The growing left-wing authoritarianism among Millenials

[scombrid]

I see no argument about anything.

People can be reasonably harmed by speech.

Harmful behaviors should have prohibitions.

Sticks and stones can break my bones but words...

Harm is a slippery concept. Right now in the US we put the "harm" level that triggers speech restrictions at direct incitement to violence/physical harm. I am comfortable with that. I am not comfortable reducing the "harm" trigger to "offense" or "hurt feelings". That is where the super religious draw the line when they are using the state to protect their religion from criticism and it is stifling and prone to abuse by authorities.

 

[scombrid]

Some of these kids coming need to go to remedial US Government, History, and Civics classes. They need to understand that personal liberty necessarily means some restriction of government authority and that some people are going to do stuff or say things that you do not like. They can attend with the idiot tea party folks that wave the Constitution around without understanding a goddamned word of it; teafolk like my neighbor that is just now coming to the realization that when you hold title to property that means that you hold title to "exclusive use" but that your title on the land is ultimately subservient to City/County/State/USofA. Neighbor is all upset that she can't do anything she damn well pleases on her property and thinks that it is a new anti-freedom development brought about by liberals/obama. Somebody should have taught her about property laws and rights back in the day. Maybe they did and she forgot.

Do they teach civics and such in school anymore? I'm GenX. We didn't learn much about the nuts and bolts of local government in school, but I went to parochial so I don't know what the public schools were teaching.

 

[Nice Squirrel]

They are kids being kids. They'll grow out of it.

 

[Derec]

They are kids being kids. They'll grow out of it.

Are you sure? Untermensche still hasn't ...

 

[Nice Squirrel]

They are kids being kids. They'll grow out of it.

Are you sure? Untermensche still hasn't ...

We all mature at different paces.

 

[whichphilosophy]

Some of these kids coming need to go to remedial US Government, History, and Civics classes. They need to understand that personal liberty necessarily means some restriction of government authority and that some people are going to do stuff or say things that you do not like. They can attend with the idiot tea party folks that wave the Constitution around without understanding a goddamned word of it; teafolk like my neighbor that is just now coming to the realization that when you hold title to property that means that you hold title to "exclusive use" but that your title on the land is ultimately subservient to City/County/State/USofA. Neighbor is all upset that she can't do anything she damn well pleases on her property and thinks that it is a new anti-freedom development brought about by liberals/obama. Somebody should have taught her about property laws and rights back in the day. Maybe they did and she forgot.

Do they teach civics and such in school anymore? I'm GenX. We didn't learn much about the nuts and bolts of local government in school, but I went to parochial so I don't know what the public schools were teaching.

Though this is being eroded by Eu membership, the UK (which the USA largely adopted) also creates precedents in the courts.

 

[dismal]

How is that specifically harmful?

Its hurts the religious peoples feelings. Just like offensive speech about minorities hurts millennial's feelings.

Speech saying there shouldn't be free speech hurts my feelings.

 

[Derec]

Its hurts the religious peoples feelings. Just like offensive speech about minorities hurts millennial's feelings.

Speech saying there shouldn't be free speech hurts my feelings.

That depends: are you a minority?

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

Its hurts the religious peoples feelings. Just like offensive speech about minorities hurts millennial's feelings.

Speech saying there shouldn't be free speech hurts my feelings.

Speech saying that people who feel hurt by bigoted speech shouldn't work to curb such bigoted speech hurts my feelings.

 

[Colonel Sanders]

They are kids being kids. They'll grow out of it.

Hopefully.

As an older and recent attendee of a large California university, I can tell you, the kids aren't teaching this stuff to themselves. I'll go so far as to say that Fox News gives more time to the left than liberal arts programs give to anything right of slightly left of center.

Unfortunately, the term "personal responsibility" was so hijacked and twisted by the GOP in the U.S. for so many years that it still causes me to bridle when I hear it, despite its plain meaning when spoken in an apolitical context. And it is the plain meaning of the term that simply cannot be discussed in university because it separates the individual from the group that is helpless in the face of institutional Whatever. It forces group identification and stifles personal growth.

I once saw an Asian professor refuse to allow a student to write a paper on Gwen Stefani because apparently Stefani had some kind of choreography that borrowed from some form of Chinese dance tradition---the unforgivable cultural appropriation reared its ugly head.

In real literature classes, the go-to was the feminist perspective. Thankfully there was at least one professor who told the class, when studying Paradise Lost, that no one could write about it from a feminist perspective. The bitching was such that it was as if most of the class had fallen to Pandemonium along with Satan and the rest of his compatriots. But it was good because it forced them to actually have to think about what they were reading. But make no mistake, this professor was quite despised among his students. I quite like him though.

This thin-skinned leftist wave of speech oppression is something that will probably go away, but its crippling a lot of good minds in the meantime.

