"They couldn’t look at me directly, because if they had, they would have seen another human being,"
writes Allison Stanger, the professor who brought Charles Murray to Middlebury College to speak.
Students were chanting, “Who is the enemy? White supremacy,” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay: Charles Murray, go away!”...
Most of the hatred was focused on Dr. Murray, but when I took his right arm to shield him and to make sure we stayed together, the crowd turned on me.
Stanger makes it clear that she is a Democrat, she disagrees with Murray, and the students
knew that.
Someone pulled my hair, while others were shoving me. I feared for my life. Once we got into the car, protesters climbed on it, hitting the windows and rocking the vehicle whenever we stopped to avoid harming them. I am still wearing a neck brace, and spent a week in a dark room to recover from a concussion caused by the whiplash.
Stanger tries to reach out to the student protesters:
[W]ith time to reflect, I have to say that I hear and understand the righteous anger of many of those who shouted us down. I know that many students felt they were standing up to protect marginalized people who have been demeaned or even threatened under the guise of free speech.
But for us to engage with one another as fellow human beings — even on issues where we passionately disagree — we need reason, not just emotions. Middlebury students could have learned from identifying flawed assumptions or logical shortcomings in Dr. Murray’s arguments....
There is no excusing what happened at Middlebury, and those who prevented Charles Murray from speaking must be punished for violating college rules. But what the events at Middlebury made clear is that, regardless of political persuasion, Americans today are deeply susceptible to a renunciation of reason and celebration of ignorance.
The "events" at Middlebury showed
left-wing students resorting to violence and refusing to listen to the other side. I don't see how they make anything "clear" about
right-wingers. Sanger seems to be sweeping them in too because it's conciliatory. But how is that embracing
reason? It seems to me that what we've been seeing — at least at Middlebury and Berkeley — is that the
left has a problem with violence and with hostility to freedom of speech.
Posts
101 comments:
But how is that embracing reason? It seems to me that what we've been seeing — at least at Middlebury and Berkeley — is that the left has a problem with violence and with hostility to freedom of speech.
No shit. The left wants war, but would lose one so badly that they don't have enough working IQ points even to contemplate it.
Progressives run on dopamine. Dopamine is generated by gestures and virtue-signaling. Which have less than nothing to do with reason or logic. The closest parallel to what Stanger went through is the Two Minute Hate in Orwell's "1984." See also the scene in "Lord of the Flies" where the boys kill the Beast.
Leftists supporting and wanting violence? Never!
--Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin, Mao, Fidel Castro, all laughing hysterically.
--Vance
Right you are. And Stanger simply lacks the courage to violate a taboo of campus life: you are allowed to criticize the Left, as long as you immediately follow with an equal or harsher criticism of the right.
But to her credit she does criticize the left here, when many just make excuses.
Any criticism of the left, by the left, has to be comparative -- never absolute.
Stanger makes it clear that she is a Democrat, she disagrees with Murray, and the students knew that.
She's adorable.
The Left has been mostly reduced to calling their opponents names and shouting them down. Not a winning formula going forward.
As Wisconsin and Creighton enter the NCAA tournament this week, imagine the players doing the same thing to their opponents. Not a perfect analogy but you get the idea. Politics is the marketplace of ideas and the winner is judged by results in a fair contest.
Go Jays!
It seems to me that what we've been seeing — at least at Middlebury and Berkeley — is that the left has a problem with violence and with hostility to freedom of speech.
The problem is much more pervasive than that. To the point that it is simpler to list the campuses that don't encourage such behavior. Allow me to reiterate: the intolerance, the violence, the negation of all the basic prerequisites of popular government is rooted in the institutions themselves. It's the instructors, particularly in those phony grievance disciplines (using the term loosely), and the administrative faculty in general who are primarily responsible for these conditions. Sharing the blame are the parents who in pursuit of lifestyles beyond their means consigned their offspring to the dubious ministrations of institutional caregivers. The result is a generation afflicted with extreme personality disorders, rendering many university-aged students emotionally crippled and unprepared for adult realities.
Righteous anger? No, this is mob rule. Unreasoned mob rule. Thank goodness she wants the miscreants punished -- that's the only good thought in her letter. Otherwise it is an apologia for unacceptable hooliganism -- likely instigated from outside Middlebury. She needs a reality check.
I could write 100 words, and they'd be pretty much the same as everybody else's in this case. Condemning the intolerance and violence at Middlebury College.
But one odd thing I picked out was the accusation that Charles Murray was "anti-gay." I see this in so many anti-Trump rallies. "Trump is racist and misogynistic and homophobic..." However, protesters get called on that frequently, and the usual response is some fumbling and mumbling and then something like, "Well, he picked Pence for V.P. and we know what he stands for."
