Kevin Graham wrote:Then no one should be. I'd hate to find out my kids were attending a school that allowed such people to preach. It defeats the purpose of sending them there to get an education.
It's not the school. It's the school facilities. Student groups are given use of campus resources. Those student groups can then invite people to speak to them using those resources. If you don't like the speakers, you can ignore them. The only thing the loud protests and efforts to shut them down do is amplify their voice. Charles Murray is a racist crank no one had been paying attention to for years until he surged in popularity recently after efforts to lock him out of obscure campus speaking spots. It allows them to act as a martyr for free speech and suggest there's something compelling about their ideas that requires them to be shut down by force because they cannot be by cogent reasoning.
I would prefer young adults attending campus learn how to tolerate and intelligently disagree with opposing points of view. It's only a small step from "no-platforming" Ben Shapiro to "no-platforming" anyone who does not affirm the prevailing group think.
In fact, it took no time at all to go from "fascists have no right to speak" to "The ACLU has no right to speak because they said fascists should have a right to speak."
Uncle Ed wrote:In my experience, "conservative" websites that assert that they are news sources promote dialogue by including reader forums to comment on, with a minimal amount of policing/monitoring. "Liberal" websites (egregiously CNN) either do not include comment forums at all or heavily regulate them.
So where is this "bubble" of which you speak?
Then there’s the point of view that the reader comments section of many highly partisan sites basically just devolve into a riot of self-affirming back pats, along with insults liberally sprinkled about and aimed at the ‘other side’. Pick any of your favorite sites and we can look at the content of those sections to confirm this.
As for a news or information source that doesn’t have a ‘comments’ section being automatically regarded as in its own bubble - I’d only point out that for hundreds of years prior to the Internet, society acquired a great deal of varied knowledge using books, none of which have a function that allowed a reader to comment back. And still we seemed to have done fairly well, generally, in maintaining balance.
So, EA's support for liberals not being in a bubble is founded on liberal sources....got it!
(see also, physician heal thyself)
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires...seek discipline and find your liberty I can tell if a person is judgmental just by looking at them what is chaos to the fly is normal to the spider - morticia addams If you're not upsetting idiots, you might be an idiot. - Ted Nugent
subgenius wrote:So, EA's support for liberals not being in a bubble is founded on liberal sources....got it!
(see also, physician heal thyself)
I quoted four sources on this thread. One was Frank Luntz at PJ media, who a conservative political consultant writing on a right-wing website relying on 3 non-partisan data collection sources. A second was Pew Research, which is a non-ideological and non-partisan subsidiary of Pew Charitable Trusts. The third was 6 researchers at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard, which is also non-ideological and non-partisan. A fourth was Reason, which is libertarian.
The game here is that the researchers at Pew Research and the researchers at Havard are "liberal" sources, so we can dismiss their findings. No evidence is supplied that the research comes from liberal sourcing - just a vague association between Pew Research and Harvard and "liberal." It's just declared to be so because, in the world subgenius exists in, either something is overtly conservative or it is liberal. Those are the options.
The executive summary of the Harvard research is good, but if you ever get time, I can't recommend enough the full paper. It's book-length, but relatively approachable for scientific research. It maps out partisan media information networks in painstaking detail and shows, using multiple examples, how media narratives are influenced by those networks and how that specifically impacted 2016 election coverage. Its key findings are incidentally friendly to Clinton in that it shows that pro-Trump sources were able to dominate media coverage decisions due to asymmetry in, well, what we might describe as decency. Some liberal sources ran with that when covering this paper. That shouldn't be the main takeaway, though. The bigger takeaway is how faults in journalism and the splintering information environment is creating a dangerous backdrop to American democracy.
Kevin Graham wrote:Then no one should be. I'd hate to find out my kids were attending a school that allowed such people to preach. It defeats the purpose of sending them there to get an education.
It's not the school. It's the school facilities. Student groups are given use of campus resources. Those student groups can then invite people to speak to them using those resources. If you don't like the speakers, you can ignore them. The only thing the loud protests and efforts to shut them down do is amplify their voice. Charles Murray is a racist crank no one had been paying attention to for years until he surged in popularity recently after efforts to lock him out of obscure campus speaking spots. It allows them to act as a martyr for free speech and suggest there's something compelling about their ideas that requires them to be shut down by force because they cannot be by cogent reasoning.
I would prefer young adults attending campus learn how to tolerate and intelligently disagree with opposing points of view. It's only a small step from "no-platforming" Ben Shapiro to "no-platforming" anyone who does not affirm the prevailing group think.
In fact, it took no time at all to go from "fascists have no right to speak" to "The ACLU has no right to speak because they said fascists should have a right to speak."
I agree with all this. College has changed over the years I suppose. I remember back in 1989 New Gingrich was invited by the SCHOOL (Kennesaw State) to teach our Political Science class. It was just temporary, and wasn't really sure why, but I was a Conservative back then and didn't complain.
