Oh, right. Forgot about that.
The video is quite good, actually. Makes perfect sense how its shortened version got injected into alt-right discourse as a dirisive term for - well, anyone who is so cowardly as to care about anyone other than themselves on issues of racism and sexism I guess.
Let's talk about what happened at Middlebury College yesterday. Charles Murray, author of the controversial book "The Bell Curve," among others, was invited to speak. When he got up to do so, a whole raft of student demonstrators stood up to try to make it impossible for him to do so.
They chanted, in call-and-response, "Who is the enemy? White supremacy!" over and over. Apparently, one of the professors who had organized the event was injured by some of the savages...I mean, protesters.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/03/04/prot...
The Addison (Vt.) Independent writes:Middlebury College Professor Allison Stanger was injured by protesters Thursday evening as she was escorting a controversial speaker from campus. She was treated at Porter Hospital and released. …
As Stanger, [Charles] Murray and a college administrator left McCullough Student Center last evening following [Murray’s speech] they were “physically and violently confronted by a group of protestors,” according to Bill Burger, the college’s vice president for communications and marketing.
Burger said college public safety officers managed to get Stanger and Murray into the administrator’s car.
“The protestors then violently set upon the car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and try to prevent it from leaving campus,” he said. “At one point a large traffic sign was thrown in front of the car. Public Safety officers were able, finally, to clear the way to allow the vehicle to leave campus.
“During this confrontation outside McCullough, one of the demonstrators pulled Prof. Stanger’s hair and twisted her neck,” Burger continued. “She was attended to at Porter Hospital later and (on Friday) is wearing a neck brace.”
Seven Days (Sasha Goldstein) likewise reports:
A violent “mob” attacked controversial author Charles Murray and a Middlebury College professor as they left a campus building Thursday night following a chaotic attempt at a lecture, a college spokesman said.
The New York Times (Katharine Q. Seelye) carries a similar report, which also elaborates on the earlier shouting-down of Murray:
When Mr. Murray rose to speak, he was shouted down by most of the more than 400 students packed into the room, several witnesses said. Many turned their backs to him and chanted slogans like “Racist, sexist, anti-gay, Charles Murray go away!”
After almost 20 minutes, it was clear that he would not be able to give his speech, said Mr. Burger, the [college] spokesman. Anticipating that such an outcry might happen, Mr. Murray was moved to a separate room equipped with a video camera so that Allison Stanger, a Middlebury professor of international politics and economics, could interview him over a live stream. Mr. Burger said the administration felt strongly that Mr. Murray’s right to free speech should be protected and that “no one should have the heckler’s veto.”
Once the interview began in the second room, protesters swarmed into the hallway, chanting and pulling fire alarms. Still, the interview was completed and officials, including Ms. Stanger, escorted Mr. Murray out the back of the building.
There, several masked protesters, who were believed to be outside agitators, began pushing and shoving Mr. Murray and Ms. Stanger, Mr. Burger said. “Someone grabbed Allison’s hair and twisted her neck,” he said.
After the two got into a car, Mr. Burger said, protesters pounded on it, rocked it back and forth, and jumped onto the hood. Ms. Stanger later went to a hospital, where she was put in a neck brace.
Another sad day of brown-shirted thuggery at our nation’s academic institutions — and thuggery that undermines the opposition to Murray’s claims, rather than reinforcing them.
Once again, whatever the problems may be with anything Murray has said, they cannot possibly compare with the problems with the methods employed by these students. Want to protest? Do it outside. You don't have the right to prevent the people who came from hearing what the speaker has to say.
What I can't understand is what goes through the heads of the students who decide to engage in this kind of vapid, zombie protest. Way to show everyone you're not an individual, but a member of a demented mob.
The irony is that Charles Murray is one of the smartest and most well-spoken conservative speakers, who has spoken plainly about the problems of growing income inequality. He is someone that many on the left should be able to make common cause with - but not if identity politics, and the idea that Murray may have written some racist shit, trump everything.
Savages?
Well not so savage that any of them shot him, so evidently they have something to learn from their more civilized betters.