The fact is, Trump and Charles Murray are both at the extreme progressive end of all Republican politics on the subject of same-sex marriage. Trump made one of the most pro-gay speeches in the history of the RNC. Charles Murray has said of gay marriage that "the train has left the station" and he not only does not oppose gay marriage, he thinks that all of his colleagues in conservative academia and think tanks ought to drop their opposition. From the lefty, Murray-hating The New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/charles-murrays-gay-marriage-surprise
"Anti-gay" just seems to flow out of left wing rubric like an order of fries at McDonald's. It's not just baseless; it isn't even thinking.
Right-winger? Not the American right. They need to read The Declaration of Independenced and the Constitution, and judge people by the "content of their character".
The Left in America judges people by the "color of their skin" (e.g. racism, sexism). They are exclusive (e.g. "=") and paint people with a prejudicial brush. They deny individual dignity and intrinsic value of human life. They are anti-native, redistributive, and retributive. It's no wonder that more Progressives and Liberals are seeking to escape association by joining Americans at the ideological center.
The establishment of a Pro-Choice Church has been a progressive condition for too many men, women, children, and babies, too.
Vance:
[class] diversity and denying life unworthy. Hitler, too.
There is a causal relationship between amoral individuals, narcissistic faith, and a catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
"It seems to me that what we've been seeing — at least at Middlebury and Berkeley — is that the left has a problem with violence and with hostility to freedom of speech."
For the left, that's not a problem. It's a feature.
Every totalitarian regime practices it.
It's too bad she didn't cover what Murray's flawed assumptions were.
On the other hand, the left may solve Murray's problem of cognitive stratification if everybody is made stupid.
She obviously does not want to be Christakised (which is the new term for being crucified by screaming campus garbage babies) further, but she's still full of BS. I have read Charles Murray's books and essays and mostly he is controversial for pointing out inconvenient facts. He wrote a good essay a few years ago that I am sure none of these garbage babies read - http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2014/04/an_open_letter_from_a_suddenly/
What is really going on here is that anyone who thinks anything contrary to progressive dogma is now subject to attack and violence. Screw all of them.
Right wingers renunciation of reason and celebration of ignorance is obvious because they are right wingers.
Pledging fealty to the left makes her feel safer.
Having raised children to adulthood, and watching many of my friends do likewise, I can assure Prof. Stanger and anyone else that the only answer is to make it very clear that this is unacceptable behavior. And by "unacceptable" I do not mean the way politicians use that word, to mean "Bad and I don't like it but i won't do anything about it beyond saying this."
I mean UNACCEPTABLE, as in the school goes over the videos and takes statements from people who were there, and suspends or expels everybody who participated in the disruption, expels anyone who touched Murray, Stanger, or anyone else involved in the presentation, and refers any such contact to law enforcement.
Fuzzing the issue as if it was right-wingers who did this, or that Murray's opinions are reprehensible, is NOT just a way to curry favor. These people were violent and will be more violent next time. Catering to them in any way tells them that they were right in what they did. She doesn't have to say she agrees with Murray, but by saying she disagrees just tells them that she lacks their courage to take direct action, and in their minds validates what they did.
This (catering to student violence) has been going on since at least Cornell in 1969 and o one in a position of academic authority cares enough to save their institutions.
This is an example of willful blindness.
The problem with White Supremacy, (Assuming of course that the real supremacy isn't actually Ashkenazi supremacy. It's hard to be supreme if your rank third from the top.) is that trying to silence Charles Murray is utterly, utterly futile. If he's in error he does harm only to his own reputation. If he is correct banning him, burning his books, evening killing him and interning his slaughter remains in an unmarked grave will have no effect acceptable to the BLM crowd. As our high-tech civilization evolves the achievement gap between Western Europeans and those of African heritage will only widen. In science asserting a falsehood, even when enforced by state power will only get you so far, then reality intrudes dramatically. This is why the AGW priesthood must resort to police state tactics to keep the lid on the roiling pot. By the same token suppression of scientific truth, keeping in mind that such truth is always tentative, can't change the inevitable consequences of that truth. Banning mention of gravity won't allow people to fly like birds, neither will banning Charles Murray increase the aggregate intelligence quotient of our most trouble-prone demographic.
I'm continually fascinated by the amount of political and social oxygen sucked out of the room by something that impacts so few people: transgendered bathroom issues. Even in including cases like Bruce Jenner (who's obviously a man given that he fathered children) we're taking less than half a percent of the population. If you ever meet an actual intersex person in your entire life you'd be quite rare.
Yet I hear about this all the time. Why? What's the real issue here? There must be a hidden agenda somewhere.
(I suppose the same could be said of abortion; the overwhelming mass of society neither has a had an abortion or knows someone who has had one ...)
