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Message
A Letter on Justice and Open Debate -Harper’s Magazine
Posted on 7/7/20 at 7:26 pm
Posted on 7/7/20 at 7:26 pm
LINK
These people are so fricking frightened of their own side. They’re also fricking insane and incapable of looking inward as they’re the ones that caused all this shite.
Anyway, there’s a list of your betters that all signed the letter.
quote:
Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.
quote:
The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.
quote:
This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.
These people are so fricking frightened of their own side. They’re also fricking insane and incapable of looking inward as they’re the ones that caused all this shite.
Anyway, there’s a list of your betters that all signed the letter.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 7:31 pm to TigerFanInSouthland
quote:
These people are so fricking frightened of their own side
Their side is complete and total retard, but it’s trumps fault.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 7:34 pm to TigerFanInSouthland
Not a person on that list that doesn't deserve some quality time at the receiving end of a baseball bat.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 7:38 pm to udtiger
Even John McWhorter?
That letter seemed reasonable to me.
That letter seemed reasonable to me.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 7:38 pm to udtiger
quote:
Not a person on that list that doesn't deserve some quality time at the receiving end of a baseball bat.
There’s the tolerance our republic needs at this point in her history.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 7:50 pm to BamaCoaster
quote:
There’s the tolerance our republic needs at this point in her history.
I think we’ve been tolerant enough.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 7:53 pm to TigerFanInSouthland
Open debate and conversation are code words for complete and utter surrender.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 7:55 pm to udtiger
quote:
Not a person on that list that doesn't deserve some quality time at the receiving end of a baseball bat.
WTF
Posted on 7/7/20 at 8:10 pm to udtiger
quote:
Not a person on that list that doesn't deserve some quality time at the receiving end of a baseball bat.
What the hell has Greil Marcus ever done to you? Show me where the album review hurt you.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 9:49 pm to TigerFanInSouthland
quote:Here's my reaction to this in no particular order:
A Letter on Justice and Open Debate -Harper’s Magazine
--very lame that they named only one politician (and of course it's Trump)
--even if you don't like Trump, the trope that he represents a "threat to democracy" is just tired and silly
--they have "come to expect" the "constriction of free exchange and ideas" from the "radical right"? WTF is this even referring to? Even though it's off the charts now at a new level, cancel culture has ALWAYS been a calling card of the Left.
--There are plenty of people on the list that I admire and read and wish they hadn't signed something so lame (Gladwell, McWhorter, Flanagan, Haidt, Hughes, Weiss - and notice Glenn Loury didn't sign)
--It's very telling that even people of this stature only felt safe putting out something even as anodyne as this in a setting of safety in numbers
Posted on 7/7/20 at 9:53 pm to TigerFanInSouthland
quote:
and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy.
They’re always guilty of the shite they accuse others of.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 9:58 pm to The Pirate King
quote:If they're such fancy writers, at least be precise with the language. We don't even have a democracy to begin with. It's a representative republic. I have yet to see Trump do anything that wasn't ultimately entirely submissive to the prescribed constitutional apparatus for operating within the confines of that republic.
They’re always guilty of the shite they accuse others of.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 10:00 pm to 88Wildcat
quote:bitch dissed the ramones
What the hell has Greil Marcus ever done to you?
Posted on 7/7/20 at 10:58 pm to RollTide4Ever
quote:
John McWhorter
Absolutely brilliant lecturer. I thoroughly enjoyed this.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 11:09 pm to TigerFanInSouthland
quote:
John R. MacArthur, publisher, writer
I wasn’t disappointed in any names till I saw that one.
Then I realized it was the Publisher and not the pastor.
That’s a bunch of people who’s opinions I disregard regularly. I can appreciate Chomsky from time to time. McWhorter as well.
This post was edited on 7/7/20 at 11:11 pm
Posted on 7/7/20 at 11:22 pm to TigerFanInSouthland
Nice attempt at lofty idealism.
But ultimately, it comes across as bullshite. Why? Because of this sentence:
Trump is crude, boorish and vain. He's also tacky and petty. But at no time have I seen him as "a threat to democracy". He's a threat to the Democratic Party, and probably the established politicians in general. And I'm sure Miss Manners would despise him.
But seriously, what has he done to threaten democracy? He's been America-first on every international deal and treaty, which has benefited our country. He's jousted with the Press, but they're going at him with every fiber of their being, so it's justified, and refreshing. You can't shout him down... well, he's our President, you would hope he would stand his ground.
See, here's the thing; you can be as eloquent as you want, but when you toss in hyperbole and outright falsehoods into your appeal, you lose credibility.
But ultimately, it comes across as bullshite. Why? Because of this sentence:
quote:That loses all credibility, for me.
Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy
Trump is crude, boorish and vain. He's also tacky and petty. But at no time have I seen him as "a threat to democracy". He's a threat to the Democratic Party, and probably the established politicians in general. And I'm sure Miss Manners would despise him.
But seriously, what has he done to threaten democracy? He's been America-first on every international deal and treaty, which has benefited our country. He's jousted with the Press, but they're going at him with every fiber of their being, so it's justified, and refreshing. You can't shout him down... well, he's our President, you would hope he would stand his ground.
See, here's the thing; you can be as eloquent as you want, but when you toss in hyperbole and outright falsehoods into your appeal, you lose credibility.
Posted on 7/7/20 at 11:30 pm to Scoob
Funny enough, many lefties who signed this have already received backlash from other lefties who are upset that they are being called out for using cancel culture as a bludgeon on open debate. Some have already apologized for signing.
Yes, the left is trying to cancel lefties who signed a letter that called for reigning in cancel culture, which according to the letter, is supposedly perpetrated by the "radical right." I'm not sure a right leaning comedian could have written this whole episode any better.
Yes, the left is trying to cancel lefties who signed a letter that called for reigning in cancel culture, which according to the letter, is supposedly perpetrated by the "radical right." I'm not sure a right leaning comedian could have written this whole episode any better.
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