Tolerating dissent
Users browsing this topic:0 Registered, 0 Hidden and 1 Guest Registered Users: None |
|
View previous topic :: View next topic |
Author |
Message |
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
Post subject: Tolerating dissent | |
|
<split from “Alex Jones” thread – thanks, David for BBMods>
Speech, like all behaviour, does indeed have consequences, but the question is the nature and proportionality of the consequences. Losing your employment is generally too serious a consequence for speech, unless it is manifestly and materially contrary to the interests of your employer and your ability to perform your role. Slating your employer or their product in a public forum, or abusing their significant customers, is a problem. Making patently offensive remarks while working on their business can be a problem. But what you do and say on your own time as a private citizen is your affair, not your employer’s. This principle should apply even when the speech in question is very unpleasant.
Increasingly, in our society, we manage a Soviet-style restriction on freedom of speech, but instead of sending people to the gulag, we publicly shame them via twitter, demand that they apologize on pain of boycott, and strip their employment away. This modern show-trial is a very sinister development, the more so because it is so protean that it’s hard to attack. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
|
Post subject: | |
|
^
And that's another example of the hypocrisy of the left.
You publish something they agree with and get in trouble with your employer, they scream and demand your employer is punished
You publish something they disagree with, they scream and demand your employer sacks you. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
Post subject: | |
|
stui magpie wrote: | ^
And that's another example of the hypocrisy of the left.
You publish something they agree with and get in trouble with your employer, they scream and demand your employer is punished
You publish something they disagree with, they scream and demand your employer sacks you. |
Absolutely. It’s very evident. Someone who thinks they have a better analysis than you is usually happy to let you speak. Someone who thinks that they have a better character than you has voted themselves the right to silence you.
The side pushing for censorship, and the type of speech they are trying to censor, says much about who really has power in contemporary society. The establishment is left leaning today, entrenched in the universities, the law, the public sector and large corporations. The old Left was concerned with economic relations. The modern Left has ceded them all the right to make as much money as they can, as long as they agree to push its agenda and police its power. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
Jezza
2023 PREMIERS!
Joined: 05 Sep 2010 Location: Ponsford End
|
Post subject: | |
|
Mugwump wrote: | Absolutely. It’s very evident. Someone who thinks they have a better analysis than you is usually happy to let you speak. Someone who thinks that they have a better character than you has voted themselves the right to silence you.
The side pushing for censorship, and the type of speech they are trying to censor, says much about who really has power in contemporary society. The establishment is left leaning today, entrenched in the universities, the law, the public sector and large corporations. The old Left was concerned with economic relations. The modern Left has ceded them all the right to make as much money as they can, as long as they agree to push its agenda and police its power. |
Spot on.
That's why I don't think it's unreasonable to regard the right (or conservatism) as being the new 'counterculture' these days. _________________ | 1902 | 1903 | 1910 | 1917 | 1919 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1935 | 1936 | 1953 | 1958 | 1990 | 2010 | 2023 | |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
Post subject: | |
|
^agreed, Jezza, though conservatism has different meanings. I think libertarian “conservatism” shares the same bed as the establishment. It too relativizes everything. The US Republicans seem to me just as radical as the mad-eyed Left. It’s partly how they arrived at Trumpland.
Burke’s conservatism is what the new Leftist establishment fear and despise, because it checks their power. It means belief in particular, local values, shared and defended and developed by a people whose common experience has shown them what works best, and what is beautiful.
Family, faith, tradition and patriotism, liberty under the law and a well-regulated market framework : this sum of things has been so long derided and undermined that it seems quaint and reactionary. Yet it really is subversive, underlying (as it once did) the most civilized, plurally tolerant, safe and improving societies that have ever graced the planet.
Great societies and hegemonic powers die, often explosively, when the values that hold them together no longer grip. That gravity, in our civilization, is now very weak. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: the edge of the deep green sea
|
Post subject: | |
|
People are just hypocrites in general and tend to have their own partisan blinkers on to varying degrees. Like censorship, it’s not just a left-wing thing. And while leftists and liberals may have colonised the cultural establishment and entertainment industry, the right still holds all the real power in our society. Look at our government, our opposition party, our biggest companies, our powerful lobby groups, our newspapers, our radio stations and commercial TV shows and tell me that it’s the left that controls speech. _________________ "Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
Post subject: | |
|
^ goodness, I don’t think that’s true at all.
Do Turnbull and his government stand for the things I described above ? To the extent they are on the Right at all, they’re libertarians whose values are closer to the mainstream Left than they are to Menzian Conservatism. Can you evidence one area where they have declared for a genuinely conservative position ? Wanting a slightly lower corporate tax rate and keeping a few refugees on Manus while admitting 350,000 immigrants a year does not qualify.
“Lobby Groups” ? you believe that the Left are underrepresented on these ? Amnesty, Greenpeace, the UNHRC, th multitude of aboriginal and multicultural lobbyists, many of them government funded ? That the business groups wanting lower taxes and lower penalty rates (and more immigration) are genuinely conservative ?
Our biggest companies ? The only views you will hear them express at all will be for free markets and for equality and diversity. How many corporate leaders declared for gay marriage vs how many against it ?
