Elanor Roosevelt

[CO. Hoosier]

This is about The Letter

If you haven't read it, you should. Signed by several dozen opinion makers, writers, and commentators including people like David Frum, Gary Kasparov, J.K. Rowling and Norm Chomsky, the authors make the point that the current culture and public debate stifles the free and uninhibited exchange of ideas and is doing significant if not irreparable damage to our society.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.
​

The critical response to this letter from many quarters has been swift. CNN published a typical response in a piece called The Problem with the Letter. Not surprisingly, the CNN piece is not at all about the letter. Instead, and significantly, CNN's complaint is all about who wrote the letter. This brings me back to the Elenor Roosevelt quote. Our country was founded on ideas, ideas coming from great minds. Like the frog in the pot of boiling water, the public discourse in America has gone from ideas to people. From great minded important issues to small minded petty issues. We just celebrated America's birthday. Nowhere was the discussion about the ideas of the first modern government controlled by the consent of the governed. Instead we now focus on who proposed those ideas and left them to us to use. The magnificent ideas contained in the words of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, give way to discussions about, well, people.

After the civil war, Grant, Lincoln, Johnson, and many others spoke about the needs of reunification and provided pardons and amnesty to Confederates in return for loyalty to the United States. That was good then. Now it is bad as we throw those efforts at reconciliation on the trash heap as we once again speak of traitors and treason. So much for coming together. So much for the ideas we were founded on and won a war to preserve.

As is said in The Letter, "The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away." I'd add that the way to defeat bad ideas is not to talk about who stated an idea. Great minds discuss ideas. Small minds discuss people.

 

[T.M.P.]

This is about The Letter

If you haven't read it, you should. Signed by several dozen opinion makers, writers, and commentators including people like David Frum, Gary Kasparov, J.K. Rowling and Norm Chomsky, the authors make the point that the current culture and public debate stifles the free and uninhibited exchange of ideas and is doing significant if not irreparable damage to our society.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.
​

The critical response to this letter from many quarters has been swift. CNN published a typical response in a piece called The Problem with the Letter. Not surprisingly, the CNN piece is not at all about the letter. Instead, and significantly, CNN's complaint is all about who wrote the letter. This brings me back to the Elenor Roosevelt quote. Our country was founded on ideas, ideas coming from great minds. Like the frog in the pot of boiling water, the public discourse in America has gone from ideas to people. From great minded important issues to small minded petty issues. We just celebrated America's birthday. Nowhere was the discussion about the ideas of the first modern government controlled by the consent of the governed. Instead we now focus on who proposed those ideas and left them to us to use. The magnificent ideas contained in the words of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, give way to discussions about, well, people.

After the civil war, Grant, Lincoln, Johnson, and many others spoke about the needs of reunification and provided pardons and amnesty to Confederates in return for loyalty to the United States. That was good then. Now it is bad as we throw those efforts at reconciliation on the trash heap as we once again speak of traitors and treason. So much for coming together. So much for the ideas we were founded on and won a war to preserve.

As is said in The Letter, "The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away." I'd add that the way to defeat bad ideas is not to talk about who stated an idea. Great minds discuss ideas. Small minds discuss people.

Quit picking on VPM.

 

[UncleMark]

This is about The Letter

If you haven't read it, you should. Signed by several dozen opinion makers, writers, and commentators including people like David Frum, Gary Kasparov, J.K. Rowling and Norm Chomsky, the authors make the point that the current culture and public debate stifles the free and uninhibited exchange of ideas and is doing significant if not irreparable damage to our society.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.
​

The critical response to this letter from many quarters has been swift. CNN published a typical response in a piece called The Problem with the Letter. Not surprisingly, the CNN piece is not at all about the letter. Instead, and significantly, CNN's complaint is all about who wrote the letter. This brings me back to the Elenor Roosevelt quote. Our country was founded on ideas, ideas coming from great minds. Like the frog in the pot of boiling water, the public discourse in America has gone from ideas to people. From great minded important issues to small minded petty issues. We just celebrated America's birthday. Nowhere was the discussion about the ideas of the first modern government controlled by the consent of the governed. Instead we now focus on who proposed those ideas and left them to us to use. The magnificent ideas contained in the words of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, give way to discussions about, well, people.

