The Intellectual Wank Dad [ ot ] jordan peterson Jordan Peterson JORDAN PETERSON

[Oblivion]

I have to say, one thing that I really hate about these discussions on "free speech" is that it's done in remarkably bad faith by the side that allegedly supports it. Just look at all the "free speech" advocates going nuclear whenever somebody exercises speech that they don't support like Colin Kaepernick, the Starbucks coffee cup incident, department stores saying "Happy Holidays", the list goes on and on. This isn't (and hasn't ever been) an actual debate on "free speech" because one side has no intention of ever letting the other to exercise their right to speak.

[etiolate]

Here's part 2 of that: https://heterodoxacademy.org/the-skeptics-are-wrong-part-2/

To understand how this operates, you have look at your average campus demographic. There is a silent majority that is for free speech, but that majority is there to actually be a student. Then there is a vocal minority who are there because they thought the 60s were cool and like protesting. It's that minority that runs for student elections and creates the entire atmosphere. The majority look at it as 4 years of putting up with these people so they can get a degree and move on. Most of the campus had their head down.

You don't have enough time for shutting down a speaker if you're in an intensive study. The students who ran Weinstein out of Evergreen weren't his own biology students. It was students with time and anger to spare. And they effectively tarnished the whole college by themselves. It's a risk to stand up so most don't.

This behavior pattern isn't contained to colleges.

[shosta]

From part 2.

To address this question, we first ask whether the students themselves think something is changing. A 2017 survey conducted by Cato/YouGov, on Free Speech and Tolerance (Total N = 2,300, including an oversample of 769 current college students and college graduates), asked: “Do you think that recent student protests and cancellations of controversial speakers on college campuses are isolated incidents, or are they part of a broader pattern of how college students respond to controversial ideas?”

Of the current 4-year college students in the survey, 79% responded that they thought recent campus events are part of a broader pattern of how college students respond to controversial ideas. (The percentage is nearly identical for college graduates, at 81%).

This is why I'm confused by the vocal denials that anything at all has changed. When you actually ask everyone, it seems like there's wide agreement that something has!

[jakefromstatefarm]

This is why I'm confused by the vocal denials that anything at all has changed. When you actually ask everyone, it seems like there's wide agreement that something has!

there seems to be an obvious distinction to make here between perceived changes and real ones, which I assume is why mandark mentioned “material conditions” or whatever all those posts ago

[Mandark]

Yeah, a polling result on whether people believe in a trend isn't actual evidence of the trend itself (e.g. people always say crime is getting worse even when the opposite is true), even though that poll can be useful or interesting for other reasons.

[El Babua]

So any talk of TPUSA running an organized effort to take over student governments throughout the country?

[etiolate]

Well we could point to the numerous times it happens on campus.

https://www.thefire.org/category/cases/


But I believed from the moment Mandy shat out his mouth that it was another dishonest question and he was going to weasel out of anything.

[etiolate]

Bonus: Out of 450 Universities in the theFIRE database, 136 earned a red flag rating for free speech and student right issues. This includes many major state colleges and ivy league schools.

If you throw in the yellow speech code rating, which is for policy that is vague enough to abused and restrict speech, then you probably hit over 50% of the universities.

[benjipwns]

tylerk
3 hours ago
If I saw men masturbating on the subway on the way to work, I would cringe. If I saw men masturbating on the subway every day, week after week, month after month, no doubt the "cringe factor" would dissipate over time. And that is the fatal flaw in social change. One can be conditioned to accept horror.

which of you is riding the subway with this guy

[Nola]

Bonus: Out of 450 Universities in the theFIRE database, 136 earned a red flag rating for free speech and student right issues. This includes many major state colleges and ivy league schools.

If you throw in the yellow speech code rating, which is for policy that is vague enough to abused and restrict speech, then you probably hit over 50% of the universities.

Long care post warning:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

In the context of what this most recent discussion is seemingly about: is there a notable uptick in the advocation and/or sympathy for free speech restrictions compared to past generations of university students, primarily coming from the left, I am not sure what you think you are providing evidence of here?

