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ethang5
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Open Letter On Cancel culture

...censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms.

The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

A huge list of famous notable liberals in academia and literature signed this open letter. Look at it and see how many of them you recognize.

Obama on Call-Out Culture: ‘That’s Not Activism’

“I do get a sense sometimes now among certain young people, and this is accelerated by social media, there is this sense sometimes of: ‘The way of me making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people,’” he said, “and that’s enough.”
“Like, if I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb,” he said, “then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself, cause, ‘Man, you see how woke I was, I called you out.’
“That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change,” he said. “If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”
“This idea of purity and you’re never compromised and you’re always politically ‘woke’ and all that stuff,” Mr. Obama said. “You should get over that quickly.”

(Liberals didn't know what to do with this rebuke from their darling!)

It seems like liberals are getting fed up with liberalism. Antifa is burning down their buildings, demonstrators are surrounding their homes and businesses, they are losing jobs and contracts to cancel culture, and they can't get a cop when they need one. political correctness is out of control and is correcting even liberals. They don't like it.
Dr.Franklin
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to socialism yes
oromagi
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@ethang5
It seems like liberals are getting fed up with liberalism. Antifa is burning down their buildings, demonstrators are surrounding their homes and businesses, they are losing jobs and contracts to cancel culture, and they can't get a cop when they need one. political correctness is out of control and is correcting even liberals. They don't like it.
Liberalism can't die.  LIBERALISM is "a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law.   Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support free markets, free trade, limited government, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), capitalism, democracy, secularism, gender equality, racial equality, internationalism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion."

If you believe the words written in the Declaration of Independence you are by definition a Liberal.  America was founded as an explicitly liberal project and remains so to this day.  America might perish from the Earth but the principles upon which America was founded cannot be killed.

You quote liberal critique of liberals and conservatives alike and seem to conclude that therefore there must be schism within liberalism, ut  lovers of free speech thrive on critique and debate.  Whatever the disagreement the core principles of liberalism endure.  

No liberals are concerned about Antifa because Antifa is mostly a phantasm that lives on FOX News.  Racists and anti-government extremists did represent a portion of the rioting.


Officials have arrested more than 14,000 people across 49 cities nationwide since May 27, according to a Washington Post tally of data provided by police departments and included in media reports. Thousands were arrested for low-level offenses, including curfew violations and failure to disperse.

Roughly 80 federal charges, including murder and throwing molotov cocktails at police vehicles, reveal no evidence of an antifa plot. Four people who identify with the far-right extremist “boogaloo” movement are among those facing the most serious federal charges.

“the greatest threat of lethal violence continues to emanate from lone offenders with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist ideologies and [domestic violent extremists] with personalized ideologies,” specifically pointing to boogaloo-related groups as likely to be “instigating violence” at the protests.
I live in downtown Denver and observed the three worst nights of rioting.  In Denver, at least, the overwhelming majority of rioters were white men 18-25.  The spray paint tags said "anarchy" and "fuck the police," etc but most of the crime was pretty apolitical.  For example, rioters smashed and looted the largest liquor store downtown while leaving the police across the street largely unmolested. 

I don't have any facts or figures about the economic impact of cancel culture (particularly in the pandemic) but I'm a bit skeptical of the idea that that some exclusively liberal phenomenon or that most boycott are much beyond short term posturing.   I think Twitter and Facebook have certainly the amplified the frequency and volume of tactical sociopolitical postures like boycotts and political correctness but both phenomenon seem to be at least as profound a problem on the right and again, the impact is fairly fuzzy.  Do you have any data?

I consider myself a liberal and I embraced the Letter in Harper's the other day in the spirit I think it was intended.  You don't stop loving Woody Allen movies just because Woody Allen married his daughter.  You don't stop admiring Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic just because he was a secret Nazi eugenicist with a secret Nazi second family.  You don't stop believing in the Declaration of Independence just because Jefferson raped his dead wife's slave/sister.

