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Your thinking has been completely overtaken by tribalism. "We can be bad now because other people have been bad in the past." Note that you excuse bad behavio

Your thinking has been completely overtaken by tribalism. "We can be bad now because other people have been bad in the past." Note that you excuse bad behavior from Stanford Law Students because of the Westboro Baptist Church. The former are some of the most powerful people in the world. The latter are hated by everyone and taken seriously by no one.

majormajor 4y ago
I'm not so convinced that shouting someone down is "bad." I'm not convinced that the right to speech includes the right to be listened to. Are law students, even at Stanford, "some of the most powerful people in the world"? I don't think so. The administrators have a lot more power on paper inside of Stanford. The federal judge has more power in the country as a whole. I also don't particularly care as much about whether or not it's "bad" compared to how much I care about the larger political battles. Tribalism? Or pragmatism? Meh. Westboro is just one small instance of the larger reactionary American right. They are a handy one for these purposes since their antics were somehow seen as "more acceptable" application of free speech to the right than this shouting down was. The abortion protest movement was longer, more sustained, and more violent; more recently, of course, the mob is most recognizable in screaming about election results or books in primary school libraries and such. If that sort of mob behavior is seen as "bad" by all these "free speech" folks, why are they only making noise about it when it's against them? And if they don't think it's bad, the morality certainly seems less settled than you say it is. If you're looking for tribalism, consider some more how the complaints about "the woke mob" so common in today's conversation are so one-directional in terms of which mob they target.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
  << I'm not so convinced that shouting someone down is "bad." Is it good?

majormajor 4y ago

I'm not so convinced that shouting someone down is "bad." I'm not convinced that the right to speech includes the right to be listened to. Are law students, even at Stanford, "some of the most powerful people in the world"? I don't think so. The administrators have a lot more power on paper inside of Stanford. The federal judge has more power in the country as a whole. I also don't particularly care as much about whether or not it's "bad" compared to how much I care about the larger political battles. Tribalism? Or pragmatism? Meh. Westboro is just one small instance of the larger reactionary American right. They are a handy one for these purposes since their antics were somehow seen as "more acceptable" application of free speech to the right than this shouting down was. The abortion protest movement was longer, more sustained, and more violent; more recently, of course, the mob is most recognizable in screaming about election results or books in primary school libraries and such. If that sort of mob behavior is seen as "bad" by all these "free speech" folks, why are they only making noise about it when it's against them? And if they don't think it's bad, the morality certainly seems less settled than you say it is. If you're looking for tribalism, consider some more how the complaints about "the woke mob" so common in today's conversation are so one-directional in terms of which mob they target.

A4ET8a8uTh0 4y ago
<< I'm not so convinced that shouting someone down is "bad." Is it good?