After the civil war, Grant, Lincoln, Johnson, and many others spoke about the needs of reunification and provided pardons and amnesty to Confederates in return for loyalty to the United States. That was good then. Now it is bad as we throw those efforts at reconciliation on the trash heap as we once again speak of traitors and treason. So much for coming together. So much for the ideas we were founded on and won a war to preserve.

As is said in The Letter, "The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away." I'd add that the way to defeat bad ideas is not to talk about who stated an idea. Great minds discuss ideas. Small minds discuss people.

You're still a hack.

 

[anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa]

You're still a hack.

He’s right on this one.

 

[bawlmer]

And the response - link.

This response hits on my biggest criticism of The Letter - it's general references to situations that may or may not be concerning. And then it tries to tie them together as a consistent thread.

In reality, those situations need to be reviewed individually. As is pointed out in the response, in some cases there were real transgressions. And, as is also pointed out in the response, some were concerning for the potential censuring effects.

I'm not sure yet which is view is closer to the reality. It's a good and important discussion to have.

 

[T.M.P.]

He’s right on this one.

No, Eleanor was right.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

And the response - link.

This response hits on my biggest criticism of The Letter - it's general references to situations that may or may not be concerning. And then it tries to tie them together as a consistent thread.

In reality, those situations need to be reviewed individually. As is pointed out in the response, in some cases there were real transgressions. And, as is also pointed out in the response, some were concerning for the potential censuring effects.

I'm not sure yet which is view is closer to the reality. It's a good and important discussion to have.

While true, the the authors construct their argument from various specific examples, I don't see your point about them not showing a consistent theme. In my view, there is a definite consistency in their argument and that consistency is that some ideas are to be marginalized if not dismissed mostly by attacking those who state the ideas. Your link is a clear example.

 

[UncleMark]

He’s right on this one.

Both can be true.

 

[bawlmer]

While true, the the authors construct their argument from various specific examples, I don't see your point about them not showing a consistent theme. In my view, there is a definite consistency in their argument and that consistency is that some ideas are to be marginalized if not dismissed mostly by attacking those who state the ideas. Your link is a clear example.

Here is the list of situations from The Letter:

Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.
​

These certainly seem to be troubling scenarios. But facts matter and The Letter skims over this sticky point in the very next sentence: "Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal."

I can't follow them to that conclusion without understanding what incidents we're talking about and what are the related arguments. That is what I mean when I say The Letter falls short in substantiating its claim of a theme of unjust coercion.

You say the response to The Letter I linked was a clear example of attacking those who state the ideas. Did you read the 6 responses to the assumed situations underlying the scenarios from The Letter above? At least they get the point that it's not automatically wrong when powerful people must answer tough questions and, when justified, be held accountable for their actions.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

be held accountable for their actions.

More often than not, the "accountability" argument is a red herring if not an outright scam.

There's a difference between holding Derek Chauvin accountable for George Floyd's death and claiming the boycott of Goya food products is holding the company accountable for its CEO's opinion about Trump. The latter is not an "accountability" argument. Instead it's an intellectually vacuous response to an opinion with which one disagrees.

 

[UncleMark]

There's a difference between holding Derek Chauvin accountable for George Floyd's death and claiming the boycott of Goya food products is holding the company accountable for its CEO's opinion about Trump. The latter is not an "accountability" argument. Instead it's an intellectually vacuous response to an opinion with which one disagrees.

You make an intellectually vacuous word parsing point.

A few years back I bought a My Pillow for my wife, thinking it might be helpful for her neck issues. (It wasn't.) This was before I knew that Mike Lindell was a messianic Trump ball licker. I wouldn't have bought it had I known that then. No matter how intellectually vacuous that might be.

 

[mainway_toys]

Defective minds defend Trump.

 

[Hoopsdoc1978]

This is about The Letter

If you haven't read it, you should. Signed by several dozen opinion makers, writers, and commentators including people like David Frum, Gary Kasparov, J.K. Rowling and Norm Chomsky, the authors make the point that the current culture and public debate stifles the free and uninhibited exchange of ideas and is doing significant if not irreparable damage to our society.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.
​

The critical response to this letter from many quarters has been swift. CNN published a typical response in a piece called The Problem with the Letter. Not surprisingly, the CNN piece is not at all about the letter. Instead, and significantly, CNN's complaint is all about who wrote the letter. This brings me back to the Elenor Roosevelt quote. Our country was founded on ideas, ideas coming from great minds. Like the frog in the pot of boiling water, the public discourse in America has gone from ideas to people. From great minded important issues to small minded petty issues. We just celebrated America's birthday. Nowhere was the discussion about the ideas of the first modern government controlled by the consent of the governed. Instead we now focus on who proposed those ideas and left them to us to use. The magnificent ideas contained in the words of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, give way to discussions about, well, people.

