Private Mars Rocket II

Posting this here so I can find it later: Free Speech Culture is Killing Free Speech.

A few highlights from the original post:

1) The First Speaker Problem: “Free speech culture” suffers from what I call the First Speaker Problem: it picks a speaker, treats that person’s speech as the speech that should concern us, and then applies a set of cultural norms and questions only to the responses to that speech.

2) The Interests of Dissenters: The flip side of irrationally preferring the First Speaker is irrationally diminishing the speech interests of dissenters.

3) Preferring The Powerful To The Powerless: The multi-millionaire pundit with a column and podcast and network who comes to a university and says some students don’t belong there is the free speech hero; the students in question who protest the pundit and say he or she shouldn’t be there are villains.

4) Moral Sociopathy: In short, “free speech culture” is bad and unserious to the extent it tells us that speech is morally neutral and that we should not make value judgments against it, and that there is no moral component to promoting it. ... Giving [speaker X] a platform to be a bigot is morally distinguishable from saying they should be free to be a bigot.

Random Thought #1 - Jamokes

We have a name for the people who took over the Oregon wildlife refuge, and it's not "terrorist" it's "jamoke."

Imagine the grade of sad, stunted halfwit who decks himself out in paramilitary regalia and lethal weaponry to stage a sit-in at what is for all intents and purposes a remote wildlife park’s visitor’s center. "Okay, men, when I kick in the door, you three move on the 74-year-old v0lunteer who shows the birdwatching slideshow to elementary-school field trip groups; if she makes a move, be ready to take her down with force. The rest of us will establish a defensive position behind the cardboard beaver." If bigger goobers than these exist on our planet, you identify them by the bruises from where they poked themselves in the eye while trying to pick their noses.

from the same source (in comments): The solution to disproportionate responses by the government to persons of color is not to call for disproportionate responses by the government to white people. It’s to stop disproportionate responses against persons of color.

Random Thought #2 - "Silencing"

Disagreeing with somebody is not the same as silencing them. Money quote: This whole argument about political correctness turns the concept of “free speech” on it’s head. It basically comes down to this: Conservatives are allowed to exercise their right to free speech. But when liberals do so, it is an attempt to silence the opposition.

My trainer worked my ass off yesterday, and I'm going downstate tonight. So, have a cartoon in lieu of content:



http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free_speech.png