Universities are also "speakers," with an independent mandate to teach, research, and pursue truth for the common good. And this requires taking sides.
    • Muchtall@lemmy.worldEnglish
      14·
      1 year ago
      1. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion, please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.

      Wow. The updoinks… Such quality discourse and amazing insight!

      How is this entire sub not considered a giant circle tug?

      • Poob@lemmy.caEnglish
        53·
        1 year ago

        You’re right that it wasn’t a very high quality post, but with this topic, what else is there to say? Conservatives have been pretending they’re free speech warriors while at the same time very publicly banning books. It’s so obvious that there isn’t really anything to discuss.

      • bemenaker@lemmy.worldEnglish
        45·
        1 year ago

        Because the post articulated what the majority of us already knew. That as always has been, the repression in this country comes from the conservatives. The very definition of a liberal philosophy would be against a threat to free speech. When conservatives complain their rights are being trampled on, it’s normally their “right” to harm some group or person that they do not like. A liberal wouldn’t say you aren’t allowed to have a negative view of such person, but may consider it flawed, but wouldn’t say you have a right to harm that person because you don’t like them. Conservatives want to control what you can say, think, and do, to only what fits in a world that makes them comfortable, and feel better about themselves.

        • Nowyn@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          32·
          1 year ago

          Please note that it is not only a US-specific issue. Right has especially in its extreme lengths always been somewhat oppressive and as the right has become more right (again) (also read as in more fascist) in recent years oppressive policies they support are getting more and more oppressive.

          • Zink@lemmy.worldEnglish
            37·
            1 year ago

            I took a look at the “conservatives banning books” link and it says thousands of books have been banned and/or removed from libraries.

            I took a look at your link, and it describes the process by which one book was removed from the required reading list, but was still allowed to be used in class.

            It makes me think of the “we are not the same” meme.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldEnglish
            24·
            1 year ago

            Removing a book from the curriculum and removing it from the school (and possibly public libraries) entirely are very, very different. Republicans are doing the latter.

          • Lightor@lemmy.worldEnglish
            24·
            1 year ago

            Yes, let’s also let parents decide what medicine they get instead of doctors. And decide when their kids should be able to drive, not the government.

            I mean why let educated professionals get in the way?

            • Muchtall@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              1 year ago

              Yes, let’s also let parents decide what medicine they get instead of doctors.

              As a matter of fact, yes. As a parent, I have the responsibility to choose what medicines to allow my children to receive.

              And decide when their kids should be able to drive, not the government.

              Yep. If my 17 year old is too irresponsible to drive, I can choose to not let him.

              Parents have the right to withhold anything they deem to be harmful to their children.

              • Lightor@lemmy.worldEnglish
                21·
                1 year ago

                So if you decide you don’t want a medicine for your child because you think it causes cancer, even if it doesn’t, then you should be allowed to prevent him from taking it? Even if it kills him? No. No, that is a horrible idea.

                And you think that you should control when your kid should drive too. Great, now irresponsible parents can ask 12 year olds to drive to the store for them? Endangering everyone around them? Another horrible idea.

                Yes you can withhold things. But you don’t have absolute say. They are a person. If your choices would cause them harm, such as an improper education or not getting needed medication, then it’s the governments job to step in and protect that child.

                • Muchtall@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  1 year ago

                  “Improper education”. There is the crux of it. Your definition of improper may not be the same as mine. You think that you should be able to force other people’s children to be taught what you want them to be taught, according to your political and/or moral standards, through the force of government.

                  I want parents to be able to decide for their own children how they are taught. I think parents of a child know better how to raise that child than a government bureaucrat.

                  Tell me again how I’m the Nazi.

              • daemoz@lemmy.worldEnglish
                12·
                1 year ago

                Yeah cool, you decide what your property gets to do since you’re responsible for them. Government, nor your doctor shall stop you from telling your creation what is right or wrong, if you eat paint for breakfast because eating plants and animals is evil/poison, thats your right as a free man on the land. Best to start early too, so they dont have the faculties to question it later on.
                It’s not like there are bad actors and tens of thousands of ai gemerated fake news to sway popular opinion with branding and politics. And its totally a boon for a society when we can isolate ourselves in thought bubbles and share as few values as united people as possible. Really helps us maintain our financial security and opportunities for quality of life, standards for education and licensing for professionals responsible for life altering decisions. Its not like devaluing those professional opinions im mass will lead to bad things; what do they evem know, they didnt even study at Facebook UNIV?

                The idea and value of freedom is great, but there are thresholds that cross into ignorant arrogance that causes individual and systemic harm. I know gov can’t solve this, but i fully believe it has a role to play in helping set standards that reduce harm, even for your kids.

      • surewhynotlem@lemmy.worldEnglish
        15·
        1 year ago

        I don’t understand. You’re saying the conclusion is so obvious that the article is worthless and redundant?

        • some_guy@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          You’re saying the conclusion is so obvious that the article is worthless and redundant?

          I’m saying that. But also, it doesn’t hurt to keep talking about it for those who haven’t yet realized what’s going on.

  • Bucky@lemmy.worldEnglish
    106·
    1 year ago

    What they want is freedom to control reality. What Republicans say, every day is not real, they don’t live in reality. What they want is not free speech, they have that more than ever. What they want is to dictate reality to the rest of us.