For this to be adequetely meaningful, it would need to include some historical anchor we could weigh the present trend against. And it would need to siphon out, stratify, and organize the context in which these events are happening. So as to make a more informed value judgement. As is, your "cases" link is throwing into the same basket a college Republican group trying to ban a science teacher for saying in class that people that vote for Republicans are tacitly supporting murder and dislocation by way of denying climate change(like happened at my school) with left-wing protestors trying to ban Milo from speaking. I guess it could be evidence toward it's present state of being on a broad, indiscriminate level, but we both know you see the causation and problem more specific. And have long argued to it being a troubling trend predominately amongst the left.

However, as evidence for consideration, if you look at a wide collection of surveys across age and political spectrum, like two recent YouGov/Economist polls and a Pew Survey, it does seem to undercut the current Peterson style thesis that there is something uniquely wrong with the free speech values of the children(and more specifically the dirty millennial leftist, Marxist post-modernists).

Almost across the board, you tend to find a wider range and stronger advocation for speech restriction amongst older, Republican people surveyed than younger, liberal participants. And greater advocacy for a wider range of restrictions amongst Republicans than Democrats. However, the inflection points differ. The right tends to favor bans on trans, gay, non-Christian speech in institutions and restricting their allowance in society. Followed up closely by things like banning flag burning or protesting the National Anthem. While the left is slightly more willing to ban and restrict issues stemming from prejudice. However, the aggregate percentage of those groups advocating given restrictions comes out higher and wider on the older, right leaning participants. Basically the one place that the left seems to take a harder line on free speech restrictions are when it comes to issues of prejudice. Which has always made me suspicious about why so many like Peterson only seem to give a shit about that particular inflection point of anti-prejudice and not the still much larger issue of people advocating restrictions on speech because of their prejudice???

Some charts to illustrate some of the above:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

I've asked this before, but why should I have a greater outsized concern about liberals on campus over-correcting for real issues of prejudice in society and our economic systems than actual Republicans and older conservatives and their much larger and broader assaults on speech? Like trying to jail teachers that protest their wages or work conditions? Want to pressure companies to fire people that protest racism by way of the national anthem? Or legislate a ban on certain civic protests entirely? Ban political dissent they don't like? De-humanize and suppress immigrants, religious minorities, and POC for political gain and personal desire? Ban LGBTQ literature in libraries? Restrict LGBTQ rights more generally? Whom actively vote for autocratic candidates and are consistently supporting any and all underhanded ways to undermine and corrupt core democratic institutions and processes from the national level down to the student government level(as El Babua alluded to)? Especially the core Trumpian white, non-college graduate?

It is really hard to take seriously someone that wants to tell me that the real nexus of problems in this country is 19 year old college liberals getting too worked up on social media and campuses over racism when you step back and take in any sort of objective perspective on free speech issues in this country.

[close]

[Mandark]

Bonus: Out of 450 Universities in the theFIRE database, 136 earned a red flag rating for free speech and student right issues. This includes many major state colleges and ivy league schools.

If you throw in the yellow speech code rating, which is for policy that is vague enough to abused and restrict speech, then you probably hit over 50% of the universities.

From FIRE: Report: Campus speech codes decline for 10th straight year

• Just under one third (32.3 percent) of surveyed institutions received FIRE’s poorest, red light rating for maintaining speech codes that both clearly and substantially restrict freedom of speech. This year’s figure is seven percentage points lower than last year and almost 42 percentage points lower than in FIRE’s 2009 report.
• Most institutions — 58.6 percent — receive a yellow light rating. While less restrictive than red light policies, yellow light policies still prohibit or have an impermissible chilling effect on constitutionally protected speech.
• Thirty-five institutions earned FIRE’s highest, green light rating for free speech in this year’s report. Since the report was written, two more universities have earned green light status, bringing the total to 37. Only eight institutions earned this rating in the 2009 report.

Still not sold this is a major crisis.

[etiolate]

I didn't expect you to be sold on it since your intent is to never believe it and try to dismiss it.


Show me some metrics!

oh, no not THOSE metrics

or those metrics

what metrics? the magical metrics that I didn't specify

and never will

Always a coward.


32% of colleges is no minor thing, unless you want to pretend the events that keep happening over and over are nothing.

