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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

#851

Post by bluGill »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #813
bluGill wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is everyone who kept on the path instead of saying 'I don't care what you say I'll defend your right to say it'. If you can't allow someone else to say things you don't like you are at fault - it doesn't matter how good hou think you are.

So because a vocal minority 'cancelled' speech in private spheres for a few years, it's the fault of (all?) progressives that the right wildly overreacted and installed facism and government enforced censorship? By this logic if one member of my family makes you feel unwelcome then its my own fault that you got the cops to beat me up?

There are a lot of people on the "right" who are horrified about how Trump is doing anything and have no clue what they can do about it.

There are evil people on both sides, always have been, always will be. It always looks like the other side is more evil than your side because you have a human bias to assume people who agree with your are not evil with a few small exceptions. Because of this bias it is always wrong to try to paint the other side worse than yours.

The important take away: power shifts, it always has and always will. Next time your side is in power how will you recognize where they are doing evil and oppose them. The first is at least something you can partially train yourself to do with great effort - I have no clue what you can usefully do about it though.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#852

Post by settrans »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #823
settrans wrote: post #732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're against the idea of national self determination altogether. Can you think of an example of a successful assertion of the right to self determinism which didn't involve a national entity asserting sovereignty over a body of land populated by a diverse group of people? As we have already established, the population in the land of the historical mandate has exploded, including a manifold increase o…

> If the Zionist pioneers had managed to achieve a 99% majority of Jewish population in Palestine through legal immigration before asserting sovereignty, would that pass your test? The whole enterprise was illegitimate, because it was carried out against the will of the population of Palestine. The population did not want a foreign group of people to come in, settle the land and take over. The British colonial rulers…

This isn't a serious argument. You want the Jews to have self determination if and only if they can conjure into existence a magical fairy land free of compromise or can will into existence powers like militarily defeating the Nazis despite lacking even a basic police force.

> Only a small percentage of them wanted to pack up and go to Palestine, a far-away place they knew nothing about.

And pray tell, what happened to the ones who stayed?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#853

Post by settrans »

thyristan wrote: post #740
settrans wrote: post #735

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Set aside the 2000 year old history for a moment. Given that the Jews were a persecuted minority across Europe - and indeed faced the a campaign of extermination far worse than early Zionists feared - one can see the moral necessity for their self determination. Anti-Zionism is antisemitic because it declares that no, it is preferable for Jews to continue to face the Holocaust and other attempts at their genocide tha…

There are different things here that you are glossing over and conflating. Yes, there is a moral right and necessity for self-determination and self-defense for the Jews after the Holocaust. But there is no necessity or justification for that to happen in Palestine, especially when this means displacing and slaughtering the Palestinians who have lived there for quite a few centuries. And indeed Palestinians do have a…

Got it, so you only specifically object to the Jews settling in their ancestral homeland which they immigrated to legally and was 98% less populated than today, because the Nazi-aligned mufti of Jerusalem objected to their presence.

Care to suggest a superior choice of venue for Jewish sovereignty where the Jews had a better claim to the land, and the locals were prepared to welcome their national project?

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#854

Post by insane_dreamer »

martin82 wrote: post #817
insane_dreamer wrote: post #816

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I for one would much rather it go to subsidize university research than subsidize the defense industry

You need both if you want it to remain a free and sovereign country.

But not anywhere near what we have in terms of military power and spending.

Also, economic decline is a much greater threat to the US than military decline. China is eager to dethrone us economically; an invasion of the US would be extremely costly and highly unlikely even if the US' military were significantly smaller.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#855

Post by DiogenesKynikos »

settrans wrote: post #852
DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the Zionist pioneers had managed to achieve a 99% majority of Jewish population in Palestine through legal immigration before asserting sovereignty, would that pass your test? The whole enterprise was illegitimate, because it was carried out against the will of the population of Palestine. The population did not want a foreign group of people to come in, settle the land and take over. The British colonial rulers…

This isn't a serious argument. You want the Jews to have self determination if and only if they can conjure into existence a magical fairy land free of compromise or can will into existence powers like militarily defeating the Nazis despite lacking even a basic police force. > Only a small percentage of them wanted to pack up and go to Palestine, a far-away place they knew nothing about. And pray tell, what happened…

> You want the Jews to have self determination if and only if they can conjure into existence a magical fairy land free of compromise

I think it's much more serious than arguing that they had the right to take over land already inhabited by another group of people, because of events from 2000 years ago. It just doesn't seem to occur to you that the Palestinians also have rights, and shouldn't have been forced to give up their land.

> or can will into existence powers like militarily defeating the Nazis despite lacking even a basic police force.

You're supposing that Jews would have left Europe en masse for Palestine. They wouldn't have. Most Jews before WWII did not accept Zionism. For example, in Poland, the dominant Jewish political movement was the Jewish Labour Bund, which was hostile to Zionism and which strove for Jewish civil rights inside the Polish Republic. In the real world, the only way the Jews of Europe could have been saved would have been by preventing the rise of fascism.