You say that Liberals didn't know what to do with Obama's  reprimand re: cheap wokeness but I embraced that article as well- in fact, I quoted it the very next day in these very forums criticizing the conspiracy of phony outrage that drove bsh1 from this site which was as much his as anybody's.

fauxlaw
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The letter is an interesting read, but is, itself, a marked example of condoning the censure it is written to oppose, to wit: "The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy." This is a common phrase coming from Progressives, not Liberals, who are, indeed, a dying breed, and specifically because Progressives are crowding them out in a steady march toward Marxism. I keep expecting that someone, sometime is going to follow up the statement by example of why they think Trump is a threat to democracy, but they never do. So, why are they so shy?
ethang5
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@oromagi
I consider myself a liberal and I embraced the Letter in Harper's the other day in the spirit I think it was intended. 
You may try to gloss it over, but Obama said exactly what conservatives have been saying is wrong with liberals for years.

Did you hear of the secondary row about J.K. Rowling being accused of  insensitive remarks about transgendered folks and several people who signed the letter recusing themselves from endorsing the letter because she is a signatory?

Talk about cancel culture run amok.

(PS. I was using the political definition of liberal.)
ethang5
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@fauxlaw
I keep expecting that someone, sometime is going to follow up the statement by example of why they think Trump is a threat to democracy, but they never do. So, why are they so shy?
Their belief is not based on empirical fact, but emotional liberal dogma. Every prediction they made about Trump at his gaining the office has proven false, yet the go right on as if a record of 100% wrong matters not.

For them, it's liberal dogma, not reality, that matters.

14 days later

sadolite
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@oromagi
LIBERALISM is "a political and moral philosophy based on liberty, consent of the governed and equality before the law.   Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but they generally support free markets, free trade, limited government, individual rights (including civil rights and human rights), capitalism, democracy, secularism, gender equality, racial equality, internationalism, freedom of speech, freedom of the press and freedom of religion."   Huh, interesting , the majority of those beliefs are called far right extremists views from what I an told and lectured to by self espoused liberals.
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@sadolite
Politics...It's something to disagree about for 4 years and then it's circus time.....Everyone loves a clown.....We've got one and you've got one.....And then everything's back to normal.

Let's hope that big top hasn't got dodgy rigging.
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@sadolite
the majority of those beliefs are called far right extremists views from what I an told and lectured to by self espoused liberals
My definition comes from Wikipedia.  I'd say the majority of people talk politics using a highly inaccurate political vocabulary.  If one accepts the Declaration of independence  or the Gettysburg Address as truth, then one is a liberal by definition however often the FOX News pundits try to change the meaning of that word.  There's a lot of false political dichotomies out there and even a little research on political terms would profoundly improve the quality of political discourse.
WaterPhoenix
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hopefully
Intelligence_06
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I consider myself to be pretty liberal. You blame the bad people, not the ideology. You blame the racists, not the Whites. pretty much every ideology can bring good except for the ones that are intended to cause chaos.

107 days later

Theweakeredge
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@fauxlaw
Progressive here, we are actually climbing the ranks at an impressive speed, just as atheists and such are. Idk why people think they're dying out, we're just getting our foot in the door lol
fauxlaw
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@Theweakeredge
By "dying out," I was meaning liberals, let alone moderates, neither of whom are Progressive. The latter is a different breed of Democrat, which, as you say, are climbing. But I don't find a single tenet of Progressive ideology that does not have its antithesis in another Progressive tenet. A sack of contradictions.
zedvictor4
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@fauxlaw
Evolution is progressive, unavoidable and unstoppable.....And  the political thrashings of human society are inconsequential to the fact....And we like to think that humanity is the be all and end all.....And on the one hand we could be, but on the other we probably won't be....Relative to this particular spec of cosmic dust of course.

There may be intelligent carrots out there somewhere, that don't give a damn about  liberals, moderates or progressives.

So maybe, Trump is in fact a carrot.....Certainly the right colour, though clearly one of the less intellectual ones.
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@fauxlaw
Point out some then, what do you have as some contradictions?
Trent0405
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Seeing how liberalism values economic and individual liberty, two measurable metrics, we can actually objectively determine whether or not we are trending toward or away from Liberalism.

