Montreal’s McGill University is the latest school facing an attack on free speech and academic freedom. We have followed efforts to fire professors who hold opposing views on police abuse or the Black Lives Matter organization. At McGill, eight student groups have gone further. They want to rescind the emeritus status of a retired professor to retroactively punish him for opposing their views. Professor Philip Carl Salzman is a well-known anthropologist with an impressive record of publications and recognitions. However, students are demanding the rare action to “protect and legitimize racist and Islamophobic dialogues.” They further declare in an open letter that free speech “does not exist outside of its social context” and that it has been shown to be “dictated by whiteness.”
We have been discussing efforts to fire professors who voice dissenting views of the basis or demands of recent protests including an effort to oust a leading economist from the University of Chicago as well as a leading linguistics professor at Harvard and a literature professor at Penn.
The McGill open letter is signing on behalf of eight groups:
The Students’ Society of McGill University Executive Team
The Anthropology Students Association
The Anthropology Graduate Students Association
World Islamic & Middle Eastern Studies Association
Black Students Network
Muslim Students Association
Students in Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights
Thaqalayn Muslim Association
The letter explains why free speech should not be a barrier to punishing faculty for holding unacceptable or controversial views. Indeed, free speech itself is deemed harmful:
Freedom of expression is traditionally considered central to permitting the free exchange of ideas and debate and fostering the university environment. Free speech, however, does not exist outside of its social context. David Gillborn, a critical race theorist at the University of Birmingham, suggests that the terms of what is considered ‘legitimate’ speech are dictated by whiteness, since “[w]hiteness operates to invest speech with different degrees of legitimacy, such that already debunked racist beliefs can enjoy repeated public airings where they are lauded as scientific and rational by many White [sic] listeners, who simultaneously define as irrational, emotional, or exaggerated the opposing views of people of colour.” Moreover, evidence from psychology, social work, and medicine suggest that microaggressions, including racist, sexist, homophobic, or transphobic speech, have numerous and significant impacts on the health, wellbeing, and educational success of marginalized people.
The defence of discriminatory dialogue at the expense of the safety, security, and wellbeing of people of colour reflects the power of whiteness in determining what is and is not considered acceptable speech. Upholding free speech at the cost of marginalized groups permits racist talk with real-world impacts; it teaches future generations that perpetrating this kind of harm is acceptable. These harms are not hypothetical; they have been and will continue to be felt by marginalized communities on campuses across the country.
The letter captures the chilling shift on our campus. Students and faculty were once the bulwark against speech controls and regulations. They are now calling for the censorship and silencing of those with opposing views. The “real-world impacts” that concern them do not include a world without free speech. Now free speech must be curtailed to conform to the “social context.”
The point of free speech is that it is not relative to the social context. It can change social contexts (as did the speech of figures like Martin Luther King and Harvey Milk), but it is not dependent on social context. Free speech is a human right to expression. Society will not always approve of the viewpoints of some but free speech allows each person — including these students — to express their values and beliefs.
In a statement to The College Fix, Brooklyn Frizzle, vice president of student affairs with the Students’ Society, further explained that “no freedom is without limits” and that “freedom of expression cannot be used to defend hate speech.” She said that the initial complaint against Saltzman came from the Canadian Arab Federation, which previously attempted to get McGill University to publicly condemn Salzman’s writings.
What is particularly chilling is the example cited for this action, a clear opinion expressed by Salzman on the Middle East:
In the past year, several articles have been posted on public forums by Professor Philip Carl Salzman, a retired Professor Emeritus of the McGill Anthropology Department. In one recent example, Salzman goes on to write that “the Middle East is a place where doing harm and being cruel to others is regarded as a virtue and a duty.” Salzman goes on to condemn multiculturalism, immigration, gender parity, cultural equality, social justice, and the Black Lives Matter movement, along with dismissing the existence of rape culture and systemic racism.
Despite their editorial nature, Salzman’s opinions are presented as though they are objective facts. …
Framing this as an issue of Professor Salzman’s academic freedom, rather than the right of Muslims and People of Colour have to feel safe, illustrates the ways in which McGill maintains structures that protect and legitimize racist and Islamophobic dialogues.