Hmm! Lots to respond to above since I posted this morning.
It appears that universities in recent decades have become dominated by socialists, which means that conservative and constitutional thinking, ergo history, is anathema for the main part. I completely agree that if the university student associations can invite a speaker all of them can do likewise without prejudice. But we don't see that. ANTIFA lovers converge and throw firebombs. If some abused neocons do likewise, who started this reprisal war anyway?
Oh, that's right, "white privilege" people didn't need to protest injustice in their world, did they. It was all so one-sided and prejudiced and racist and homophobic and whathaveyou, that Leave it to Beaver's world hadn't a clue how evil we all were. Until radical elements started popping up and shouting and screaming about injustices on every side, pissing downstream even.
It has turned into a piss and moan fest and conservatives finally got sick of being pissed on and being told it is raining.
Now we have universities touted as non partisan and neutral ideologically. Pure, Bull Cobblers! Nobody is ideologically NEUTRAL. The concept is a joke. Especially in today's 24/7/365 Social Medía dominated world, where most or even all of us are still off-balanced by it. We hardly know where to turn next or what to respond to first.
Comparing this world to, "I’d only point out that for hundreds of years prior to the Internet, society acquired a great deal of varied knowledge using books, none of which have a function that allowed a reader to comment back" (canpakes), is so non sequitur I can hardly find the words. False comparisons to non existent climate conditions cannot be compared. The closest comparison to the "world of books" would be libraries banning certain books/authors: that's as close to Internet fora being prohibited as we will get I guess.
We live in a world of instantaneous comment and response. So because partisans flock to their favorite website fora and nod together and castigate the opposition these should be banned? Controlled/moderated? Malarkey! What are people afraid of, losing the impromptu debate? How can they lose when they don't debate?
Online fora are the new permutation of meeting down at the forum (remember the etymology of that word?) and getting into fisticuffs. You do know that people who could not play nicely got disciplined, basically turned into social pariahs and outcasts in polite society. The hallmark of a mature person is one who can say anything and receive the same without melting down. That, to these old eyes, is called "winning". Not preventing the contest in the first place to spare the losers.
If conservatives debate, actually rationally bring up points with sources, and the opposition attacks the messenger we know what that is called. And over on ABC's forum the liberals lack rationality almost to a psychotic degree. On say FOX's forum the amount of counter crap is increasing, lamentably. Rational voices still dominate and they don't indulge in ad hominems. This is typical of conservatives in debate. But the instant a liberal gets called on her fake facts, her Medía concocted lies as reality, she turns into a melting snowflake. Last year was such a hoot, and 2016 before that was almost as good.
We are not well served by any pushes to eliminate the powers of communication that we have been blessed with. But it is the liberal-leftie-socialists who will always be the first to suggest that controls are needed: that people are abusing the privilege of technology to congregate and - how did canpakes put it: "just devolve into a riot of self-affirming back pats, along with insults liberally sprinkled about and aimed at the ‘other side’" - so the hell what? That is abusive somehow of the privilege of speaking what you possess that passes for a "mind"?
Then we have this gem by EAllusion: "That said, there is a strain of thought that treats [these "campus attacks on free speech"] as the most significant threat to free speech in the US, which is endlessly bizarre. 2017 saw a half dozen Republican legislatures try to make running over protesters with cars effectively legal. A similar number tried to legally curtail the teaching of cultural studies in public universities. Conservative speakers invited to campuses to troll leftists and getting platformed is about a million miles away from that in terms of seriousness, but notice what gets more press attention? "
Yes, of course we have radical conservative and liberal elements in our local governments. "Half a dozen" cases hardly equates with a plague to equal the threats to our children as they go off to get radicalized by group-think educators of "higher learning". They've been dissing religion, the constitution and individual rights for the last two or three generations, pushing anti establishment by any means that they can get to stick, "phobia" of all manner being their latest favorite denigration of what is self-deprecatingly called "the moral majority", i.e. American conservatives, who happen to be mostly religious, patriotic, even militaristic when called upon, and above all Americans who rever the Constitution and the precedents inclusive in the original intent of the Founders of the documents. Etc.
To assert that an insidious corruption of our education system is minor compared with a few nutjob radical "alt right" conservatives is asymmetrical blame assigning alright: and doublespeak and outright lies.
And to further assert that this minority of "alt right" nutjobs have somehow suborned the Medía to spout their fake news ideology and drown out the liberal-leftie-socialist memes that the mainstream media has hurled for years is absolutely one of the most twisted views of how the true conservatives reacted that I have read yet. Do you think our memories are that short? Hell's bells man! The conservatives who elected The Donald had stopped believing the crap that they were wading through everytime they turned on the evening Neewz or went online to get informed. Finding a real news source is a challenge. You don't notice because you get to read what agrees with your world view: that's why you lost the last election, you believed the crap that The Donald loves to keep calling "fake news". He's right!