(though according to Murray, perhaps they are too genetically inferior to learn that)
As for Murray's writing and the reaction to it, it might be worth reading reviews of both his most infamous book which compares race and intelligence, and a more recent work on white culture:
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/26/opinion/in-america-throwing-a-curve.ht...
https://campaignstops.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/what-to-do-about-comi...
And the Southern Poverty Law Centre's assessment of him:
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/charl...
Funny how old white guys can say stuff like that and they are still well-spoken, and respectable. But the people who feel the results of those sexist, racist, anti-poor, and pseudoscientific ideas in public policy - like welfare cuts - are savages.
As for what happened there, no Boze, violence is never good. But should anyone be surprised, given the current climate, and the very real, deadly attacks that have happened, that someone is going to give into anger and push back?
But should anyone be surprised, given the current climate, and the very real, deadly attacks that have happened, that someone is going to give into anger and push back?
What was Murray there to speak about? What (specifically) were protesters unsurprisingly pushing back against?
I don't know, Magoo, but I'll repeat, they didn't shoot him, or firebomb the hall, which is the standard response we have come to expect from badly behaved white people - a response which happens far more often than protesters shutting down a speech.
But sure, this is all about how savage they are to infringe on his freedom of speech regarding the genetic inferiority of poor people, non-whites and women, and what a reasonable guy he is, and how universities are places to sit on your hands and listen to that, while people are being oppressed and murdered because of those ideas outside the walls.
After all, he clearly hasn't been getting enough exposure in the media over the past 25 years.
But here's his take on it. In fact, he did get to deliver his speech in a side room - something they had planned for. Where things went sideways was when they were leaving, and one person decided to attack one of the people in his group by yanking her hair, resulting in injury.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/03/06/charles-murray-into-middle-mob...
In any case, he's pretty clear about what he wants as a solution to what he calls the thugs. The administration - who actually did everything they should have here, and accommodated the situation so he was able to speak - are apparently supposed to start cracking down if they don't want to get tarred with the same brush and be responsible for the downfall of academia.
Or maybe he's just pissed off that this goes against a theory (if you can call it that) in the book he was intending to speak about - that elites are so much more non-judgmental than the poor.
When the latest in a string of white guys kills someone else he is always a lone wolf. When someone in a protest group resorts to attack it is the whole group, and a crisis that demands a crackdown or it will mean the downfall of civil society.
As for his prediction, I was at an event once where someone was prevented from speaking on a campus. That was 20 years ago. Last time I checked the University of Winnipeg hadn't been overrun by thugs.
Universities sure are becoming the last bastions for free speech aren't they.
"When the latest in a string of white guys kills someone else he is always a lone wolf. ". I don't recall Alexandre Bissonnette being called a lone wolf. Quite the opposite I found.
"but I'll repeat, they didn't shoot him, or firebomb the hall, which is the standard response we have come to expect from badly behaved white people - a response which happens far more often than protesters shutting down a speech."
I'm not so sure I would agree with this. Shutting down speechs seems pretty standard now, as does the violence.
SPLC has really lost the plot lately. I lost a lot of respect for them when they branded Maajid Nawaz as a hateful extremist.
I think you're making a connection that doesn't exist. Those protesters aren't "the people who feel the results of those sexist, racist, anti-poor" ideas. They're at a goddamn university, a good number of them are white, and they don't see why they should have to make the case for their ideas, rather than just shout down those who disagree. I can't accept that "the current climate, and the very real, deadly attacks that have happened" (whatever that is supposed to be referring to) have anything to do with these students' inability to control themselves.
I don't know, Magoo, but I'll repeat, they didn't shoot him, or firebomb the hall, which is the standard response we have come to expect from badly behaved white people - a response which happens far more often than protesters shutting down a speech.
What the fuck are you talking about?
edit: just to make it clear, so that we're all on the same page, these protesters [i]are[/i] badly behaved white people.
Oh. Did that sound a tad unfair?
Tell me again about the demented savages.
But no, it doesn't happen in isolation, or as frequently as racist attacks. And you might notice the difference between people who just happen to run afoul of it, and those, like this fellow, who use it as an opportunity to push their agenda.