Time to repost this:

http://nassimtaleb.org/2016/09/intellectual-yet-idiot/

[Mandark]

32% of colleges is no minor thing, unless you want to pretend the events that keep happening over and over are nothing.

Nine years ago it was 74%. The source you picked shows the trend significantly and monotonically improving in the last decade.

[benjipwns]

BILL MAHER SHOWDOWN POST-MORTEM:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

at Doocy whenever Peterson talks for longer than ten seconds "sure... right... sure... right... right..."

[close]

[etiolate]

Did he think Peterson was going to give him Fox News hot takes?

[benjipwns]

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-04-24/holding-up-a-mirror-to-the-intellectuals-of-the-left

This column is my corresponding warning to the left, like when somebody tells you your shirt is not properly tucked in.

Here is what I see:

More and more of the interesting discussions are going off-line and occurring in private groups, in part to escape the glare of social media and political correctness. Right now, it is especially hard to tell who will prove to be the important thinkers of our time. I’m struck by Scott Alexander, a blogger at Slate Star Codex and a thinker who is influential among other writers. He keeps his real name a secret.

Often my best conversations are with doers and practitioners, rather than intellectuals and writers. The politics of the doers are typically difficult to discern or to boil down to simple classifications. Even when they are registered Democrats, they often seem alienated from that party in intellectual terms.

I find that left-wing intellectuals complain more about the right wing than right-wing intellectuals complain about the left. This negative focus isn’t healthy for the viability of left-wing intellectual creativity.

...

Religion has been a major force in world history, and today is no exception. The popular intellectual who probably has made the biggest splash this year, Jordan Peterson, describes himself as a Christian. Right-wing intellectuals, overall, aren’t nearly as religious as is the broader right-wing electorate. Still, I find they are much better suited to understand the role of religion in life than are left-wing intellectuals. For intellectuals on the left, the primary emotional reaction to religion is to see it as a force standing in the way of social liberalism, feel awkward about how many Americans are still religious, and then prefer to change the topic.

I see the main victims of the political correctness movement as standing in the center or center-left. In fact, some intellectual superstars, such as Peterson or Steven Pinker, have thrived and received enormous attention by attacking political correctness. But if you don’t have a big public audience, you work in a university, and you wish to make a point about race or gender that isn’t entirely along “proper” lines, you will probably keep your mouth shut or suffer the consequences. Those intellectual victims are not mainly on the right, and it means the left has ended up somewhat blind on these issues. This underlying dysfunction is a big reason the left was so surprised by the election of President Donald Trump.

Every intellectual on the right is extremely familiar with the doctrines of the left and center-left, but the converse is somewhat less true. It is virtually impossible to imagine a conservative or libertarian analog of Krugman’s earlier claim that there are no conservative sites he reads regularly.

In short, the new world of ideas is a free-for-all, and it is hard to wrap your arms around it. But the overall picture is by no means as favorable to left-wing intellectuals as left-wing intellectuals might wish to tell you.

[shosta]

benji, if I recall correctly don't you hate slate star codex?

also maybe I'm wrong but I really doubt a significant amount of Steven Pinker's notoriety comes from attacking political correctness...

[Oblivion]

Fresh off the hot take express, noted Soviet Union expert, Jordan Peterson thinks the Stalin was a secular humanist and that atheists would murder everyone without God to stop them.

Can't believe this is the guy that stole our beloved Shosta's heart. 

[Momo]

timestamps for relevant points, not going to listen to this whole thing.

[Oblivion]

Stolen from reddit:



(11:33) - JP: "The celebrity atheists don't contend with the real issues". Lists a bunch of authors, no specific issues.

(13:09) - JP suggests experiences while getting high on shrooms are evidence of the supernatural.

(41:32) - JP: "All artists only think they're godless" [paraphrasing]. Later, says Matt acts like he believes in God. JP starts getting weirdly aggressive.

(47:13) - JP attempts a series of "gotchas" in an attempt to show that Matt's morality has fundamental axioms. Claims cutting off your own head is not necessarily bad for well being.

(50:55) - Matt calls out JP for "Cathy Newman"ing him for the last 10 minutes.

(55:50) - JP abandons the entire field of logic to attempt to undermine Matt. JP says his "smart engineer friend" told him machine learning uses no rules. (This is literally wrong, and at best a complete misunderstanding). JP misses irony of having a book with 12 rules.

