Free Speech and Creepy Liberalism

I've got a bike. You can ride it if you like
It's got a basket, a bell that rings and
Things to make it look good
I'd give it to you if I could, but I borrowed it

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything, ev'rything if you want things

I've got a cloak. It's a bit of a joke
There's a tear up the front. It's red and black
I've had it for months
If you think it could look good, then I guess it should

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything, ev'rything if you want things

I know a mouse, and he hasn't got a house
I don't know why. I call him Gerald
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything, ev'rything if you want things

I've got a clan of gingerbread men
Here a man, there a man, lots of gingerbread men
Take a couple if you wish. They're on the dish

You're the kind of girl that fits in with my world
I'll give you anything, ev'rything if you want things

I know a room full of musical tunes
Some rhyme, some ching. Most of them are clockwork
Let's go into the other room and make them work

this is the only way to defeat white nationalism. you need to get people to your side before they go to the other side. this doesn't mean pandering to their racism, it means appealing to the better angels of their nature, and not talking about them in generalizations.

― blame society (Treeship), 26. marts 2017 03:20 (five hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is completely baseless assumptions.

Just a couple of problems: 1) No matter what the Dems could have promised, the GOP could always promise that + racism, meaning they always had a better deal. 2) Unless the Dems control every part of government, there are limits to what they can deliver. Promising above these limits could lead to more resentment and Trump-like populism.

The Stronger Together idea, flawed as it was, tried to undermine ethnocentrism by showing it simply wasn't strong enough to defeat coalition-building. With the way demographics are going, that will be true one day soon. And that, rather than any change in outreach, will be the end of Trumpism.

1) is a pretty flawed argument, I think - there's tons of stuff that would benefit working class voters that republicans can't promise, or won't promise at any rate.

I'm sure you're correct about the demographics in the long term but there was a pretty strong narrative that this was already the case and so Trump could never win, and yet...

1) No matter what the Dems could have promised, the GOP could always promise that + racism, meaning they always had a better deal. 2) Unless the Dems control every part of govern

This is so cynical. Fascists aren't born, they're made; people make a choice to buy into the politics of backlash. Maybe it's too much for a politician to make someone let go of their biases, but they can make a strong case that their opponent -- if like Trump they are trying to weaponize these biases, following a long Republican tradition -- is conning them. Hillary lost because 1.) she didn't adequately inspire her base and 2.) she didn't even try to convince people considering Trump that her policy platform would be better for them. She said "America is already great," something only white professionals could believe.

She even said she was writing some voters off because they were "deplorable." If you think this way it's a self fulfilling prophecy -- they will only ever listen to the right wing, and they will get even more steeped in reactionary ideology, and their politics will get even more toxic over time, which is what has happened in America over the past few decades of increased polarization.

Bernie would've won you guys

Yup. But he wouldn't have been able to get through any policies bettering life for the WWC. There wasn't a single thing in Hillary Clinton's policy platform that she wouldn't have been able to deliver, mostly because there was next to nothing in her policy platform.

That's because the essential problem in America is the radical, intransigent Republican Party. Their propaganda promotes divisiveness and false explanations for inequality while their policies ensure that practically nothing constructive can be done domestically. It seems like an easy story to tell the working class, white and otherwise, to secure more of their votes.

Bernie would've won and been worse than trump

Boom

Balls.

I have no idea who Peacock is, but it's not me.

Bernie. If you want an idea of how "democratic" socialism goes, take a look at Venezuela today, once prosperous recently, now in ruins and food lines.

Norway, Sweden, England, Denmark -- they're on fire!

Not sure what's worse, watching y'all engage with the proliferating tanuki socks, or watching y'all fall back down the rabbit hole of 2016 election theorizing and alternate-universing.

lol at calling some of the most market driven capitalistic market driven countries in the world like the ones you mentioned socialist

this thread is about the proliferation of bullshit (or semi-bullshit) free speech arguments. please to jettison the rest.

hmmmmmm sounds like CENSORSHIP to me

orietmammal's world will start to dim when he realizes that market socialism lives.

The countries you mentioned have a mixed economy, which is different from market socialism

the nordic model is based on free market capitalism and private ownership (the part most liberals leave out), as well as universal welfare systems. The welfare systems would not work without the rampant capitalism bit.

Liberals and even social democrats are not against markets or private ownership. You're confusing them with communists.

The correct answer here isn't that Scandinavian countries are socialist, but rather that Bernie's proposals are much closer to Scando countries than Venezuela and, as we all know, Sanders would be a social-democrat centrist in any European context. Still tho, Doctor Casino OTM on both election theorizing and RacoonWatch.

Bernie didn't talk about expropriating the expropriators he called for "top earners" to "pay their fair share" in taxes to fund programs that would ameliorate the mass death and suffering that characterizes life in America for the lowest earners.

Yanks shouldn't get to talk about Europe imo

most never do! unless they are going on vacation.

If anyone's interested, I brought up an actual academic freedom/free speech/creepy liberalism issue here, one I'm still trying to figure out: The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

I'm flagposting everyone for saying stupid things about Denmark without knowing what you talk about tbph.

Fairs fair i guess

Harsh tbh

FP away Fred, you've earned it.

The reappearance of the Raccoon has put Fred and larry appleton's excesses into pin sharp perspective.