All of a sudden because of a couple of boneheads he has a national open mike courtesy of FOX News, and is baiting the school for not making mass expulsions.
The moderator Allison Stanger, who was the woman injured, said this:
"To people who wish to spin this story as one about what’s wrong with elite colleges and universities, you are mistaken. Please instead consider this as a metaphor for what is wrong with our country, and on that, Charles Murray and I would agree. This was the saddest day of my life. We have got to do better by those who feel and are marginalized. Our 230-year constitutional democracy depends on it, especially when our current President is blind to the evils he has unleashed. "
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10209936010371446&id=1070107561
One of the commenters quoted Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham Jail in response:
“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”
— Letter from a Birmingham jail, 1963
And according to this article the violence (like the violence in Berkeley last month) may have involved black-clad people who were not students.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/03/06/middlebury-engages-soul-s...
Oh. Did that sound a tad unfair?Tell me again about the demented savages.
I just do not understand why you continue to respond with sarcasm that places the opposing position [i]beneath contempt[/i] rather than with reasoned argument. It has nothing to do with "unfair." You made ridiculous statements (that what we expect from angry white people lately is firebombing a town hall, AND that this happens more often than protesters behaving badly - these are both demonstrably false). Calling violent protesters savages isn't in the same category of statement. I don't have a problem with insults. I have a problem with distortions.
But no, it doesn't happen in isolation, or as frequently as racist attacks. And you might notice the difference between people who just happen to run afoul of it, and those, like this fellow, who use it as an opportunity to push their agenda.All of a sudden because of a couple of boneheads he has a national open mike courtesy of FOX News, and is baiting the school for not making mass expulsions.
What are you talking about? Are you saying that Murray got what he wanted? Murray came to gave a talk. It wasn't "a couple of boneheads." It looked like the entire activist population of that student body. The idea that he's using this to push his agenda is absurd - his [i]talk[/i] was his agenda.
But, suppose that you're right, for the sake of argument. Wouldn't that prove exactly my point? That protesters behaving badly are more damaging to the left than the people that they are protesting?
I would agree with your premise if we were talking about somebody like Milo Yiannopoulos. He's a troll, a dishonest interlocutor, who specializes in riling people up and getting exactly the reaction that he wants. Charles Murray, whatever else he may be, is not that. Nobody familiar with him and his work would claim that.
Martin Luther King, Jr. preached nonviolent civil disobedience to oppressive laws. He did not advocate shouting over the people that we should instead be debating with. It is a disgrace to invoke his name in defense of these ruffians.
As to the possibility of agents provocateurs, I agree that it's not only possible, but likely that they will make themselves known (edit: I should have said "that they will make their presence felt"), but you can see in the footage of the initial demonstration, they weren't the ones pushing the narrative that Murray's ideas are so beyond the pale that they need no rebuttal, and that others don't even have the right to listen to him talk.
Oh. Not a dishonest interlocutor. Not a specialist in riling people up:
“Try to imagine a … presidential candidate saying in front of the cameras, ‘One reason that we still have poverty in the United States is that a lot of poor people are born lazy.’ You cannot imagine it because that kind of thing cannot be said. And yet this unimaginable statement merely implies that when we know the complete genetic story, it will turn out that the population below the poverty line in the United States has a configuration of the relevant genetic makeup that is significantly different from the configuration of the population above the poverty line. This is not unimaginable. It is almost certainly true.”
—“Deeper Into the Brain,” National Review, 2000
“You want to have a job training program for welfare mothers? You think that’s going to cure the welfare problem? Well, when you construct that job training program and try to decide what jobs they might qualify for, you had better keep in mind that the mean IQ of welfare mothers is somewhere in the 80s, which means that you have certain limitations in what you're going to accomplish.”
—Interview on race and IQ, “Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg,” PBS, 1994
"A huge number of well-meaning whites fear that they are closet racists, and this book tells them they are not. It's going to make them feel better about things they already think but do not know how to say.”
—regarding his book, Losing Ground, quoted in “Daring Research or Social Science Pornography?: Charles Murray,” The New York Times Magazine, 1994
That mob. They're just ruffians.