""Those who wanted the event to take place made eye contact with me. Those intent on disrupting it steadfastly refused to do so. They couldn’t look at me directly, because if they had, they would have seen another human being," writes Allison Stanger." This is obtuse obfuscation. Unless "mainstream libs" honestly confront the fact that the left doesn't give a damn about "making eye contact" or looking at others as human beings or anything else that detracts from the pursuit of power and the triumph of their will, they will just aid and abet the intellectual terror they claim to decry.
"Students were chanting, “Who is the enemy? White supremacy,” and “Racist, sexist, anti-gay: Charles Murray, go away!”..." Par for the course, to be sure, but even by low leftist standards deeply, deeply stupid as applied to Murray.
"Stanger makes it clear that she is a Democrat, she disagrees with Murray, and the students knew that." Showing backbone means not giving an inch, not feeling the need to kowtow by signaling that you are a good liberal too.
"Stanger tries to reach out to the student protesters: W]ith time to reflect, I have to say that I hear and understand the righteous anger of many of those who shouted us down." In other words, for all her efforts to stand with Murray, she's a weasel. Showing understanding to the leftist mob is to aid and abet their terror.
How did self-described progressives get to this place? And why do university administrators condone such illiberal behavior? What is the underlying philosophy? Or is it just childishness in adult-sized bodies? I am genuinely perplexed. Let's not have a repeat of the 20th century.
Murray is not any kind of supremacist. Quaestor is however: a bullshit supremacist.
Luke Lea:
The only criticism of anyone now is that he is and ite, an ist, or a phobe. They disagree with what they were told, but didn't bother to check, that Murray thinks. Ergo he must be an ite, an ist or a phobe. "RacIST, sexIST, anti-gay [homoPHOBE]."
What I don't get is why leftists students and professors think that leftist speech will continue to be protected if they succeed in destroying the legal and social culture of free speech and academic freedom on campus. What's to prevent conservative legislators from pulling the plug on funding schools with leftist-dominated faculties (i.e., any small liberal arts college)? Or if you think the First Amendment will still be in place, what is to prevent trustees at private schools from pushing the schools they are funding to squeeze out their leftist profs and students? Does anyone honestly think that a sociology department's reputation would suffer if it got rid of all its "auto-ethnographers" or a school's reputation would suffer if it eliminated gender and ethnic studies departments?
Well Allison, now you know something you didn't know before. Pretty soon there will be some of those lefty thugs monitoring your classroom. Just to make sure you don't stray from the shining path.
I have zero sympathy for her. She participated in the rowdiness before the event.
Please read article: https://thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/middlebury-college-enabled-student-riot-charles-murrays-visit/ Paragraph titled: Stanger participated in the Protest ( about 2/3 of the way through the article)
Whatever. They need to be treated like enemies - that's how they see themselves anyway. Enemies of Normal America. It's a mistake to let enemies have too much leeway.
The left have destroyed education in this country.
Murray is not any kind of supremacist. Quaestor is however: a bullshit supremacist.
Quaestor reveals in your insults, Ken B.
@Douglas - those on the left know that they can behave as they want - there never have been consequences because the people they consider their enemies do not think or act as the leftists do. Legislators will never make more than tiny, token gestures at change, because they are not revolutionaries or absolutists the way leftists are. Conservatives will not choose to destroy free speech in order to deny it to leftists, because they would not like to live under a regime of censored, approved speech. Leftists would like very much to live in that regime. Who do you think ends up in charge in a society that gives up freedom? Leftists dream of it because they know they will, in fact, be the ones in charge. They're the ones who want that way of life.
Kern B. wrote: They disagree with what they were told, but didn't bother to check, that Murray thinks...
Come again?
It seems to me that what we've been seeing — at least at Middlebury and Berkeley — is that the left has a problem with violence and with hostility to freedom of speech.
The Left has always had a problem with violence and a hostility to freedom of speech going all the way back to the French Revolution.
" It seems to me that what we've been seeing — at least at Middlebury and Berkeley — is that the left has a problem with violence and with hostility to freedom of speech. "
Althouse has it exactly right. Two quick points:
1. The Left doesn't deny the violence and suppression of free speech. They (erroneously) think it's justified by the extremely negative caraciture they impose on the opponent.
2. They have a lot of silent enablers. The night of the Milo riots in Berkeley I spoke with a 20-year Phyisics student - sweet, studious, not a rabble-rouser by any stretch. However his take on Milo? Well, Milo is a provocateur, and the worst elements causing the physical damage or probably not Cal students. He had not an ounce of respect for the free exchange of ideas or the first amendment. And he's one of the good guys!
The admins and professors cant afford to piss off the students. Follow the money.
The majority of the students don't care, but those that do certainly have a general sympathy with the protesters, and in that school they probably vastly outnumber those that have the opposite opinions. Any attempt at discipline would threaten applications and enrollment more so than letting the kids riot.
