641–650 of 1001 posts
In 1985 in most places in the USA a public school teacher openly supporting gay rights in the classroom would have been risking their job and possibly their entire career.
I think this is an important part: "Fortunately in western countries the suppression of heresies is nothing like as bad as it used to be. Though the window of opinions you can express publicly has narrowed in the last decade, it's still much wider than it was a few hundred years ago. The problem is the derivative. Up till about 1985 the window had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would…
I like to point out the Sedition Act of 1918 here. About 100 years ago, a law that literally made it a crime to criticize the government was not only enacted, but upheld by the courts. Can you even imagine that today? What people are finally noticing now is that non-government entities can also have negative impacts on free speech. They're not noticing because it just started -- e.g. lots of folks lost their jobs for…
No need to imagine, the law never left.
https://www.lawfareblog.com/seditious-conspiracy-real-domest...
I think this is an important part: "Fortunately in western countries the suppression of heresies is nothing like as bad as it used to be. Though the window of opinions you can express publicly has narrowed in the last decade, it's still much wider than it was a few hundred years ago. The problem is the derivative. Up till about 1985 the window had been growing ever wider. Anyone looking into the future in 1985 would…
I like to point out the Sedition Act of 1918 here. About 100 years ago, a law that literally made it a crime to criticize the government was not only enacted, but upheld by the courts. Can you even imagine that today? What people are finally noticing now is that non-government entities can also have negative impacts on free speech. They're not noticing because it just started -- e.g. lots of folks lost their jobs for…
Not in the countries I guess we both live, but in some authoritarian places, definitely, unfortunately. Your point still fully stands though!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The speed with which society is moving is also a factor. Tacitus or Voltaire are variously credited with the notion that in any epoch, to know who is in power, ask who you may not criticise. I think Graham is slightly missing the point about our period. It's not that heresy is on the up, so much as it's on the move. Outrage is a homeless beast. We're in an Orwellian age where it changes with the seasons, so what is h…
> Tacitus or Voltaire are variously credited with the notion that in any epoch, to know who is in power, ask who you may not criticise. The actual source of this quote is a literal Nazi who was using this quote to claim that Jewish people run the world. It is also a silly idea. It is considered rude to make fun of autistic people at work, but autistic people clearly aren't running the world through some secret cabal.
This is called the Genetic Fallacy, it is completely irrelevant who said anything as long as that thing is true and/or useful. Nobody owns words. Aristotle supported slavery, you don't interrupt every logic lecture with "You know the source of those funny terms is a literal slavery supporter?" do you?.
>It is also a silly idea. It is considered rude to make fun of autistic people at work
This common retort completely misses the point, voltaire's rule of thumb is just that, it's a heuristic, an extremely good one for detecting and finding hegemonic ideologies, but not an algorithm. A necessary but not sufficient condition.
The kind of offense is also different, nobody rages at you and assembles a mob because you made fun of an autistic person, at most you will get a cold stare and get ignored. Voltaire was talking about a different kind entirely of "Not allowed", the familiar hysteria coming from the fanatically religious when you speak ill of their idols, he was probably speaking about the church, but the wisdom is just as relevant to the new religions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is "honest and forthright" really the only qualification for working at Google? What about being professional? Meaning... getting your work done in a way that you're not making other people hate you? I can totally imagine a workplace where "It's not your problem if other people hate you" is the norm. And I'm happy for people who find an employer like that and enjoy that. But does every workplace need to be like that?…
> Meaning... getting your work done in a way that you're not making other people hate you? "Making other people hate you"? Blaming a victim of vicious abuse for what his abusers were doing is very much not cool.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When people bring up posts like this they never say what the "heresies" are. People aren't getting "cancelled" for their takes on taxes. There are plenty of examples of stuff that is way less clearcut "that's bad" than your example. See e.g. David Schor getting fired for retweeting a black professor's paper arguing riots are bad for black political movements. See also, e.g. a friend ending our friendship because I…
> There are plenty of examples [...] e.g. David Schor I think it's rather the opposite. There are, to be sure, tragedies and abuses of woke rhetoric that gets directed at the wrong people and/or implemented in outrageous ways. But they're pretty rare, and generally get a ton of media coverage for exactly that reason. Those are what PG is writing about. But in my experience, the overwhelming majority of people enterin…
> the lesson you seem to have taken from it is that you were the oppressed one
I never said I was oppressed. You've invented that whole cloth.