I still feel bad about fp'ing larry. Confused him with Iago :(

larry appleton wasn't a troll. he suffered from paranoid delusions.

Also, a douchebag

was he really Spectrum?

On ¡ is

here's an interview with Christina Sharp, a scholar who also signed the letter, that i found insightful. i think the whole piece is worth a read but i'll highlight two points that stood out to me:

1. Mamie Till Mobley's intention in publishing the images

I’m very interested in how the painting functions versus how the actual photographs of Emmett Till function. Mamie Till Mobley makes the decision, against much advice, to have those photographs of her son published. It was not mainstream media — or white media — that published those images. It was Jet magazine. And those images had nothing to do with white consciousness. They were for Black people, because Jet was a Black publication. They weren’t meant to create empathy or shame or awareness from white viewers. They were meant to speak to and to move a Black audience.

So Mamie Till refuses to have those images not be shown. And she says (this isn’t a direct quote): Look at what they did to my son. This is my son. Look at what they did to him. She insists that the violence that he has been subject to be seen, unobscured. It seems to me that what Dana Schutz has done is to take that unobscured violence and make it abstract. Mamie Till wanted to make violence real. And that thing — white supremacy, violent abduction, murder — that Mamie Till wanted to make absolutely clear is abstracted in Schutz’s work, and in her defense of the work.

2. the intimacy of violence

There’s an intimacy that you have as the perpetrator of violence, and an intimacy that you have as people who have suffered violence. An illustration: There’s the intimacy of, let’s say, an enslaved community; then there’s the intimacy of the master, who, when a member of that enslaved community runs off, puts an ad in the paper describing that person in all kinds of detail. That’s an intimacy of violence. So there are at least two intimacies in relation to looking at that painting, which is looking into a casket. Is it the intimacy of the woman who has now said she made the shit up [Carolyn Bryant, Emmett Till’s accuser], or is it the intimacy of Mamie Till? I’m not going to assign an intimacy to the artist. I’m simply saying those are questions one should ask of how one is positioned.

as someone reflexively pro free speech esp in the academy i thought this was a compelling argument i cannot dismiss:
https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/04/11/sacred-principles-as-exhaustible-resources/

as long as we agree to intentionally and completely misconstrue what "free speech" means then yup okey dokey on target there mordy buddy

The more often people hear about free speech being used to defend NAMBLA, the less that anti-paedophiles are going to like free speech. The more often people hear about free speech being used to defend the KKK, the less anti-racists are going to like free speech. The more often people hear about free speech being used to defend radical Islamist mosques, the less anti-Muslims are going to like free speech, and so on.

fuck this paragraph and fuck the stupid asshole who wrote it imho

tombot - it's 2017 we have all heard the distinction by now that "free speech" as construed by the first amendment does not mean an unfettered right to say whatever you want wherever you want but rather a way to protect speech from the government. but hopefully it has become clear by now that there are other principles that are not just the simple meaning of the amendment and include questions of what kinds of speech should be allowed in public spaces / the academy / the media.

So much loathing in this thread.

and i don't see how you can argue with the point scott is making there. we live in a country where v few ppl have a devotional relationship to free speech and so for most ppl if the argument for expansive speech everywhere infringes on their pet beliefs they'll likely sacrifice the principle before they sacrifice their own issue. and you see this all the time - ppl hate speech when it disagrees with them. nat hentoff even wrote a book on the topic called free speech for me but not for thee that pointed this out.

i happen to think that probably we should err on the side of unlimited speech bc we need to create an environment where ppl understand that they will be confronted w/ speech they don't like and it's a part of being in a healthy society w/ a lot of different perspectives, but it's v hard to ignore the idea that making the principle into an issue like this will likely lose ppl to the war and not gain allies. nb it is possible that inviting this kind of overreaction from the fringes will ultimately help convince moderates about the importance of the principle.

"We might lose; better surrender now."

i think he's saying "pick our spots," if you waste your ammo on defending fringe speech that you don't even really believe in you'll be spent when it comes to defending speech you do believe in. it's a strategic argument and one that i think has merit if you consider esp how dismissive the left has become to free speech as a principle (at least as it appears to me over the last few years)

What I'm going to do here, because I don't want to hate you, is walk away from this, and in future interactions, I'll do my best not to bring up the fact that you hold a totally bullshit position on protected speech (which seems to be that no speech can be protected anywhere, if we want to preserve certain people's ability to speak freely in the nice places) so congratulations, you have successfully gotten me to censor myself in order to continue engaging with your censorious, context-ignorant ass. Face.

excuse me for saying so but it seems like you glossed over the context of that post which is that students were explicitly bringing charles murray to speak not because they feel that race-based IQ studies are a worthy topic of interest but just to protect the principle of free speech. where you got "no speech can be protected anywhere if we want to preserve certain people's ability to speak freely in the nice places" i have no idea. or even what that means. who are the certain people and what are the nice places you think i'm trying to protect speech for? and whose speech do you think i'm saying we cannot protect?

the argument he is making is that if you want to promote free speech as a social virtue maybe don't link it in people's minds to Charles Murray

students were explicitly bringing charles murray to speak not because they feel that race-based IQ studies are a worthy topic of interest but just to protect the principle of free speech.

Do you believe this? It's not what I get from the Inside Higher Ed article that SSC is linking.