In a now common construct by liberal groups seeking to limit free speech and academic freedom, the students simply brush over the “editorial nature” of such writings. Instead, they insist that the opinions are “presented as though they are objective facts.” Most opinions are stated from a perspective that they are correct in their historical, political, or social viewpoint. Yet, the letter shows an increasingly common construct of denouncing opposing viewpoints as “fake news” or “disinformation.”
They are not alone. We have have been discussing how writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. Even journalists are leading attacks on free speech and the free press. This includes academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy. Now, Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll has denounced how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation.
In his response, Salzman tries to explain the difference between dialogue and diatribes on our campuses:
It appears to have eluded the students supporting this petition that a university is supposed to be a place where opinions, views, and theories are exchanged and critically assessed. I would welcome critiques of my articles through argument and evidence and am prepared to defend my positions. But these students have made no attempt to challenge my articles with contrary arguments and contradictory evidence. Their view appears to be that diversity of opinion about important subjects is unacceptable. Faced with opinions that they dislike, they attack the messenger rather than the message. And they move swiftly from accusation to sentence, without bothering to pass through argument and evidence.
I assume that McGill will stand firm on academic freedom and free speech. However, the greater danger is the growing anti-free speech movement on our campuses. The open letter of these students expresses views that were once deemed extreme and anti-intellectual. They are increasingly become mainstream as students and faculty alike yield to the temptation to silence those with opposing views.
I agree with some commenters here who say define some of these so called colleges.
Make no such assumption. In Canada, our right of free expression is not the same as in the United States. We are subject to hate crime laws that protect the usual suspects plus other restrictions, and this effort by McGill students could well succeed even in court.
Canada even has criminal laws regarding slander and libel, and one can find themselves at risk of a criminal penalty for saying the wrong thing.
If you want to see an example of how it works in Canada, Mark Steyn’s fight over remarks that he made from several years ago is exemplary.
He won, but at what cost?
So deaf and dumb we shall all be led to our end. Free speech must be upheld for everyone no matter who finds it distasteful. I find this appalling.
Maybe it’s time to ask, is American pluralism really a good idea?
Can we really live together?
Is it wise to tolerate error?
Maybe it’s time for a divorce. The woke crowd can have California and New York. Normal people can have the middle.
And if we all pretty much see eye to eye, then will there really be a need for the “First Amendment?”
Was the “First amendment” just one of many compromises that the Founders made to get the deal, to bring a disunified pluralistic set of states into a loose federal union?
Do we have to let their deal from 250 years ago define our polity forever? Is it Holy Writ?
Maybe the Left is smarter than we are on this. Maybe they understand that some viewpoints will spoil the soup. Maybe intolerance is a necessary ingredient to an emergent society.
Maybe they are an emergent society that is so different from what came before among us Americans, that there needs to be two Americas now.
Maybe “free speech” “tolerance” “marketplace of ideas” and all that jive were just fantasies of an Enlightenment, that went down in flames in the 20th century.
And we are still here acting like we didn’t get the memo.
Saloth Sar
Sal, my two cents, what we are witnessing is the sharpening of boundaries in political opinion. When I was a kid, we had southern Democrats and California Republicans, and voters tended to choose among such politicians because they distrusted stereotypical politicians. Politics was geographically diluted and scrambled.
Now we are electing northern Democrats and southern Republicans, so the political distinctions are becoming more geographically consistent and sharper. Intense political differences along geographic lines are potentially dangerous.
Then of course there is the emergence of boutique journalism and social media, and these intensify confirmation bias.
The factors driving leftwing stridency are especially strong. Education naturally attracts liberal-left types, and with the passing of the Greatest Generation in education, education has become an echo chamber of leftism. Globalization and third-world immigration also favor radicalization, so not surprisingly, the trend toward the left has been notably more intense than the trend toward the right.
And let’s not ignore the elephant in the room (you never let us forget). Globalization is making the ruling class filthy rich while damaging political stability. It’s a Malthusian world that is the real subtext for open borders.
The result is that the middle, the range of consensus, has just about collapsed.
