The Rise of the Regressive Left

[untermensche]

The regressive left controls the media and the conversations we have as a society. When they silence someone, you're damn right that you don't hear about those people again.

Is this a joke?

The US corporate media is run by right wing authoritarians. Like almost all modern corporate structures.

They command in rigid top down dictatorships.

 

[Warpoet]

I do.

Though I don't have a thick posting history here going back several years or more, if I did you would find - as you can find in forums where I do have such a history - me regularly defending the rights to free speech of people with whom I do not agree.

And if you did some research, you'd probably find that I am not alone and that there are a lot of people just like me - that not everyone is the self-involved hypocrite you believe them to be.

This board currently prohibits any pro-pedophilia advocacy. Likewise, it is widely, almost completely shut out from any and all mainstream social discourse. You think that this mindset is erroneous, and that groups like NAMBLA should be given a mainstream platform to argue for the right to fuck little kids?

If you don't, then no, you don't believe that everyone's views deserve to be heard out in the public sphere. It is simply a matter of which views are heinous enough to be disqualified. Pedophilia is an extreme example we can all agree upon, but I consider unrepentant bigotry and mass demonization of entire groups of people to cross the threshold as well. But in principle, we pretty much all agree that certain views simply shouldn't be heard out.

 

[iolo]

When did this happen? Has it always been there and simply risen to prominence?

I think I can remember when being liberal meant being for free speech, including speech you strongly disagree with. I remember religious and quasi-religious crusades against everything from porn to Donald Duck not wearing pants to the Teletubbies (the pink one was said to be gay!) and demands to pull books off of shelves and to censor anything and everything. It was the liberals who stood against this. But today? "Safe Spaces"? "Trigger warnings"? "Micro-Aggressions"? Speakers cancelled because what they say offends somebody? When did the left become about shutting people up with self-righteous rage, instead of hearing people out and defeating them in the marketplace of ideas?

Wisdom is knowing and understanding the valuable insights of those you disagree with.

I recently followed David Rubin's exodus from the Young Turks. I had agreed, and still agree, with a lot of what they have to say, but my goodness have they jumped the shark. Cenk and Anna have turned into the equivalent of Fox News only from the other side. Rubin actually hears people out, even those he completely disagrees with, and I find it refreshing. Why is that no longer the norm?

I think that as liberals, we care more about the outsiders of the world, and have more empathy towards the outgroup. So we fight for the rights of minorities, be they black, gay, etc, and for immigrants and others around the world who are in need or who are oppressed. Equality and fair treatment matter a lot to us. But lazy thinking can carry that over into wanting to reflexively defend any individual minority member regardless of what they have done, or defending a group or ideology on the outs, and protecting it from criticism, even when those criticisms are against ultra-conservatism in that ideology (ie, Whenever we criticize Islam).

How do we bring liberals back to actual liberal values?

Being a classical liberal am I going to have to stop calling myself a Liberal because what "Liberal" means is changing, or can we get this regressive side of liberalism under control?

It is difficult to imagine a Country in which Liberalism can be considered 'left' in the C21. It ceased to be so here round about 1910, and I suppose that, even in America, working people expect someone to represent them. If that is what 'regressive' means, long live retrogression!

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

OP is obviously pissed over what I said to him here; however, this rant doesn't address the fairly straightforward and comprehensible point I was making.

Wow. Quite self absorbed are we? I didn't even read that post you point to. Now that I have, I see nothing to react to. There is no substance in it other than a heated dismissal of the subject of that thread.

No, the OP had nothing to do with you or your post. It had to do with the regressive left and especially Dave Rubin's exodus from the Young Turks and interviews he has done on his show that I have particularly enjoyed and that I found his style to be far more rare than it should be. Everyone from Sam Harris (explained his views well and how they have been taken out of context) to Michael Shermer (I expected some good from him) to Dinesh Desouza (shocked me) to Sarah Hader (had never heard her before but she had some good insights) have actually had some very interesting things to say once Rubin cut passed their routine soundbites. As I said above, wisdom is seeing the insights of those you disagree with. You can still completely disagree with them, but you can also learn something either about them and where they are coming from (and perhaps how to better oppose them) or in general (some of what the person you disagree with most says may actually make some sense).

