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They Thought They Were Free (1955)

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Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#391

Post by throwawaymaths »

1oooqooq wrote: post #197
throwawaymaths wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities will not be safe from government meddling until they comprehensively stop taking money from the government first . Until such a point, they run the real risk of censorship and becoming the agents of the very thing that they are warning about.

you're historically wrong. monasteries were financialy independent. when the "government changed" and the new rulers had no use for the church, all of them were raided and plundered. it's very dangerous to have resources and not be politically positioned. you become a target more than a fortress. it's the one thing preppers don't get. universities are facing the same problem as monasteries faced. they are huge bags o…

nobody claimed absolute immunity from everything that the government does anywhere. enjoy beating up your strawman.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#392

Post by cadamsdotcom »

ajuc wrote: post #16

Look at Russians right now. The vast majority of them do their jobs, pay their taxes, and consider themselves patriots and good people because they help their families and motherland, and are polite and well-meaning. While their jobs help the military machine that murders thousands of innocent people every week, their taxes fund that machine, and their complacency keeps the system stable for decades, costing not only…

While I see what you’re saying I think it’s taking the “outside view” of things. It’d be great for those people to down tools and protest, but what would they gain?

It’s difficult to know when to down tools and make noise. If they avoid the almost certain ruin of dissidence and just keep working and living, there’s a chance things blow over, and their families get a better future.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#393

Post by throwawaymaths »

GuB-42 wrote: post #275
throwawaymaths wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities will not be safe from government meddling until they comprehensively stop taking money from the government first . Until such a point, they run the real risk of censorship and becoming the agents of the very thing that they are warning about.

This kind of reasoning works for private companies, not for the government. It is true that if you are accepting money from Coca Cola, it will limit your ability to do work that goes against the interests of Coca Cola. To be independent, just stop accepting money from them. But it only works because Coca Cola can't do much against an independent group. Of course, you need to be careful, which typically means hiring a…

by that argument coca cola can certainly hire goons to come get you.

how far do you want to take your strawman?

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#394

Post by [deleted] »

robwwilliams wrote: post #215
throwawaymaths wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities will not be safe from government meddling until they comprehensively stop taking money from the government first . Until such a point, they run the real risk of censorship and becoming the agents of the very thing that they are warning about.

Worth drawing a distinction between governmental support for science and for the humanities. The first does a lot of relative low mark-up contract work requested by governmental agencies. Governments and all of us would like to see cancer and Alzheimer disease cured. The request for “bids” (aka grant applications) from NIH, DoD (now DoW) and NSF is what has greatly expanded research-focused universities and msde the…

[deleted]

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#395

Post by hollerith »

giardini wrote: post #384
hollerith wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My father worked as a mechanical engineer in West Germany after the war. He told me the French removed all the machines from the factories and took them to France, then the Americans installed much better new machines in their place. The Marshall Plan was a real thing. My father also told me that before the Americans decided on the Marshall Plan, they considered other plans (also named for American generals IIRC) one…

hollerith says >My father worked as a mechanical engineer in West Germany after the war. He told me the French removed all the machines from the factories and took them to France, then the Americans installed much better new machines in their place. The Marshall Plan was a real thing. So damned funny!!8-)) The phrase "Grasping defeat from the jaws of victory!" comes to mind.

France received aid from the US, too. An unreliable source I just consulted says France got twice as much as West Germany got from the Marshall Plan.

But yeah, transporting those old machines back to France was probably a waste of Paris's time.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#396

Post by moomin »

MrJohz wrote: post #333
simpaticoder wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdotally, having lived in Germany for a couple of years recently, there is a perceptible national character. The best way to understand it is to ponder the difference between a drag race and a rally race - in one, success means going as fast as possible; in the other success means getting to navigation points within a window of error. Or, with beer: in America success is discovering a new beer with a different fla…

Eh, I think that's a bit overblown. In theory, Germans are famously methodical and precise, in practice the rail network is falling apart, a major bridge in my city recently collapsed due to lack of proper maintenance, and "made in Germany" is mainly an encouragement to buy local, rather than buying for quality. My experience of Germans, having lived among them for almost a decade, and having married one of them, is…

Funnily enough, the book goes into the anti-war thing a bit. The idea put forward in the book is that straight after the war there wasn’t a great deal of anti-war sentiment, just anti-losing sentiment. But after the Cold War started, and the major powers wanted Germany militarised again, to be on the front line of a battle against checks notes other Germans on the other side’s front lines, they developed an anti-war culture pretty quickly.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#397

Post by [deleted] »

microtonal wrote: post #201
bix6 wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whereas the Nazi Germany analogy ends with near-inevitable wave function collapse into "start shooting Nazis" Does it? I haven’t thought about shooting anyone. I would like to see more widespread awareness, protesting, and a general strike.

This. If you read Reddit, a whole lot of comments go from Nazi parallels (which is partly justified, but as another comment points out there are also a lot of parallels with Orban's Hungary, Erdogan's Turkey, Putin's Russia, etc.) to 'Luigi'. There are so many non-violent approaches that would be effective. First, there is the 3.5% rule [1]. Second, if 10%-20% of the general population would go on a general strike, p…

[deleted]

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#398

Post by throwawaymaths »

robwwilliams wrote: post #215
throwawaymaths wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Universities will not be safe from government meddling until they comprehensively stop taking money from the government first . Until such a point, they run the real risk of censorship and becoming the agents of the very thing that they are warning about.

Worth drawing a distinction between governmental support for science and for the humanities. The first does a lot of relative low mark-up contract work requested by governmental agencies. Governments and all of us would like to see cancer and Alzheimer disease cured. The request for “bids” (aka grant applications) from NIH, DoD (now DoW) and NSF is what has greatly expanded research-focused universities and msde the…

> Governments and all of us would like to see cancer and Alzheimer disease cured.

i think an important question is "who is this "all of us" you speak of and who made you god to pronounce it"

you are making an arbitrary distinction because vibes, because it's a cause you care about. it's irrelevant. if you take money for Alzheimer's research, you owe the government one (because that money is extracted from the people in a way you could never have done yourself). if you take money from, say a 501c3, it's a completed transaction of services.

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#399

Post by anigbrowl »

DrewADesign wrote: post #298
overfeed wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Armed civilians with their puny little guns and little organization are right out as soon as any part of the military joins a fight In the 1940s, the DoD published a field manual on how folk with "puny little guns" - or no guns at all - can fight.

Let's see... military drones; satellite surveillance; comms surveillance; giant network of flock cameras vacuuming up facial, descriptive vehicular, and license plate movement data; small-scale tactical nuclear weapons; a huge fleet of hypersonic aircraft and extremely maneuverable helicopters; decades of urban combat experience; militarized law enforcement; the largest military in the world by orders of magnitude fi…

Afghanistan

Re: They Thought They Were Free (1955)

#400

Post by UncleMeat »

ethical_source wrote: post #150
estearum wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They came for..." in this comment refers to "the marketplace of ideas built a brief consensus against..." The "they came for..." in the famous poem, and in reference to today's Trump administration, refers to "the government utilized state power to advance or suppress certain ideas." These are not the same at all. A few specific bullets: * Universities (especially private ones) are allowed to have ideological biases…

> Universities (especially private ones) are allowed to have ideological biases Universities as private associations can have whatever biases they want. What they can't do is take public money earmarked for promoting debate and discovery and use it to promulgate a particular ideology, discriminate on the basis of immutable protected characteristics, or do other things contrary to public policy. If they want the money…

Liberty University receives public funds. It has an explicit ideological project. It recently fired a member of its IT staff for being trans.
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