To get back to the questions you raise, I submit that free speech still matters tremendously, but in the absence of a meaningful consensus, the left is bound to reject free speech. The left doesn’t want war or secession because those could easily backfire (red counties have a lot of resources, taxpayers, and consumers), but there’s no bridging the differences, so legal suppression is the best strategy for the left.
Some on the right believe secession is workable. Free speech would not be an impediment to that cause; however, I don’t believe secession is workable—just longer borders with fewer resources to defend them. Also, there will inevitably be fighting over who gets what. Instead, events might lead to a war of proscription, i.e., states and counties don’t leave; they get kicked out to reestablish a workable consensus. Again, free speech would not be a barrier to that strategy, but wars are inherently risky. If the right lost, the left would be even more determined to suppress.
Globalization is doomed, so it’s impact may ebb, but with its collapse, desperate immigration may intensify. Boutique journalism and social media are here to stay. The geographic alignment is still underway. I just don’t see any conditions leading to the improvement of the national consensus.
Of course, it’s always possible the left might wake up from their reverse McCarthyism. American radicalism is insane in just about every respect. People might finally realize that globalization is a dead end for political stability.
That’s why I’m very interested in van Creveld’s book. It might give me some insight to how things will shake out.
yeah it’s not clear where it’s heading. i tend to think the globalists are firmly in control and driving every single one of the big messes of 2020
one thing is clear they are seeking to do in the nation state. technology is a factor in that. they drive technology and guide it to their ends
who knows where it will end up
Sal Sar
Agreed.
Decades ago, as a graduate student, Marxist professors encouraged me to debate them openly — to engage them with persuasion and arguments. (They were old-school scholars, first; advocates, second.) Years after that, as an academic, “aggrieved activists” and faculty cliques decreed: We will not permit your opinions and arguments to be heard here. Their rationalization was always the same: Your ideas hurt our feelings.
Academia’s promise was always: the “life of the mind.” That life is being snuffed out by those who elevate emotions over reason.
Universities need to start suspending students who demand this sort of nonsense. They have no maturity or life experience to demand anything.
Well, this is the millennial phenomenon, after all (now teachers and professors). Gen Z are even worse, and the kids coming up after them are still worse somehow. We did this, and only we can undo it by ceasing the endless capitulation to privileged, precious, pampered, perfectly prosperous, spoiled and fragile children, and that seems to be the sole M.O. of a certain rather large portion of our republic, these are future voters and they know it. The kids AIN’T alright. Seriously not alright, and comparisons to past generations that stood for something are a damned joke. These kids want eternal coddling and to punish those that refuse to provide it and they want it at any cost. The neurons aren’t firing on all cylinders.
Speech must be in the correct social context, This is the latest changed definition, it used to be; speech must be within the revolutionary Dialectic.
SJWs, critical race theorists, and gender degree holders have no path to wealth and control; unless they can install themselves as the primary, mandatory psycho / social arbiters.
To Joe Friday, If you don’t like Professor Turley’s choice of subjects start your own blog then a moron like you can choose the topics. Also in case you have not noticed he is a law professor NOT an epidemiologist or a cyber security expert!
You’re right Paul. No legal ramifications to a coup attempt by the defeated President, his failure to perform the duties of the office since his trauma, or cyber security attacks. How silly of me.
Blacks Lives Matter is just a joke of an organization which, of course, makes its followers clowns.
So can someone please explain why adults mostly cringe and appease an angry irrational little mob of those without fully formed brains or thought processes? Really.
Because it’s pantomime. The students are agents of the administration and enabler faculty. The carping of these fools is excuse fodder for the administration to do what it wants to do anyway.
Maybe “the Left” has siezed upon an ancient wisdom
Pluralism is a failure. They are not interested in pluralism anymore. They want uniformity. They want to live with other people who think like they do.,
Maybe that is because deep down, “diversity” is not actually a strength. See, their mouths cry for it, but their actions prove they do not like it.
Maybe that is because deep down, none of us like diversity. We want to live in society that has some order and agreement on fundamentals.
Before we get too mad at the Left, maybe, just maybe, let’s stop for a minute and imagine, what if America was a place where we all pretty much agred on the basics?
What would that look like? the late 1950s? Maybe it would look like Japan? I dont know. Maybe it would be a more peaceful and prosperous existence for us. Would that be a bad thing?