It's easy to spout self-righteous rhetoric about how all ideas need to be heard out and the court of public opinion should prevail, but nobody saying it actually believes that. We don't hear them speaking up on behalf of groups like the Aryan Brotherhood or NAMBLA to have their views heard in a mainstream platform.

Where here you go then: The Aryan Brotherhood, NAMBLA, KKK, pornographers, Fred Phelps's gang etc shouldn't be silenced and should be heard. If only so we understand them and how to counteract them. Nobody should be silenced unless and until they explicitly incite violence or yell fire in a crowded building etc, and only while they are doing so. This used to be a core value of liberals.

It's almost always people who they share some sort of common cause with - like the OP does with Tommy Robinson.

I share no common cause with Tommy Robinson. I merely enjoy open dialogue and the exploration of ideas (and often the rejection of them after understanding what they actually are). The knee jerk and unthinking response you provide here is a great example of the regressive left sort of thinking. As is your attempt to brand me as somehow in agreement with Tommy Robinson. Rubin talks about that too. He has been hesitant to have some guests on merely because he realizes he will be attacked and maligned for merely speaking to them. This is not liberal thought.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

This board currently prohibits any pro-pedophilia advocacy. Likewise, it is widely, almost completely shut out from any and all mainstream social discourse. You think that this mindset is erroneous, and that groups like NAMBLA should be given a mainstream platform to argue for the right to fuck little kids?

I do, yes. My only line would be violence, and only an immediate call for it likely to incite people. I don't mind people advocating for wars etc online for example. It shows us what they are thinking, how they are thinking, why they are thinking it, and gives us the opportunity to form responses to it. If they are advocating criminal behaviour, it also tips us off to potential crimes they may commit and they may get some special scrutiny by the police.

But lets not kid ourselves. The regressive left isn't just about keeping NAMBLA at bay (I wouldn't be too bothered by that in and of itself). It is about silencing anybody and everybody who disagrees with their own agenda or who has opinions they find in some way offensive. I'm also not interested in discussing the biases and uneven moderation of this board, but those of us who are not perfectly in line with the agenda of the mods know how that goes here.

 

[ronburgundy]

I do.

Though I don't have a thick posting history here going back several years or more, if I did you would find - as you can find in forums where I do have such a history - me regularly defending the rights to free speech of people with whom I do not agree.

And if you did some research, you'd probably find that I am not alone and that there are a lot of people just like me - that not everyone is the self-involved hypocrite you believe them to be.

This board currently prohibits any pro-pedophilia advocacy. Likewise, it is widely, almost completely shut out from any and all mainstream social discourse. You think that this mindset is erroneous, and that groups like NAMBLA should be given a mainstream platform to argue for the right to fuck little kids?

If you don't, then no, you don't believe that everyone's views deserve to be heard out in the public sphere. It is simply a matter of which views are heinous enough to be disqualified. Pedophilia is an extreme example we can all agree upon, but I consider unrepentant bigotry and mass demonization of entire groups of people to cross the threshold as well. But in principle, we pretty much all agree that certain views simply shouldn't be heard out.

Promoting specific criminal actions that almost everyone thinks should be crimes (e.g., pedophilia versus pot smoking) is not remotely similar to voicing ideas not directly advocating criminal behavior or voicing views on unsettled factual matters. Valuing free speech and its critical role and progress of all types and in constraining fascism and authoritarianism, requires that the willingness to try and coercively silence speech rather than counter it with speech must have an extremely high bar limited to where the speech very explicitly advocates actions that are uncontroversially and near universally held to be deserving of criminal prohibition. IOW, only when the "view" is not merely a view about what is true but about what people should do in violation of near universally accepted law and thus is causally very proximal to actual criminal actions, should those views not be allowed public airing.