After the civil war, Grant, Lincoln, Johnson, and many others spoke about the needs of reunification and provided pardons and amnesty to Confederates in return for loyalty to the United States. That was good then. Now it is bad as we throw those efforts at reconciliation on the trash heap as we once again speak of traitors and treason. So much for coming together. So much for the ideas we were founded on and won a war to preserve.

As is said in The Letter, "The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away." I'd add that the way to defeat bad ideas is not to talk about who stated an idea. Great minds discuss ideas. Small minds discuss people.

Extremely well said.

 

[TheOriginalHappyGoat]

Here is the list of situations from The Letter:

Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.
​

These certainly seem to be troubling scenarios. But facts matter and The Letter skims over this sticky point in the very next sentence: "Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal."

I can't follow them to that conclusion without understanding what incidents we're talking about and what are the related arguments. That is what I mean when I say The Letter falls short in substantiating its claim of a theme of unjust coercion.

You say the response to The Letter I linked was a clear example of attacking those who state the ideas. Did you read the 6 responses to the assumed situations underlying the scenarios from The Letter above? At least they get the point that it's not automatically wrong when powerful people must answer tough questions and, when justified, be held accountable for their actions.

I am philosophically sympathetic to the authors of "The Letter," but they give away the game with this clumsy line: "books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity."

Well, yeah. Go figure. Complaining about that just makes them seem like a giant more famous group of Vox Day's.

 

[hoosboot]

You make an intellectually vacuous word parsing point.

A few years back I bought a My Pillow for my wife, thinking it might be helpful for her neck issues. (It wasn't.) This was before I knew that Mike Lindell was a messianic Trump ball licker. I wouldn't have bought it had I known that then. No matter how intellectually vacuous that might be.

And here I thought that money was speech. I guess it's different when CoH doesn't like what the money is saying.

 

[StelioKontos]

Not all ideas are created equal

 

[twenty02]

This is about The Letter

If you haven't read it, you should. Signed by several dozen opinion makers, writers, and commentators including people like David Frum, Gary Kasparov, J.K. Rowling and Norm Chomsky, the authors make the point that the current culture and public debate stifles the free and uninhibited exchange of ideas and is doing significant if not irreparable damage to our society.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal.
​

The critical response to this letter from many quarters has been swift. CNN published a typical response in a piece called The Problem with the Letter. Not surprisingly, the CNN piece is not at all about the letter. Instead, and significantly, CNN's complaint is all about who wrote the letter. This brings me back to the Elenor Roosevelt quote. Our country was founded on ideas, ideas coming from great minds. Like the frog in the pot of boiling water, the public discourse in America has gone from ideas to people. From great minded important issues to small minded petty issues. We just celebrated America's birthday. Nowhere was the discussion about the ideas of the first modern government controlled by the consent of the governed. Instead we now focus on who proposed those ideas and left them to us to use. The magnificent ideas contained in the words of government of the people, by the people, and for the people, give way to discussions about, well, people.

After the civil war, Grant, Lincoln, Johnson, and many others spoke about the needs of reunification and provided pardons and amnesty to Confederates in return for loyalty to the United States. That was good then. Now it is bad as we throw those efforts at reconciliation on the trash heap as we once again speak of traitors and treason. So much for coming together. So much for the ideas we were founded on and won a war to preserve.

As is said in The Letter, "The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away." I'd add that the way to defeat bad ideas is not to talk about who stated an idea. Great minds discuss ideas. Small minds discuss people.

If you would post more often like this..... rather than our local Rudy Giuliani.....I wouldn't rag on you so often.

Cancel culture is corrosive and inherently un- American. It's childish behavior carried out by those that can't actually backstop their own positions with anything resembling coherent thought.

I see it a lot, as I have a 5 and 2 year old living with me.

 

[TommyCracker]

I'm too tired to read up on what the hell 'the letter' is but I have noticed my right wing friends have been bitching like crazy lately that people are not letting them get by with as much locker room talk.