Gahre@8:10PM
Yes, as the old saying goes, "scratch a leftist and underneath you'll find a Robespierre."
She's clueless. And full of shit in a way that only an academic can be.
Murray is no more "anti-gay" than Trump is, which is to say "not at all." Both of them were pro-gay-marriage more than a decade before Obama and HRC were still solemnly swearing that marriage was only between one man and one woman. This bogus claim needs to be stopped. (Throw in Milo Yiannapoulos while you're at it. He's a gay, ethnically Jewish, religiously Catholic -- though how he manages that, I don't know -- immigrant guy with a taste for black men. How such as he come to be regarded as bigots I don't know. But then, we made a bigot of Pim Fortuyn, too -- I can't forget Mark Steyn writing about "pot-smoking gay sociology professors stomping all over Europe in their screamingly camp jackboots" -- and of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose crime apparently is being an ex-Muslim, which of course is punishable by death. Interesting times, indeed.)
"Sexist" is just the Larry Summers stuff: Bell curves are centered the same way for men and women, but have different distributions, so there are more men at both tails (high and low alike).
"Racist" is based on a small part of a book over twenty years old, and again hasn't actually been, y'know, disproven or anything, but it's enough for students who weren't born when it was written, let alone have bothered to pick up a copy and read it, nonetheless to get into hair-pulling, car-rocking assault mode the moment the Dread Pirate Murray shows his awful face on their nice little campus.
I am beginning to think that college students are mostly about age six. At least, that's the only explanation I can find for their behavior.
Middlebury students could have learned from identifying flawed assumptions or logical shortcomings in Dr. Murray’s arguments.
Those who have actually read the book know that Murray and Herrnstein were remarkably careful and restrained in their conclusions. The book tip-toes around racial issues and clearly attempts to avoid all of the controversies it raises.
The Bell Curve - Intelligence and Class Structure in Amerivan Life is hated because it indirectly reveals unspeakable truths. It is attacked because it can't be refuted.
It seems to me that what we've been seeing — at least at Middlebury and Berkeley — is that the left has a problem with violence and with hostility to freedom of speech.
To which I will add Black Lives Matter, the Revolutionary Black Panthers, RevCom, the Black Bloc, SEIU, the Weather Underground, Studens for a Democratic Society, the Symbionese Liberation Army, United Freedom Front...
The result is a generation afflicted with extreme personality disorders, rendering many university-aged students emotionally crippled and unprepared for adult realities.
This is an increasing mental health problem in this country. It seems to be centered on Humanities (and "Studies" majors) in mid level colleges. Engineering students and medical students don't have these symptoms.
During the Vietnam war, 50 years ago, left wing students stayed in college to avoid the draft and ended up with graduate degrees and stayed on as faculty. The students who were in Engineering or, later Computer Science, or Medicine, went out into the world and built careers and did real things.
Gradually the leftist faculty perpetuated themselves, driving out anyone with conservative inclinations.
They are creating a sick generation, mostly in useless fields like "Gender Studies" but still a concern with college age children.
The solution, which might occur to Betsy DeVos, is to limit student loans to those able to repay, such as STEM majors.
PITA, Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, The Family...
And, yes, this violence, these days, almost always comes from the Left. I mean, the JDL may focus on a few pathetic neo-Nazis, but which has more members, Christian Identity or the BDS Movement? And which is likelier to torch your car, or your trash cans, or Sproul Plaza? The SPLC may say this-and-that are "hate groups," but it was just such a statement that led a guy to shoot up the Family Research Council.
I haven't heard of a right-wing riot in the US since the last lynching, which was literally before I was born, 49 years ago. Unless you count the "Brooks Brothers riot" in Florida in 2000, which was just an attempt to stop recounting ballots when it wasn't yet authorized. Otherwise, whenever someone starts burning stuff or pepper-spraying people or beating them up or pulling their hair, you know damn well who is responsible.
So, slightly off topic, but are there ANY colleges or universities that it would be worth sending my kids to? Maybe University of Chicago? Any other candidates?
If people were not judged by the Color Of Their Skin then strippers would not bleach their asshole.
Apply as needed.
I am Laslo.
Michael the Magnificent, I think you mean PETA. I think Ingrid Newkirk is an atrocious human being, personally. PETA captures feral cats, holds them for a week or so, sucks the air out of their lungs, and throws them in the Dumpster. Feral cats are feral, and they aren't going to be tamed in a week, or (practically speaking) ever, after eight weeks of age or so. Trap/neuter/release is the only way that actually makes sense, but La Newkirk won't admit this because, songbirds. (Also mice and voles, but she puts less emphasis on those.)
I work for a smallish no-kill cat shelter, so forgive my speaking with some heat.