One thing that means that since no issue of empirical fact ever clearly recommends a particular action, there should never be censorship of discussions about data and empirical/scientific issues. For example, a speaker presenting research showing that pedophilia where violence or threat of violence is used has minimal long term harmful effects on most victims, should not be censored, regardless of how giddy NAMBLA might get over such findings. The same applies to any scientific discussions about race and gender, no matter who feels offended by the data being presented.

 

[ronburgundy]

Mods, I find this speech offensive. Please ban him.

Where are the victims illiberally silenced by this "regressive left"? Who are they? How do they suffer?

These are real questions BTW.

The victims of an act censorship are not just the speaker but all people that don't have the chance to hear that act of speech. IOW, everyone. Speech shapes thought, so all restraints on speech are restraints on thought. Do I need to spell out the harm done by not allowing people to engage in free thought?

It isn't just particular speakers being censored, but particular words and ideas, no matter who says them. Every instance of campus "speech codes" harms everyone, and most campuses have them (yet every legal challenge to such codes has resulted in a change to these clearly unconstitutional regulations of speech). In addition, every instance of censorship erodes the principle of free speech itself, making future restrictions of any type of speech more likely. Historical analysis and basic logic how principles operate make this clear. So, the harm done is well beyond any direct connection with the content of the ideas that are or are not heard.

The fact that you don't grasp these simple truths about free speech and why it matters so much is evidence you are part of the authoritarian regressive left that lacks a principled commitment to such a critical neccessary feature of any defensible society.

There is a non-partisan civil rights organization called the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education dedicated to the specific issue of free speech violations on college campuses. They both track and sometimes legally fight such cases, defending evertyone from PETA, marijuana advocates, and Ward Churchill (the Prof fired from U of Colorodo in 2005 for suggesting 9/11 was a predictable byproduct of US foriegn policy) to students and profs being dismissed for making passing comments that the leftist thought police find reasons to take offense over, to openly conservative student groups being prohibited from engaging in speech critical of various government and University policies (e.g., Young Republicans at NEIU banned from holding a mock bake sale designed to protest affirmative action policies where the protest was identical in format to a feminist bake sale protest the same University had just allowed mocking unequal pay).

In addition, a recent national poll showed that the majority of self-identified "Democrats" between 18 and 34 support "The Government should prevent people from saying things that that are offensive to minority groups." That is a dangerously low bar for censoring views that are light years from even anything validly labeled "hate-speech" let alone advocating violence or criminal acts. There are more such regressive authoritarian leftists among Millenials than there are right-wingers who support censorship of speech that offends religious belief.

 

[untermensche]

The victims of an act censorship are not just the speaker but all people that don't have the chance to hear that act of speech. IOW, everyone. Speech shapes thought, so all restraints on speech are restraints on thought. Do I need to spell out the harm done by not allowing people to engage in free thought?

If I am prevented from harassing people with speech who is harmed by that?

Some speech is better left unheard.

And some speech is illegal.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

The victims of an act censorship are not just the speaker but all people that don't have the chance to hear that act of speech. IOW, everyone. Speech shapes thought, so all restraints on speech are restraints on thought. Do I need to spell out the harm done by not allowing people to engage in free thought?

If I am prevented from harassing people with speech who is harmed by that?

Some speech is better left unheard.

And some speech is illegal.

Exactly. How can you have a stable government if you don't pass laws which allow the police to arrest those treasonous elements who criticize the ruling class? Their harassment of their superiors leads to unrest and a divisive society and we're all better off when they find themselves on the business end of a firing squad.

Or, are you suggesting that it's only the types of speech that you disagree with which should be silenced and outlawed?

 

[untermensche]

If I am prevented from harassing people with speech who is harmed by that?

Some speech is better left unheard.

And some speech is illegal.

