Bad Cat, how fast can you copyright this: "....if you trust the government, then go find your history teacher and ask for a refund." Very true is that.
Unfortunately guys the most critical time to speak out is before free speech becomes "penalized".
We mostly missed that opportunity. It sucks being stuck between a "live and let live" and "leave me the eff alone" mentality. If the later is not the case then the former will only make the later worse.
So now we are stuck with the second most important time to speak out:
When free speech is penalized, but before you have to build your own gulags.
Make no mistake that's where it ends.
It smells like a 30's re-run...because...well...that's exactly what's happening.
OK so this past weekend I found myself in conversation with a polite, friendly, and apparently well-educated, shall we say, European of the usual urban "normie" persuasions. He started saying how he was terribly concerned these days about misinformation, most especially misinformation on social media, and that what we really need now is a committee of authorities to determine what is information, so that the misinformation can be kept out of the public realm. I said, rather mildly, well, you might not like the conclusions of the authorities should one day the other party, the one you don't like, win the national elections and then appoint their own authorities to said committee. I could have cut the shock in the air with a plastic knife. I do believe that this obviously obvious obviousness had not ocurred to him. I then directed the conversation towards more pleasant and less cognitively challenging subjects, such as housepets. Meow.
Would it be fair to summarize your thesis as “bad things happen when liberty is interpreted to mean license”?
There can be no liberty without self-restraint. And self-restraint must ultimately spring from morality — the sense of duty. And morality has a super-material origin that can’t be a matter of simply selecting the right governing “-ism”.
You hit on so many important issues but I’d like to focus on one, the coddling of criminals, especially the young ones.
I was a big troublemaker during my teens over 50 years ago. Living in NYC, my wrist was slapped more than a few times. At age 16, I finally came before a wise judge who sent me away for 3 years for a crime, joyriding in a car I didn’t own, that would almost certainly get a wrist slap today. I thank God for that judge every day! He started me on a path to change my life. It didn’t happen immediately but, within a year of being released, I was drug free and sober! This HS dropout recently retired near the top of my chosen field in IT.
I believe that allowing the young criminals to skate does them no favors. Coddled young criminals often escalate to become hardened criminals with a much more difficult path to success in life.
In other words, “Spare the rod, spoil the man-child.” I suppose these days I should add woman-child but I’m just not that woke!
Canada is lost and an example of "you get the government you vote for... "
Driving speech out of the public square is on the surface short-sighted but in the longer run it is very dangerous... When we stop engaging each other with speech (even "hate" speech) there's no other way for either side to get their point across but with violence...
And government has been trying to squelch speech since the Whiskey Rebellion so don't expect anything new from them...
Well bad cat... every once in a while you let fur fly in a rant that does indeed assure me of the validity of my quote from a couple of years ago :
You are our times Thomas Paine.
Ok , fellow toxoplasmosis infected- spread this and defend it against all comers, with tooth, claw, and hellacious yowls...because Ryan is right too: we're at "that place right before they make us build our own gulags".
It's intentional chaos. Out of chaos eventually comes order.
"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."
-Frank Zappa
"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government."
James Damore, a former Google software engineer, wrote and published a memo entitled Google's Ideological Echo Chamber about the silencing of opposing opinions after being forced to endure Googles endless DIE training. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/James_Damore
He laid out his argument very clearly and made a lot of sense and is a very interesting read. His position boiled down to what he says in the "Suggestions" portion:
"I hope it’s clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that
we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of
those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that
don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender
roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another
member of their group."
James Damore wrote his memo in July 2017.
In Google's public response, Google's VP of Diversity, Danielle Brown wrote:
"Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions."
"once you surrender even one case, your right is gone. it's no longer yours, it's theirs."
"and it's time we remembered this and started drawing the line and fighting for the first inch rather than the center of the slippery slope."
Different topic, but the same principle: If you fancy yourself as pro-life, but are willing to settle for the various "center(s) of the slippery slope" like 6 weeks, 15 weeks, rape and incest exceptions, etc. remember these two lines. Because if you believe in the right to life, there are no exceptions. Rights belong to everyone, or to no one.
Bad Cat, how fast can you copyright this: "....if you trust the government, then go find your history teacher and ask for a refund." Very true is that.
Unfortunately guys the most critical time to speak out is before free speech becomes "penalized".
We mostly missed that opportunity. It sucks being stuck between a "live and let live" and "leave me the eff alone" mentality. If the later is not the case then the former will only make the later worse.
So now we are stuck with the second most important time to speak out:
When free speech is penalized, but before you have to build your own gulags.
Make no mistake that's where it ends.
It smells like a 30's re-run...because...well...that's exactly what's happening.