I'm still waiting for a group of rabid College Republican frat boys to riot and disrupt an Angela Davis speech on campus....
Bueller?.....Bueller? .... anyone?
Bay Area Guy wrote: He had not an ounce of respect for the free exchange of ideas or the first amendment. And he's one of the good guys!
Troubling. The Left are talking and behaving much like the slavocracy in the 1850's. Riots, beatings, arson, and even murder erupted against nearly anyone who dared use the public tribune to condemn the status quo. They got their case settled in a way they didn't expect. If things don't improve, and soon (Things always either improve or get much worse, don't they?) The Left will get their case settled as well.
I will add that I got my degree at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, where we were too busy studying academics (18 credits per trimester) to have any time to protest anything other than the workload.
And I thank God that I made that choice, rather than going to a state college run by a bunch of angry draft-dodging anti Vietnam war America-hating hippies.
How anyone can commit violence on campus, on camera no less, and not be expelled boggles the mind!
Are these institutions of higher learning, or indoctrination camps straight out of 1984?
Mr. Majestyk,
U of C might actually be very good. Berkeley (yes, Berkeley) is good if you can weather the storms -- I mean emotional, not physical, though there are those too -- which are enormous but get old in retrospect. I say that as a Berkeley grad, twice (once in mechanical engineering, and later on in musicology). Not always easy going, I might say, but it's a very big school, and you can usually find like-minded people, even in your own grad department.
If your kids are interested in engineering, MIT, Caltech, and Harvey Mudd are up there. Also RPI, though that's a tier down.
The thing to avoid is small, elite liberal arts schools where there aren't any people to interact with but your small circle of classmates, who are all going to be as liberal as hell.
It is really worth watching the stream of their discussion. Prof. Stanger asks searching questions and listens respectfully to the answers in a civil interchange.
As for what was going on at Middlebury, the facts speak for themselves. A faction chose to attempt to disrupt the event, and when they failed to do so, they engaged in assault and battery of the speakers. Apparently Dr. Murray is libeled as a white nationalist on the website of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a topic that is discussed near the end of the livestream.
It was like this on campus in the 60s, but then the topic then was the Vietnam war and the draft. Then the college administrations were more robust, and you saw very aggressive attempts to restore order. That didn't turn out very well. The colleges have gone to a soft response (as have the Chicago Police in responding to protests that disrupt traffic). The question is when will someone really get hurt. I don't foresee any crackdowns coming in the present circumstances.
Stanger makes it clear that she is a Democrat, she disagrees with Murray, and the students knew that.
She's proud of her anti-science philosophy. As Rob McLean said... She's adorable.
Maybe Paglia is right and our civilization is nearing collapse.
It seems to me that what we've been seeing — at least at Middlebury and Berkeley — is that the left has a problem with violence and with hostility to freedom of speech.
The violent people have permission from their peers and elders to behave this way. Many of them have no actual concern fro "social justice". They are obsessed with creating a disturbance for whatever reason. Trump and anyone associated with him are the theme of the dat.
Snoop dog makes a vid showing murder of our President. Scarlett Johansson mocks Ivanka on SNL.Not for anything that has actually happened, but for what might happen, or for something Trump said. Trump appoints ZDeVos, who might get kids out of ghetto school, and the blacks trash him, and her.
Trump is called a liar by MSM and celebrities, where previous presidents "misspoke", or "mistakenly said".
So, slightly off topic, but are there ANY colleges or universities that it would be worth sending my kids to? Maybe University of Chicago? Any other candidates?
If considering Chicago why not Northwestern U? Good school, safer area then Chicago U.
Middlebury is only typical of the elite small liberal arts colleges that cost -- how much is it now? 50K a year?
The students at a school like Washington State University aren't going to be the same college population as those at Middlebury. btw WSU is a good engineering school.
Middlebury students would expect a lot to be catered to them by the school. Very small class sizes, a LOT of attention, many students with background at expensive prep schools, a lot of family vacations in Hawaii and boutique bike rides through Europe.
Yes, I knew a couple of people who attended years ago.
Thanks, MDK. I was actually thinking not so much about my kids finding like-minded students, although now that you mention it that would be great, but rather about places where their professors don't try to indoctrinate them and penalize them for expressing non-leftist views and where the school administrators are keen on upholding free inquiry.
You might think about Hillsdale College in Michigan. It has a long tradition of rejecting federal money so that it won't be stuck with government money. It has a strong liberal arts tradition based on classical values.
When I first read about these events, I thought Stanger was one of the good guys, a hero even, but the more I hear from her the more I think that she may be a "good Nazi". You know, the good Nazi had nothing much against the Jewish family that lived next door; the good Nazi was sad when the authorities showed up to drag the Jewish family off to the box cars; the good Nazi gave the Jewish family a blanket to keep them warm in the box car that was taking them East. But the good Nazi understood why the people in charge thought the Jews were a real problem and something had to be done about them. Just not THAT.