They've also been complaining that they are now getting labeled as a slack jawed, booger eating, racist, wwf lovin, redneck trash because they like Trump, not realizing that is what Trump has done to you and the republican party that he represents.

Lastly Trump fans seem to be wanting to do whatever they can to stop talking about the daily dumb and blatently corrupt things that Trump does on and almost daily basis.

I watched Fox News evening lineup the other night (Carlson, Hannity and Ingraham) and although they keep whining about a cancel culture...they sure do a lot of grade school insults (Bernie Bolshevik, Sleepy Joe, Radical Left, the New York Toilet Paper Times).

So they sure like to hurl a lot of shit but think it's unfair when people come back at them.

Yeah cry me a river.

It's hard to take anyone seriously when they support that kind of discourse.

 

[Bill4411]

And I always thought CoH hated the Roosevelt’s.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

Ranger and I discussed this in another thread. To my knowledge I have never taken part in such an effort.

We accept free speech. So if one were trangendered, do they have a right to refuse to buy anything JK Rowling? Do they have a right to tell other people how they are unhappy with Rowling's views?

So I do not know how to deal with this. If Harvey Weinstein were still making movies, I doubt I would go see one. So we probably agree there are times this works.

The people that signed this letter tend to have a larger voice than most. Are they concerned that they may be losing their oversized influence?

We know Marge Schott said that Hitler started good bit then went too far. People went "cancel culture" on the Reds, was that wrong?

Was it wrong for people to write radio stations saying they no longer wanted Dixie Chicks played because one spoke out against the war in Iraq?

So is it always wrong, is it sometime wrong? Or is it just the way the marketplace of ideas works?

 

[hoosboot]

Ranger and I discussed this in another thread. To my knowledge I have never taken part in such an effort.

We accept free speech. So if one were trangendered, do they have a right to refuse to buy anything JK Rowling? Do they have a right to tell other people how they are unhappy with Rowling's views?

So I do not know how to deal with this. If Harvey Weinstein were still making movies, I doubt I would go see one. So we probably agree there are times this works.

The people that signed this letter tend to have a larger voice than most. Are they concerned that they may be losing their oversized influence?

We know Marge Schott said that Hitler started good bit then went too far. People went "cancel culture" on the Reds, was that wrong?

Was it wrong for people to write radio stations saying they no longer wanted Dixie Chicks played because one spoke out against the war in Iraq?

So is it always wrong, is it sometime wrong? Or is it just the way the marketplace of ideas works?

The thing that scares some folks is that they don't control the marketplace of ideas anymore.

 

[Marvin the Martian]

The thing that scares some folks is that they don't control the marketplace of ideas anymore.

Frankly, it scares me too. Right now anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers have equal footage to real experts. But I think we will eventually correct that.

Would it be correct of my to refuse to see a Jenny McCarthy show because she is an anti-vaxxer? I think it would be.

 

[anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa]

Ranger and I discussed this in another thread. To my knowledge I have never taken part in such an effort.

We accept free speech. So if one were trangendered, do they have a right to refuse to buy anything JK Rowling? Do they have a right to tell other people how they are unhappy with Rowling's views?

So I do not know how to deal with this. If Harvey Weinstein were still making movies, I doubt I would go see one. So we probably agree there are times this works.

The people that signed this letter tend to have a larger voice than most. Are they concerned that they may be losing their oversized influence?

We know Marge Schott said that Hitler started good bit then went too far. People went "cancel culture" on the Reds, was that wrong?

Was it wrong for people to write radio stations saying they no longer wanted Dixie Chicks played because one spoke out against the war in Iraq?

So is it always wrong, is it sometime wrong? Or is it just the way the marketplace of ideas works?

Sure they have a right to boycott Rowling’s works. It’s when they then try to get their company to fire the person at the lunch table reading Harry Potter...

I don’t need to be told what to think by a bunch of virtue-signaling woke dicks and dickettes. Cancel culture is, as twenty states, completely cancerous and un-american.

 

[anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa]

The thing that scares some folks is that they don't control the marketplace of ideas anymore.

Because the marketplace has been shattered by groupthink and a bunch of coddled minds. Some on this forum signal that this is a good thing.

 

[hoosboot]

Frankly, it scares me too. Right now anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers have equal footage to real experts. But I think we will eventually correct that.

