I'm not 'equating' the political sphere with anything. What counts, and does not count, as political, is the political act par excellence and the liberal con is to imagine that one can set out, in advance, what ought to, and ought not, count as political. The neutralization and sterilization of politics passed off as sensible political theory. Trash. — StreetlightX
It's not "fair" because banning conservative views on campus would be gross political favoritism. Conservative students are paying customers, and as long as they're behaving peacefully, banning them would be unjust.
It's also not fair to Berkeley to use force to compel them to play political favoritism. — VagabondSpectre
If alt-rioters shut down an event you that happened to be attending and support, I'm guessing you would object to their use of force against you and yours, right? — VagabondSpectre
As it turns out, conservatism and progressivism are often after the same ends, people just disagree about how best to achieve them (both sides are interested in "fairness" for example, but they disagree about the facts of the playing field).
So, with the right evidence, it is actually possible to show people that their views are not practical or are not likely to achieve the desired results. — VagabondSpectre
Alabamians are well insulated from reasonable pro-choice speakers — VagabondSpectre
they're surrounded only by people who reinforce that view — VagabondSpectre
Racists and fascists are debating their ideas in open forums — VagabondSpectre
Tell me again why barricading the doors of Shapiro's events is necessary force? — VagabondSpectre
You said because the lives of marginalized folk are on the line. You might interpret that as only condoning barricades, but why can't someone else say that it condones the use of artillery?
If lives are on the line when Shapiro speaks, can't your argument also justify his assassination? — VagabondSpectre
The whole point of democracy is to work through our disagreements about what policies and moral aims we should enshrine into culture and law. — VagabondSpectre
emotionally riled up individuals within the scuffling mob take aggressive action, which engenders an aggressive response from opposing individuals, and then when the rest of the mob sees this, they tend to escalate their degree of scuffling. — VagabondSpectre
Scruton and Murray do get to the point just why conservatism seems so feeble compared to the left (and I would also add compared to the extreme-right). Cherishing how things are, love of your country and your people is especially in a democratic justice state is quite lame and uninteresting. Conservatism is for those who at least are doing OK. Those that look for scapegoats in minorities and have more hate in their hearts than actual love for their people are made of a different mold and will look for radical changes. In political discourse and in the university traditional conservatism sounds extremely boring. However when it comes to real life and the choices people make in their own lives, conservative values are quite popular. In a leftist welfare state like mine I would say that many of those that vote for social democrats are otherwise quite conservative: they like how things are and don't object at all to what the free market can offer them, with the supervision of the government of course.Regarding “conservativism” it is clear enough to me that it’s suffering, and going to suffer more, simply because the world is changing fast. — I like sushi
No, I want a non-hypocritical political sphere. One in which the politics at work in platforming some dickhead like Shapiro is acknowledged as political, and not the outcome of some 'natural', merit-based, extra-poltical process. Where money is similarly acknowledged as a political tool that anyone who holds it knows it to be. What is 'undemocratic' is the (pseudo-)depoliticization of what is obviously political: of putting these things out of democratic play. I want more democracy not less. But this requires a less shallow, less emaciated understanding of democracy than just what happens in 'voting booths'. — StreetlightX
I don't think the liberal has any capacity to think of political action beyond political speech. Words simply float free of any gravity of worldly consequence, and the whole content of politics lies entirely in the ephemera of 'argument' or 'agreement', which now come to bear the entire weight of politics. Nevermind that the world around the lectern is literally on fire - what happens out there, beyond the charmed circle of intellectual spar and parry simply cannot so much as even be thought. The liberal literally doesn't even have the vocabulary to deal with it, let alone act upon it. — StreetlightX
What is it about political favouritism that is unfair? — Isaac
People think its OK to just walk past a homeless person because others do so too. — Isaac
No, they're not. No one is 'debating' anything. They're rabble-rousing and it needs to be stopped before a rabble gets roused. Their words have real impact on the lives of actual people. Ethnic minorities, the poor, immigrants... These people are actually harmed by the rhetoric of fascists, racists and the alt-right. — Isaac
Why is 'scuffling' particularly responsible for creating these "emotionally riled up individuals" yet words are completely immune from having such an effect? — Isaac
So you're arguing that because moneyed interests are supporting Shapiro, and because ideological merit has nothing to do with politics or democracy these days, the use of intimidation, force, and violence to silence him is well justified? — VagabondSpectre
I'm arguing that people like Shapiro got to where he is by means far beyond that of his power of speech alone, and to restrict responses to those means to speech alone is asymmetrical and democratically fatal. — StreetlightX
And this is all to say nothing about the reductive and myopic tertium nom datur that is speech or violence that you keep pushing. — StreetlightX
Most of those having their au courant whine about deplatforming or whatever are responding less to incidences of violence - rare and sporadic as they are - than to the sense of damage done to their bourgeois sense of dinner table manners ('let the man speak, chérie'). Violence is rarely at issue, and to pretend that it is is misdiagnosis, either deliberate, ignorant, or both at the same time. In any case the right - who have been pushing just this line, to their infinite benefit - couldn't be happier with exactly that framing of choice — StreetlightX
I'm telling you to let the man speak because throwing him out of the saloon makes us look weak and stupid — VagabondSpectre
I don't see the asymmetry of means between political camps that you do. — VagabondSpectre
Then there's nothing to discuss. Fascists and racists are always a 'minority' in the liberal imagination. Right up until the point they're not. Because there are no racists and fascists, only ever racist and fascist ideas, ripe for the acedeme debate. What a joke. — StreetlightX
Words simply float free of any gravity of worldly consequence, and the whole content of politics lies entirely in the ephemera of 'argument' or 'agreement', which now come to bear the entire weight of politics. — StreetlightX
Where's the extra-word center of gravity here? — csalisbury
You don't know? — StreetlightX
It's not mine. — StreetlightX
When everything around you is ugly, the concern for 'looks' is just about as shallow as it gets. — StreetlightX
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