Lol, hey, I'm a Millennial - we're not so bad! But yes, I do kind of see what you're trying to say. That said, I'm a big supporter of political correctness because I believe the lack of political correctness is driving the kind of bad ideas we see emerging openly from people who don't even feel ashamed or any qualms about saying anymore that they want Muslim lands nuked or Muslims to be killed; I read this kind of poisonous nonsense almost on a daily basis on the Internet, and I've only just started recording the idiotic comments made in one of my recent threads.
Short of an actual and immediate call to violence, censorship is never a good idea. It only pushes the ideas underground and pushes counter-culture. The better idea is the free marketplace ideas. The answer to bad ideas is good ideas, not silencing people.
Yet it's getting a little bit out of control with "Muslims get out" restaurant sign to actually Muslims constantly having to exercise hypervigiliance in regards to mosques being burnt or vandalism happening to Islamic centers; to be honest, I'm just looking at it from a bird's eye view of history and seeing that the trends that we're seeing today specific to Muslims is actually quite reminiscent of the time before the Holocaust took place because Antisemitism in Europe had been taking the exact forms it's taking today specific to Muslims
And I can stand shoulder to shoulder with you on that; unless and until you switch from progressive to regressive and start making things up to put into the mouths of others that you refuse to actually hear. I am not saying you do that, but that is what regressives do. A classic example is this clip of Cenk Uygur interviewing an author, calling his book absurd, and telling him what the book says, having never read it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMzCitlbsh0 .
We have seen people like Reza Aslan do the same to Sam Harris. Sam Harris believes that we should "anti-profile" people, meaning not spend as much scrutiny of obvious non-threats like six year old girls as on people who look like himself and like middle easterners, as scrutiny is a limited resource. He can imagine a crazy scenerario where using torture and where using nuclear weapons could be acceptable. I disagree with him on each of these points, but I recognize and acknowledge that his is NOT saying that we should nuke the middle east or torture muslims.
For the record, I don't think anyone should have impunity from criticism, but I also understand the importance of political correctness in everyday discourse and behaviors. For example, I also note that blacks were called N-word and there's a reason we don't use that word anymore; it is because we know the historical associations and connotations that word implies. If we use it, we should rightly be called bigoted and ostracized from having a say in public discourse; someone might say that's unfair but we have a right as a self-regulating society to be able to determine what types of persons and discourses we want to embolden within our society because the matter is far bigger than freedom of expression but includes the ability of such discourse to marginalize further a minority.
Words are words. Not magical powers. They have the power we give them and only that. There was a time when Moron, and Idiot were not negative words, but instead descriptive words. Then we had Retarded people, which also later became a negative word. We had Gay as a very negative word back in the 80s, and now that word has been claimed by the homosexual community and isn't a slur anymore except among extreme anti-homosexual bigots. You can say "Gay" to a homosexual and nobody will blink. The "N-word", and I only call it that because I sense the mods will censor me otherwise, has a toxic connotation because of the history of extreme bigotry against blacks to the point of slavery, but even that word CAN be used in some very limited cases without any bigotry at all. You can see black people using it while joking around, and George Carlin, a white comedian, dared to use it and did so in a not at all bigoted way. I really miss George Carlin. His "words you can't say on TV" routine is a bit out dated now, but still a classic.
Also, I'd note in the United States, the word "Negro" and "Oriental" are banned since Obama signed a legislation during his administration making it so.
A ridiculous abuse of power for a man imagined to be liberal. I don't think I have ever mentioned it, because it is rarely relevant, but I am Asian. I take no offence whatsoever to anybody calling me "Oriental" unless it is said with malice.
I do think the cartoons should be censored even if there'd never been any cause to believe that there would be any negative reaction, and the reason is because I frankly think it's hate speech. Also, I've seen a double standard emerge when we talk about these cartoons specific to Muslims. Can you imagine us talking about whether there should be cartoons of the Holocaust in the United States or anywhere in the West? Hell, no. People would say that's Antisemitism. Not to mention, Holocaust denials are already banned in 14 countries across Europe. The only places such cartoons are drawn is in Iran, a matter about which I have nothing good to say because I feel it's an exercise in hate that should not be allowed to exist and is also against Islamic values.
Cartoons about the death and torture of holocaust victims are certainly in bad taste; as are cartoons about doing the same to Muslims. But what of other cartoons? Much of what Charlie Hebdo drew isn't all that offensive, and some of it is even anti-discrimination oriented. Jesus & Mo is a comic strip where Jesus and Mohammed are depicted sitting around chatting and making some puns. Do you consider that hate speech? I know your religion forbids you from drawing Mohammed, but why can't I? Why should I have to restrict my behaviour based on your religion, especially if I am not directing it at you? I will do what I want, and if you decide to get offended, that is your problem.