Exactly. How can you have a stable government if you don't pass laws which allow the police to arrest those treasonous elements who criticize the ruling class? Their harassment of their superiors leads to unrest and a divisive society and we're all better off when they find themselves on the business end of a firing squad.

Or, are you suggesting that it's only the types of speech that you disagree with which should be silenced and outlawed?

This is not responsive to anything I said.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The victims of an act censorship are not just the speaker but all people that don't have the chance to hear that act of speech. IOW, everyone. Speech shapes thought, so all restraints on speech are restraints on thought. Do I need to spell out the harm done by not allowing people to engage in free thought?

If I am prevented from harassing people with speech who is harmed by that?

Some speech is better left unheard.

And some speech is illegal.

You're harassing people with your speech. Shut up!

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Exactly. How can you have a stable government if you don't pass laws which allow the police to arrest those treasonous elements who criticize the ruling class? Their harassment of their superiors leads to unrest and a divisive society and we're all better off when they find themselves on the business end of a firing squad.

Or, are you suggesting that it's only the types of speech that you disagree with which should be silenced and outlawed?

This is not responsive to anything I said.

Then, what are you saying? Your point seems to be that there should be some group of people with the authority to determine which speech should be unheard and which speech should be illegal. Am I wrong about that? If so, what criteria do you feel should be used to put certain types of speech into these groups?

The basic purpose of my post was to ask the question of what your position is when you feel that something should be said but society / the government disagree with you and feel it should not be said. What should one do if they find themselves in that situation?

 

[untermensche]

If I am prevented from harassing people with speech who is harmed by that?

Some speech is better left unheard.

And some speech is illegal.

You're harassing people with your speech. Shut up!

Yes. So-called "political correctness" is as big a problem as this.

 

[untermensche]

This is not responsive to anything I said.

Then, what are you saying? Your point seems to be that there should be some group of people with the authority to determine which speech should be unheard and which speech should be illegal. Am I wrong about that? If so, what criteria do you feel should be used to put certain types of speech into these groups?

The basic purpose of my post was to ask the question of what your position is when you feel that something should be said but society / the government disagree with you and feel it should not be said. What should one do if they find themselves in that situation?

I was responding to specific points. Mainly the point that suppression of any speech is harmful in itself.

Which is nonsense.

Who is harmed because somebody refrains from speech that is nothing but harassment?

I mentioned no remedies merely pointed out this absurdity.

And it is a fact that some speech is illegal.

 

[ronburgundy]

The victims of an act censorship are not just the speaker but all people that don't have the chance to hear that act of speech. IOW, everyone. Speech shapes thought, so all restraints on speech are restraints on thought. Do I need to spell out the harm done by not allowing people to engage in free thought?

If I am prevented from harassing people with speech who is harmed by that?

Everyone is harmed by such censorship, because it inherently increases the likelihood that any speech will be censored. The idea of "harassing people with speech" is so incredibly vague, subjective, and emotional that any and all speech can be characterized as doing it, including your speech in every post on this board.

You constantly post vacuous ramblings about conspiracies of particular authoritarian abuses, yet are promoting an ideology that is guaranteed to increase such abuses and fascistic government.

Some speech is better left unheard.

And some speech is illegal.

That actually has zero relevance to whether that speech should be prohibited.

The world would be better if some people were not in it. Does a person's net effect on what is "better" in the feelings of others warrant hunting all such people down and killing them?

My sister would be better off without her husband. Should she be allowed to kill him?

The world would be better without religion and theism, should these be made illegal? The US would be better without a GOP, should it be illegal to be or vote for a GOP candidate?

The world would be better if poor people didn't have so many kids, should we forcibly sterilize them?

Your idea that things should be made illegal and criminal simply because it meets the vague and purely emotional and ideological criteria that we are "better off without it" is the very epitome and foundation of the fascist authoritarian mentality and its the same argument used by authoritarians on the left and the right.

One really could not construct a strawman of the "regressive left" that is more extreme than the example created by your own arguments.

 

[untermensche]

If I am prevented from harassing people with speech who is harmed by that?