Maybe it’s time to reject pluralism altogether. Maybe a homogenous society is more desirable. Homogenous in many ways including, ideas and culture, perhaps most of all.
Maybe the First Amendment is obsolete and it’s time to move on. Get past it. Let them have their cancel-spaces but get ready for this– we’re gonna have ours too
Saloth Sar
Jurtz rails against the inevitable future and with no answer except a romantic fantasy he got from a book or movie.
Pluralism not only works – see America for the last 170 years at least – it kicks ass – see “hynrid vigor” – and will continue to do so unabated. I don;t know about him, but I’m proud of a US Olympic team with Lebron James, Michael Phelps, and Simon Briles marching in the opening ceremony, and of Nobel prizes to Americans with names I can’t begin to pronounce. It’s the human race buddy, an we have it in spades – no pun intended – here.
There is no future in nationalism or racial purity, especially for a white race which makes up a small and shrinking part of the population. In fact our booming world economy – before the pandemic – has lifted even 3rd world countries from starvation and short life spans and we all buy food and toys at historically low prices.
Leave Kurtz and his racist yearnings in the dirt. He’s ending up there one way or another with his program.
oh, race or ethnicity are indeed natural forms of organic human social organization, and I fully admit they are legitimate norms for human association. yes, even for politics. and they are operating as such all around the world, even if that’s verboten in the USA and Europe. Forbidden only to who? more importantly, why?
you call that racism. that’s your word not mine
but it’s not just about race. its about a lot of other things too. religious order, kinship order, cultural order, class order, you name it. those things are all out there in one form or another. secularism is itself, a belief system that functions almost precisely like religions do. capitalism, becomes neofeudalism now. we can see that the old patterns reform like salt crystals, absorbed into water, and then when the water dries up, the same crystalline forms reappear
“the Left” is hated by normal Americans who don’t understand this. Is it because we, too, are deluded? We too, have bought into false notions?
As for “the future” of society, in case you forgot, the rising economy is China. Which although it has hundreds of ethnicities, is ruled by one. The Han Chinese people. Explicitly so. Seems like China isn’t failing either for a lack of diversity nor a lack of free speech. They may be an adversary of America, but is there something to be learned?
Im just asking questions. I can see that some people find my questions disturbing. Calling me a racist, isnt that trying to shame me into silence?
Your own instincts betray you Joe
Saloth Sar
Kurtz, you’re not a “normal American”. Normal Americans didn’t vote for Trump, they voted for the Democratic candidate like they have in every election but one since 1992.
Your questions aren’t disturbing because they’re going nowhere – they’re funny. Answer them yourself. What are you proposing besides a bad attitude?
Assimilation works. The type of tribalism you cherish doesn’t.
Well said.
It would be because they are stupid cowards.
maybe these kids have the basic human instinct that we lack
maybe they are smart for being intolerant.
maybe we should be intolerant, too.
maybe two ever more divergent groups of “Americans” just need to separate.
maybe that’s the way to achieve a peace that we obviously lack.
maybe peace is more important than pluralism
maybe order is more important than diversity
maybe the Left is seeking an order that is good for them
and we need to seek an order that is good for us
just asking questions here– can I do that? is it ok for me to question the Bill of Rights?
Or is that one of those intolerant ideas that the tolerant must intolerate?
Saloth Sar
Yeah Kurtz, God knows human cooperation and times of peace have never gotten us anywhere. Look how the world has suffered since some one else who agrees with you tried to conquer the world. Yeah, it’s been just a nightmare since 1945!
Ha ha, for the adversaries of America, has it been so peaceful and cooperative?
Amazing how you advocates of diversity and internationalism ever fail to account for the viewpoints America’s strategic adversaries used to have before they got squashed
Behold the underlying message: accept our message of tolerance and diversity and pluralism, or else!
