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> you don’t see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people This is an extremely odd statement and it took me a while to figure out why you would

> you don’t see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people This is an extremely odd statement and it took me a while to figure out why you would think that. Because you absolutely do see conservatives shut down speech. Systematically. For a good account of this on college campuses, see https://newrepublic.com/article/147908/invisible-free-speech-crisis https://newrepublic.com/article/147908/invisible-free-speech... Perhaps we "don't see conservatives going around trying to 'no platform' people" in the same way that fish don't see water. We expect conservatives to fire public school LGBT teachers who mention their partners when told to talk about their personal lives on parent night. We expect Christian colleges to fire people for being not conservative enough. We expect those colleges to expel students for supporting gay rights. We expect obscenity laws. (Aside: conservatives strongly support obscenity laws and strongly oppose bans on hate speech. I can understand the worldview that bans both, and I myself have a worldview that calls for banning neither. But I will be forever perplexed over how anyone who doesn't themselves condone hate speech could come to the conclusion that nakedness/lewdity poses a great threat to society which justifies censorship, but that hate speech does not. If anyone here does have that viewpoint, I'd be interested to hear their reasoning.) We expect attempts to ban flag burning. We expect the Red Scare. And it's true that we never hear about Richard Dawkins being uninvited from Cedarville or Wheaton. But that's only because those students/faculty would be expelled from the institution the moment the invitation was extended. It's normal for conservatives to be illiberal on speech. So normal that, like fish in water, we don't even see it! So when people like Cedarville's president bemoan the suppression of speech on college campuses while at same time firing his own faculty for publicly criticizing Mitt Romney, expelling his students for their speech, and routinely monitoring the social media accounts of his students, I think it's fair to say (as https://newrepublic.com/article/147908/invisible-free-speech-crisis https://newrepublic.com/article/147908/invisible-free-speech... puts it): There are many who argue, in the pages of this country’s most respected periodicals, that this power lies with the intolerant left. But the evidence of real, widespread speech suppression shows it lies elsewhere, on the right. This, in turn, suggests that the ostensible champions of free speech are more interested in criticizing campus identity politics than in protecting speech. Now, revisiting your quote once more: > you don’t see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people (which is an insidious euphemism) Insidious. No-platforming is so thoroughly embedded in American conservativism that you don't even see it even though it's pervasive. That's practically the definition of insidious. > I don’t see how you could plan to fight censorship with more censorship. There is one famous example related to the heckler's veto. Rules against heckling/shouting during a speech use censorship to shut down an attempt at censorship. And even that only makes sense in some circumstances; e.g., in a lecture hall but not at a large rally.

