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Extremism on any side is bad, period. 'But they are worse' is sort of moot point and most people don't care about details, you simply lose normal audience and maybe gain some fringe.
A university president makes a case against cowardice
341–350 of 934 posts
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#342Oh hey, Wesleyan on HN! I’m an alumnus (matriculated a year or two after Roth became president). Wesleyan has a rich history of activism and protest, and not always entirely peaceful (Roth’s predecessor, Doug Bennet, had his office firebombed at one point). I’ve had a few opportunities to speak with Roth since the Gaza war started, and I’ve always found him particularly thoughtful about balancing freedom of expressio…
They'll make it through if they bend the knee. Otherwise the regime will destroy them, and the conclusion will be that it's all because of these darned radical leftists.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
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One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you. The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.) It's odd that one ban operates within the constraints of freedom (the freedom to associate requires the exercise of the freedom to not associate), while the other does not. It's almost like there's a categorical distinction.…
> One ban consists of the exercise of their right to... Not associate with you.
Many people have been fired / expelled / and many more silenced by those examples. If you can't tell the truth about your side (from how you're writing I assume you think in sides) then there's no point saying it.
> The other sends you to a Salvadoran gulag. (The silence from all the 'free speech' folks on this point is deafening.)
I haven't heard about this. Who has been sent to a Salvadoran gulag for speech?
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#344Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Election is a bad way to choose almost anything. Except the alternatives! No form of government is more effective, competent, just, or free of corruption.
That's false. Everything comes down to good leadership. Monarchies with good leadership very well might have incredibly effective anti-corruption techniques and competency. China is managing a billion people and their infrastructure and tech is incredible. The problems are two fold. The first is vetoing of bad ideas. No leader is right 100% of the time, and when they are wrong, someone must have the power to veto. Th…
I think people get confused into thinking that democracy is about voting when it is should be about reducing prolonged concentrations of power, because of the innate tendency for it to be abused and hoarded. So to support your point, if your culture does not support the concept of good "democratic" governance, and no one strives for the institutions and constitutions to support it, you might be better off with a benevolent dictator, for as long as they last before a not-so-benevolent one.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly man since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the left in the US threw their whole weight into pushing the Overton window on identity politics/intersectionality to the point that "real" old time leftists and communists (like my father) were treated like some sort of conservatives, lol. They went way past the sustainable point.
I feel like the people who say things like "communists were treated like some sort of conservatives because of identity politics" are telling on themselves. If you look at the people on the actual political left in the US (Bernie, AOC, etc) are they talking about identity politics? Last time I checked they were talking about the problems that impact non-billionaire Americans: Healthcare, Social Security, Raising Mini…
> If you look at the people on the actual political left in the US (Bernie, AOC, etc) are they talking about identity politics?
Great example! So... what happened to Bernie in the Democratic party?
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#346Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But at the same time the US „antiracist“ campaign itself looks just like (reverse) racism in many case. And what do you propose instead ? I'm not seeing the EU doing any better than the US with their lowest socioeconomic class groups. Talking points are nifty. But, at some point, you have to propose an actual solution that does something . Bigotry exists. What are you going to do about it? It seems that the most po…
> And what do you propose instead? I'm not seeing the EU doing any better than the US with their lowest socioeconomic class groups. Key word „socioeconomic“ groups. It should not be racist policies based on skin color. Help poor people, help people growing up in shitty neighbourhods. True diversity is people with different life experiences. Sometimes it correlates with skin color, sometimes it doesn't. Just like poor…
> It should not be racist policies based on skin color. Help poor people, help people growing up in shitty neighbourhods.
That is, in fact, what a lot of those DEI programs did. The problem is that "lower socioeconomic status" is a high correlate proxy for "minority" in the US. There are simply a lot more minorities in the US in the lower socioeconomic brackets.
The problem, at the end of the day, is that the a lot of the market became zero sum. When there were lots of jobs and lots of college slots, nobody cared so much about affirmative action-type programs.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#347Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes they went to universities. No, they are not trying to help the students. They don't even pretend to be trying to do so. They are nit trying to make it cheaper and they are not trying to make it more accessible. They agenda was either openly the opposite or they ignored the students. Except when they think they are too progressive and attack then verbally.
> They are nit trying to make it cheaper and they are not trying to make it more accessible Should they be doing these things? Maybe I've read too much Caplan, but credential inflation seems to be wasting the new generation's best years.
Then you're reading the right amount of Caplan. So you probably also want more babies and immigrants.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#348Earlier quoted context omitted.
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Not really. In both cases, compulsion is the problem. Neither side has the right to compel anyone to do anything, but they operate on the premise that they do, usually characterized by indignant self-rightiousness. The irrational extremists of both sides, the ones screaming the loudest, naturally, seek to enforce their version of "how things should be" on to other people, regardless if their objections are rational or not, while also constantly changing the rules or shifting goal posts, which keeps us forever locked in a state of not knowing if we are breaking them. It's mind-numbing to a degree that apathy starts to seem like a perfectly valid option. It's also a tactic historically used by totalitarianism.
They are two sides of the same monster, like Jekyll & Hyde.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
Freedom of speech necessarily implies that a group of people might team up and loudly announce that the people they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or even ostracized. That's the price of freedom of speech, and it's a fair price. Being annoyed, inconvenienced, or even negatively impacted by the speech acts of others is by design. To throw that out is to make a calculation that without…
> Freedom of speech necessarily implies that a group of people might team up and loudly announce that the people they don't agree with are incorrect and immoral and should be ignored or even ostracized. That's the price of freedom of speech, and it's a fair price. Sure, agreed. But groups and institutions taking even a dime of tax money should not get to place a thumb on the scales of those arguments. US universities…
What did US universities do to "silence all opposing viewpoints" on any issues? Did they kick students out of school because of their viewports? Claw back their financial aid? Get them deported? Physically harm them? I sure don't remember things like that happening in widespread manner to conservative students, let alone happening in a way that was organized top-down by the universities' leadership.
Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice
#350Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes they went to universities. No, they are not trying to help the students. They don't even pretend to be trying to do so. They are nit trying to make it cheaper and they are not trying to make it more accessible. They agenda was either openly the opposite or they ignored the students. Except when they think they are too progressive and attack then verbally.
> They are nit trying to make it cheaper and they are not trying to make it more accessible Should they be doing these things? Maybe I've read too much Caplan, but credential inflation seems to be wasting the new generation's best years.
For the original argument above about Republicans and college I would focus more on things like who has been trying to make student debt as something special, something near impossible to get out of.
I don't accept an argument of personal responsibility in this case, because student loans target one of the most vulnerable groups: Inexperienced and with a great need. To me, this is malicious.
I'm all for personal responsibility, in this point I'm more on the conservative side, but reality also includes that humans are not perfect machines, and targeting their weaknesses is easy and impossible to avoid as an individual. This principle does not work when it's an individual against sophisticated well-funded organization (here, there is not one but many who influenced policy), even worse when it's someone too young or too old for their brains to be at their best (not yet experienced enough in the one case, the brain no longer working at its best in the other).