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A university president makes a case against cowardice

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Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#651

Post by settrans »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #635
settrans wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The antisemite does not accuse the Jew of stealing because he thinks he stole something. He does it because he enjoys watching the Jew turn out his pockets to prove his innocence." Although I laud your unassailable argument highlighting yet another instance of double standards against Jews, ultimately there is little upside in engaging with the "no, no, technically there is a difference between anti-Zionism and anti…

I'll bite. Most demands for self-determination were for self-rule on land already inhabited by the group in question. Zionism was unique in that it demanded self-determination on land inhabited almost 100% by a different group of people.

Given that the Jews were forcibly expelled from their homeland by the Romans, by definition, any Jewish self-determination would need to take place in a land that is at least partially[0] already inhabited. You now have two choices:

1. Deny Jews the right to self-determination altogether, continuing the dispossession of an actively persecuted people, indeed, the same one that was about to face the Holocaust in Europe, thereby punishing them for their own historical victimization, or

2. Acknowledge the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination, even if it takes root in their historical homeland and entails negotiating with and sharing the land with other peoples, thereby accepting that historical justice often requires grappling with imperfect realities, and that two national claims can coexist without one invalidating the other.

Or are you arguing that self-determination only applies to groups of people who haven't been exiled from their homeland (i.e. the people that need self determination the least)?

[0] Before Zionism, the population of Mandatory Palestine was 98% smaller than the same region today. Even the Arab population has increased 26-fold. So, yes, technically it was inhabited, but dramatically less developed. And even then, Jerusalem was 60% Jewish.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#652

Post by anigbrowl »

emptysongglass wrote: post #360
hellotheretoday wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

[flagged]

The problem with such reflexive absolutism, as I've pointed out many times, is that you end up advocating for the speech rights of people who are advocating for genocide. I shouldn't need to point out that killing people also terminates their speech rights and that advocacy of genocide is thus an attack on free speech.

You do not have to defend the free speech rights of people who are themselves attacking free speech (and free life). In fact, it is foolish to do so.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#653

Post by 8note »

vimax wrote: post #481
hellotheretoday wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well for brevity I did trivialize it but I will expand: The left side got people fired. This is objectively not as bad as getting people disappeared. You can get a new fucking job. You can’t get freedom from detention and you cannot easily return to the country (if at all) Additionally there is the motivational factor behind both sides: The lefts argument in policing language was to reduce harm to marginalized groups…

You're still trivializing. The cancel culture would often follow the people it wanted to cancel to make it hard for them to get another job again. Also, I'll add that the "there is the door" comment is entirely wrong. There are countless stories of open source maintainers being harassed to make language changes to their code base, master/slave, whitelist/blacklist. The harassers never offered to do the work themselve…

Generally i think harvey weinstein should be unemployable in any position of power. if people hear about what he's done and still want to hire him, sure, they can go for it, but they'd probably appreciate knowing about him before doing that.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#654

Post by rayiner »

MPSFounder wrote: post #630
rayiner wrote: post #497

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That only Americans have the right to participate in our political system is an expression of values. And it’s entirely compatible with democracy. The citizen versus non-citizen distinction is fundamental to democracy.

It absolutely is not. And your views are very concerning. Everyone residing in the US is entitled to the ammendments. That is exactly why Guantanamo bay was formed, as a matter of fact. What makes this so much worse is these individuals were not arrested for criticizing these United States, but for criticizing a hostile foreign nation, that just so happens to be the darling of billionaires of a certain faith, who con…

I’m not weighing in on the specific protests here—I’m actually not unsympathetic to your point about that. I’m talking about the general power of the government to decide what kinds of foreigners it wants to allow in the country.

Do you think the first amendment means the government has to allow in immigrants that are Nazi sympathizers? What about Communists?

Americans have free speech. But Americans can also decide which foreigners are allowed the privilege of being on American soil. In fact, I would say that it’s precisely because we have free speech that we must carefully guard who is allowed into the tent.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#655

Post by anigbrowl »

theultdev wrote: post #621
ziddoap wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They didn't say it was the same. You're arguing with what you imagined they said.

They presented a strawman. I'm unravelling it. I want to know where their values are and if they contradict. I'm re-presenting the original scenario being discussed and the scenario they introduced. Comparing the two while also redirecting back to the original moral dilemma.