Q+A

(1:04:58) - JP does his usual dodge of the "Is God real" question, complete with long silence.

(1:15:00) - JP: "The Soviet Union was a secular, humanist government" [para.]

(1:28:21) - JP claims a "genuine" atheist is like Raskolnikov from Crime and Punishment, proving he did read the book.

(1:35:02) - Matt points out JP simply redefines "atheists" to avoid acknowledging conflicts in his worldview.

(1:39:29) - JP walks back his claim that shroom trips are evidence for God.

[Momo]

okay sounds interesting enough thank you, i'll give it a complete listen later, rn i'd rather listen to FF

[Mandark]

Aw man, I had a flippant comment about how Peterson thinks that everyone would turn into a bunch of Raskolnikovs without a "real" system of morality (ie existing outside of human creation) but the man himself beat me to it.

[jorma]

JP is such a goof and continues to make unforced error after unforced error for those who don't like him (for whatever reason any individual has to dislike him, there are a few). He should probably scale back his appearances as, like most people, the more he speaks the more chances he gives himself to look like a dummy.

Reading this thread i'm starting to think he's just expanding his audience. His fans are only interested in watching clips where he slays, while his anti fans will only listen to clips where he is a bit of a clueless wanker.

[jorma]

But he knows from personal experience that he has far more of a reach on any given number of podcasts he regularly goes on than a few minutes on Fox News. Going on the worst pundit shows on Fox News undermines his position on anything, imo. He can go on JRE basically whenever and be on a show with 5m+ downloads on one platform alone and talk for 3 hours about all of his points, or he can go on Tucker for 7 minutes for half as many people and talk about those dang libs. It makes him come off as an ideologue and, dare I say it, dog whistler.

It's almost..idk...intellectually dishonest. Cowardly, perhaps.

I just based it on the comments here, some users post videos to show how awesome he is, others post different videos to show how awful he is.
But it's not like i care enough to actually watch any of them. (trumpshrug)

[etiolate]

32% of colleges is no minor thing, unless you want to pretend the events that keep happening over and over are nothing.

Nine years ago it was 74%. The source you picked shows the trend significantly and monotonically improving in the last decade.

FIRE wins its cases, which improves the rating for the college they win against. It reflects trends in the court, but not for certain trends in the college mentality or the youth there.

Weinstein got a very nice going away present from Evergreen but that doesn't mean Evergreen admits guilt or will change. It doesn't seem that way at all.

The issue of Title IX cases going to real actual courts is costing the colleges money, but it is not a certainty that this means that colleges will stop running kangaroo courts or change their vague guilt-assuming practices as long as TItle IX exists in the same way or if the lobbying and activist forces that created the kangaroo courts still exist in DC and in the campus itself. 


It would be better if you knew how to be honest Mandark, but I don't think you do know how to be honest. If you did have honesty then I probably wouldn't have to explain this rather obvious bit of nuance.

[Mandark]

FIRE wins its cases, which improves the rating for the college they win against. It reflects trends in the court, but not for certain trends in the college mentality or the youth there.

So most or all of the changes in FIRE's ratings reflect policy changes forced by verdicts in court cases?

[benjipwns]

Just anecdotally, many colleges I know of have scaled back their policies as part of a standard review and a whole "woah, we don't want that mess, it sounds like paperwork, and not the good kind of paperwork" mentality with practically zero actual events occurring beforehand. That's not to say a free speech extremist like myself doesn't consider aspects of them to be problematic, and I'm sure that's part of why FIRE doesn't hand out green ratings easily, but on the whole you aren't going to be pulled before any kind of tribunal and mostly because the administration doesn't want to deal with it. Campus forces actively desiring it are too small and easily distracted to where I strongly suspect* the administration was behind some pro-Trump chalk writing that "suddenly appeared" on the sidewalks and caused a tizzy until it rained.

Evergreen is such a tiny and insignificant college that is so out of line with colleges in general (it doesn't issue grades, it only has a "single" undergraduate degree in Liberal Arts, its motto is latin for "let it all hang out", it has 4000 students, etc.) that it's absurd to consider it comparable or any kind of trend with universities or colleges writ large. Wellesey is a million times as relevant and it's a parody college in pop culture.