Would it be correct of my to refuse to see a Jenny McCarthy show because she is an anti-vaxxer? I think it would be.

Correct? I don't know. The right decision for you? Sounds like it. This stuff requires some thoughtfulness and I see as little in the people screeching about "CANCEL CULTURE!" as they claim exists in the people wanting to cancel.

Your Marge Schott example is a great one. If somebody didn't want to go to a Reds game while she was owner, totally cool. Somebody else wasn't moved to throw away their season tickets...that's cool, too. Marge starts doubling and tripling down on her "interesting" Hitler theories...maybe it wasn't just a one-off mistake and I stop going to the games, too. That's a long way of saying, yeah...it's the marketplace of ideas.

 

[hoosboot]

Because the marketplace has been shattered by groupthink and a bunch of coddled minds. Some on this forum signal that this is a good thing.

Meh...that sounds about as thoughtful as the people you are complaining about. Looks like "CANCEL CULTURE!!!" is the new groupthink.

 

[UncleMark]

Don’t Fall For The ‘Cancel Culture’ Scam

Anecdotes are not data, free speech is not under attack — and elite journalists should find something else to write about.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cancel-culture-harpers-jk-rowling-scam_n_5f0887b4c5b67a80bc06c95e

On Monday, 153 prominent writers, academics and public figures signed their names to a statement entitled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” According to the signatories, “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”

While the letter itself, published by the magazine Harper’s, doesn’t use the term, the statement represents a bleak apogee in the yearslong, increasingly contentious debate over “cancel culture.” The American left, we are told, is imposing an Orwellian set of restrictions on which views can be expressed in public. Institutions at every level are supposedly gripped by fears of social media mobs and dire professional consequences if their members express so much as a single statement of wrongthink.

This is false. Every statement of fact in the Harper’s letter is either wildly exaggerated or plainly untrue. More broadly, the controversy over “cancel culture” is a straightforward moral panic. While there are indeed real cases of ordinary Americans plucked from obscurity and harassed into unemployment, this rare, isolated phenomenon is being blown up far beyond its importance.

The panic over “cancel culture” is, at its core, a reactionary backlash. Conservative elites, threatened by changing social norms and an accelerating generational handover, are attempting to amplify their feelings of aggrievement into a national crisis. The Harper’s statement, like nearly everything else written on this subject, could have been more efficiently summarized in four words: “Get Off My Lawn.”​

 

[anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa]

Meh...that sounds about as thoughtful as the people you are complaining about. Looks like "CANCEL CULTURE!!!" is the new groupthink.

Whatever bud. They’ll cancel you someday too.

 

[anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa]

Frankly, it scares me too. Right now anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers have equal footage to real experts. But I think we will eventually correct that.

Would it be correct of my to refuse to see a Jenny McCarthy show because she is an anti-vaxxer? I think it would be.

You don’t understand cancel culture. You are too practicable and reasonable. It’s not about your individual choice, it’s about not being able to have conversations on ideas that break sole virtue signaling culture. It’s about controlling a signal to only result in woke propaganda nonsense.

The right has their own version of it - it’s just more subtle. If you wear a mask, you’re a puss. If you believe in AGW you don’t have a seat at the table. It’s the same thing, it’s just that it won’t cost you your job.

 

[Bulk VanderHuge]

Don’t Fall For The ‘Cancel Culture’ Scam

Anecdotes are not data, free speech is not under attack — and elite journalists should find something else to write about.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cancel-culture-harpers-jk-rowling-scam_n_5f0887b4c5b67a80bc06c95e

On Monday, 153 prominent writers, academics and public figures signed their names to a statement entitled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” According to the signatories, “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”

While the letter itself, published by the magazine Harper’s, doesn’t use the term, the statement represents a bleak apogee in the yearslong, increasingly contentious debate over “cancel culture.” The American left, we are told, is imposing an Orwellian set of restrictions on which views can be expressed in public. Institutions at every level are supposedly gripped by fears of social media mobs and dire professional consequences if their members express so much as a single statement of wrongthink.

This is false. Every statement of fact in the Harper’s letter is either wildly exaggerated or plainly untrue. More broadly, the controversy over “cancel culture” is a straightforward moral panic. While there are indeed real cases of ordinary Americans plucked from obscurity and harassed into unemployment, this rare, isolated phenomenon is being blown up far beyond its importance.