Saloth Sar
Kurtz, you’re bright enough to understand that one measures the world economy and world peace by the overall trends. not circumstances in limited situations. THese things can be measured and have been. Humans over the last several decades have the lowest chance of having their life ended by another human EVER! Humans live longer EVERYWHERE and even wealth has increased EVERYWHERE. That is a testimony to peace, cooperation, and technological advancement which flow from those conditions. Your fantasy that white people in America need to fight there way out of this, or could if the needed to is complete BS. Good! We litearlly have never had it so good as a species and most likely as individuals, unless we are outliers.
and yet murder rates in the big cities in USA went up a lot this year. surely you saw the news
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2020/1214/2020-s-murder-increase-is-unprecedented.-But-is-it-a-blip
peace, peace, again, that is how you see it. Did the Picts see the Pax Romana as peace?
Allow me to share a speech attributed to Calcagus, their chieftan. From Tacitus:
“Whenever I consider the origin of this war and the necessities of our position, I have a sure confidence that this day, and this union of yours, will be the beginning of freedom to the whole of Britain. To all of us slavery is a thing unknown; there are no lands beyond us, and even the sea is not safe, menaced as we are by a Roman fleet. And thus in war and battle, in which the brave find glory, even the coward will find safety. Former contests, in which, with varying fortune, the Romans were resisted, still left in us a last hope of succour, inasmuch as being the most renowned nation of Britain, dwelling in the very heart of the country, and out of sight of the shores of the conquered, we could keep even our eyes unpolluted by the contagion of slavery. To us who dwell on the uttermost confines of the earth and of freedom, this remote sanctuary of Britain’s glory has up to this time been a defence. Now, however, the furthest limits of Britain are thrown open, and the unknown always passes for the marvellous. But there are no tribes beyond us, nothing indeed but waves and rocks, and the yet more terrible Romans, from whose oppression escape is vainly sought by obedience and submission. Robbers of the world, having by their universal plunder exhausted the land, they rifle the deep. If the enemy be rich, they are rapacious; if he be poor, they lust for dominion; neither the east nor the west has been able to satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal eagerness poverty and riches. To robbery, slaughter, plunder, they give the lying name of empire; they make a solitude and call it peace.”
Saloth Sar
Here is a song that renders that famous speech a little differently, set to the well known Irish tune called Brian Boru
By the neofolks band “blood axis”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWNZfTwZVzw
Saloth Sar
Exactly, Sal.
What would make anyone think that those brains of the 60’s and into later years were able to develop into the mature brains of leaders? They were given the keys to the offices of power and never grew up.
Not everyone who grew up in the 60s went down the rabbit hole.
Right. those minds that never matured are leading the leftist violence.
Anything important happening in the world? Somebody actively planning a coup of the US government? Pandemics raging and killing more people each day that a 9/11 attack? Cyber attacks on US security?
Guess not, so why doesn’t Turley write about college students doing something questionable? Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Get your own blog if you don’t like the fare.
Arty:
Who’d read Gainesville’s blog? The blind, deaf and dumb?
i suspect that this blog comments area shows what free speech is really like in its essence. rude, arrogant, disharmonious, and uncivil
maybe it ensures that America was, is, and soon will continue to be, a socially atomized, disharmonious, contentious society
maybe it’s time to rethink the desirability of “pluralism” altogether
Sal Sar
It is all part of the same problem, to ignore free speech attacks by what you feel is more pressing dangers is to ignore the foundation that freedom rests on. We must push back against ALL attempts to dismantle freedom and free speech.
You always lie, or just to your betters?
Apparently McGill is standing firm on protecting freedom of speech , see letter from provost:
https://www.change.org/p/university-of-mcgill-vice-chancellor-suzanne-fortier-affirm-the-statement-of-academic-freedom-at-mcgill/u/28228045
Actually, it’s an insipid and mealy-mouthed statement. He could have dealt with the issue more concisely, but he’d have to stick a stilletto into the complaining woke-tards, and that he won’t do. The small favor was that he refrained from insulting Dr. Salzman. See, by contrast, his counterpart at Cornell, who went out of his way to make rude remarks about Prof William Jacobson, a man who certainly did not deserve that.
I would posit that the demands themselves put forth by these fringe groups are, in fact, protected free speech. It is what they are demanding that is unacceptable.
I don’t think anyone that stands for free speech would disagree but I think most people recognize this type of speech to represent a totalitarian mind set from young students who should be set straight. The students are demonstrating their inherent racism.