Economic Freedom
In the Fraser Institutes annual report on economic freedom, they noted that the world is becoming freer economically.

Individual Liberty

Green represents free countries, yellow represents partly free countries, and purple represents unfree nations. Clearly then we are becoming freer.

So we are indeed becoming more liberal.
fauxlaw
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@zedvictor4
Curious it's only progs who see the carrot when it was Hillarous Balloon Girl who wore more orange than Trump ever does. Y'all seem to have a color distinction issue. Not surprised. Biden also has a problem distinguishing what black is, let alone orange. Can't seem to find his way around the spectrum of visible light.
TheUnderdog
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Most liberals aren't antifa, most conservatives aren't klansmen, and most libetarians aren't anarchists.  People can think for themselves.
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@Theweakeredge
responding to your #15:

Progressive contradictions:
 
You claim net zero emissions, yet every green energy turbine in the world [ wind, tidal, hydro, geo-thermal, and even nuclear [quasi-green] use petroleum as a lubricant, because you don’t have AlGoreGooeyJuice. Why not?
 
You claim we should not eat beef because of cow flatulence [methane], but encourage rice production  even though cultivated and natural wetlands, rivers, lakes, and oceans emit more methane collectively than do cows, because all living things emit methane.
 
You claim anthropogenic climate change is the worst contributor to climate change even though the climate saw more severe climate shifts prior to the advent of man in Earth’s biosphere.
 
You claim socialism is the best economic model, although it has an average 40-year life cycle, and has never achieved more than a 100-year cycle [USSR leads at 75 years], yet make use of capitalism as practiced in the U.S., now in its 233rdyear, counted from the inception of the Constitution, and over 400 years since the beginning throes of colonization.
 
You claim abortion is an effective preventative of pregnancy, yet abortion, in 47% of cases, represents abortion as a second choice, after that percentage of contraceptive failure, and there is a 13% failure of abortion success in eleven years by resulting live births, when abstinence, when practiced successfully, is 100% effective.
 
 
Theweakeredge
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@fauxlaw
Do you have sources backing any of that up? Do you have sources that tell allow you to gauge that these are the actual positions of the average progressive? 
fauxlaw
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@Theweakeredge
Wiki
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@fauxlaw
Excuse me? Was it not you that continuously espouses how Wiki itself admits it is unreliable?
fauxlaw
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@Theweakeredge
It's a conundrum, isn't it? Now you complain? The point is, y'all believe it, so why am I denied?
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@fauxlaw
What? First of all, link the page if you would, second of all: it's used as a consensus of information, as Oromgai has detailed time and time again. 
fauxlaw
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@Theweakeredge
You mean, do all your research for you? Nope. I'm not your tutor. Maybe when you start crossing my palm with some green. What, this is your idea of free college? Sorry. Do it yourself.
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@fauxlaw
Yep. Same old stuff.

Though the carrot thing was more of a reference to an old sci-film I watched years ago about Alien invasion....The Thing From Another World.... The alien beings weren't typically humanoid, but looked more like giant carrots.  Although the film wasn't particularly good, I nonetheless  thought that the concept was an interesting take on evolutionary possibilities.

Trump was always going to be the carrot...... Especially as he still want's to be the star of the show.
ethang5
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After a 3 month ban, my thread is still 2nd on the CURRENT EVENTS board.

Can anyone see what this means?
Theweakeredge
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@fauxlaw
No, this isn't me asking you to do my research for me, this is me asking you to actually provide evidence for your claims, whenever a proposition is made, the burden of proving said claim in on the maker of that proposition. Therefore you have necessarily adopted the burden of proof and must actually demonstrate your claims. 

fauxlaw
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@Theweakeredge
Since when does the forum require BoP? We do it, on occasion, but that is really a dominion of debate.
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@fauxlaw
No, that's the dominion of a proposition. Any time you make a claim you under that burden