The panic over “cancel culture” is, at its core, a reactionary backlash. Conservative elites, threatened by changing social norms and an accelerating generational handover, are attempting to amplify their feelings of aggrievement into a national crisis. The Harper’s statement, like nearly everything else written on this subject, could have been more efficiently summarized in four words: “Get Off My Lawn.”​

So correct me if I'm wrong, but this sounds like the Pub version of #metoo.

 

[hoosboot]

Whatever bud. They’ll cancel you someday too.

Gee...doesn't sound like you feel I'm your "bud". That's okay. I still have tons of respect for you, but "they" posts suck. Are they groupthink?

 

[hoosboot]

Don’t Fall For The ‘Cancel Culture’ Scam

Anecdotes are not data, free speech is not under attack — and elite journalists should find something else to write about.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cancel-culture-harpers-jk-rowling-scam_n_5f0887b4c5b67a80bc06c95e

On Monday, 153 prominent writers, academics and public figures signed their names to a statement entitled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” According to the signatories, “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”

While the letter itself, published by the magazine Harper’s, doesn’t use the term, the statement represents a bleak apogee in the yearslong, increasingly contentious debate over “cancel culture.” The American left, we are told, is imposing an Orwellian set of restrictions on which views can be expressed in public. Institutions at every level are supposedly gripped by fears of social media mobs and dire professional consequences if their members express so much as a single statement of wrongthink.

This is false. Every statement of fact in the Harper’s letter is either wildly exaggerated or plainly untrue. More broadly, the controversy over “cancel culture” is a straightforward moral panic. While there are indeed real cases of ordinary Americans plucked from obscurity and harassed into unemployment, this rare, isolated phenomenon is being blown up far beyond its importance.

The panic over “cancel culture” is, at its core, a reactionary backlash. Conservative elites, threatened by changing social norms and an accelerating generational handover, are attempting to amplify their feelings of aggrievement into a national crisis. The Harper’s statement, like nearly everything else written on this subject, could have been more efficiently summarized in four words: “Get Off My Lawn.”​

These crazy kids and their rap and roll music...they're ruining this great country! They should just shut up and dribble.

 

[jet812]

So correct me if I'm wrong, but this sounds like the Pub version of #metoo.

You could almost replace “cancel culture” with “systemic racism” in this huff post piece.

 

[TommyCracker]

When I was a freshman at IU I came out of Ballentine after an early morning class and a bunch of dudes were making out in protest.

I thought to myself 'wow, okay, I don't see that everyday. Ugh, gross, dudes making out'.

However I was horrified at the reaction around them.

A guy on a bike screamed 'die ******s!!!'. Some Bible chicks were yelling that they were going to hell and then out of nowhere somebody threw rocks at them.

It literally looked like the end of the movie Bruno.

A year or so later we were discussing gays in the military and my argument was it reminds me of the segregation of the military that African Americans had to go through. Remember when white people said 'I don't know if I could trust a n##### to have my back in a foxhole.'

In this case it was 'you can't trust a fag in a foxhole, he's probably looking at me wanting to f#$k me!!!

In both cases if you took the side of the black dude or the gay dude, many times you were ostracized, called a n#$$#$lover or a fag yourself if not physically threatened.

So yeah, right wingers complaining that their feelings are getting hurt and they are being picked on can cry me a river.

Bottom line, if you come into a subject with grace, humility and ask to have a discussion most of the time you're going to have a peaceful discussion.

When you come into a discussion with 'the radical left wants to control what I say whaa whaa whaa ' then f#$k off.

 

[Stuffshot]

Sure they have a right to boycott Rowling’s works. It’s when they then try to get their company to fire the person at the lunch table reading Harry Potter...

I don’t need to be told what to think by a bunch of virtue-signaling woke dicks and dickettes. Cancel culture is, as twenty states, completely cancerous and un-american.

And, to build from your example, it's really sad to see cancel culture inflicted on someone because someone else says, "I saw so-and-so reading Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone in 1997, and he has never apologized. He should be held accountable." So, the poor schmuck gets pilloried in 2020 even though there was no outcry of any kind in 1997 (and, perhaps, no believable proof that he ever was guilty of it).

 

[CO. Hoosier]

The panic over “cancel culture” is, at its core, a reactionary backlash. Conservative elites, threatened by changing social norms and an accelerating generational handover, are attempting to amplify their feelings of aggrievement into a national crisis.