AmericanChopper 8y ago
I think you must live in a pretty opaque bubble. You might expect those things to happen, but they only do in your imagination. Most Christian colleges are actually pretty accepting of LGBT. You might be able to find a couple examples of some that haven’t been, but you barely have to open your eyes to see that conservative voices have pretty much been prohibited from all of the country’s other Colleges. Forget how intolerant the user base is, conservative voices are very heavily suppressed on most social media platforms. If your unfortunate enough to voice a conservative opinion in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’ll get a Twitter brigade harassing your employer until they fire you. Schedule a conservative speaker to talk at a College, at you won’t be at all surprised when a gang of violent, intolerant liberals start a riot. Your comment is completely disconnected from reality. If you look hard enough, you’d probably be able to find a couple of minor examples to point at, but intolerance and suppression of speech has become mainstream liberal politics. I’ve been a liberal for most of my life, I voted for Obama’s twice. But it was the grotesque intolerance for all non-confirming views that drove me away from the left. Any form of individual thought is liable to be labeled as hate speech, and possibly the worst element of it is the demand to have your cake and eat it too. To go around literally violently suppressing freedom of expression, and then attempt to claim some level of victimhood as if it was actually your voice that was being suppressed.
- throwawayjava 8y ago
  I want to begin by reiterating that the point of my original post was the adamently disagree with the asseriont that: >> you don’t see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people I think this is false. That said: > I think you must live in a pretty opaque bubble. You might expect those things to happen, but they only do in your imagination. Each of the things that I listed has actually happened in the past few years. Consider reading, with an open mind, the link from my parent post. It's written by a former Cedarville student, which is about as far from a liberal bubble as you can possibly get. There exist a contingent of conservatives who are extremely hostile to free speech, to the point where they create entire institutions dedicated to suppressing and blocking out any non-christian, non-conservative influence. They are right there in plain sight. They do things like publicly threaten to have campus speakers arrested and fire faculty for opposing Republican presidential nominees [3]. Do you disagree these people exist? > Most Christian colleges are actually pretty accepting of LGBT. I agree! [1] In my post, I referred specifically to conservative Christian colleges, not all Christian colleges. And I even named particular colleges that fit the mold. And, btw, those very institutions agree with the facts I asserted (if not the way I phrased them). Cedarville, Wheaton, Liberty -- the presidents of these colleges will be the very first ones to tell you that you should not expect freedom of expression as a student or employee at their college! FIRE, a free expression advocacy organization focused college campuses, even creates a separate category for these institutions (and their illiberal [2] peers on the left): "Warning Schools". The meaning is literally what I say: you should expect to be censored and this fact is very explicitly written in their codes of conduct and staff manuals. > Schedule a conservative speaker to talk at a College, at you won’t be at all surprised when a gang of violent, intolerant liberals start a riot. Wait, have you actually scheduled a conservative speaker on a college campus? I have. No mob. Actually, of all the speeches I organized, only one speaker was heckled. (And the speech/speaker wasn't even remotely political. And the heckler was a conservative, not a student, and I think the heckling that was entirely unrelated to either of those facts. He was just a rude nutjob.) Just as most Christian colleges are very accepting of a wide variety of viewpoints, most other colleges are very accepting of a wide variety of viewpoints. You don't hear about the countless of uneventful Young Republican/Libertarian speeches. Or the countless weekly bible study groups that happen without incident. You hear about the tiny handful that go awry. And then a narrative is crafted. But the point of my post was not that liberal institutions are a bastion of free speech. Just like the point of my post was not to assert that all conservatives are illiberal re: free expression. The central thesis of my post was just a refutation of assertion that: >> you don’t see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people by pointing out the very real existence of places like Cedarville/Wheaton/et al. that very much do "no platform" any not-sufficiently-conservative-in-just-the-right-way speech. And additionally to point out that illiberal conservatives (again, to be clear, a subset of all conservatives) are not new in this country. We are not surprised when a conservative expresses illiberal views (which, again, is not meant to imply that all conservatives are illiberal). Whereas the (also real, also subset) illiberal leftists are a newer phenomenon. Maybe that's why we "see" illiberalism on the left but not on the right? Because we are used to, we expect, a form of conservative illiberalism re: free expression. > If your unfortunate enough to voice a conservative opinion in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’ll get a Twitter brigade harassing your employer until they fire you. It's unfortunate that some conservatives are harassed in this fashion, but this is an anomaly, not a norm. This country has millions of conservatives who are open about their political beliefs (on Twitter, FB, etc.) and do not suffer retribution for expressing those beliefs. E.g., the majority of my friends and family. And, this sort of harassment also happens to (an also small number of) leftists and even not-quite-conservative-enough conservatives. The one person I personally know who was fired for political speech was targeted by conservatives. Again, consider reading with an open mind the link in my parent post. People with illiberal views on free expression and with a vendetta and no decency exist on both the left and the right. Which is why, again, I disagree with the initial assertion that: >> you don’t see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people It's just not true. Those people exist, in plain sight, and are very open about their beliefs. Falwell openly threatens to have people (not-conservative-enough conservatives, no less!) arrested for expressing views he disagrees with at the wrong place and time. I do agree that we don't always see them clearly enough. I hypothesize it's because they are so overt about their repression of speech. But you very much do "see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people". -- [1] For anyone following along, item #3 in this interview does a good job at distinguishing between the sort of conservative Christian colleges I'm referring to and the hundreds of less dogmatic Christian institutions that have much stronger free expression protections for faculty and students: https://www.thefire.org/is-speech-suppression-at-religious-colleges-the-invisible-free-speech-crisis/ https://www.thefire.org/is-speech-suppression-at-religious-c... [2] To avoid confusion: I'm using "illiberal" to mean "illiberal specifically on the question of free expression", i.e., opposes free expression. I use "left" and "right" to refer to more general political affiliation. Hopefully that doesn't cause too much confusion... [3] https://relevantmagazine.com/current/shane-claiborne-says-liberty-u-threatened-arrested-asking-falwell-campus-prayer-vigil/ https://relevantmagazine.com/current/shane-claiborne-says-li...

AmericanChopper 8y ago

I think you must live in a pretty opaque bubble. You might expect those things to happen, but they only do in your imagination. Most Christian colleges are actually pretty accepting of LGBT. You might be able to find a couple examples of some that haven’t been, but you barely have to open your eyes to see that conservative voices have pretty much been prohibited from all of the country’s other Colleges. Forget how intolerant the user base is, conservative voices are very heavily suppressed on most social media platforms. If your unfortunate enough to voice a conservative opinion in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’ll get a Twitter brigade harassing your employer until they fire you. Schedule a conservative speaker to talk at a College, at you won’t be at all surprised when a gang of violent, intolerant liberals start a riot. Your comment is completely disconnected from reality. If you look hard enough, you’d probably be able to find a couple of minor examples to point at, but intolerance and suppression of speech has become mainstream liberal politics. I’ve been a liberal for most of my life, I voted for Obama’s twice. But it was the grotesque intolerance for all non-confirming views that drove me away from the left. Any form of individual thought is liable to be labeled as hate speech, and possibly the worst element of it is the demand to have your cake and eat it too. To go around literally violently suppressing freedom of expression, and then attempt to claim some level of victimhood as if it was actually your voice that was being suppressed.