And to be clear, the only ones I consider boneheads are the ones who committed physical assault. I don't like seeing speakers shut down, but I can appreciate the outrage at some racist, anti-poverty troll being given an open forum, especially given the climate in the U.S. right now.
Please tell me what is "dishonest" about those quotes. We KNOW that IQ is substantially heritable and we KNOW that it is a predictor of many things including life success. If you think he's saying these things to elicit reactions and not to engage in a discussion then you are the one who is a bonehead, but I don't think that you actually believe that.
Murray's central claim for decades now has been that intelligent, rich, successful people marry each other and produce intelligent offspring who they will increasingly send to private schools (because the public schools are a disaster) where they will increasingly meet, socialize, and fall in love with other rich and intelligent kids, while marriage continues to disintegrate among the lower classes and many children are born to unwed mothers, which we [i]know[/i] produces measurably worse outcomes for children. This will cause the genetic gap, including the IQ gap, between the rich and poor populations to increase, and that this is a [i]bad[/i] thing. He points the finger at the welfare state and its perverse incentives for exacerbating this problem. It seems to me that this is where intelligent criticism of his arguments should begin, because the premises are built on pretty solid science. It is not "racist pseudoscience" to say that IQ is substantially heritable and is a significant predictor of things such as life success, income, and other outcomes. Whether IQ [i]should[/i] be a predictor of such things is another question. Murray is a libertarian and he thinks that government efforts to counter what he describes as "natural laws" are destined to fail. Again, there are things that we might take issue with here. But it seems to me that advocates of welfare-state type policies are going to have to at least acknowledge what conservative critics of these policies have to say.
Rather than try to grapple with his points, though, people would rather shout "racist sexist anti-gay, right-wing bigot, go away!" As though the problems he is describing aren't real, or aren't problems. Sad to say, even most of the legitimate criticism of Murray, such as that he ignores economic developments such as globalization and deindustrialization, simply don't address his main arguments.
Yes, people who are so angry at the conclusions a sociologist reaches that they engage in ad hominem attacks and try to shout over him so that others, who came to hear the man speak, can't hear him, are being [i]bad actors.[/i] To attempt to counter discourse with anything other than discourse is to demonstrate your incompetence. The worst thing is that many of these people, yourself included, are perfectly capable of grappling with the points that Murray is trying to make and coming up with intelligent replies - but that's work, and why do work when you can just rely on your ideology to tell you who the bad guys are and that you don't have to listen to them?
Furthermore, what is the value of the SPLC providing a list of "bad people" and all the bad things that they have said? Is there any value, other than telling people such as yourself what to think? Seriously, what is the value of that? "Oh thank goodness I have this handy SPLC document to help me show what a bad person this guy is, otherwise it would be a lot harder to shit-talk him on the internet."
Edit: I forgot that I was talking to someone who insists on repeatedly misconstruing things that people say. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO SAY THIS, AND IT IRRITATES ME THAT I DO, BUT TO SAY THAT IQ IS A GOOD PREDICTOR OF SUCCESS IS NOT TO SAY THAT PEOPLE WHO ARE POOR NECESSARILY HAVE A LOW IQ.
[youtube]h1S6L57T9_c[/youtube]
Well here's the critical stuff about his main work:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Bell_Curve
Anyone who flipped through the footnotes and bibliography of Murray and Herrnstein's book could see that there was something screwy about their sources. And there is hardly a proposition in their book that had not been thoroughly debunked more than a decade ago by Stephen Jay Gould's classic work on the pseudoscience behind eugenics, The Mismeasure of Man.[14][15]
And another one to chew on (with a few more clues as to why yes, this does in fact have a few things to do with what is going on outside the ivory tower) :
http://www.salon.com/2014/03/18/paul_krugman_demolishes_charles_murrays_...
And a more off the cuff take on it:
https://lisaschweitzer.com/2017/03/07/why-does-charles-murray-get-invite...
