Quote:
Originally Posted by Quincy Lehr
It is amusing to see the Berkeley stuff come up here. It's really very simple--had Yiannopoulos simply been spewing his usual bigoted bullcrap, a response of vigorous protest and judicious heckling would have been appropriate (protesters have First Amendment rights, too). But on this speaking tour, he'd already outed at least one transgender student, and he'd intimated he'd do the same to undocumented immigrant students. People can get deported and killed over that stuff, which put his speech in "clear and present danger" territory.
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Quincy,
all American citizens have First Amendment rights. Of course you know that, but the way you inserted
(protesters have First Amendment rights, too) makes me suspect that you may have thought I didn't know it also. Sorry to get defensive, but having political discussions is getting awfully difficult of late, which is why I usually stay the hell out of them!
It's like Andrew telling me that "Freedom of speech is not just about silence William." I spent several minutes trying to figure out what reason he could possibly have for saying that to me after all that I've written in defense of free speech, and after spending all this time
exercising my right to free speech! I can only imagine that he was talking about my not wanting to share in public some things Charlie told me in private. I do intend to keep silent on that, as to do anything
but that would be a breach of privacy and an insult to a friend.
I don't like hate speech any more than you do, but in this country we are forced to tolerate it. Not tolerate as in having some benign resignation to it, or to wallow in apathy, but as in
allow it. Let the loudmouths hang themselves by being given enough rope to do it, and prosecute if they've broken a law. Has Milo broken a law that we know of, for certain? Educate me.
I agree that deliberately trying to get someone killed crosses the line of free speech, and strong protest against that would certainly be in order. But breaking shit and setting fires also crosses the line, and should be protested as well. I'm waiting to see the precedent at Berkeley escalate into more violence, and I won't be surprised if innocent people get in the way, maybe even killed. History is full of this kind of thing happening, when the mob gets whipped into a collective frenzy. I will be celebrating with everyone else if Trump gets impeached (if and when it needs to happen). And I will be terribly happy if no innocents are hurt or killed in the meantime.
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Andrew,
Back to what I was saying above: I do regret implying that you were telling falsehoods intentionally. I may have been a bit careless. (I'll go back and check my exact wording after I post this, and get back to you.) What I meant to say was that you may be misjudging Charlie, and personally, I think you are. To be wrong about something or someone isn't the same as lying. I can tell falsehoods all day, out of ignorance, and still not be lying. A lie is a deliberate falsehood, and I hereby retract any loose or careless writing that may have implied that you are a liar.
As for Camus, I have read the quotes. Inspiring stuff there, but I stand by my belief that human nature precludes anything like a Utopia. We may have a dystopian future on our hands, depending how the winds of fortune blow, and this dystopia can be brought into being by the loony right or the loony left. Militant police state, radical theocracy, or a land of Stepford Wives and/or brain-engineered sheeple. None of these scenarios are appealing to me, in case that hasn't come across yet. I'd be all for a real Utopia, but odds are my Utopia and your Utopia wouldn't be similar.
Ayn Rand had her Galt's Gulch, which to her was a vision of Utopia. An extremely unlikely and rather silly one, if you ask me. The libertarians love her, but she detested libertarians. The libertarians have their version of Utopia, the anarchists have theirs, the loony Christian Reconstructionists and Identity Christians have theirs, the Muslim theocrats have theirs, the Buddhists and Hindus have theirs, and the Zionists have theirs. And so on.
I think that what is trending now is a strong form of egalitarianism. I have kids and from what I saw of the modern school environment, it's getting tougher and tougher for kids who excel to do it with good conscience. The idea of "teamwork" is rampant.
There is no 'I' in team! is the rally cry in school as well as the workplace.
I saw a class of kids giving readings of their Valentine's Day poems at my place of work today. It's an assisted living facility. After they were finished, the teacher gave a speech which was chock full of this modern team spirit. To my mind, teamwork is fine and dandy, but writing a poem is the work of an individual. Certainly, any person writing anything has been influenced by others, and there is almost literally nothing original. We "makers" (poets) only rearrange things. We don't create in any literal sense. Nonetheless, there are good poems and lousy ones. Why put a damper on the kids who wrote better poems than the others? Why coddle mediocrity? It may not happen as a general rule, but I've definitely seen it happening in my town. In some schools, trophies are no longer given out, because the kids who don't get trophies are shamed.
In the film,
The Incredibles, the young Super-Hero son is constantly getting in trouble because he can run way faster than the others. In one scene he's talking with his mother and bemoans the fact that his powers have to be kept in check, for fear of making the other kids feel bad. I don't remember the exact dialogue, but it gets around to the boy admitting to feeling ashamed or frustrated because he's "special". His mom tells him, "Everybody's special". He frowns and says, "Which means no-one is."
I am rambling again, but since you brought up Camus and the possibility of Utopia (and what Christians like myself ought to be doing to bring it about), I felt the need to explain myself even further.
I'd like to have a peaceful dialogue, because all of this is fascinating to me, and I realize its importance. But I can't stand ad-homs. Sure, some people might really be idiots. But to call a person an idiot doesn't do much insofar as educating the idiot and carefully trying to help him understand things, so that he doesn't turn his kids into idiots.
***Edited in: I realize Charlie is throwing ad-homs around too, Andrew. I should have said that before.
A lot of what's wrong today comes down to parenting and schooling. If someone is taught bullshit, and has it drummed into them long and hard enough, they will grow up to speak bullshit with a clear conscience and with grave conviction. Who wants that? I'd rather try and get my views across gently, and with as much patience as I can muster, and I believe, like Bishop Spong, in "loving wastefully".
Love is our greatest value. It's infinite, self-replenishing, and inexhaustible. Let's use
it, and not violence. There
is a time for violent retaliation against tyranny, but we are not at that time
yet. Is Trump a budding Hitler? Who knows. But people aren't being corralled, stripped naked, lined up, shot in the back of the head, and kicked into mass graves. Ergo, comparisons to Hitler are, thus far, premature to say the least.
Just my thoughts.