selling used cars. Vulcans don't vote in our elections.

This is the real world, muchacho, and you're in it.

The sanitized NRA version of a militias being citizen soldiers is pure historical dreck. The 2nd Amendment was about one thing - southern slave owners killing and exploiting blacks. Your narrative is nonsense.
— Landru Guide Us

Ah, so a controversial issue and it's entire history can be boiled down to just one thing.

The best scholarship shows that
— Landru Guide Us

By best, you mean the scholarship that boils it down to one thing. — Marchesk

Thing is, I've read all the traditional stuff you've read. But you haven't read anything else. Indeed this is the first time you've heard about the real scholarship. And still you're so sure of yourself.

So you're projecting.

Read some of this, and then get back to us, a sadder but wiser man.

http://www.carltbogus.com/guns
http://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=432106001013079074025065070001092113002025093035058063121102109120074116091086100066102029123005005035117116006091082103064123013008066061053120103098102004126070059052008009006086111083019070089092029064126076065100119022126003096090029123096111123&EXT=pdf
http://rci.rutgers.edu/~tripmcc/the_amicus_curiae_project/heller-racove_et_al.pdf
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/13890-the-second-amendment-was-ratified-to-preserve-slavery

Gun nuts reject the argument that they believe their guns are worth any number of mass murders. I reject it too. Their guns, after all, were not the guns used in the mass murder. (Unless they were, then they should be arrested, immediately.) — Bitter Crank

I thought I made it clear: we shouldn't try to convince the gun nuts. They're hopeless. The point is to convince the majority of Americans who in fact want gun control but don't vote on that issue.

The way to nudge them to vote on the issue is to use the meme that the other side is totally illegitimate and freakish. It happens to be true, but that doesn't matter. Political memes don't work because they're factual, they work because the frame the issue in terms that people resonate with. They tell a story.

The narrative here is that the US is in the thrall of NRA paranoid gun nuts who hate democratic values, not to mention minorities, women, workers, etc. It happens to be true, but that's besides the point. The point is to never mention guns without this frame.

Does it? How has the Supreme Court and constitutional scholars traditionally understood the issue? You make it sound like it was well understood to just be in the context of maintaining a well regulated militia, until the most recent court. But individuals have retained the right to own guns long after the US had an official military. — Marchesk

This is knownothingism. The best scholarship shows that the South wanted the 2nd Amendment (it's based on the Virginia Constitution written by George Mason - the largest slave owner in the country at the time) to prevent the North from limiting white death squads (militias) used to hunt down and kill fleeing slaves, and put down slave rebellions.

The South -- and Mason in particular - was paranoid about slave rebellions.

The sanitized NRA version of a militias being citizen soldiers is pure historical dreck. The 2nd Amendment was about one thing - southern slave owners killing and exploiting blacks. Your narrative is nonsense.

And it's also good for making the opposition look bad. If we're on the side of righteousness and those evil, selfish, greedy bastards are out to drink our children's blood, well then, we don't need to bother with their side of the matter. We can just dismiss it. — Marchesk

That's exactly how you win political arguments - by delegimizing the other side. Ever hear of Gingrich's GOPAC memo? Of course you haven't. You want to bring a knife to a gun fight, to use an appropriate metaphor. Progressive need to do to the Right, what the Right did to progressives via the GOPAC memo.

Not, it should be framed as people have a different understanding of the second amendment, which has to be balanced with what to do about the problem of gun violence. — Marchesk

Yeah, that'll work. It's worked so far. Politics isn't about reason; it's about framing issues. The right knows that, which is why we don't have gun control in a nation where the overwhelming majority want it. They just don't vote on it. Why? Because the way you frame the issue fails.

Are you trying to say that people who disagree with your position are evil? — Marchesk

Conservatism is evil, so to the extent conservatives disagree with me on their odious exploitative politics, they are evil.

Why do you find that hard to accept? Are you arguing that the exploitative, boorish, knownothing positions of conservatism aren't evil, or are you arguing we're not allowed to call it that?

What good does making statements like that do except preach to the choir? — Marchesk

Excoriating evil in words is good for the soul and the first step in defeating it in practice. How issues are framed determines how they get argued. The gun issue should be framed as the freaks and fetishists against rational normal Americans who want to go about their business without worrying a gun nut will shoot them.

Ah well. That's a far more responsible conclusion. — Ciceronianus the White

I knew you'd agree with me.

"I've seen the future and it looks like murder."

Actually Pneumenon's post suggests the heart of the matter: conservatives and their knownothing party, the GOP, are in the grip of gun culture and really don't care if their gun "rights" require that several dozen schoolchildren get massacred every couple years or so, along with thousands of other people. They are fetishistic and beyond rational discourse.

But that's not America. Most Americans don't have strong feelings about guns one way or another. There are more pressing issues for them. The reason gun fetishism isn't a more important topic has a lot of causes, the dominance of the rightwing noise machine and its ability to distract people is one. But for whatever reason, normal Americans don't usually vote based on gun issues - the gun nuts do, and that's why they are able to dominate legislatures, especially in benighted areas of the country like the South.

But if the OP means that anybody who votes for a conservative is complicit in the death culture of America's advanced capitalist danse macabre, I'll agree to that.

There is a surge out here in Arizona as I am sure is happening in other states, for weapons used for self protection and classes on the safety in using those firearms have tripled. That tells me two things, one people feel personally threatened by the unknown risk of 'the bad guy' and the lack of trust in our leader as with the swipe of a pen he can control what guns are legal and the ammo necessary for the firearm. — ArguingWAristotleTiff

Because some guys in Arizona are going to protect our democracy like they did during segregation when they rose up against Bull Conner and the unconstitutional segregationist governments of the Southern states and confronted them with firearms to protect the rights of black people.

Wait, they didn't! They supported the authorities and called the civil rights champions communists. Oh for fun.

Anybody who thinks NRA types are going to protect the Constitution are seriously deluded. The only provision of the Constitution they want is the 2nd Amendment. The rest, they stand against.