Actually, the students are pissing on street trees like dogs and demanding that others stay out of their territory. They need to be slapped down hard.
Unfortunately, this type of academic tripe is not uncommon. How sad – not only for those of alive at this time, but, unless curbed, for those who come after us
So very, very true.
This is additive to all the proof we have seen on this blog that the ideas of the left do not satisfy the needs of freedom in a free society. With an inability of the left to adequately express itself in an intelligent fashion they seek to deprive others of their freedom of speech.
The “Open Letter” shows how utterly stupid and imbecile the new generation of students are. The letter is full of words and clichés which state nothing. Just words, words and more words.
Professor Salzman’s reply is concise and to the point. What will become of humanity??
“The letter is full of words and clichés which state nothing. Just words, words and more words.”
Pretty much like the anonymous cretin who saturates this blog with loads of meaningless responses without an intelligent word among them.
About the young, the best lack all conviction, the worst are filled with passionate intensity. This isn’t always true, but it’s been true the last 15 years or so. If you questioned them carefully, I think you’d discover that most of the exhibitionists are organization kids, responding to what the enabler faculty tell them. Leadership in higher education is deficient and most faculty and administrators are very far from admirable. We live in a decadent age.
Republican state legislators have the tools at hand to clean up their state systems. They never use them.
” it’s been true the last 15 years or so … Leadership in higher education is deficient ”
Leadership has been deficient in higher education ever since the cowardly university presidents yielded to the mob of pigmy minds rioting at their door steps. I think Columbia was the first or one of the first to permit this type of idiocy.
True. It’s been some time since academic administrators were respectable. I was referring to the youths. Twenty years ago, the political opinions of the young showed the same 50-50 split as the political opinions of the rest of the population and political sectaries on campuses were not numerous and passably congenial. There was a very abrupt shift between 2000 and 2008. Fashion is always a puzzle.
Ohio governor Mike DeWine recently signed Senate Bill 40 -( Protecting free speech on campus), so there’s a start.
I certainly hope so. Keep in mind that the modal disposition of higher ed bureaucracies is try-every-door non=compliance when they don’t want to follow the law. You have to provide for an enforcement mechanism and you have to specify institutional obligations. I doubt you’ll get compliance unless the corporate veil which protects the president, the dean of students, and other actors from personal liability is removed.
But what you really need is legislative remedies within the limits of the state constitution. The Missouri constitution to take one example, gives the legislature wide latitude to effect repairs, but the legislators do not use them. Another thing you need to do is put the fear of God in judges who invent immunitiies that have no basis in law. That requires political organizing.
That’s right. Political organizing is everything.
However the motley crews of the socalled “right” have no coherent philosophy and cling to bromides of the Enlightenment that were a strategy to divide and conquer human groups in the first place. We have to jettison those failed ideas first, scourge them, and scour them, or else the fundamental errors will persist
at root of many of these errors is the big one: that pluralism is desirable.
It isn’t actually. Not for normal people at least. For billioinaires? Sure they love it when all society is all mixed up and atomized and in conflict. Then without social unity, the society can’t tturn on the billinoaires.
But for regular folks? Perhaps a more harmonious, orderly, and even a more homogenous society, is a more desirable one.
The Left obviously gets it. They are out to make their spaces more homogenous, by getting rid of US and people like us.
So we better establish our own green zones and fast, and have the gall to desire and require them to have a certain amount of homogeneity, harmony, and order
No getting that done without attacking the champions of disorder and atomization. That’s actually not “the Left” that is the billionaires.
Saloth Sar
“However the motley crews of the socalled “right” have no coherent philosophy”
Kurtz upon arising from the dead take note that everything you ascribe to the right is what is not designated the left. That makes your argument incoherent though the thoughts behind the argument would be interesting to explore.