To get back to your original point, you still haven't acknowledged that Zionism was fundamentally different from other movements for self-determination. It was a movement for self-determination on land that the group in question did not inhabit, and which an entirely different group of people already inhabited. When Zionism succeeded, it created a massive refugee population (the previous inhabitants of the land the Zionists wanted for their own "self-determination") and sparked a conflict that has been going on for nearly a century now.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#856

Post by BeFlatXIII »

kelnos wrote: post #304
hayst4ck wrote: post #293

America has done an absolutely terrible job of teaching people about rights. If governments granted rights then they would be privileges not rights. In western tradition governments exist to protect rights, such as the freedom of expression, not to grant them. If you believe these are human rights, rather than your privilege as an American, then you must protect their rights to seek justice too. People are already be…

I think what's going on is a helpful reminder that there's no such thing as "rights" in the way you describe. Everything we have, everything we're permitted to do, is at the pleasure and permission of our governments. Constitutions and laws are only worth anything if the people in charge honor them. Might may not make right, but might does let you impose whatever you want on people who don't have your might. You can…

> We always thought the US had such a system, but when you put law enforcement and the military under a single group, and give the other two groups no teeth, you really don't have that sort of system.

More like the two other groups (the elected group more so than the appointed judges) willingly gave up their teeth.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#857

Post by margalabargala »

jgalt212 wrote: post #839
margalabargala wrote: post #677

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those who disagree with this, when was the last time you thanked your boss for your paycheck?

But, I bet many have thanked their boss for the opportunity given to them. This statement of gratitude is a tacit acknowledgement of salary.

Depends on the worker I guess.

In many skilled professions, you are more likely to see the boss thanking the worker, for chossing to work there and provide their badly needed skills, than the other way around.

It probably depends on the local unemployment rate.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#858

Post by synecdoche »

gigatree wrote: post #787
Ray20 wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can I have statistics for this? Because I always thought it was mostly from the government, not from the public.

Where do you think the government gets its money from?

Printing?

btw, you got my upvote

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#859

Post by onetimeusename »

soulofmischief wrote: post #838
onetimeusename wrote: post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The good forefathers? What is the basis for deciding? Like back in 2017 there was the Unite the Right rally on the UVA campus. I am guessing you would not support that kind of anti-Semitic speech and "protest against totalitarian government" although there's not really much difference in speech said at that rally versus the anti-Israel ones at Columbia except by who was saying it. Maybe I am wrong and you are a free…

> What is the basis for deciding? For one, whether or not they supported abolition. I also will not engage in a debate with a poisoned premise: To be clear , supporting Israel today means supporting genocide. That is the beginning and end of it. You can denounce Israel and still denounce Hamas. You can support an individual Jewish person's right to life and liberty without making the mistake of supporting their genoc…

For the record I am not really defending Israel. I think they routinely violate conventions and illegally expand their territory. They also mistreat non-Jewish people. So it is reasonable to protest against Israel.

I am more interested in knowing how someone decides what is moral and immoral, i.e. which causes they choose to support. I have my theories. I have very mixed feelings towards the pro-Palestine protestors on campuses stemming from the tactics used, how they directed protests at universities themselves and not Israel, and the subtle implications that universities were "Zionist" for vague reasons. I guess that by extension most Americans are Zionist also?? I am not sure if that's fair and then obviously there's an element of conspiracy theory that is also kind of nasty.

I note you mentioned abolition, colonialism, and genocide so I think it's not a stretch to say you decide based on anti-Fascism which I'll leave open to definition.

Re: A university president makes a case against cowardice

#860

Post by paulryanrogers »

bluGill wrote: post #851
paulryanrogers wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So because a vocal minority 'cancelled' speech in private spheres for a few years, it's the fault of (all?) progressives that the right wildly overreacted and installed facism and government enforced censorship? By this logic if one member of my family makes you feel unwelcome then its my own fault that you got the cops to beat me up?

There are a lot of people on the "right" who are horrified about how Trump is doing anything and have no clue what they can do about it. There are evil people on both sides, always have been, always will be. It always looks like the other side is more evil than your side because you have a human bias to assume people who agree with your are not evil with a few small exceptions. Because of this bias it is always wrong…

The left is loud about the hypocrisy and faults of its own. Whether that's drone striking US citizens, trading on insider info, or taking literal bribes. The left has prosecuted its own far more often than the right.

My whole point is both sides deserve the rebutes and criticism they have earned, and at this moment one side is objectively far, far worse. Which doesn't excuse faults on the left. But it certainly is not the left who has embraced facism and kleptocracy, nor has anyone except the Republican party and their voters caused this.

> There are a lot of people on the "right" who are horrified about how Trump is doing anything

Citation needed

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