4 ms·

How many degrees of separation can you get in here and still feel justified? Kunin opposed the idea of blacklisting in general, he didn't even endorse any pers

How many degrees of separation can you get in here and still feel justified? Kunin opposed the idea of blacklisting in general, he didn't even endorse any person. So now, for those who refuse to be published in the same magazine as him, the chain goes "unspecified other" -> Kunin didn't disavow -> they can't publish anything where Kunin might also publish? There's not even a specific idea they're condemning besides general open-mindedness. What about if the magazine had allowed him to publish, and you had been in there as well? Would you deserve censure as the third link? After all, you shared a stage with someone, and god only knows how many stages they've shared with how many people.

fatbird 6y ago
Kunin opposes blacklisting that resulted from others voting with their feet. He heaps scorn on the editors of the magazine, who have, I think, the best defense of their actions, namely that it was him or them, and they chose them so they could continue publishing. Kunin's target is really the other contributors who effectively strongarmed the editors into ejecting him, and he later in his essay falls back on the old chestnut that the best response to terrible speech is better speech--an idea that the amplification argument is explicitly trying to reject. So what's really being discussed here is whether the other contributors leaving is justified, and I think that this is the best form of freedom of expression. It's the most powerful form of expression to walk away from someone uttering something you find terrible to express. And when they sputter that you should engage them to demonstrate your own superiority of thinking, that's just demanding you amplify them as the price of showing off yourself. Sometimes, the better response is really to just walk away. This is the marketplace of ideas at its most effective.
- refenestrator 6y ago
  It's really funny to me that this is 'inclusivity'. We have a tiny clique of upper-middle-class people who want to control all discourse in the name of 'inclusivity'. If you're one million percent sure that you're right about everything, that's justifiable. You're maximizing inclusivity. But if you're not?
  - fatbird 6y ago
    No, what's really funny is suggesting that the editors of the Chicago Review and their contributors somehow CONTROL ALL DISCOURSE. It's as if Kunin has no other medium for the written word available to him. Of course I don't think I'm right about everything. But, as should be obvious, maximizing inclusivity means more than just ensuring an edgy, white, male poet with a university position is provided an audience.
    - refenestrator 6y ago
      Well, they're controlling what they can. And if we're gonna bring ethnicity into this, those people are mostly white too, no? The average tech team I've been on is way less white than the woke median. And most of them don't buy it if you talk to them.

fatbird 6y ago

Kunin opposes blacklisting that resulted from others voting with their feet. He heaps scorn on the editors of the magazine, who have, I think, the best defense of their actions, namely that it was him or them, and they chose them so they could continue publishing. Kunin's target is really the other contributors who effectively strongarmed the editors into ejecting him, and he later in his essay falls back on the old chestnut that the best response to terrible speech is better speech--an idea that the amplification argument is explicitly trying to reject. So what's really being discussed here is whether the other contributors leaving is justified, and I think that this is the best form of freedom of expression. It's the most powerful form of expression to walk away from someone uttering something you find terrible to express. And when they sputter that you should engage them to demonstrate your own superiority of thinking, that's just demanding you amplify them as the price of showing off yourself. Sometimes, the better response is really to just walk away. This is the marketplace of ideas at its most effective.

refenestrator 6y ago
It's really funny to me that this is 'inclusivity'. We have a tiny clique of upper-middle-class people who want to control all discourse in the name of 'inclusivity'. If you're one million percent sure that you're right about everything, that's justifiable. You're maximizing inclusivity. But if you're not?
- fatbird 6y ago
  No, what's really funny is suggesting that the editors of the Chicago Review and their contributors somehow CONTROL ALL DISCOURSE. It's as if Kunin has no other medium for the written word available to him. Of course I don't think I'm right about everything. But, as should be obvious, maximizing inclusivity means more than just ensuring an edgy, white, male poet with a university position is provided an audience.
  - refenestrator 6y ago
    Well, they're controlling what they can. And if we're gonna bring ethnicity into this, those people are mostly white too, no? The average tech team I've been on is way less white than the woke median. And most of them don't buy it if you talk to them.