I hope I'm wrong. I hope that she is not a good Nazi, but is someone with her heart in the right place who hasn't yet figured out where the evil is in the world, and will realize soon what side she needs to be on.
Sorry. That should be government rules, not government money.
Godfather--you should watch the video. She is a good person, not a good Nazi.
Thanks, Amadeus 48
Those mob members put others "in a clear and present danger of death or great bodily harm". They should have been suppressed by any level of force (Including deadly force) needed to do so---And, as supported by both statutory law and Natural Law.
"...whether Americans can relearn how to engage civilly with one another, something that is admittedly hard to do with a bullying president as a role model."
Pathetic. If those radicals had broken her neck, it still wouldn't break through her liberal/leftist cocoon. Been there in the 60s--early 70s, done that.
Governor Reagan put an end to the Berkeley Riots of 1967 with force. It's amazing how soon a rioters cool when they see their comrades hemorrhaging.
Speaking of civilization nearing collapse, we are at the beginning of creating our own true artificial life at the same time AI is running its robots programmed to kill unreliable human life. HAL9000 is back,and he is angry.
wwww
Creighton University in Omaha. Ranked #1 in the Midwest for over a decade and not nutty Left political.
While the students at Middlebury College were terrible wrong, it is a bit of an exaggeration to say this doesn't happen on the right. given that colleges like Hillsdale for instance do not list any left speakers in their series, as is the case in many small so-called liberal art schools. No wonder there are no demonstrations. And depending on where one goes in our society it can be very dangerous for a known liberal, that was the case when I worked in Appalachia, for example, or when I wondered into Camp site next to militia members one summer.
Maybe Paglia is right and our civilization is nearing collapse.
If one read Camille Paglia closely one will conclude it is the leftish civilization (such as it is) that's teetering on the edge.
"And depending on where one goes in our society it can be very dangerous for a known liberal, that was the case when I worked in Appalachia, for example, or when I wondered into Camp site next to militia members one summer."
Let's compare what's happening today on numerous college campuses with what may have happened years ago in one specific region of the country. Totally the same thing! Lulz
p.s. Militia -- drink!
R/V, how do you become a "known liberal"? Do you follow Obama's playbook and get in people's faces? Do you punch back twice as hard? What is it that you do that sets people against you as you implied in your post? Or is it just your general dishonesty that sets people's backs up?
roesch/voltaire:
While the students at Middlebury College were terrible wrong, it is a bit of an exaggeration to say this doesn't happen on the right. given that colleges like Hillsdale for instance do not list any left speakers in their series.
You really need to get out more.Bernie Sanders speaks at Liberty University
The Vermont democratic socialist and the conservative Southern evangelical university were both on their best behavior Monday as worlds collided and both sides attempted to find common ground.
From God and Man at Hillsdale.
The list of past speakers reads like a history of the modern American Right.. From time to time, a liberal dares to show up–Ralph Nader, Michael Kinsley, and Duke University professor Stanley Fish, who, after two trips to Hillsdale events, says he delights in playing "designated scapegoat."
You should not make claims you cannot back up: "given that colleges like Hillsdale for instance do not list any left speakers in their series." Right wingers Ralph Nader, Michael Kinsley and Stanley Fish. Yup
While the students at Middlebury College were terrible wrong, it is a bit of an exaggeration to say this doesn't happen on the right.
Please find an example in the last twenty years where right wing students assaulted a speaker. Note that as Professor Stanger spoke with Charles Murray, she was a speaker.
The time has come for all those who are not insane leftists to band together for protection. The police will not punish the violent left. The justice system backs them. We need a new version of the Vigilance Committees, or the Deacons for Defense. I expect the officers will suddenly find their handcuffs when citizens stand up to the campus thuggery, but such is the necessity of the times.
Luke Lea said...
How did self-described progressives get to this place?
Not to be glib but read history. This is where they always end up. Next is usually the combination of state power and brown shirts that leads to some form of purge. It has happened easily a dozen times over history.
The only difference in this country is that their opponents, us, have lots of guns. They have of course been trying to remedy this problem. But that is why the US is historically unique and will remain so.
I think the left's embrace of violence and suppression of free speech elected Trump! It's a tough era in which to be traditionally liberal. Or even a liberal who supports the First Amendment and the Constitution.
There is not any society-wide embrace of violent, extremist right-wing groups. We have them - we'll always have them - but they are very small fringes that have no real effect on the national politics.
If we can't get a stronger Democratic/Progressive criticism of the speech=violence groups (which includes a huge chunk of university officials), the nation will be forced to shift its support either to Republicans or some new party. This is warping and twisting our nation's traditional politics.