I am sure that, having read both Murray's book and Gould's, you understand the arguments are you marshalling here. :rolleyes:
https://lisaschweitzer.com/2017/03/07/why-does-charles-murray-get-invite...Blog says that Murray "can't do math," citing, of course, no sources. Great link, Smith. Congratulations, you've found some rando who agrees with you. Great googling. The piece that references Krugman, and the Krugman piece that it links to, are equally embarassing. Murray may well be a racist, but based on what I've seen here, his critics don't seem to want to address his actual arguments.
That's why I posted the wiki link. You can go to his wikipedia page if you want more critical assessments, Boze.
That blog was just someone asking the reasonable question of what the point is if the guy is a fraud?
Answer of course is that he's an old white guy and people fall for that shit all the time, especially if he backs up their own racism and discrimination.
You mentioned Milo. If you haven't watched Bill Maher falling all over him and his racist tripe you really should. And it is also worth watching for those on the panel who call him on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cDLflyQ8TA
boze says:
"many children are born to unwed mothers, which we know produces measurably worse outcomes for children. "
your words are so fkn offensive.
just for a quick reality check the last president of the UA was the product of a single mother.
maybe it's the deadbeat dads who are causing the poor outcomes boze. if there are truly any.
x
I don't know, Magoo, but I'll repeat, they didn't shoot him, or firebomb the hall, which is the standard response we have come to expect from badly behaved white people - a response which happens far more often than protesters shutting down a speech.
Umm, OK.
But I figured that since you described this protest as unsurprising, you would know what they were protesting.
Just his mere existence, I guess? Or else what was he there to talk about? My understanding is that it was NOT his book.
I find it unsurprising because of the climate of racism, sexism and poor-bashing in the U.S., and his role in giving it legitimacy. So I am not surprised people are angry.
And he was there to talk about one of his recent books - the one about poor white people - as it relates to Trump. He mentioned that int he article he wrote.
"We can't restore our civilization with someone else's babies."
https://thinkprogress.org/steve-king-white-nationalist-tweet-5f43c687902...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-nvNAcvUPE
The videos of Peterson are pretty interesting. Standing inside a circle of people agressively asking questions and demanding answers, often trying to throw him off by taking any oppertunity to take an answer out of context and twist it, is no easy feat.
It seems like a lot of people go out of their way to live in a constant state of outrage.
maybe it's the deadbeat dads who are causing the poor outcomes boze. if there are truly any.
Maybe so. I don't see how this contradicts anything I said. The question would be what contributes to dads being deadbeats?
To quote another poster from another recent thread, being offended is not a valid rhetorical stance. My words are offensive? Fine, let them be offensive. I do not shrink from causing offense (on the contrary, I enjoy it). What matters is, [i]is it true[/i]?
To restate my earlier point. Just because something is associated with worse outcomes, does not mean that it tells you anything about the fate of any given individual subjected to it. I'm speaking statistically here. The idea that the decline of two-parent families does not have negative consequences for children has no basis in reality.
Anyone with half a brain would know that his topic would be bring out an angry crowd. It seems to be a pretty meanspirited stunt in many ways. I would bet that egging on the protesters was all part of the plan.
1) Do you even know what his topic was?
2) What is a mean-spirited stunt? Is it a mean-spirited stunt on his part to go anywhere at all? Or is inviting him anywhere a mean-spirited stunt? The guy has spoken at plenty of places over the last 40 years. He's actually a good speaker, whatever one thinks of his views (I first became acquainted with him many years ago when researching basic income and didn't even realize for some time that he had all that baggage). It's only in the current climate of disinvitations and wrong-headed campus activism that inviting him could be taken as a "stunt" of any kind.
3) Watch the videos, they didn't egg the protesters on in any way.
I mean, imagine if a conservative group at a university says "hey, let's invite conservative speaker X to talk," and activist groups at the university get wind of it and say "They're just inviting this guy to rile us up, let's show up and shout him down!" We'd all think that was pretty stupid, I hope.
Here is a sideways example. When planning a social housing project there is often a large group of people that oppose the project often very actively. The advocates need to look for ways to present their plans in a way that is respectful of the dissenters and not in a way that dismisses their input. Has this been done in his case? (maybe have a recognized critic included on the speakers list).
"The advocates need to look for ways to present their plans in a way that is respectful of the dissenters and not in a way that dismisses their input. "
By need do you mean might be a good method or they must ? Using the video I just posted it looks like the dissenters are going out of their way to get offended.
