Comment by FloorEgg
5 days ago
Indulging in your blatant straw man argument for a moment, what if discussing these ideas and the downsides of them to society helped the world transition away from them faster and minimized the chance of backslide?
There is nothing wrong with discussing bad ideas, especially with students that aren't familiar with them, if done responsibly, with respect for the student, and facilitation of critical thinking.
This attitude that certain topics or ideas are taboo and shouldn't ever be acknowledged or discussed because they are bad is a big part of what is increasing extremism and pushing America to the brink. It's authoritarian, and it makes the nation more fragile, not stronger.
You are free to discuss any idea you want. I'm also free to call you an idiot and ask you to leave my house.
Please stop arguing that ideas should be free from criticism.
I am not arguing that ideas should be free from criticism. Not at all. Not sure how you got that idea.
I'm arguing that we shouldn't censor bad ideas, or exclude them entirely from the relevant discussions. And more to the point, when we educate the next generation we should be doing so in a holistic way so that they understand why and when bad ideas are bad, and why those ideas were ever popular in the first place.
I'm arguing against ideological censorship, not justified and well constructed criticism.
Let's start from the beginning. There is, by and large, no such thing as ideological censorship in american university settings. Ideas are free to be advanced and argued with.
Certain ideas have been so heavily criticized that people have stopped bringing them up. Criticizing a speaker at a college is not censorship, it's criticism and argument. Having a protest outside a speaker's event isn't censorship either, it's free speech.
I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt here since perhaps you genuinely don't know that the people you're aligning your argument with are asking for their own ideas to be free from criticism.
This might be a good starting point: https://popehat.substack.com/p/our-fundamental-right-to-sham...
> This is sheer nonsense from the jump. Americans don’t have, and have never had, any right to be free of shaming or shunning. The First Amendment protects our right to speak free of government interference. It does not protect us from other people saying mean things in response to our speech. The very notion is completely incoherent. Someone else shaming me is their free speech, and someone else shunning me is their free association, both protected by the First Amendment.
When you bring up an abhorrent idea and I call you an idiot and ask you to leave, I'm not censoring you. If I refuse to invite you over next week, I'm still not censoring you. Nobody owes you a platform and demanding one is one of the more pernicious forms of free-speech-rights violations there are.
1 reply →
Is this an example of "one strawman deserves another"? You know that when GP talked about "presenting a viewpoint", he didn't mean "as an example of a bad idea that nobody should believe". He meant he wants alt-right talking points parroted to everyone because he's upset that reality has a liberal bias. You know this. You also know that I'm not suggesting outlawing the discussion of slavery in its historical context, but simply saying that universities have no obligation to make a case for failed and abhorrent ideas in the name of "diverse viewpoints". Why are you pretending like you don't know this already?
Your First Comment: "That's true. Universities no longer present the viewpoint that black people are inferior to whites and deserve to be slaves."
Your Later Comment: "You also know that I'm not suggesting outlawing the discussion of slavery in its historical context, but simply saying that universities have no obligation to make a case for failed and abhorrent ideas in the name of "diverse viewpoints"."
I am not American, Republican or even politically right. I am not your enemy. Please try and take the most respectful interpretation of what I am saying.
Your first and second comments I quoted above contradict each other.
The straw man I was referencing in your original post is how you pointed to the worst examples of "right" values. I indulged the examples you shared by stating even in those cases those ideas need to be explored fully in order to understand why they failed, so they are not repeated. I understand you are not advocating for these discussions to be outlawed, and I agree! I also don't advocate for these discussions to be forcefully imposed! However I do think that schools have evolved their curriculums to such an extent that many of these ideas are not adequately analyzed or represented within the programs offered, and the consequence is that it makes society weaker and more susceptible to the ideas resurfacing.
Also, I honestly don't know who GP is that you are referring to. I also don't know who you are, what you believe, or what you meant beyond the words you wrote in that one comment. I am not pretending anything. Just trying to point out how avoiding discussing certain ideas (by deliberately excluding them from curriculums), just because those ideas are "bad", is a problem that will have big long-term consequences, including the resurgence of those "bad" ideas (because the education system didn't inoculate people against them).
In your original comment that I responded to, it sounded like you were saying universities shouldn't discuss these ideas (including their subjective historical-context-dependent merits or correlated beliefs) at all. Now it sounds like you are saying that's not your stance. That's fine, you clarified your stance.
It's not helpful to assume that I should have known this was your stance all along and that I am pretending not to.
> I am not American, Republican or even politically right. I am not your enemy.
It's telling that intelligent discussions with people on the left are almost impossible without such disclaimers