    All conservative are bad, acab as it were.

    • ggBarabajagal@lemmy.worldEnglish
      19·
      1 year ago

      I think what they want is as many big-money donors as they can get, for which they require as many reliable Republican votes as they can get, for which they require Trump, for which they are required to give prima facia credence to whatever misinformation Trump is pushing on any given day.

      It didn’t always used to be like this, but that was a long time ago.

      Trump didn’t create his voter base – he stole it, from Rush Limbaugh, Bill Reilly, Glen Beck, Alex Jones, and all those other millionaires who spent decades feeding working-class conservatives daily servings hate for huge profit.

      And in all of history, who has been the conservative pundits’ all-time number-one biggest and best favorite target for this hate? It has to be Barack Obama. (Our first Black president. Coincidence?)

      Trump didn’t create his voter base, but he has owned it outright for going on a decade now, starting way back with his entirely bogus claims against President Obama’s citizenship. It didn’t matter that the claims were bogus – all that mattered is that they were against Obama, in an outright demeaning (and overtly racist) way. Dittoheads and O’Reilly fans ate that shit up.

      Now here we are, eight or nine years later, and Trump still owns it. Only now, instead of feeding that voter base, and growing it with strongman posturing and punitive policy, he’s using it exclusively to try to save his own skin. And at this point, the only way Trump saves himself is in an alternate reality, with alternate facts.

      Now Trump lies to save himself, and half of congress has to play along or risk losing their own reelections. Thanks Obama.

    • Saneless@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      1 year ago

      They’re desperate since they’re fading. Their party or ideology isn’t attractive. Younger people have no interest and the older people are dying odf

        • Saneless@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          1 year ago

          You don’t have to hope for that, it’s happening. Hope is reserved for it happening before they take away enough voting rights or even legislative rights so that when the takeover is complete, the government that is left over isn’t impotent

          There’s a reason they’re fighting harder than ever to block voting.

  • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.mlEnglish
    51·
    1 year ago

    I’ve found a pretty effective argument when dealing with right wingers at this point. I simply say that only one side is banning books and it’s theirs, and I stick only to that. It’s indefensible. They can try to twist it, say it’s just protecting kids, and I will continue to say “Only the republicans are banning books”. It’s the end of discussion. Its shoving in their face that there is a clear line in the sand that republicans have crossed, and there is nothing they can say that would change that.

      • Saneless@lemmy.world
        7·
        1 year ago

        Bbbbut it’s in the constitution

        If the constitution said we had to sacrifice children to make God happy, they’d defend it till the end of time

      • Boddhisatva@kbin.social
        5·
        1 year ago

        Yep. When’s the last time you saw a drag queen beat a kid to death with a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird?

      • tryptaminev 🇵🇸 🇺🇦 🇪🇺@feddit.de
        3·
        1 year ago

        No we only need to protect them from liberal ideas! You see, nithing us more American than dying to a good honest made in the US bullet from a proud American gun, during second term at elementary school. But imagine if those kids would have read Marlon Bundo, a book about a male bunny that likes another male bunny as more than just friends, and everyone around being supportive?! That shit is dangerous!

    • fixed_point@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      So you can’t think of any reason to ban books? Do you have any examples of a book that was banned recently by conservatives that clearly should not have been banned? What do you think about the following being in school libraries: page from Gender Queer (NSFW)?

    • StrawberryEnglish
      17·
      1 year ago

      Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

      Jean-Paul Sartre

    • Kornblumenratte@feddit.de
      1·
      1 year ago

      As a non native speaker, I do not get the meaning of this post? And a lot of others. The word entitlement seems to have changed it’s meaning. What does it mean today?

      according to wiktionary:

      entitlement (countable and uncountable, plural entitlements)

      • The right to have something, whether actual or perceived.
      • Power, authority to do something.
      • Something that one is entitled to.
      • (politics) A legal obligation on a government to make payments to a person, business, or unit of government that meets the criteria set in law, such as social security in the US.
  • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    1 year ago

    They’ll ban books and then whine that they’re being oppressed when people point out that they’re scared of ideas.

  • dx1@lemmy.worldEnglish
    24·
    1 year ago

    In the U.S., yes, at this moment the major threats to free speech are coming from the so-called “right”. Forbidding teaching black history, LGBT issues, etc. A few years ago, lest we forget, it was Obama cracking down on the OWS protests and trying to prosecute Julian Assange and Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Before that it was the GOP again pushing the PATRIOT Act and trying to ban Grand Theft Auto. They did it for a long time with the Red Scare. That of course, basically kicked off in response to Stalin, who was doing his own purges of opponents and censorship. Pre-war, it was Hitler, Mussolini and Franco worst of all, but was happening in the U.S. too. That all goes back even further to the Comstock laws, the Alien and Sedition Acts, you name it. There isn’t some magical quality about the directions “left” and “right” by which bad people in power in government under that label don’t want to silence their opponents. There is a tendency for what we call “the right” - this kind of more-or-less fascist, religious based, emotionally charged, etc. set of ideologies - to respond more eagerly to calls to silence or brutalize opponents, because they are by and large a good bit dumber at the end of the day.