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Yo, Sherb...
I only wish I could express this thought this well. It is columns like this that make Brooks my favorite conservative Republican.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/the-crisis-of-western-civ.html?hpw&rref=opinion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/21/opinion/the-crisis-of-western-civ.html?hpw&rref=opinion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
"...this low-rent Lear raging on his Twitter-heath has proven that the phrase malignant buffoon is not an oxymoron..."
George Will
George Will
Replies
1) I think Mr. Brooks is reading a bit much into the college campus flare-ups. That is a reaction to having a very un-fit and very troubling man in the WH. In the context of the arc of Western Civilization, it isn't really worth mentioning.
2) Sure, the ideals of W Civilization aren't lauded and taught like they once were. I think we can all agree that a balance needs to be struck in teaching the positives while still acknowledging the atrocities. White guilt shouldn't be a way of life!
3) Brooks seems to be laying the blame for the fall of reasoned discourse on the above two. While certainly contributing, what about the right's role in this? I know I'm a broken record on this but who is to blame for so many turning their backs on science, education and diversity? We have whole media complexes that are committed 100% to spreading fear and lies! In short, the problem is more widespread than his column portrays.
4) Man, this Erdogan/Turkey thing is bad. Real bad.
I find the willingness to give it up frightening.
Yep. I like him on NPR too.
Crooow:This music would work better with women in bikinis shaking all over the place. I guess that's true of any music really.
Not a fan or Dionne.
They were annoying long before Trump.
fact check: true.
And I think Wetdog is right that a lot of campus activism is the low-hanging fruit of radical thought, easily picked apart and evincing a lack of mature thinking. But there definitely is something to what Brooks is saying. Brooks doesn't link to them in the piece, but there were two articles published last week in school newspapers which came in for a fair amount of rightly-deserved criticism. Both pieces contain what might be called the latest and greatest in radical political thought. Leaving aside the terrible writing, both pieces demonstrate a poor understanding of the cultural and literary capital reserves needed to bolster and defend their claims, and the reason is that both arguments lack any kind of grounding in Western philosophical thought.
Here's the first:
http://thewellesleynews.com/2017/04/12/free-speech-is-not-violated-at-wellesley/
Not sure what $65K a year gets you at Wellesley, but English composition it ain't. Anyway, once you get past the abysmal writing, the premise is fairly straightforward: hate speech is not free speech. The minor premise that follows from the major is that its perfectly acceptable to police that hate speech. But that's wrong. Its legally wrong, factually false, completely at odds with the mission of a liberal arts college-and most importantly for our purposes-violates the scientific spirit at the heart of the Enlightenment. A dose of Western Civ could only help, if for no other reason than to force the students to think through their claims.
The other is different, more radical, more theoretical. Its a letter to the school administration in response to the school (Claremont) reaffirming its commitment to free speech.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_y6NmxoIBLcZJxYkN9V1YfaPYzVSMKCA17PgBzz10wk/edit
These guys swing for the fences. there's no bougie hand-wringing over the difference between "free speech" and "hate speech" here. They go straight for the rhetorical throat: truth is a Euro-centric concept that serves the goals of white supremacy. And the thing is, this argument can be made. Its been a staple of postwar continental philosophy for 70 years. But the problem is that the argument is hard; the concepts require a certain level of intellectual rigor to understand, and the people who can make this argument work draw from a deep well of French and German philosophy that enables them to understand the counterarguments and respond to them accordingly. The students don't. And the reason that they don't is that they lack the grounding in Western Civ that their intellectual forbears had at their fingertips.
Its easy to poke holes in these arguments, but wouldn't it be better if the students could actually defend their opinion?
George Will
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/21/no-gov-dean-there-is-no-hate-speech-exception-to-the-first-amendment/?tid=a_inl&utm_term=.137e92ac6667
The First Amendment protects against seditious libel, it doesn't mean that a university has to give a soap box to everybody.
That said, I don't believe hate speech isn't free speech. Just that free speech is protected from government interference.
Sorry, for the obtuseness, but what exactly are you getting at?
You then say (which I agree with) that the minor premise that follows from the major is that its perfectly acceptable to police that hate speech. You then say this is legally wrong.
I'm questioning why it's legally wrong for a university to police hate speech on its campus. Or did I misunderstand your point?
What is the "doctrine of viewpoint restriction?" I googled, but came up empty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.A.V._v._City_of_St._Paul
So, I'm out on Sproul Plaza spewing all kinds of racial hatred. Can the University of California boot me off the premises?
True. So is Berkeley.
Perhaps they could make out a valid time, space, and manner requirement, but I don't see how they could boot you for content. And I assume (without knowing) that Sproul plaza is a place open to the public.
Sproul Plaza is on university grounds, fwiw.
Something else to think about. Cal is a public university, but Wellesley is private. Does that change things?
I would have to say that Wellesley being private changes the first Amendment analysis. in other words, yes, Wellesley can engage in viewpoint discrimination. But, that doesn't change my point that there's no such legal entity as hate speech. Keep in mind that the editorial acknowledges the imperatives of free speech, but says hate speech is not free speech. Private or not, the legal analysis is still wrong. And private or not, I'm sure that somewhere in Wellesley's charter is some aspirational statement about the importance of free speech and academic freedom.