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Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

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Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#961

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from responsibility when your speech offends someone. Progressives aren’t stopping you from reading racist books to your children.... just don’t expect most people to want to sell them to you or pat you on the back for making the next generation toxic against fellow citizens.

How can we humans progress morally if we systematically try to hide the history of our immorality from ourselves?

This is precisely the same logic that led the Conquistadors to systematically destroy the history of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#962

As dis-heartening as this story is, compared to a couple of years ago, it is encouraging to see lots of comments from people beginning to wake up to what is going on with this craziness and not being modded here. Free speech is about protecting the right of the un-popular and views that some may find utterly repugnant. Why? because, as we are seeing with all of the woke craziness, when you don't stand up for everyone…

Free speech doesnt mean an obligation for people to provide you a platform, nobody is obligated to carry my book or let me on tv. You may criticize how that is carried out, but its not anti free speech to say racist cartoons dont need to be published

You've defined what you think free speech isn't, but can you define what free speech is, in your opinion?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#963

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Turkish immigrant in Germany. I've read that book in a country it wasn't banned and I didn't turn out to be a neonazi (Yeah, Turkish "neonazis" who don't like Kurds and Syrians is a thing, unfortunately). It actually helped me fortify my arguments against them. That's why I also used to read many extreme right-wing sites, before they were all erased from the surface of the internet (and I refuse to go "deep").…

I replied to a comment that said that all book-bans are would be evaluated to be harmful/negative in retrospect. I don't think that this general statement is true and brought up the ban of Mein Kampf as a counterexample. Who knows how harmful Mein Kampf publishing in Germany could have been from 1950-2000, but surely, there was no harm in having it banned. You must understand that in post-war Germany the threat of fa…

I mean, we still have it with AfD, no? I think it's a given that some portion of the population will support fascist parties. IMHO, how much total support they achieve has little to do with the books people can read, but much to do with socioeconomic balances (global and national).

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#964

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. Wonderful. And where do tech monopolies figure in the world view you've expounded ?

Indeed. Giant technology companies are effectively part of government now. They make and enforce the rules about public discourse. The libertarian argument used to support censorship is that a private group or business is free to do what it wants. However this misses the increasingly apparent fact that an insufficiently politically correct business in this environment is quickly targeted and perhaps even 'cancelled'.…

That's a good point. Not to mention that mobile providers and tech companies can, and do, volunteer private data to police and authorities without a warrant. I believe Apple was one that pushed back on this.

It is time to declare the old argument, since it's a private company it can do what it wants, and free speech should not apply, dead and outmoded. Yes, the 1st Amendment. But it's time to rethink the entire moral fabric that has informed us before the Internet Age.

What I find positively shocking is that, myself as a lifelong progressive, am seeing Woke people using that free market argument, to promote censorship and what they call antiracism. I think it goes hand in hand with large megacorporations like Amazon and Bloomberg promoting wokist ideology.

Bottom line, they want more, not less control over our minds. They know what's good. We must ask someone with a Ph.D. in __ Studies to tell us what our ethical path should be. It's positively insane.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#965

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are market-dominating book distributors like Amazon and eBay effectively deciding what people can and cannot read. The fact that a few people might still be able to view images of these books (illegally, as they are copyrighted) on some tiny closed forum on the internet isn't a real comfort. In the Soviet Union, there were also tiny isolated pockets where "forbidden books" were surreptitiously copied and read.…

Anyone going to address the Texas/schoolbooks issue tangential to this?

What is it? I'm unaware

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#966
post #747

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtual book burnings, virtual public shamings... We are stepping closer and closer to virtual middle ages...

At this point I'm hoping for the Balkanisation of the internet, so that we Europeans wouldn't have to put up with American opinions on the web anymore.

Yet it is inevitably Europeans who complain about the widely-predicted effects of GDPR, a regulation designed to bring about the world for which you hope... Perhaps Europe is also not in complete agreement?

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#967

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are market-dominating book distributors like Amazon and eBay effectively deciding what people can and cannot read. The fact that a few people might still be able to view images of these books (illegally, as they are copyrighted) on some tiny closed forum on the internet isn't a real comfort. In the Soviet Union, there were also tiny isolated pockets where "forbidden books" were surreptitiously copied and read.…

> market-dominating I'm reminded of In-Q-Tel at times like these. I defy anyone to find more than 20% of wildly successful "tech giants" who have not received government funding and support. It's not a free market when some get tax breaks and government money. If you get those things, your utmost law should be the law that governs the government in your region. This will never happen, of course.

What does IQT have to do with any of this? I get where you are coming from and to a certain extent agree with the principal. The problem is that the us government is a giant beast of an organization and can't be thought of as a single entity.

In FY19 the us government spent 4.5 trillion dollars.

To put that in perspective (these are the top 5 companies in the world by market cap and some quick googling): Saudi Aramco spent 150 Billion, Apple spent about 200 Billion, Microsoft was 82 Billion, Amazon spent 265 Billion and Google spent 127 Billion.

Combined the top 5 companies in the world spent less in an entire year than the US government spent in a single quarter (824B/year vs. 1,125B).

There is so much spend that it is difficult to have a company that in some way doesn't either directly do business with the USG or benefit within 1 degree of separation from USG spending.

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#968

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two kinds of freedom: freedom from and freedom to. These are some children's books that contain illustrations that some people find offensive and the publisher (and sellers) are deciding they no longer want to be associated with and sell to children. There are internet forums where the images are available and people can view them without the police knocking your door down, and I'm sure these are available in…

These are market-dominating book distributors like Amazon and eBay effectively deciding what people can and cannot read. The fact that a few people might still be able to view images of these books (illegally, as they are copyrighted) on some tiny closed forum on the internet isn't a real comfort. In the Soviet Union, there were also tiny isolated pockets where "forbidden books" were surreptitiously copied and read.…

[deleted]

Re: Dr. Seuss books deemed offensive will be delisted from eBay

#969
post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The critical race stuff is getting more and more sinister and anti-white. https://www.unz.com/article/review-of-robin-diangelos-white-...

Wait, I think Robin DiAngelo and her work are hot garbage... but an Unz link was your choice to cite? It veers into talking about Jewish conspiracies on sentence 1. Is this a troll?

It's the best review of the book I've read. It's not conspiratorial to acknowledge the over-representation of Jewish authors listed in the bibliography.
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