OK so this past weekend I found myself in conversation with a polite, friendly, and apparently well-educated, shall we say, European of the usual urban "normie" persuasions. He started saying how he was terribly concerned these days about misinformation, most especially misinformation on social media, and that what we really need now is a committee of authorities to determine what is information, so that the misinformation can be kept out of the public realm. I said, rather mildly, well, you might not like the conclusions of the authorities should one day the other party, the one you don't like, win the national elections and then appoint their own authorities to said committee. I could have cut the shock in the air with a plastic knife. I do believe that this obviously obvious obviousness had not ocurred to him. I then directed the conversation towards more pleasant and less cognitively challenging subjects, such as housepets. Meow.
Would it be fair to summarize your thesis as “bad things happen when liberty is interpreted to mean license”?
There can be no liberty without self-restraint. And self-restraint must ultimately spring from morality — the sense of duty. And morality has a super-material origin that can’t be a matter of simply selecting the right governing “-ism”.
Amen and Amen.
If they can shut us up all bets are off.
“Live not by lies.”
Spot on. Their excuses are sickening: "protecting our democracy", "too much free speech", "discouraging alternative ideologies". May they rot in hell!
Instead of Chesterton's fence, we have Civilizational Jenga (as Glenn Reynolds calls it).
"for those in the back who seem ill at ease with shape rotation, the “fence” is what is called “a metaphor” "
Like... a metaphor in a metaphor...
You hit on so many important issues but I’d like to focus on one, the coddling of criminals, especially the young ones.
I was a big troublemaker during my teens over 50 years ago. Living in NYC, my wrist was slapped more than a few times. At age 16, I finally came before a wise judge who sent me away for 3 years for a crime, joyriding in a car I didn’t own, that would almost certainly get a wrist slap today. I thank God for that judge every day! He started me on a path to change my life. It didn’t happen immediately but, within a year of being released, I was drug free and sober! This HS dropout recently retired near the top of my chosen field in IT.
I believe that allowing the young criminals to skate does them no favors. Coddled young criminals often escalate to become hardened criminals with a much more difficult path to success in life.
In other words, “Spare the rod, spoil the man-child.” I suppose these days I should add woman-child but I’m just not that woke!
Off topic, but on a happy note....I see that Javier Millei has fired 24k gov't workers in Argentina. What do we call that? A good start.
Canada is lost and an example of "you get the government you vote for... "
Driving speech out of the public square is on the surface short-sighted but in the longer run it is very dangerous... When we stop engaging each other with speech (even "hate" speech) there's no other way for either side to get their point across but with violence...
And government has been trying to squelch speech since the Whiskey Rebellion so don't expect anything new from them...
Well bad cat... every once in a while you let fur fly in a rant that does indeed assure me of the validity of my quote from a couple of years ago :
You are our times Thomas Paine.
Ok , fellow toxoplasmosis infected- spread this and defend it against all comers, with tooth, claw, and hellacious yowls...because Ryan is right too: we're at "that place right before they make us build our own gulags".
It's intentional chaos. Out of chaos eventually comes order.
"The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater."
-Frank Zappa
"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order. Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government."
- Henry A. Kissinger
James Damore, a former Google software engineer, wrote and published a memo entitled Google's Ideological Echo Chamber about the silencing of opposing opinions after being forced to endure Googles endless DIE training. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/James_Damore
He laid out his argument very clearly and made a lot of sense and is a very interesting read. His position boiled down to what he says in the "Suggestions" portion:
"I hope it’s clear that I'm not saying that diversity is bad, that Google or society is 100% fair, that
we shouldn't try to correct for existing biases, or that minorities have the same experience of
those in the majority. My larger point is that we have an intolerance for ideas and evidence that
don’t fit a certain ideology. I’m also not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender
roles; I’m advocating for quite the opposite: treat people as individuals, not as just another
member of their group."
James Damore wrote his memo in July 2017.
In Google's public response, Google's VP of Diversity, Danielle Brown wrote:
"Part of building an open, inclusive environment means fostering a culture in which those with alternative views, including different political views, feel safe sharing their opinions."
James Damore was fired on August 7, 2017.
How lost is Canada, eh?
I now hesitate even to book short trips or vacations up there to visit friends and family.
"once you surrender even one case, your right is gone. it's no longer yours, it's theirs."
"and it's time we remembered this and started drawing the line and fighting for the first inch rather than the center of the slippery slope."
Different topic, but the same principle: If you fancy yourself as pro-life, but are willing to settle for the various "center(s) of the slippery slope" like 6 weeks, 15 weeks, rape and incest exceptions, etc. remember these two lines. Because if you believe in the right to life, there are no exceptions. Rights belong to everyone, or to no one.