Im just asking questions
i don’t think the socalled right has a coherent political philosophy, nor does the Left. The left is certainly not communist nor Marxist. The more I think about how these epithets are tossed at them, the more dismayed I am. They are clearly not either. They are too stupid to be Marxists and they are too disorganized to be communists. they are anarchists perhaps, which is little better than roving herds of malicious vandals, but they do not deserve to be called much more than that.
but the Left has a tactical agreement that is always operating, going for it that the right does not: a clear unwritten rule “GET WHITEY”
They can always turn to this. It’s “white racism” and other times, “the patriarchy” or “colonialism” or twenty other things that all equal; “GET WHITEY”
billionaires love this. it weakens the only group that could pull their fangs in America
So lest the quarry successfully evade their hunt, the promote false leadership and doomed to fail political movements.
They seed failure on the right with liberterian claptrap and big money poured into useless think tanks and bogus leadership groups
they seed success on the Left with money poured into an assortment of divisive, virulent, and damaging activist organizations like “BLM”
they also buy off the socalled “center” with money dumped in the pockets of the politicians
billionaires are the enemy. yes. one the Left and Right should agree to hate. Yes, I used that hate word
With the billionaires taken down a few notches, there could be a peaceful devolution of the US into more coherent regional federations that would be better off living separately. It’s fine if all the goofy activist cliques want to think their craziness somewhere else. They can experiment with transhumanism and progress all they want. We should just be equally free to have our own normal, ordered society without constant disruption from their idiotic and wicked ideas.
Now, political organization to be effective, requires not only leadership but also cooperation, coordination, teamwork, and unity.
A team that fields players with a lot of different ideas about how to play the game is going to be uncoordinated and fail.
Hence in every successful political movement in history you had a measure of intolerance for bad ideas that damaged the team
So here we get to the root of why individualism is always promoted by the billionaires in its diverse forms, and why they always back some minority against some majority.
They want to disorient and dis-coordinate every natural organic social group or political force that could come together and threaten their power.
That’s what all this pluralism and tolerance and diversity and socalled freedom is all about. An ideology of narcissistic, socially atomizing selfishness that makes political mobilization against the masters impossible, on the one side, and whatever fashionable cause energizes the youthful rabble on the other side, to constantly disorient the sane and responsible adults who should lead society.
one day the adults who are still remaining in America if they want to see a brighter future for the common good and not just billionaires, are going to have to lay down the law and banish a lot of the puerile self indulgent and useless “freedoms” that only serve to seed more division and counterproductive social conflict. Not sure what forms that may take, but the First amendment right now does not look very smart to me anymore. Nor the “goal” of an ever more disorderly and pluralistic society that it obviously serves.
.
Saloth Sar
“i don’t think the socalled right has a coherent political philosophy”
The right extends from the Rand Paul libertarian and more to the JFK Republican and more. The more is because what is not on the left is considered on the right.
The left though not totally unified is far more unified than the right and for the most part can be described as fascists. Look at the self control when they vote.
“They are too stupid to be Marxists “
Maybe they left that position of stupidity to the young since humans start off stupid. Some never grow up and they become stupid like anonymous.
“they are anarchists perhaps”
They use an anarchist approach much like the Nazis did but they can be lumped together as fascists.
“It’s “white racism” and other times”
For the Nazi’s it was kill the Jews, kill the gypsies and the like. They like the word “kill” . Remember the signs Kill Bush? In many ways he was closer to the Democrats than the Republican Party under Trump. Leftists have always used racism as a tool and they use it on this blog quite frequently.
Billionaires follow the money. Today it is globalization so they follow the money while they ‘admit’ how terrible they are and give money to the ‘Causes’ to keep themselves safe while they sneak around to kill off the competition. The leftists that say they hate big corporations are the ones that are supplying those same corporations with power and money. They are more fascist than socialist. However the stupid like Anonymous don’t realize the basics of fascism, socialism and nazism when they blunder around making fools out of themselves.
Very good, except that the Left has always been plutocratic, and the billionaires are part of it.
I am all for free speech but let’s get this all into perspective. Right wing militias and some Republican leaders are suggesting that the barrel of a gun is the way to police speech or decide elections. Threatening violence if their candidate isn’t given with the election he lost..big time..is a lot worse that what these groups are doing. If what you say is correct I oppose what they are suggesting. I also oppose violence and intimidate of voters, legislators, election officials and peaceful protestors.
“Right wing militias and some Republican leaders are suggesting that the barrel of a gun is the way to police speech or decide elections.”
