…is just another way to shut down debate on campus.
[Update a while later]
When and where did this “Ideas I disagree with make me feel ‘unsafe'” thing start?
This is a huge threat to the future of free speech nevertheless. Today’s college students are going to be tomorrow’s judges, and if they truly believe that “safety” means “never having to deal with opinions that disagree with one’s cherished beliefs,” then censorship has a good chance of gaining the upper hand over freedom of speech. After all, public safety can be a justification for suppressing speech, as with the “fighting words” doctrine.
It’s almost as if it’s all part of a plan to control speech.
[Update mid afternoon]
This seems related: An interview with Andy Levy:
It’s embarrassing now, but I have to admit that what started my change from a liberal to a libertarian (as a freshman in college) was reading “The Fountainhead.” (And I still think it’s a good book, unlike most of the rest of Ayn Rand’s stuff.) If nothing else, reading Rand got me to seek out other libertarian and libertarianish writers like Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman to learn more about it.
I also have to give credit to the core curriculum at Columbia, particularly the philosophy class (Contemporary Civilization). That class exposed me to a lot of great stuff: classical thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, people like Rousseau, Hobbes, Locke, and Marx; and books like Robert Nozick’s “Anarchy, State and Utopia.”
And beyond that, it was a great class because being exposed to a whole range of different ideas forces you to learn how to really think, something I think is being lost at a lot of colleges these days, where they seem more concerned with keeping students “safe” from ideas they might not like.
…To me the greatest danger facing America (and Western Civilization in general) is the attacks on free speech that we’re seeing on what seems like almost a daily basis in European countries and on college campuses here at home. We’re seeing people in Europe being thrown in jail for speech that’s deemed offensive, we’re seeing a generation of college students here who are convinced that they should never have to engage ideas or thoughts or speech that they don’t like.
I’ve said on Red Eye that I believe this is a far greater existential threat to America than ISIS or al-Qaeda could ever hope to be. Along those lines, the idea that Garry Trudeau can give a speech calling “free-expression absolutists” “childish, unserious” fanatics while accepting a journalism award – and then be defended *by journalists* – is disgraceful. The idea that he can basically say “Well, of course the people at Charlie Hebdo didn’t deserve it, but man, did you see how short their skirts were” – and then be defended *by journalists* – is obscene. If you’re not “fanatical” about free-expression, you shouldn’t be a journalist.
Yes.
[Thursday-morning update]
The closing of the Millennial mind on campus:
A successful college education replaces ignorance with insight, and insularity with confidence and engagement. With the escalating price and debt loads from tuition becoming a crippling fiscal burden to young adults, delivering on those values becomes more important than ever to their economic survival.
Unfortunately, most of our universities and colleges end up promoting ignorance, insularity, fear, and infantilism. Rather than seek out heterodox opinions, the faculties and student bodies of these schools attempt to insulate themselves from opponents through speech codes, demands for “trigger warnings,” demagoguery and shouting down of alternate views. Instead of education producing open minds, these institutions end up indoctrinating young adults on how best to keep their minds closed, limited to the boundaries of groupthink rather than freed to pursue truth.
What’s worse, they borrow tens of thousands of dollars, in undischargeable debt, for the privilege. This may be the biggest scam in American history. It’s a tragedy and a travesty.
These idiots are doing a public service every time they let themselves get quoted by name in an article. Prospective employers very often perform Google searches on job applicants. It’ll be very easy to eliminate these chronic malcontents. Before Google, you’d need to establish and maintain a blacklist database. Now, Google does all the hard work for you…with no visible fingerprints.
Seriously, no rational employer would ever consider hiring one of these idiots. Truth be told, I doubt many of them want to work in the private sector where people are focused on results and evil profit. They’d rather work for some non-profit, academia, or the employment Lotto prize of a government job.
As usual, there is a free market solution. People should negotiate how much they are willing to pay to hear or not hear someone else. In a free market, free speech only makes as much sense as free consumer goods.
Oh Bob-1, bless your little heart.
I think he’s on to something. Suppose we charged liberals for filtering their search results? How much would they pay to maintain their bubble? I’m thinking quite a lot, up to maybe half their net income.
Conservative, on the other hand, seem to hit both liberal and conservative news source and pundits equally, so there’s no money to be made off them.
And it wouldn’t just be for the Internet. When we go into a restaurant, we could charge liberals for us not speaking up, in effect charging them to let us eat in peace, and if they speak up we could void the agreement, run them out of the establishment with their hands over their ears so they don’t hear words like “Laffer Curve”, and keep their money because they violated the terms of the contract.
It would basically be a mafia protection racket, but instead of threatening to break a store owner’s wife’s kneecaps, you would threaten to tell an off-color joke or speak an inconvenient truth about economics. Extremely lucrative and there’s nothing they could do to protect themselves, because even if they unplug from the Internet, you could threaten to put a Ronald Reagan poster under their car’s wiper blades, which would leave them mind-raped, traumatized, and mentally dysfunctional for months.
For those willing to cross certain lines, like expressing an opinion and backing it up with facts and data, people with histrionic personality disorder could be the cash cow of the 21st century.
We could use “The Clapper” as a system of measurement for calculating payment by rate. Oh damn, I shouldn’t have put this here… Well ok, but now nobody gets that patent. But please share your applause, as a minor token of my generosity. No freeloader jazz hands!
Oh, you call it “a mafia protection racket” and Leland in the other thread called it “extortion”, but c’mon, you have to embrace commerce, capitalism, and the free market.
Also: I was going to hit the donate button, on this site, to put my money where my mouth is, but
a) where is the profit in that?
b) having answered “a” for myself, I hit the donate button anyway, and received an error.
c) I would rather buy Rand some carbon debits.
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.
I think even the SJW types realize at some level that this doesn’t work. I recall discussions with trolls who brag of the challenge of trolling sites that attempt such things.
You could alleviate the problem by encouraging a (bidding) war between rival “danes”. You could also sell various increasingly complicated financial instruments which promise increased rewards for the same initial investment.
Anywhere with Brownshirts is not a “Free Market”.
This deliberate misunderstanding that “Free Market” means “Let anyone do -anything-” is pernicious. And evil.
The core idea of a modern free market is that of a trade where both sides freely choose the pile presented by the -other- side of the trade after (a) being reasonably well informed of what’s -in- both piles, and (b) -without- force, coercion, intimidation, etc.
Failing (a) is cheating, failing (b) is theft.
But if you fail neither, the total wealth of the system has generally grown.
Thank you. In my future pro-free-market commenting, I shall strive to succinctly show that both (a) and (b) are reasonably well achieved.
I think it is called the Marketplace of Ideas. It disappeared from the University Campus nearly 50 years ago.
If you want to bring back the marketplace, exorcise the ghost of the Frankfurt School.
It is logically impossible to learn if you are never wrong.
Honey Badgers banned from Calgary Comic Expo
Sad to see this level of idiocy here in my hometown. The femi-Nazis sure like to beat down anybody who disagrees.
“And beyond that, it was a great class because being exposed to a whole range of different ideas forces you to learn how to really think, something I think is being lost at a lot of colleges these days,”
Flies right in the defense most colleges use for not actually training people to work specific occupations, that being able to perform a job out of college is not as important as learning how to think. Oh wait, maybe it doesn’t…