throwawayjava 8y ago
I want to begin by reiterating that the point of my original post was the adamently disagree with the asseriont that: >> you don’t see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people I think this is false. That said: > I think you must live in a pretty opaque bubble. You might expect those things to happen, but they only do in your imagination. Each of the things that I listed has actually happened in the past few years. Consider reading, with an open mind, the link from my parent post. It's written by a former Cedarville student, which is about as far from a liberal bubble as you can possibly get. There exist a contingent of conservatives who are extremely hostile to free speech, to the point where they create entire institutions dedicated to suppressing and blocking out any non-christian, non-conservative influence. They are right there in plain sight. They do things like publicly threaten to have campus speakers arrested and fire faculty for opposing Republican presidential nominees [3]. Do you disagree these people exist? > Most Christian colleges are actually pretty accepting of LGBT. I agree! [1] In my post, I referred specifically to conservative Christian colleges, not all Christian colleges. And I even named particular colleges that fit the mold. And, btw, those very institutions agree with the facts I asserted (if not the way I phrased them). Cedarville, Wheaton, Liberty -- the presidents of these colleges will be the very first ones to tell you that you should not expect freedom of expression as a student or employee at their college! FIRE, a free expression advocacy organization focused college campuses, even creates a separate category for these institutions (and their illiberal [2] peers on the left): "Warning Schools". The meaning is literally what I say: you should expect to be censored and this fact is very explicitly written in their codes of conduct and staff manuals. > Schedule a conservative speaker to talk at a College, at you won’t be at all surprised when a gang of violent, intolerant liberals start a riot. Wait, have you actually scheduled a conservative speaker on a college campus? I have. No mob. Actually, of all the speeches I organized, only one speaker was heckled. (And the speech/speaker wasn't even remotely political. And the heckler was a conservative, not a student, and I think the heckling that was entirely unrelated to either of those facts. He was just a rude nutjob.) Just as most Christian colleges are very accepting of a wide variety of viewpoints, most other colleges are very accepting of a wide variety of viewpoints. You don't hear about the countless of uneventful Young Republican/Libertarian speeches. Or the countless weekly bible study groups that happen without incident. You hear about the tiny handful that go awry. And then a narrative is crafted. But the point of my post was not that liberal institutions are a bastion of free speech. Just like the point of my post was not to assert that all conservatives are illiberal re: free expression. The central thesis of my post was just a refutation of assertion that: >> you don’t see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people by pointing out the very real existence of places like Cedarville/Wheaton/et al. that very much do "no platform" any not-sufficiently-conservative-in-just-the-right-way speech. And additionally to point out that illiberal conservatives (again, to be clear, a subset of all conservatives) are not new in this country. We are not surprised when a conservative expresses illiberal views (which, again, is not meant to imply that all conservatives are illiberal). Whereas the (also real, also subset) illiberal leftists are a newer phenomenon. Maybe that's why we "see" illiberalism on the left but not on the right? Because we are used to, we expect, a form of conservative illiberalism re: free expression. > If your unfortunate enough to voice a conservative opinion in the wrong place at the wrong time, you’ll get a Twitter brigade harassing your employer until they fire you. It's unfortunate that some conservatives are harassed in this fashion, but this is an anomaly, not a norm. This country has millions of conservatives who are open about their political beliefs (on Twitter, FB, etc.) and do not suffer retribution for expressing those beliefs. E.g., the majority of my friends and family. And, this sort of harassment also happens to (an also small number of) leftists and even not-quite-conservative-enough conservatives. The one person I personally know who was fired for political speech was targeted by conservatives. Again, consider reading with an open mind the link in my parent post. People with illiberal views on free expression and with a vendetta and no decency exist on both the left and the right. Which is why, again, I disagree with the initial assertion that: >> you don’t see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people It's just not true. Those people exist, in plain sight, and are very open about their beliefs. Falwell openly threatens to have people (not-conservative-enough conservatives, no less!) arrested for expressing views he disagrees with at the wrong place and time. I do agree that we don't always see them clearly enough. I hypothesize it's because they are so overt about their repression of speech. But you very much do "see conservatives going around trying to “no platform” people". -- [1] For anyone following along, item #3 in this interview does a good job at distinguishing between the sort of conservative Christian colleges I'm referring to and the hundreds of less dogmatic Christian institutions that have much stronger free expression protections for faculty and students: https://www.thefire.org/is-speech-suppression-at-religious-colleges-the-invisible-free-speech-crisis/ https://www.thefire.org/is-speech-suppression-at-religious-c... [2] To avoid confusion: I'm using "illiberal" to mean "illiberal specifically on the question of free expression", i.e., opposes free expression. I use "left" and "right" to refer to more general political affiliation. Hopefully that doesn't cause too much confusion... [3] https://relevantmagazine.com/current/shane-claiborne-says-liberty-u-threatened-arrested-asking-falwell-campus-prayer-vigil/ https://relevantmagazine.com/current/shane-claiborne-says-li...