You're just abstracting it and trying to draw concrete conclusions form abstract cases. Of course it depends on what someone says; to ignore this is asinine.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#656

Post by Animats »

rtkwe wrote: post #405

Harvard's rolling over was particularly annoying, they have a 52 billion dollar endowment! If any university could afford to make a stand and lose funding over it it's Harvard. What's the point of this massive pile of money if you never dip into it in exceptional circumstances?

That surprised me. It set the pattern for lesser schools, too.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#657

Post by nitwit005 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #431
sequoia wrote: post #49

A lot of Americans support these attacks on universities. Why do people harbour this much animosity towards these institutions? Is there anything they could have done differently in the past decade or two to have broader sympathy now, or is people's ambivalence towards elite universities 100% irrational?

The right's problem with universities is the same as the left's problem with churches: 1. They are institutions of "indoctrination" by the other side. Faculty are something like 98% registered democrats and many subjects ("X studies") have an explicitly left-leaning bent. 2. They have tax advantages and other significant government subsidies. 3. They exercise significant amounts of ideological control over the narrat…

Left leaning, but authoritarian, governments have also cracked down on universities. The issue isn't the political lean.

People with a more authoritarian bent view dissent itself as objectionable. That's central to their whole worldview. Any institution or social organization that allows debate or questioning things is a problem for them.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#658

Post by anigbrowl »

hsiuywbs630h wrote: post #531
hellotheretoday wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t win with these people. They don’t care if they aren’t personally impacted. The “sjw boogeyman” that could theoretically impact their cushy livelihood matters more than the very real right wing government that exists right now and is disappearing people. But as long as they can still say the n word on twitter and call of duty everything will be okay. Who cares about those disappeared people anyway, they were…

Listen, this is not theoretical. In my realm, we had people getting in trouble for otherwise benign speech, because someone's feeling matter more than basic.common sense. The pendulum has swung pretty hard not because sjw bogeyman, but because it has gotten to the point people skilled in ignoring corporate idiocy had enough AND the chronic complainers were demanding increasing superpowers.

What sorts of trouble and benign speech are you talking about?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#659

Post by pclmulqdq »

squigz wrote: post #449
pclmulqdq wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

This is a conversation about American politics, so I don't think how other countries acted is relevant. The political landscape also changes regularly - I don't think the Republicans of a few decades ago were attacking schools so vigorously, so I'm not sure going further back than that for examples is relevant either. > efforts of left-wing people in the 60's-90's to reduce their influence on society. Can you elabora…

In terms of use of hard power against religion: Mandatory prayer in school was outlawed in 1962. Teaching creationism in public schools was banned in 1987. Teaching the Bible (and other religious texts) in public schools is mostly banned. Title VII of the civil rights act prevented employers and many other institutions from discriminating based on religion in 1964. These were all passed by the left.

In terms of soft power: Huge cultural movements (driven by left-leaning people) against church attendance and in favor of atheism really began in the 1960-1990 period. The hippie movement and all things associated with it, as well as the new age movement are big parts of this.

In general, I think you underestimate how much power religion had in 1950's America. It was constantly pushed on young people, and if you wanted to get a good job, you had to have "strong moral character" that was demonstrated by where you went on Sundays.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#660

Post by wat10000 »

nradov wrote: post #590
wat10000 wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a free country, private employers should be allowed to choose who they employ, with very narrow exceptions for discrimination based on race, religion, etc. In a free country, citizens should be allowed to read what other citizens write in public. Those both seem pretty obvious, but put the two of them together and it means people can lose their jobs or not be hired for stuff they tweet. How do you resolve that? IM…

Why should we make an exception based on religion but not on political viewpoint? That is logically inconsistent. There's nothing special about religion.

The historical answer is because Congress wanted to be sure that employers could fire Communists for being Communists.

Of course, that's not my view. I think political affiliation should probably be protected, but it needs to be very narrow. You shouldn't be able to be fired for being a Republican. But if you post "Gay people should be executed," you shouldn't be able to hide behind "I'm a Republican, that's a political view!" any more than you should be able to hide behind "I'm a Christian, that's a religious view!"

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