Yeah, it's a good video.
I don't know what you're talking about, but don't get too uppity. I've studied the Nazis, and you know what they do when the radical left gets out of line.
Of course my saying that you don't deserve the same human rights protection as everyone else has nothing to do with that.
I am just saying that there are others out there that face similiar pressures and they figure it out.
Here is a sideways example. When planning a social housing project there is often a large group of people that oppose the project often very actively. The advocates need to look for ways to present their plans in a way that is respectful of the dissenters and not in a way that dismisses their input. Has this been done in his case? (maybe have a recognized critic included on the speakers list).
I don't see how that's a good example. This isn't a project of any kind. It's one speaker being invited to speak. Imagine if every time Naomi Klein came to speak, some right-wingers said that they needed to have a recognized critic invited to speak alongside her.
It does seem that somewhere along the way, the notion of dialog, or compromise, or discussion got lost.
Compromise == genuflection now. Discussion == acquiescence now. Go big or go home.
How about the notion of humility. Say there's a speaker coming to talk and everyone is saying that he's known for saying things that are deeply contrary to my values. Okay. So, maybe I should listen with an open mind, on the off chance that I might learn something. Of course, I can't do that if I'm absolutely committed to the idea that I understand the world.
Post #231
Bingo!
The absence of metrics for sociopathy and altruism, combined with the power dynamic of supposed "IQ" and wealth maintaining conformity of the race to the bottom might be a good starting point to evaluate if you are "really" interested in why, perhaps, those lacking these privileges might not feel a "debate" is the rational analysis.
We have metrics for sociopathy. I'm not sure about altruism. I did a bit of googling and did find some self-reports, but I'm not sure how reliable and valid they are. Ironically, they were designed in large part by the late J. Philippe Rushton, who was also infamous for his research on race and intelligence - but Rushton actually wrote a great deal about race and intelligence, whereas Murray has written comparatively little on the subject, despite reviewers who accuse him of dishonesty and then claim that "all 800 pages" of The Bell Curve are about race and IQ, which is probably why Rushton faced a much greater backlash than Murray did.
But as for IQ, it's the single most validated construct in all of the social sciences.
And that guy who thinks other people babies are a threat to his civilization?
He just doubled down on it:
King in a tweet praised Geert Wilders, including a cartoon depicting Wilders plugging a hole in a wall that reads “Western civilization.”
“Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” the congressman wrote.
“It’s a clear message," King said on Monday. "We need to get our birth rates up or Europe will be entirely transformed within a half century or a little more. And Geert Wilders knows that and that’s part of his campaign and part of his agenda."
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/323633-king-says-he-meant-tweet-endors...
Hey, RP. Good to see you. And you are right.
Well, the repression tactic has certainly not done anything to slow down Geert Wilders. He has been slowly growing in popularity over the last decade and I think the steadfast refusal of mainstream Dutch politicians to discuss the issues he raises, [i]at all,[/i] has played a role in it. And that's not a good thing. It is like Marine Le Pen. If Dutch politicians ten years ago could have seen into the future and seen that Wilders' popularity would continue to grow, do you think that they would still have behaved exactly as they did? Or would they have tried to find a way to bridge that gap?
Okay. So, maybe I should listen with an open mind, on the off chance that I might learn something. Of course, I can't do that if I'm absolutely committed to the idea that I understand the world.
Or, if you prefer, you don't even need to attend (or listen) at all.
That's what's kind of uncomfortable about the "shut them down" tactic. It's not people making the choice to not be an audience for someone they disagree with, it's people trying their best to ensure that others who may wish to listen cannot. If speeches were tangible written words instead of live, real-time experiences, we'd call it book burning.
This is the terrible Charles Murray that must not be allowed to speak.
[youtube]SStZxI1rH-A[/youtube]
There are, of course, plenty of things to disagree with here, but calling the people who say that this man must never be allowed to speak at a university because of things he wrote over 20 years ago "overzealous" seems to be missing the point. They're worse than he is.