 

[dismal]

Speech saying there shouldn't be free speech hurts my feelings.

Speech saying that people who feel hurt by bigoted speech shouldn't work to curb such bigoted speech hurts my feelings.

Work all you like.

However if by "work" you mean "attempt to criminalize" you have hurt my feelings and by your standards deserve to be punished. If you want to haul yourself before me in chains I can give you the address.

 

[crispy]

Censorship of speech has always been empirical and theoretically central to the concept of authoritarianism.

It has mostly been tied to right-wing politics to the point where many (wrongly) assume that authoritarianism and right-wing are largely synonymous. Classical liberalism values liberty at least as much as equality of opportunity and treatment under the law, which prevents true liberalism from endorsing authoritarian controls aimed at forcing equality of outcomes.
But the US is seeing a rapid rise in left-wing authoritarianism in which the liberty part of liberalism is being discarded.

The rise in support for censorship among the left is among its telltale signs, and is shown by this recent PEW survey.


33% of Americans do not agree that "People should be able to make statements that are offensive to minority groups"

40% of "millennials" (ages 18-35) agree that "Government should be able to prevent people from making statements that are offensive to minority groups."

This latter number is up a good deal from the 27% of 36-50 year olds, and 24% of 51 to 69 year olds.

When you consider that only about half of Millennials lean "Dem". That means that among the next generation of Democrats and so-called "liberals", the vast majority of them support government censorship of speech that offends minority groups. In fact, white Dems (who wrongly label themselves "liberal") support such censorship moreso than the non-white minorities who are usually the one's supposedly being offended.

That should frighten any reasonable person that values liberty (all which requires strong free speech protection), even moreso than the speech that rightly offends minority groups.

Correlation != causation.

The percentages may very well be because of less life experience, instead of being born a certain year.

 

[ronburgundy]

No, it simply hurts their feelings.

It can intimidate, and frighten, and cause anxiety and even depression. Humans have a psychology. They are not robots.

Those are feelings, and words cannot harms them. The hearer of the words harm their own feelings via their reaction to those words and they have control over those reactions. As you say, they are not robots, meaning they are not programmed to automatically feel negatively in response to particular words. Plus, negative feelings are not "harm" in any objective sense. Bodily harm hinders actual existence. Negative emotions are part of what human existence is about and gives it its meaning, and motivates actions. Emotions are just a source of information. They are not harm, even when "negative".
This is the very reasonable basis why anyone that cares about liberty and all of the progress it has allowed, draw a very distinct ethical and legal line between bodily harm and emotional impact.

Also, all of that impact on emotions is equally true of all speech, including blasphemy and criticism of government. So, if you buy it as a justification for prohibiting speech, then its irrational hypocrisy for you not support suppression of blasphemous speech and anything that the State feels "hurts their feelings".

There is no such concept as "free speech".

We have centuries of philosophical and legal though explaining what "free speech" is. Your semantic games won't contradict that.

Who is this "we" and what the hell are you talking about?

People that are not completely ignorant of the last 25 centuries of human thought.

There are many legal restrictions on speech, even political speech.

The same "logic" applies to absolutely every single type of freedom, liberty, and "rights". So, your position is that there is no concept as freedom, liberty, or rights related to anything or anyone?

In the US, the principle of free speech is what limits any restriction on the content of speech to extremely prescribed circumstances where the speech can be reasonable assumed to directly cause actual behavioral actions that harm other people, or within the context where the person swore to be truthful in a legal context where harmful actions against others are being determined. Fraud is NOT a speech restriction. IT is a behavioral restriction. You can run around all you want saying "This widget has property X". What you cannot do is then go and engage in the behavior of selling that Widget, if it does not have property X.

IOW, the harm to others is not caused by the speech itself, but by its direct connection to physical actions that caused material harm.

 

[ronburgundy]

Censorship of speech has always been empirical and theoretically central to the concept of authoritarianism.

It has mostly been tied to right-wing politics to the point where many (wrongly) assume that authoritarianism and right-wing are largely synonymous. Classical liberalism values liberty at least as much as equality of opportunity and treatment under the law, which prevents true liberalism from endorsing authoritarian controls aimed at forcing equality of outcomes.
But the US is seeing a rapid rise in left-wing authoritarianism in which the liberty part of liberalism is being discarded.

The rise in support for censorship among the left is among its telltale signs, and is shown by this recent PEW survey.


33% of Americans do not agree that "People should be able to make statements that are offensive to minority groups"

40% of "millennials" (ages 18-35) agree that "Government should be able to prevent people from making statements that are offensive to minority groups."

This latter number is up a good deal from the 27% of 36-50 year olds, and 24% of 51 to 69 year olds.