*

[naff]

Etoiletries still up in here trying to manufacture outrage.

It would be better if you knew how to be honest Mandark, but I don't think you do know how to be honest. If you did have honesty then I probably wouldn't have to explain this rather obvious bit of nuance.

 

[Momo]

I still havent watched the Jordan Peterson video, got busy yesterday :/

[etiolate]

Almost through the Peterson/Dillahunt debate. I think they get a little testy toward the end. I find that the discussion reveals how strongly their experiences influence their view, be it southern baptist churches for Dillahunt or the clinical work of Peterson and the troubled people he's tried to help. I think this showed a lot in the Doestevsky story. Peterson was talking about human rationalizing and then the actuality of living with the reasoning. Dillahunt took this as real atheists are murderers.

[Oblivion]

You would think Peterson himself would spend a few seconds to trying to clarify that at some point throughout the debate, if that were the case.

[Oblivion]

*In John Connor voice* : I think it's slowly becoming self-aware.

[Mandark]

This isn't the first time he's said something like this.

You can be a non-believer in your surface rationality, but you can’t be a non-believer in your actions, you see, because Harris’ metaphysics is fundamentally Christian. So he acts out a Christian metaphysics, while at the same time saying ‘I don’t believe it’. Yes, you do, because you’re acting it out. You just say you don’t believe it, but he’s acting it out, e.g. he doesn’t rob banks, he doesn’t kill people, he doesn’t rape. This addressed in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

[HardcoreRetro]

What the hell is a Doestevsky?

[etiolate]

What the hell is a Doestevsky?

doestevsky a russian female deer whose burden is heavy as sin

[HardcoreRetro]

How does Peterson feel about Tostloy though?

Edit: Every time I read a Peterson thing Psycho Killer's lyrics come to mind.

"You start a conversation, you can't even finish it. You're talking a lot, but you're not saying anything"

[agrajag]

This isn't the first time he's said something like this.

You can be a non-believer in your surface rationality, but you can’t be a non-believer in your actions, you see, because Harris’ metaphysics is fundamentally Christian. So he acts out a Christian metaphysics, while at the same time saying ‘I don’t believe it’. Yes, you do, because you’re acting it out. You just say you don’t believe it, but he’s acting it out, e.g. he doesn’t rob banks, he doesn’t kill people, he doesn’t rape. This addressed in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

what a dumb fuck.

[etiolate]

You would think Peterson himself would spend a few seconds to trying to clarify that at some point throughout the debate, if that were the case.

He seemed to realize that at a certain point in the conversation that he upset Dillahunty and was trying to be less verbose*.




* Which he can't do so he just picks less topics to interject on.

[Momo]

This like/dislike ratio, Abby still rustling people fiercely.

[etiolate]

Abby pushes propaganda. I turned that one off after lke the 6th time she made a big claim, Joe asked for verification and she had to back off.

I'm not  for America's interference overseas or its geopolitical shenannigans, but you don't fight that by raving about the latest Potemkin village you saw in some hellhole country.

[Crash Dummy]

This isn't the first time he's said something like this.

You can be a non-believer in your surface rationality, but you can’t be a non-believer in your actions, you see, because Harris’ metaphysics is fundamentally Christian. So he acts out a Christian metaphysics, while at the same time saying ‘I don’t believe it’. Yes, you do, because you’re acting it out. You just say you don’t believe it, but he’s acting it out, e.g. he doesn’t rob banks, he doesn’t kill people, he doesn’t rape. This addressed in Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

i haven't watched the debate but is he basically using many words to essentially say what zizek says about ideology (it exists and works regardless of one believing and having faith in it)? and also what's his rationale for attributing those metaphysics to christianity specifically? i'm sure most religions preach not to rob, kill and rape

[etiolate]

I'm not sure its to Christianity alone. I think he sees the best wrangling of the ideas in Christianity, but he references other religions. He brings up the Tao in the discussion. 

The Dillahunty/Peterson discussion needed to answer the question of whether a transcendental being (such as God) is required for a proper morality.

[Nola]

I'm not sure its to Christianity alone. I think he sees the best wrangling of the ideas in Christianity, but he references other religions. He brings up the Tao in the discussion. 