Everyone is harmed by such censorship, because it inherently increases the likelihood that any speech will be censored.

No. It decreases the likelihood that harassing speech will be tolerated.

It is a positive thing to point out to people when they are harming others with their speech.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Then, what are you saying? Your point seems to be that there should be some group of people with the authority to determine which speech should be unheard and which speech should be illegal. Am I wrong about that? If so, what criteria do you feel should be used to put certain types of speech into these groups?

The basic purpose of my post was to ask the question of what your position is when you feel that something should be said but society / the government disagree with you and feel it should not be said. What should one do if they find themselves in that situation?

I was responding to specific points. Mainly the point that suppression of any speech is harmful in itself.

Which is nonsense.

Who is harmed because somebody refrains from speech that is nothing but harassment?

I mentioned no remedies merely pointed out this absurdity.

And it is a fact that some speech is illegal.

Again, you're making a post which contains a number of categories but not defining those categories. Suppression of people's speech can very well be harmful depending on where one draws the line on what speech is going to be suppressed and what the consequences are for those who speak these things anyways.

Also, what do you mean when you use the word "harassment"? If President Trump decides that journalist are harassing him when they write articles questioning the effectiveness of his absolutely superb policies and they are harming society with these articles because they are impeding his plan to Make America Grrreat Again, does that count? I assume that you wouldn't agree with using "harassment" to describe that situation, so what falls under that term for you?

And yes, some speech is illegal. In many places, you can be arrested or executed for criticizing the government. You don't strike me as the kind of person who would agree with the statement "It's the law, so therefore it's right" or that a government would be right in doing that, so what are the criteria that has speech being illegal going from good to bad?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

It is a positive thing to point out to people when they are harming others with their speech.

Yes, sure, but that isn't censorship. It is one thing to tell people they are saying bad things; it is another to stop them from speaking.

 

[JonA]

It's easy to spout self-righteous rhetoric about how all ideas need to be heard out and the court of public opinion should prevail, but nobody saying it actually believes that.

I do.

Though I don't have a thick posting history here going back several years or more, if I did you would find - as you can find in forums where I do have such a history - me regularly defending the rights to free speech of people with whom I do not agree.

And if you did some research, you'd probably find that I am not alone and that there are a lot of people just like me - that not everyone is the self-involved hypocrite you believe them to be.

This board currently prohibits any pro-pedophilia advocacy. Likewise, it is widely, almost completely shut out from any and all mainstream social discourse. You think that this mindset is erroneous, and that groups like NAMBLA should be given a mainstream platform to argue for the right to fuck little kids?

Let me point out that the statement I said 'I do' to was:

It's easy to spout self-righteous rhetoric about how all ideas need to be heard out and the court of public opinion should prevail, but nobody saying it actually believes that​

It was not:

You think that this mindset is erroneous, and that groups like NAMBLA should be given a mainstream platform to argue for the right to fuck little kids​

Or...

We don't hear them speaking up on behalf of groups like the Aryan Brotherhood or NAMBLA to have their views heard in a mainstream platform.​

I will also point out that these two statements:

... that everyone's views deserve to be heard out in the public sphere...

... that groups ... should be given a mainstream platform...​

... do not deal with the same thing at all.

But in principle, we pretty much all agree that certain views simply shouldn't be heard out.

No we don't. Because I, for one, do not see anything to validate governments silencing people just because they argue for legalization of pedophilia - as disgusting a thing I may find that to be.

 

[untermensche]

It is a positive thing to point out to people when they are harming others with their speech.

Yes, sure, but that isn't censorship. It is one thing to tell people they are saying bad things; it is another to stop them from speaking.

I have such a hard time taking this whole non-issue seriously.

It is just a few college students and not some serious problem with society.

It is just a way for people to pretend there is a problem from people who self identify as being on the "left".

It is desperation. A political issue like gay marriage and men using toilets in the bathrooms designated for women.

But go ahead find me the person who was forced by somebody else to stop talking.