If you didn’t notice BLM or Antifa your head is in the sand. Guns and torches were part of the KKK Democrat leadership.
I don’t know a day out of the blog that your head has ever seen the light of day.
@anonymous… It’s not the sand that his head has been in… It’s stuck somewhere else.
All laws are a pattern and set of rules for imposition of state force. Ie organized violence imposed by state actors against property and people.
All politics operates along a spectrum of social conflict.
The left understands that and it’s time for the average american to get it through their thick skulls too, before its too late
Saloth Sar
Kurtz, I’m on the left and I don’t “understand that”.
Your ideas are comical – it’s not 1930 – and obviously go nowhere good for humans, and especially white people in the west
you are not on the left joe. You are a center left moderate. You have said that yourself before. You dislike Bernie bros as you call them, you liked Hillary, you like Biden.
You are not even close to a Marxist.
The intellectual Left of today is not Marxist anyways. That is old hat to them. An analytical tool that no longer pays the bills. Instead, it is now postmodernist, in a very crude way. Postmodernism applied to our situation is fundamentally nihilistic. It is Nietzschean will to power without any of Nietzsche’s aesthetics and beauty. It is crude and it is for hire.
I will give an example of that. Here is Pete Butt, the future Transportation Boss. His daddy was an English prof who catalogued the works of Italian communist Gramsci capably.
But Pete is the darling of the billionaires. with the help of a sketchy vote county app (a democrat billionaire specialty) he won Iowa caucus. Strangely, he gave up his momentum and quit before Super Tuesday. Why? Oh that Pete is a team player., He knew his time would come, abide, play ball, and get paid in the meantime. A very clever chap! He has few commitments, little baggage, few strong attachments politically, he is malleable, he has few things holding him back. He is a clever manifestation of a crude will to power, for hire.
But you are no Pete,. You are a regular guy, you told us yesterday. A well read fellow and obviously smart, but not clever like Pete. You are more an old fashioned liberal.
You are not postmodernist. You are an Enlightenment sort of chap. Vaguely transhumanist with all your progress talk but that is roughly the fashion of generic California limousine liberals. There is no Silicon valley without capitalism and capitalism’s agenda today is globalism. You are suspicious of “populism” and you like technocrats. You believe in “progress”
But you are certainly mainstream., Unlike the anarchist rabble. No you have a place in the American mainstream. You love pluralism. And that was an integral condition for the American proposition and experiment. Seems like in a way, the American constitution is fundamentally a center left institution in itself. It is fundamentally liberal and capitalist. It was in 1789 and it is now. America as a political experiment is devoted to “progress,” which the Founders envisioned as, a future in which they, the clever men with money, would no longer be shackled with the old world feudalism that was holding them back, religion and aristocracy and all that, but in a political entity which would also be durable against the occasional uprisings of the poor.
And oh, how successful that project has been for the Americans with the big money, all along
The amazing thing is how in every generation the rest of us get tricked into thinking it’s all so wonderful for us, too.
Well, there;’s lots of shiny gadgets and such. if your only measure of the common good is cheap imported goods, then we are the best.
I dont measure existence that way. Sorry. I want prosperity too but I am looking for we values too. Social and spiritual values that we can share, to find meaning in our time and place which valorizes our existence. Money and technology alone will never suffice.
Saloth Sar
“You are not even close to a Marxist.”
Joe doesn’t have the knowledge to be a Marxist.
Joe is an opinion based on a lack of accurate facts and an obnoxious personality.
Kutz, I value living a long healthy life with freedom and oh yeah, the cheap imports. What exactly are the “values” you claim without enumerating and what do they have to do with race. What’s the point?
You’re delusional.
Since universities have become hotbeds of anti-American thought (I know this example is in Canada, but it is similar to the American experience), why are we funding them?
The Bill of Rights is a fundamental document.
If the universities won’t support it, then we shouldn’t fund them.
The 1st does not require us to fund people who want to destroy our way of life.
If the universities won’t support it, then we shouldn’t fund them.
Given the fact Congress deemed sending millions of dollars to Pakistan for gender reconstruction surgery an important step in the Covid Relief bill, it’s safe to say defunding American universities for anti-American policies is not on the horizon.