When you consider that only about half of Millennials lean "Dem". That means that among the next generation of Democrats and so-called "liberals", the vast majority of them support government censorship of speech that offends minority groups. In fact, white Dems (who wrongly label themselves "liberal") support such censorship moreso than the non-white minorities who are usually the one's supposedly being offended.

That should frighten any reasonable person that values liberty (all which requires strong free speech protection), even moreso than the speech that rightly offends minority groups.

Correlation != causation.

The percentages may very well be because of less life experience, instead of being born a certain year.

????? Of course, the particular number of the birth year has nothing causally to do with it!! Where did you get that from?

I agree, it is their "experiences", among which includes the experience of being raised in a culture of whining, victimhood, and manufactured outrage, where the free expression of ideas is attacked and devalued.

Are you trying to say that maybe it is just that they have had less life experience and they will become more liberal and accepting of free speech when they get older?
All other research suggest just the opposite, that they will only get more intolerant of others speech, which is an aspect of authoritarian conservatism that increases with age.

In addition, the fact that the support for censorship is tied to specific types of speech (that which offends minorities) and that support is much stronger among Democrats and among women, suggests it is not tied to length of life experiences but rather tied to the specific kinds of socialization that relates to whether a Millenial identifies as "liberal" or "Dem" (even though censorship is the definitional anti-thesis of true liberalism).

 

[ronburgundy]

Speech saying there shouldn't be free speech hurts my feelings.

Speech saying that people who feel hurt by bigoted speech shouldn't work to curb such bigoted speech hurts my feelings.

The censorship Millennial "liberals" support is not about people trying to curb their own speech, or even about other people speaking to shame them into curbing their speech. It is about them supporting the use of government force to criminalize speech.

 

[ronburgundy]

They are kids being kids. They'll grow out of it.

What is most frightening about it is precisely that they are not being "kids". For one, they are voting adults. But also, people are generally the most supportive of basic liberties and rebellious against authoritarian control when they are young. They get more conservative and less tolerant of speech they disagree with as they get older. Odds are that this 40% will only increase in that generation and future generations and extend to censorship of other kinds of speech since ignoring the principle in one context inherently erodes it as a principle, and the value for principle is the only to fight against the motive to violate liberties you find distasteful.

This is not a byproduct of youth. It is a byproduct of a dangerously authoritarian mentality they have been socialized into, likely combined with an inability to be able to cope with their own negative emotions, due to constant coddling and efforts to shield them form negative feelings.
It coheres predictably with the leftist rhetoric and policies that promote the kind of authoritarian coercion that is definitional to modern conservatism but has become increasingly common on the left, as respect for individual liberty is supplanted with a myopic demand for equality of group level outcomes at all costs.

 

[untermensche]

It can intimidate, and frighten, and cause anxiety and even depression. Humans have a psychology. They are not robots.

Those are feelings, and words cannot harms them....

Nonsense.

Bullies will always find ways to justify their bullying.

Even with lies like these.

People can be seriously harmed by the words of others. That is a fact.

 

[crispy]

Correlation != causation.

The percentages may very well be because of less life experience, instead of being born a certain year.

????? Of course, the particular number of the birth year has nothing causally to do with it!! Where did you get that from?

I agree, it is their "experiences", among which includes the experience of being raised in a culture of whining, victimhood, and manufactured outrage, where the free expression of ideas is attacked and devalued.

Are you trying to say that maybe it is just that they have had less life experience and they will become more liberal and accepting of free speech when they get older?
All other research suggest just the opposite, that they will only get more intolerant of others speech, which is an aspect of authoritarian conservatism that increases with age.

In addition, the fact that the support for censorship is tied to specific types of speech (that which offends minorities) and that support is much stronger among Democrats and among women, suggests it is not tied to length of life experiences but rather tied to the specific kinds of socialization that relates to whether a Millenial identifies as "liberal" or "Dem" (even though censorship is the definitional anti-thesis of true liberalism).

Well, you claimed it had something to do with the year they were born (millenials).

And its exactly a possibility that its because they are younger, they are more likely to have certain opinions. All I am saying is that those numbers you presented alone doesnt prove what you are saying. How were they 10 years ago? 20? 30?

 

[Blahface]

The truth is that freedom of speech is something most people only support in theory. When it is put into practice and you start attacking someone's sacred cow and you are no longer dealing with something abstract, that is when you start to see resistance. This doesn't just go for Millenials. I'd bet that if you polled Americans about whether or not burning the flag should be prohibited, the Millenials would be least likely to say yes.

 

[Nexus]

Those are feelings, and words cannot harms them....

Nonsense.

Bullies will always find ways to justify their bullying.

Even with lies like these.

People can be seriously harmed by the words of others. That is a fact.

Prove it. Explain in detail how sound waves from a human's voice harms another person. Or how letters arranged in a certain sequence harms someone if their eyes view those words.