You either believe the mainstream media because you have a foggy mirror view of reality or you know you are spreading lies. I won't try and judge either way. Liberals are very, very, very clever with words and calling people derogatory things while actually being those things themselves. ANTIFA, for example is fascist because it pushes socialism, and fascism is just blatant socialism pushed to the point of state-run socialism out in the open (no fuzzy feeling rhetoric to hide the fact that there are no private property rights anymore except for the elites). I digress.
So of course, studies and research, even book-length in their entirety, will come to the conclusion that the other side's propaganda is the dangerous stuff, the "bubble" creating stuff, not our propaganda. And we will assure the student/reader that there really is such a thing as a non idealist, someone utterly neutral. I repeat, BS. Just accept that everyone is biased and it simplifies everything: it allows you to find out right away which side they are pushing.
I have this to say about freedom: liberal-leftie-socialists are not about individual rights: conservatives are ALL about individual rights. You can judge them by their fruits. And this "make society better" is, at the core, about that battle of ideologies.
Conservatives who push for Gov't controls are fake: they are exactly the same as liberals who assert that they are open minded and all about the rights of the individual, yet support every gun control measure to come along, and push speakers off campuses, and burn cars and bust windows and attack the other side when they organize protests that are simply marching down the street, etc. and etc and etc.
The NRA, for example, is almost universally castigated (in the mainstream media) as being fascist-pushing, money grubbing, Mega Huge Corporation pandering, freedom destroying lobbyists with unfair power to influence Congress and local governments. Nothing is further from the reality. You can tell this for yourselves by looking at the fruits of the NRA's agenda: everything (sic) they push is anti increased Gov't control, and pro individual rights. Their whole effort is to keep the Constitution (all of it) strong by defending the 2nd Amendment as the right that defends all the others. Their power is true grass roots, not bought with money: online you can find comparative lobby groups' budgets: the NRA is way down by that comparison: but their influence is asymmetrical to the money they spend because they are supported by millions beyond their membership numbers who agree with them. They are supported by belief in the truth. They push for ALL law abiding citizens to exercise that right (it doesn't mean everybody carrying guns, go figure!): it is an agenda that is the polar opposite of "white privilege", since the NRA invites all responsible adults who can consider themselves Americans to engage in firearm training and possession. The fastest growing body of gun owners and CCW holders are minorities, especially including women. How does this originate inside "the bubble", exactly?
A man should never step a foot into the field, But have his weapons to hand: He knows not when he may need arms, Or what menace meet on the road. - Hávamál 38
"Everything is biased, therefore there is no qualitative difference between getting your information from Zero Hedge and information Wars or academic research published by a team of researchers working out of Harvard" doesn't challenge my point so much as illustrate it.
Since zero effort was spent addressing the content of that research, there's no real reply to reply to. I guess I can just note that there isn't two diametrically opposed sides that everything is either pushing or opposing.
Uncle Ed wrote:Really one-sided point of view, there, EAllusion. As if the conservative point of view holds some kind of patent on propaganda inside "the bubble". Differing world views produce opposed propaganda, because the definition of "differing world views" is: holding differing agendas to promote or even force a desired society
No horse! There are some conservative news that aren't complete garbage such as National Review for example. The Blaze, the Daily Caller, and others are highly misleading and very dishonest garbage. Don't play victim here okay.
Uncle Ed wrote:Transparency is not equal, however. In my experience, "conservative" websites that assert that they are news sources promote dialogue by including reader forums to comment on, with a minimal amount of policing/monitoring. "Liberal" websites (egregiously CNN) either do not include comment forums at all or heavily regulate them.
So where is this "bubble" of which you speak?
because they won't want to comment section to be flooded with Russian bots.
Uncle Ed wrote:It appears that universities in recent decades have become dominated by socialists, which means that conservative and constitutional thinking, ergo history, is anathema for the main part.
It seems you don't know what the hell you're talking about and have been getting your information from the same idiots mentioned in the OP. I remember being fed this drivel back in the early 90's when I was still in college. It was being fed to me by the Rush Limbaugh radio show. And yet I never recalled every meeting a self-proclaimed Socialist. I attended college for about 7 years at three different Universities and not once did I encounter Socialists. I was a Conservative back then so I just took his word for it and assumed these were all silent Socialists that only the smart people like Rush knew about. Until I got my head out of my ass and realized Rush never went to college.
Equating conservatism with "Constitutional thinking" is a pretty stupid comment as well given your Tyrant in Chief is about the most unConstitutional President in US history. You only care about the Constitution when you think you can use it to forward your Right Wing agenda, which is basically about forcing everyone else to abide by your preferred culture that's based on your religious upbringing.