Progressive politics is engaged in a sustained attack on the Constitution. So are university officials!
nd depending on where one goes in our society it can be very dangerous for a known liberal, that was the case when I worked in Appalachia,
What a bunch of bullshit. I live in the south, have for decades and have more liberal friends than conservative, and I can assure you they are not shy about asserting their beliefs. As for Appalachia, my family comes from there, my wifes family is from there, and therefore I know plenty of people who are from there and visit there often. Plenty of liberals there, also not shy about voicing their beliefs.
What Roesch/Voltaire knows about Appalachia he learned from watching episodes of Law and Order.
@Godfather ... everyone's humanity -- everyone's "good person-hood" -- makes a cameo in the foxhole. The video doesn't credit Stanger on that score.
That she commented on Murray's views reveals her true "Good Nazi" nature, and she felt compelled to disagree with his views, once comfortably and safely out of the foxhole. Her "under the guise of free speech" remark reveals it, too. Protected free speech ought to be the only issue here, and the students' reprehensible violence against the speakers -- not the motives of the speakers or the content of the speech itself. Stanger deliberately changed the subject, as any "Good Nazis" would do.
Nobody "resorted" to anything. There were no options to what was going to happen. There was violence. Period.
The real Fascists in action.
"There is no excusing what happened at Middlebury, and those who prevented Charles Murray from speaking must be punished for violating college rules. "
-- Forget that. Assaulting people and preventing their free travel through public places are crimes. This is a job for police, not campus.
""Anti-gay" just seems to flow out of left wing rubric like an order of fries at McDonald's."
Plus, if you say Murray like MurAY, it rhymes!
It's not "righteous anger" perfesser: it's ignorant, mindless, violent fascism. And you're part of the problem by not calling it what it is.
I also would suggest schools in Utah or southern Idaho. The student body tends to be rather overwhelmingly conservative, and many of the professors too. My dad teaches at a small two year college in Utah, and even the theater professors are conservatives.
I'd avoid the University of Utah, though. They take pride in being the "counter culture" liberal beatniks. Most of Utah's leftist political lunacy springs from the University of Utah and also Salt Lake City council/mayors.
--Vance
"On the other hand, the left may solve Murray's problem of cognitive stratification if everybody is made stupid."
"THE YEAR WAS 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General." -- Harry Bergeron, by Kurt Vonnegut.
http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html
If you haven't been Middlebury, VT is fab. Actually everywhere in Vermont is fab.
An unusual rural state that is liberal. Probably because the state is populated with fab liberal colleges and NYC/Boston and Montreal transplants.
You go into any small town in Vermont and can't swing a cat without hitting a dyke or a frenchie.
You go into any small town in Vermont and can't swing a cat without hitting a dyke or a frenchie.
Titus is correct. Hell, a town with less than 100 residents is going to have a trendy restaurant that includes vegan selections on its menu and at least one art cooperative housed in a warehouse or some store front on main street.
In the NYT article Allison Stanger says students have "rendered judgment on Dr. Murray’s work and character without ever having read anything he has written." Yet she, too, has "rendered judgement" without telling us which of Murray's works she has read (let alone identifying what she finds flawed in them). Is the methodology flawed, are the data questionable, does his logic support his conclusions?
When she claims Murray's work contains "flawed assumptions or logical shortcomings" yet identifies none, I understand there may be insufficient space in the NYT to do so. Yet surely there's space enough (especially in the Web edition) to provide links where she provides reasoned rebuttals of Murray's work? Yet there are none of these either.
Is she asking students to do what she is will not do herself?
Titus said...
"If you haven't been Middlebury, VT is fab. Actually everywhere in Vermont is fab.
An unusual rural state that is liberal. Probably because the state is populated with fab liberal colleges and NYC/Boston and Montreal transplants.
You go into any small town in Vermont and can't swing a cat without hitting a dyke or a frenchie."
Do they wear signs?
Professor Stanger's whiplash injury and concussion must be having lingering effects on her cognition; how else to explain her lashing out at Trump for "...demoniz[ing] Muslims as terrorists...declar[ing]the free press an enemy of the people..." and linking, post hoc, his use of his own free speech rights to college leftist rioting. Needless to say, fascist opposition to free speech on campus and elsewhere antedates Trump's arrival on the political scene by centuries.
Michelle Dulak Thomson said...
Murray is no more "anti-gay" than Trump is, which is to say "not at all." Both of them were pro-gay-marriage more than a decade before Obama and HRC were still solemnly swearing that marriage was only between one man and one woman. This bogus claim needs to be stopped.
You are right, of course. What's interesting to me is who would (a) accept this news and (b) think that it reflects well on Trump and Murray.