The Dillahunty/Peterson discussion needed to answer the question of whether a transcendental being (such as God) is required for a proper morality.

It's not.

[etiolate]

Well she did a YT piece on how the press is more free in Venezuela than reported in the west... while working for a state sponsored network.

[etiolate]

You asked about propaganda and I gave you her doing propaganda.

[agrajag]

I'm not sure its to Christianity alone. I think he sees the best wrangling of the ideas in Christianity, but he references other religions. He brings up the Tao in the discussion. 

The Dillahunty/Peterson discussion needed to answer the question of whether a transcendental being (such as God) is required for a proper morality.

(Narrator) It's not.

Ftfy

[Momo]

The way I understand it Abby doesnt work for any state sponsored network, she produces content herself for her own production company and then sells it on to several state networks and whomever would have it, and yes i understand the fact that these are her customers typically is an argument that she has to pursue certain angles, but she's pretty consistent with the stuff she chooses to pursue. Not going to claim she doesn't invent a lot of really bad intentions when there is typically easier explanations or that she is exactly fair and unbiased. That she and Sam Harris are both friends with Joe Rogan makes me tingle with delight that the singularity might oneday occur where they are both on the same podcast, Joe was angling for it last time Abby was on iirc.

[benjipwns]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/04/stop-talking-about-race-and-iq-take-it-from-someone-who-did.html

The race-and-IQ debate is back. The latest round started a few weeks ago when Harvard geneticist David Reich wrote a New York Times op-ed in defense of race as a biological fact. The piece resurfaced Sam Harris’ year-old Waking Up podcast interview with Charles Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve, and launched a Twitter debate between Harris and Vox’s Ezra Klein. Klein then responded to Harris and Reich in Vox, Harris fired back, and Andrew Sullivan went after Klein. Two weeks ago, Klein and Harris released a two-hour podcast in which they fruitlessly continued their dispute.

https://niskanencenter.org/blog/there-is-no-campus-free-speech-crisis-a-close-look-at-the-evidence/

The campus free speech debate is heating up. Last month I made the case (first in a Twitter thread and then again at the Washington Post’s The Monkey Cage) that there is no campus free speech crisis. Around the same time, similar arguments were made by Matt Yglesias (at Vox), Aaron Hanlon (at NBC), and Mari Uyehara (at GQ). The gist of our collective argument was that young people and university students are generally supportive of free speech, that university enrollment is associated with an increase in tolerance for offensive speech, and that a small number of anecdotes have been permitted to set the terms of public debate.

Unsurprisingly, these debunkings have attracted some debunkings of their own. The most detailed of these was a pair of posts by Sean Stevens and Jonathan Haidt at the Heterodox Academy. In addition to restating the case for why the campus free speech crisis is real, Stevens and Haidt make a number of additional claims for why alarm is warranted. I am grateful for their critique, but I am not persuaded.

[etiolate]

Oh were those the metrics Mandark wanted? I see now.

[Mandark]

Again, your own source said university speech codes have been declining steadily for a decade. Defining what constitutes a "crisis" is subjective but that's surely not evidence of it. Not sure why you're fired up on this point.

[etiolate]

Fired up? I am laughing. You're such a obvious bullshitter. You asked a question of which you had no intent to hear the answer. Just to ask the question is to send a message that is dishonest.

You stick your head in the sand. You didn't want metrics.  You got metrics and selectively heard them. You got explanations you couldn't respond to in any way.

You're hilarious.

[Oblivion]

This was a great week for the battle for the right to FREE SPEECH.

RedState fired every single one of their anti-Trump columnists.

The entire right-wing is freaking out about Michelle Wolf being too mean to Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Trump admin.

Once again, proving that the "fuck your feelings" crowd is (and always has been) full of shit.

[etiolate]

This isn't a thread about political talking heads.

[Oblivion]

It's directly related to the discussion on free speech that was going on.

[Nola]

This was a great week for the battle for the right to FREE SPEECH.

RedState fired every single one of their anti-Trump columnists.

The entire right-wing is freaking out about Michelle Wolf being too mean to Sarah Huckabee Sanders and the Trump admin.