The Left has indeed “colonized the cultural space and entertainment industry” (and the education sector), and that is the most critical point,because the other things you mention are mostly technocratic and managerial in nature, with very little to say about values at all. It is the cultural space and entertainment industry that set the agenda, and it is overwhelmingly an establishment Left position.
I believe you are looking at the surface and the labels affixed to things here, rather than looking at what is really done and said, and where it comes from on the values spectrum. _________________ Two more flags before I die!
Last edited by Mugwump on Thu Aug 09, 2018 1:25 am; edited 2 times in total |
|
|
|
|
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
Post subject: | |
|
Thanks like a sacrificial offering to assuage the British entertainment industry's collective guilt and shame for turning a blind eye to or condoning such behaviour on a widespread basis for the past half-century you look nice too. |
|
|
|
|
Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
|
Post subject: | |
|
David wrote: | People are just hypocrites in general and tend to have their own partisan blinkers on to varying degrees. Like censorship, it’s not just a left-wing thing. And while leftists and liberals may have colonised the cultural establishment and entertainment industry, the right still holds all the real power in our society. Look at our government, our opposition party, our biggest companies, our powerful lobby groups, our newspapers, our radio stations and commercial TV shows and tell me that it’s the left that controls speech. |
The “Left” doesn’t control anything. Occasionally, a few people who aren’t conservatives say things and the Villainous Punk-right Tavern goes into meltdown. |
|
|
|
|
Pies4shaw
pies4shaw
Joined: 08 Oct 2007
|
Post subject: | |
|
Mugwump wrote: | ^agreed, Jezza, though conservatism has different meanings. I think libertarian “conservatism” shares the same bed as the establishment. It too relativizes everything. The US Republicans seem to me just as radical as the mad-eyed Left. It’s partly how they arrived at Trumpland.
Burke’s conservatism is what the new Leftist establishment fear and despise, because it checks their power. It means belief in particular, local values, shared and defended and developed by a people whose common experience has shown them what works best, and what is beautiful.
Family, faith, tradition and patriotism, liberty under the law and a well-regulated market framework : this sum of things has been so long derided and undermined that it seems quaint and reactionary. Yet it really is subversive, underlying (as it once did) the most civilized, plurally tolerant, safe and improving societies that have ever graced the planet.
Great societies and hegemonic powers die, often explosively, when the values that hold them together no longer grip. That gravity, in our civilization, is now very weak. |
Family, faith, tradition and patriotism. Are you having a poor joke at our expense or do you think those terms have actual meaning? |
|
|
|
|
HAL
Please don't shout at me - I can't help it.
Joined: 17 Mar 2003
|
Post subject: | |
|
Oh I get belief local values shared and defended and developed by a people whose common experience showed them what works best and what is beautiful . |
|
|
|
|
Mugwump
Joined: 28 Jul 2007 Location: Between London and Melbourne
|
Post subject: | |
|
^ “The Left doesn’t control anything”. And just my saying it makes it true. It’s magic : The sky is zero. The monks are down stilled. The hour is tufted.
What a hoot. _________________ Two more flags before I die! |
|
|
|
|
Pi
Joined: 13 Feb 2006 Location: SA
|
|
|
|
|
stui magpie
Prepare for the worst, hope for the best.
Joined: 03 May 2005 Location: In flagrante delicto
|
Post subject: | |
|
That NY Post article was very good. _________________ Every dead body on Mt Everest was once a highly motivated person, so maybe just calm the **** down. |
|
|
|
|
David
to wish impossible things
Joined: 27 Jul 2003 Location: the edge of the deep green sea
|
Post subject: | |
|
Mugwump wrote: | ^ “The Left doesn’t control anything”. And just my saying it makes it true. It’s magic : The sky is zero. The monks are down stilled. The hour is tufted.
What a hoot. |
If you understand that liberals aren't leftists, that would be a good start. The dominant ideology in our society, neoliberalism, is of the right, and comes squarely from the tradition of Thatcher and Reagan. Leftists are, as I said, somewhat more prevalent in the entertainment industry and academia, but the people holding the purse strings in even those fields are neoliberals and conservatives. And the right nearly always wins when it comes to the real game, which is politics. We haven't had a left-wing prime minister since Whitlam, arguably (and if not him, then not since WW2, when Labor still had some socialist elements). Rudd and Gillard were not just neoliberals, but social conservatives, too, while Hawke was a centrist at best. You could argue the toss on Keating.
As for lobby groups, which of the following do you think holds real, policy-making power in this country: GetUp, or the Minerals Council of Australia?
I grant that many CEOs and even some Liberal Party ministers (including Turnbull) aren't conservative per se. But that doesn't mean they're not of the right, of course. Ultimately their biggest interest is in profiting from and expanding the capitalist system, along with all of the wealth inequality, destruction of labour rights and disenfranchisement of underprivileged groups that goes with it. _________________ "Every time we witness an injustice and do not act, we train our character to be passive in its presence." – Julian Assange |
|
|
|
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum You cannot attach files in this forum You cannot download files in this forum
|
|