johnny karate
... and your little dog too.
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2007
- Messages
- 18,436
Hard agree on the highlighted bit.
Speaking of "Cancel Culture" (which totally isn't a thing according to some folks) there is a new book out on the subject, from one of the guys at FIRE.
As president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Lukianoff has been either in front of the camera or behind the scenes of almost every major free speech controversy over the past 25 years. A near sui generis figure in American legal history, he’s the rarest of creatures in modern public life: someone dedicated to elevating principle over tribalism, a progressive who’s willing to ally himself with anyone — even the Koch brothers — who supports his larger cause.
That cause is a near absolute commitment to the First Amendment and civil liberties. It’s premised upon a faith in the human capacity to tolerate complexity, hearkening to F. Scott Fitzgerald’s observation that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” That Americans can recognize the importance of the due process rights of a likely criminal or the speech rights of someone with extreme or loathsome views.
Read more here.
This passage neatly encapsulates the contradiction inherent in the mindsets of “cancel culture” hand-wringers:
An essential premise of civil libertarianism has always been that one could defend the rights of a speaker without agreeing with their message, even in the most extreme cases. Today, it’s no longer clear whether one can defend a racist’s right to speech without being considered a racist.
Nothing funnier than self-styled free speech warriors framing what other people might say about them as a threat to free speech.