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"People worried about womens' rights in the early 20th century should have realized that Harvard was a private university. If I held a party at my house and did
by a_puppy 9y ago
"People worried about womens' rights in the early 20th century should have realized that Harvard was a private university. If I held a party at my house and didn't want to invite you because you were a woman, you'd get laughed out of court if you tried to sue me over it. People should be allowed to organize under whatever principles they want to organize under. Disallowing Harvard to use whatever criteria they want to use to admit students, unless of course they breach free speech rights, is ultimately decreasing the amount of intellectual diversity in the world. Women that don't like Harvard can apply to any other college. There's no shortage of them to choose from. But if you tell Harvard what they can and can't do, you run the risk of destroying the individuality of Harvard."
"People worried about reproductive rights should realize that Hobby Lobby is a private corporation."
"People worried about gay rights should realize that Chick-fil-A is a private corporation."
The choices of private organizations and individuals have huge effects, and it's reasonable to criticize them if we disagree with their actions. But on the other hand, I agree that it's important to give private organizations freedom. This is a difficult trade-off; we need to consider both sides of it, and whatever principle we decide on, we should apply consistently. So unless you'd also defend historical gender segregation at private universities, or defend Hobby Lobby and Chick-fil-A, you should find a different defense of Harvard's actions.
- vinceguidry 9y agoI specifically noted the civil rights exception in my comment.
- a_puppy 9y agoYou stated the exception without justification. You need to give an actual argument for why discrimination should be an exception but free speech shouldn't. Free speech has historically been considered an extremely important right. In fact, free speech is a civil right--one of the originals. Why shouldn't it be included under your civil rights exception?
- vinceguidry 9y agoThe civil rights movement itself exposed the need for specific legal protections for minorities, because leaving it all up to the "marketplace of ideas" only ensures that patterns of systemized oppression continue. What happens when you don't restrict along protected grounds is that entire industries collude to exclude those classes of people. Mass hatred drowns out the whole marketplace.
- a_puppy 9y agoAnd right now the entire university education industry is colluding to suppress certain types of speech; an incident like this could happen at most universities, not just Harvard. So why doesn't freedom of speech also deserve specific legal protection? You still haven't justified treating freedom of speech differently from freedom from discrimination.
- vinceguidry 9y agoI'm having trouble following your logic. In my original comment, I stated that Harvard should have a right to choose who they want to admit or not admit to their school, unless they wanted to discriminate on illegal grounds. Everyone here is exercising their rights. The kids have a right to exercise their rights to free speech, and Harvard has a right to run a business the way they want to run it. Harvard is not a public institution run by the state, so it is not obligated to respect rights that public schools have to. This creates more diversity in the marketplace rather than less. Everybody can make the kinds of statements they want to make, and everybody can run the kinds of businesses they want to run, until those statements or businesses run afoul of laws. That's how America works. You can tell Harvard that they should respect student's rights the way you want them to. They can in turn ignore you. You can in turn choose a different university. The reason we have anti-discrimination laws is because without them, minorities would have no other options. You seem to want blanket and blind enforcement of your idea of what rights are, without regard to the reasons why we have free speech and discrimination laws in the first place. It's for greater diversification and opportunities.
- maxwin 9y agoOn the other hand ,how do u stop hate speech?
- gdix 9y agoYou defeat bad arguments with good arguments. By the way this is the ONLY way. Silencing those you disagree with will only enrage and mobilize those people, and those people vote. Hence, Trump.
- vinceguidry 9y agoI would argue that Trump is a manifestation of the exact opposite, that no matter how good the argument is, it won't beat a bad one.
- drspacemonkey 9y agoHonestly, I couldn't point to many people who were making good arguments during the election. Facts, reason, compromise, and logic are Trump's weaknesses, and those were jettisoned from the political process years ago. I'd argue that Trump is what happens when the media and major parties stop making good arguments.
- basch 9y agothe benefits of globalization to the common folk arguemnt hasnt been well articulated as of late.
- pbhowmic 9y agoHard to draw an meaningful inference from a sample data of one.
- pdeuchler 9y ago>> that no matter how good the argument is, it won't beat a bad one. What kind of absurd, nihilist nonsense is this? Sounds like yet another example of Trump's opponents being unable to think critically and assuming their attempt at forcing terrible policy down the throats of common people is a "good argument" against the threat of facism. Trump is winning precisely because there's no "good alternative", 99% of all "alternatives" are just less shitty, and even then only less shitty for certain segments of the population. People never resort to facism with good alternatives, yet strangely it's the default whenever they're stuck with a shit sandwich. But I mean only all of history repeats this lesson, not like we'd expect anyone to understand that or anything.
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