Neither Trump, nor Murray, are lawyers. Trump is a celebrity businessman. Murray is a political scientist and social researcher. I would not want either one to represent my interests (as a voter who supported a change in my state constitution to codify marriage in the traditionally-defined manner) in a federal court challenge. I wish that both Trump and Murray would give greater deference to conservative lawyers.
Michael K said...
"The solution, which might occur to Betsy DeVos, is to limit student loans to those able to repay, such as STEM majors."
You're on the right track. But the solution is to make the colleges guarantee their students' loans. They are in an excellent position to know which of their majors are good investments. Make them put some skin in the game.
Luke Lea,
Leftist "thought" and tactics have a rich albeit sordid history. When Marx' prediction that capitalism would collapse under the weight of its internal contradictions failed to materialize (you pardon the pun), Antonio Gramsci advocated using culture as the means to overthrow the bourgeoisie, which more or less just happened to parallel the thinking of the Webbs and their Fabian fellow-travelers in England. To help achieve this, Horkheimer and Adorno established the school of "critical theory" and exported this excrescence to the US in the 30s. "Critical theory" is a thinly-disguised endless attack on the notion of universal truth.
This nonsense received a huge boost in the 60s with the invention of post-structuralism by the left in Paris, which took the attack on universals to new depths of narcissism and nihilism. Its key belief is that universal truth is in fact a tool of oppression used by the current version of the bourgeoisie (white privilege) to enslave the current version of the proletariat (everyone else). Its key tool, as the unreflective professor so carelessly reveals, is the substitution of Emotion in the place of Reason as the accepted tool of dialogue.
The rich irony is that the assertion that there is no universal truth is itself a claim of universal truth.
Of course, the end of all this is old-fashioned power politics. When we overthrow Reason and enthrone Emotion, violence becomes the only tool of enforcing order. So once we all bought into this toxic nonsense, the end became inevitable: chaos, disorder, war, and death. This has been happening mostly in our souls, but sooner or later its energies will burst into civil society with devastating effect.
Combine this with the deleterious effects on the brain of screen viewing instead of reading, and you have this accelerating devolution. Whether and how this can be arrested without implosion is beyond me.
Yea, I am always astonished traveling around Vermont. All these really tiny towns with these outstanding restaurants or fab B& B, or amazing art thang.
Oh and CO-OP's everywhere. Farming and Store CO-OPs.
When you go to a small town in most of America you get the usual small town.
When traveling around Vermont you feel you are in some other country.
Stanger makes it clear that she is a Democrat, she disagrees with Murray, and the students knew that.
I don't know how you can call it "clear" when she doesn't say what she disagrees with. She disagrees IQ specifically and intelligence generally are inheritable to a material (but partial) level? She disagrees that people are producing offspring with others in their own intelligence strata more than in the past? She disagrees the combination of these two facts could impact society by widening the intelligence range but isolating the groups from each other?
On what does she base these conclusions?
Marty Keller said...
Leftist "thought" and tactics have a rich albeit sordid history.
They're creating a religion without any gods. No wonder it's rich and sordid.
Its key tool, as the unreflective professor so carelessly reveals, is the substitution of Emotion in the place of Reason as the accepted tool of dialogue.
A variant of "faith": "strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof." Emotion rather than reason.
But how is that embracing reason?
Their problem with reason is much greater. The left misrepresents any facts they don't like [Murray is supposed to be a white supremacist now?] and college professors are so afraid even those nominally standing up for free speech won't challenge their lies. So when these same leftists and their allies claim Trump's unsupportable assertions are a unique political outrage the simple fact is that his comments are less offensive than those the left routinely makes.
When we overthrow Reason and enthrone Emotion, violence becomes the only tool of enforcing order
Which is one of the reasons I always push back when our host starts her "emotion is a valid part of reason" or "we need to grok the gestalt of texts we read" instead of relying on the meaning of the words and the author's intent, nonsense.
roesch/voltaire said...
While the students at Middlebury College were terrible wrong, it is a bit of an exaggeration to say this doesn't happen on the right.
How typical of rv to claim imagined violence by the right offsets actual violence by the left. I'd say he's putting lipstick on a pig but since his evidence is wrong also it's lipstick on an imaginary pig.
Sad.
Stanger has apparently figured out what the problem is;
"Throughout an ugly campaign and into his presidency, President Trump has demonized Muslims as terrorists and dehumanized many groups of marginalized people. He declared the free press an enemy of the people, replaced deliberation with tweeting, and seems bent on dismantling the separation of powers and 230 years of progress this country has made toward a more perfect union. Much of the free speech he has inspired — or has refused to disavow — is ugly, and has already had ugly real-world consequences. College students have seen this, and have taken note: Speech can become action."
See, that Trump guy has been refusing to disavow stuff. Bastard!
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