If you find yourself thinking "they're just using this for cover to say bad things", consider that in the context of you abjectly misreading/inventing details to what I'm saying here. If you fill in details that match your own negative biases and then say "wow, these people really live up to my negative biases," you're not evaluating evidence, you're just testing your own beliefs against your projections of your own beliefs. Certainly looks like what you're doing here.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When people bring up posts like this they never say what the "heresies" are. People aren't getting "cancelled" for their takes on taxes. There are plenty of examples of stuff that is way less clearcut "that's bad" than your example. See e.g. David Schor getting fired for retweeting a black professor's paper arguing riots are bad for black political movements. See also, e.g. a friend ending our friendship because I…
> There are plenty of examples [...] e.g. David Schor I think it's rather the opposite. There are, to be sure, tragedies and abuses of woke rhetoric that gets directed at the wrong people and/or implemented in outrageous ways. But they're pretty rare, and generally get a ton of media coverage for exactly that reason. Those are what PG is writing about. But in my experience, the overwhelming majority of people enterin…
You are making stuff up. The person already said that they discussed politics together all the time.
If you are discussing politics with someone all the time, it is absurd to claim that a boundary has been crossed.
> The reason the current wave of intolerance comes from the left is simply because the new unifying ideology happened to come from the left. The next one might come from the right. Imagine what that would be like. I'm curious how Mr. Graham can look at a country that is in the process of reversing much of the last half-century's progress on women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and disability rights, and _not_ see a politic…
> reversing much of the last half-century's progress on women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and disability rights, and _not_ see a politics of heresy emerging from the right. Gee, how would anyone look at a Republican administration whose first Supreme Court appointee penned a seminal decision on LGBT employment protections as not trying to turn back LGBT rights? One wonders. Attempting to argue that the battles being fou…
Sure, Obergefell and Bostock were good, but op was talking about the country, not just SCOTUS. You can't ignore things like bathroom/locker room bills, the Don't Say Gay bill, book banning, etc. You're narrowing to things that support your position.
> (Roe) is unpopular with women in its full scope—specifically, Roe’s guarantee of elective abortions in the second trimester.
This is a right-wing talking point that (predictably) ignores the facts, narrowing to data that supports their position. It's very hard to poll about abortion because it's so nuanced, and most Americans are really uninformed. Couple of things here:
If you look at Gallup's results (the poll Town Hall et al reference) [0], you'll even see majority support for abortion in the third trimester. 75% of respondents believe abortion should be legal when the woman's life is endangered, and 52% when the pregnancy was caused by rape or incest. You'll also see that 56% of respondents oppose an 18 week ban, which is well into the 2nd trimester.
The reason the right centers on the "second trimester" talking point is that a different question shows way lower support (65% think it should be illegal), but when they drill down, support in various scenarios (life of the mother, etc.) increases. This is similar to polling about the ACA: if you asked people about Obamacare they hated it; if you asked them about the policies in Obamacare (no lifetime caps on care, no preexisting conditions) they loved it. It's an old, disingenuous trick.
> Social progressivism is an overwhelmingly white movement.
This is super untrue, but it's not that surprising since you're using Warren's primary campaign which, again, is a very narrow measure that supports your position (the demographics of the states she competed in are "overwhelmingly white" [1], so what you said applies to every candidate until Super Tuesday). The quick rejoinder is "then explain BLM", but something more substantial is the demographic breakdown of the Democratic vote in the 2020 Presidential election [2]. Quick synopsis is Biden/Harris won:
- 63% of Hispanic and Latino voters
- 87% of Black voters
- 68% AAPI voters
- 65% of Indian American voters
- 68% of American Indian and Alaska Native voters
- 43% of White voters (38% men, 44% women)
Maybe you'll quibble on Biden/Harris not being a progressive campaign? We can look at the last Quinnipiac poll from before the Iowa Caucuses [2] where Sanders' and Warren's non-white supporters made up 41% of their vote shares. Sure they don't match Biden's 70%, but they're decidedly not "overwhelmingly white" (might want to look at the Buttigieg campaign for that one).
[0]: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1576/abortion.aspx
[1]: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2020/01/31/just-ho...
[2]: https://poll.qu.edu/Poll-Release-Legacy?releaseid=3651
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidentia...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I like to point out the Sedition Act of 1918 here. About 100 years ago, a law that literally made it a crime to criticize the government was not only enacted, but upheld by the courts. Can you even imagine that today? What people are finally noticing now is that non-government entities can also have negative impacts on free speech. They're not noticing because it just started -- e.g. lots of folks lost their jobs for…
> Can you even imagine that today? Not in the countries I guess we both live, but in some authoritarian places, definitely, unfortunately. Your point still fully stands though!