And there's lots here for us to pay attention to. The man is a sociologist; he studies social problems, and he advocates solutions that I think some on this board might even find agreeable (basic income).
A video a little closer to home. Nothing says lets debate like getting a loud speaker siren blasting in your ear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaukYmQzF70&feature=youtu.be
Nothing says debate like smearing anyone who disagrees with you. The Rebel does not debate it merely spreads hate. They are not a news site.
From Boze:
There are, of course, plenty of things to disagree with here, but calling the people who say that this man must never be allowed to speak at a university because of things he wrote over 20 years ago "overzealous" seems to be missing the point. They're worse than he is.
The number of years ago he wrote things is immaterial. Has he changed his mind since then, or does he still defend the racism in "The Bell Curve"?
Here's a quote from him, published in 2000:
“Try to imagine a … presidential candidate saying in front of the cameras, ‘One reason that we still have poverty in the United States is that a lot of poor people are born lazy.’ You cannot imagine it because that kind of thing cannot be said. And yet this unimaginable statement merely implies that when we know the complete genetic story, it will turn out that the population below the poverty line in the United States has a configuration of the relevant genetic makeup that is significantly different from the configuration of the population above the poverty line. This is not unimaginable. It is almost certainly true.”
—“Deeper Into the Brain,” National Review, 2000
Seems to me he's still at the old stand...
From boze:
But as for IQ, it's the single most validated construct in all of the social sciences.
If that's true, which I don't for a second believe, it certainly isn't saying much for the social sciences. I suggest anyone who wants a pretty clear picture of IQ, and it's antecedents, read your way through
"The Mismeasure of Man"
by Stephen Jay Gould. It is an indepth analysis of the various methods of determining intelligence, and the value (or not) thereof.
Courtesy Wikipedia:
The Mismeasure of Man presents a historical evaluation of the concepts of the intelligence quotient (IQ) and of the general intelligence factor (g factor), which were and are the measures for intelligence used by psychologists. Gould proposed that most psychological studies have been heavily biased, by the belief that the human behavior of a race of people is best explained by genetic heredity. He cites the Burt Affair, about the fraudulent, oft-cited twin studies, by Cyril Burt (1883–1971), wherein Burt claimed that human intelligence is highly heritable.
The idea that a three digit number can be a valid rating of something as complicated as a human brain sh0uld let most people know that IQ is about as valid a way of measuring intelligence as would be counting the number of bits in a MP3 file to determine how good the song is.
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"Nothing says debate like smearing anyone who disagrees with you. The Rebel does not debate it merely spreads hate. They are not a news site. "
I'm no fan of the Rebel but the video shows some disgusting behavior from the left in my opinion. Drowing someone out blasting a loud speaker siren in their ear? Disgusting.
The bullhorn was over the top. However I have no problem with people shouting racists down in public. Racists don't care about public discourse they want the subjugation of others.
By shouting down do you mean preventing them to speak?
I mean good old fashioned heckling. Its been a Canadian tradition for 150 years and is very much a part of the public discourse. If you are in a crowd of people who want to hear the speaker they will let you know a thing or two if you try to prevent the talk. If the speaker is in a completely hostile crowd with no backers then someone booked the wrong venue.
I think I get what you're saying. I understand the heckling part but I think what the left is now doing is so far removed from that it's a whole new issue.
The police will charge me with assault if I go up to someone and star screaming in their face. I fail to understand how that shit with the bullhorns in someones face is any different.
I think the term "heckling" is most familiar to us in the context of some random, displeased audience member "heckling" a comedian they don't find funny.
But typically, that's an ad hoc battle of wit.
I can't recall a single time that an audience member heckled a comedian by blasting an air horn two feet to their left, or by plugging in a white noise generator.
Is it unfair to ask these "hecklers" to at least put some skin in the game?? Or is 110 decibels of white noise its own form of "wit"?
What you are describing is a lack of security for a venue. I think that air horns etc should not be allowed in an indoor space. Its not only the speakers ears that are affected anyone in the crowd with a hearing sensitivity could be affected. If the man engages in hate speech then he should be charged if not the protestors should have picketed the hall and encouraged people to make his speech a non-event.