Once again, proving that the "fuck your feelings" crowd is (and always has been) full of shit.

Like etiolate, they are just mad at where the inflection points shift to, not really the idea of free speech itself.

If that were the case, like my bloviated post above showed, the rational place to put most of the pearl clutching is on the right, and toward older generations. Which by a notable margin control larger levers of power, are far more in favor of both a broader range of speech restrictions and have a much deeper support base for it within their ranks.

But here we are talking about a diminishing trend on college campuses and etiolate getting all uppity if people deviate too much away from what he wants people to focus on...

[benjipwns]

To be honest, the most shocking and frightening thing about the RedState story is that:
1. They were paying bloggers enough that firing them would save money.
b. That they had bloggers people would notice if they were fired.
iii. RedState has non-technical employees in general, since it looks like an automatically generated blog bumping platform.
IIII. That it's not having Raven create a Battle Royale mode to compensate.

[benjipwns]

one of the top stories on RedState:

SHOCK. James Clapper Lied To Congress About Discussing The Trump Dossier With Jake Tapper

i guess my version of the headline wouldn't generate the clicks and they'd fire me too

SHOCK: Jerk who committed perjury in Congress and completely got away with it, probably did so again; now forced to work at CNN

[Oblivion]

To be honest, the most shocking and frightening thing about the RedState story is that:
1. They were paying bloggers enough that firing them would save money.
b. That they had bloggers people would notice if they were fired.
iii. RedState has non-technical employees in general, since it looks like an automatically generated blog bumping platform.
IIII. That it's not having Raven create a Battle Royale mode to compensate.

What's also surprising is that Erick Son of Erick was a never-Trumper wasn't he?

[benjipwns]

He sold RedState to Salem in 2014 in the first place to focus on his radio show and CNN full time. (Also presumably to make money before its value dropped more.)

The Resurgent/The Maven is his now website, with hard hitting never-Trump content: https://www.themaven.net/theresurgent/erick-erickson/because-they-re-okay-with-killing-kids-among-other-things-_5xBrZrrxEubwlhGrZAkzg/?full=1

Max Boot can't figure out why Republicans who claim to be upset by Donald Trump won't do what he sees as the only reasonable thing and vote Democrat.

I did not vote for Donald Trump. There are plenty of his policies I have been pleasantly surprised by. But I hold to the old fashioned view that character matters and find his character to be low. All that said, I do admit he has made great appointments and has advanced some good policies both in foreign relations and in domestic policy.

He still concerns me though and I too wish the GOP would be more forceful against him instead of less deferential. I still think Congress needs to use its checks and balances against him more and take the lead on legislating when he won't.

I could never vote for Democrats though. As much as I think the GOP has gone insane, I think the Democratic Party has embraced policies I find as morally repugnant as Trump's behavior. And his behavior is just on him. The Democrats not only want to advance morally repugnant policies, but not allow any of us to opt out of them.

It is easy for Max Boot to vote Democrat if you aren't a social conservative or Christian. But I think life matters and the Democrats' embrace of killing children, hiding euphemistically behind the term "abortion," is actually a moral evil. One of my concerns with President Trump is that I remain skeptical of his commitment to the culture of life. I'm sure not going to embrace a party that has handed itself over to a government subsidized death cult called Planned Parenthood.

Likewise, I think homosexuality is a sin and gay marriage is an affront to God. I'm not going to support a party that wants to shut down small businesses run by Christians who refuse to go along with the the left's view on human sexuality.

And then there's transgenderism. A transgender person is mentally ill and the left would prefer we treat the transgender person as normal instead of trying to get them help.

On all these issues, the Democratic Party has been hijacked by those who'd treat deviancy as normal and normalcy as deviant. I think these moral issues directly relate to a collapse of our culture. So while I have no affection for a President who is a moral cretin, I'm certainly not going to cast my lot with a party that celebrations moral abominations and thinks the government should subsidize them.

Trump may be an authoritarian, but the Democrats are the ones trying to force nuns to pay for killing kids and force small businesses out of business for not wanting to support same-sex weddings.

[Oblivion]

He sold RedState to Salem in 2014 in the first place to focus on his radio show and CNN full time. (Also presumably to make money before its value dropped more.)

Ah okay, that explains it.