"Conservative elites." Funny. still talking about who wrote the letter, not what they said. If Norm Chomsky is a conservative elite, that's news to me.

 

[anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa]

Don’t Fall For The ‘Cancel Culture’ Scam

Anecdotes are not data, free speech is not under attack — and elite journalists should find something else to write about.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cancel-culture-harpers-jk-rowling-scam_n_5f0887b4c5b67a80bc06c95e

On Monday, 153 prominent writers, academics and public figures signed their names to a statement entitled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” According to the signatories, “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.”

While the letter itself, published by the magazine Harper’s, doesn’t use the term, the statement represents a bleak apogee in the yearslong, increasingly contentious debate over “cancel culture.” The American left, we are told, is imposing an Orwellian set of restrictions on which views can be expressed in public. Institutions at every level are supposedly gripped by fears of social media mobs and dire professional consequences if their members express so much as a single statement of wrongthink.

This is false. Every statement of fact in the Harper’s letter is either wildly exaggerated or plainly untrue. More broadly, the controversy over “cancel culture” is a straightforward moral panic. While there are indeed real cases of ordinary Americans plucked from obscurity and harassed into unemployment, this rare, isolated phenomenon is being blown up far beyond its importance.

The panic over “cancel culture” is, at its core, a reactionary backlash. Conservative elites, threatened by changing social norms and an accelerating generational handover, are attempting to amplify their feelings of aggrievement into a national crisis. The Harper’s statement, like nearly everything else written on this subject, could have been more efficiently summarized in four words: “Get Off My Lawn.”​

I guess I’ll take Obama’s word for it and not the hogwash that is the Huffington Post. Or is he now no longer respected because he isn’t in on the “marketplace of ideas?”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/us/politics/obama-woke-cancel-culture.html

 

[anon_mlxxvlbug9dpa]

And, to build from your example, it's really sad to see cancel culture inflicted on someone because someone else says, "I saw so-and-so reading Harry Potter and The Philosopher's Stone in 1997, and he has never apologized. He should be held accountable." So, the poor schmuck gets pilloried in 2020 even though there was no outcry of any kind in 1997 (and, perhaps, no believable proof that he ever was guilty of it).

Obviously we’re both using hyperbole, but it’s an apt analogy.

 

[CO. Hoosier]

The thing that scares some folks is that they don't control the marketplace of ideas anymore.

Just the opposite. The market place of ideas must be a free and unregulated market. Nobody should control it. However, we are drifting towards the notion that virtuous victimhood and the developing right not to be offended are controls. The tools of the trade for those who want to control the marketplace are everywhere and include screams of racism, hate speech, I'm offended, silence is violence, and much more. Those who wield the controls are mostly individuals and organizations, but these people also advocate for government control. We all should be scared of that.

 

[Stuffshot]

Ranger and I discussed this in another thread. To my knowledge I have never taken part in such an effort.

We accept free speech. So if one were trangendered, do they have a right to refuse to buy anything JK Rowling? Do they have a right to tell other people how they are unhappy with Rowling's views?

So I do not know how to deal with this. If Harvey Weinstein were still making movies, I doubt I would go see one. So we probably agree there are times this works.

The people that signed this letter tend to have a larger voice than most. Are they concerned that they may be losing their oversized influence?

We know Marge Schott said that Hitler started good bit then went too far. People went "cancel culture" on the Reds, was that wrong?

Was it wrong for people to write radio stations saying they no longer wanted Dixie Chicks played because one spoke out against the war in Iraq?

So is it always wrong, is it sometime wrong? Or is it just the way the marketplace of ideas works?

Here, maybe this will help on part of it. Hitler and Weinstein were not hated because of their exercise of free speech. They were hated because of their actions.

The historic solution for another part of this is the nom de plume. Few people knew that many of those great 19th century novels were written by women. With cancel culture, we keep moving closer to the place where today's Brontes can't risk bylines for their own brilliant works. Even Hamilton could not use his real name on all those Federalist Papers he wrote.

And, out of character, you wrote this:

"The people that signed this letter tend to have a larger voice than most. Are they concerned that they may be losing their oversized influence?"​

Ah. You seem here to have slipped into attacking the messenger instead of the message. Why should the identity of the speaker matter so much, if truth is truth? That part of your post needed a second draft. Not like the usual you,