And of hate speech itself, without a threat of violence, would you ban it? How about blasphemy laws? In favour or against?
I would like to point out that form an atheist's viewpoint, the Bible and Quran and their religions can be easily seen as hate speech. These are books that say things like kill the unbeleiver where you find him, don't suffer a witch to live, etc. And these are religions that often conflate obedience for morality and often state belief as essential for morality. They also often say it is justice for anybody who doesn't believe in and follow their God to suffer eternally in hellfire. Hate speech? Yes. Ban it? No.
Also, yes, I've seen Dave Rubin and Sam Harris put the idea forward that actually not identifying radical Islam or Islamic terrorism as the cause of how all this problem and is somehow "racist" against us Muslims because the regressive left are the ones who're "secretly" perhaps thinking how Muslims might turn batshit crazy and attack the majority. And Sam Harris even went so far as to say that's a possibility that the Muslim gynecologist could perhaps in fact turn certifiably nuts but that's a chance we have to take. Wut? :hiding: Like seriously. The fact that he thinks like that is more cause of concern because he's actually exposing his own Islamophobia rather than actually making any meaningful comments about the so-called regressive left.
What he is saying there is that either the typical Muslim really is that fragile and volatile (which he says he thinks isn't the case), or the regressive left is doing a huge disservice to Muslims in imagining them to be like that. Comedians, TV shows, pretty much everybody can talk about, draw, make jokes about any other religion, but when it comes to Islam and Mohamed people walk on eggshells. I would like to see more prominent Muslims simply laugh off Charlie Hebdo or stuff like Jesus & Mo, showing they have a thicker than paper-thin skin and showing that they have a sense of humor and can laugh at themselves. It would help undo that thin skinned volatile image the islamists and regressive left have created for the religion. The Mormons don't react to the "Book of Mormon" broadway musical by screaming for blood or protesting in the streets. They took an add out in the show's program, using it as a way to invite people to what real Mormonism is. Now that's awesome.
As for truly hateful stuff like the "Burn a Quran" guy or people attacking mosques, etc, that needs to be called out and marginalized based on what it actually is and what these people actually say. Remember Fred Phelps, the "God Hate Fags" preacher? He used to stand outside the funerals of homosexuals with a megaphone shouting out how they were burning in hell, etc. A biker gang got involved in response. But they didn't rough him up or have him put in jail or anything. No, they counter protested and blocked the funeral off and revved their bikes up so the people at the funeral didn't have to hear Phelps. Remember the North Carolina anti-gay and anti-transgender law not too long ago? The action taken in response was to boycott. Banks, musicians, tons of businesses simply refused to do business there. The same sort of reaction works well against shop owners who are bigoted against gays, and it would work against those bigoted against Muslims too if we got enough people doing a boycott. This is how liberals operate. Leave banning free speech to the conservatives.
For the record, I don't think the regressive left as we're so called are afraid of this but we're actually afraid of having Islam and terrorism become synonymous because the wider public (especially the right-wingers voting Trump) will certainly not be able to make the distinction (as they don't on a daily basis on the Internet comments' sections I read) and I'm sure the 600% increase that you've seen in Islamophobia in U.K. is going to rise to a higher level and the tripled Islamophobia increase in U.S. since Paris Attacks is probably going to significantly increase as well, and I'm saying these based on statistics and also the truth that legitimizing a discourse means that more people will feel free to engage in the same because we're influenced by our peers as was pointed out by an article titled "
Comments affect perception of research, study says."
Shutting down free speech and the free marketplace of ideas is completely anti-liberal, and that is why we call it regressive instead of progressive. Bad ideas can be fought with good ideas; and indeed that is the only way good ideas can triumph. Otherwise the bad will just go underground and fester there bringing people to them. You want to fight bigotry? That is great. Let's do it by you and I holding hands and standing back to back against it, in all of its forms. Pretty much everybody has felt it against them in one way or another at least to some extent. The fact that there are homophobic black men and racist homosexuals boggles my mind, and if we could only get them to focus on the feeling of bigotry against themselves, they may be able to recognize it coming from themselves and put an end to it.
Check this out. THIS Is what we need more of.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYpwzUrF80M
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz_qhlRN0L8 by the same people being extremely brave and awesome. Note how they didn't cut out the negative reactions, and how heart warming the positive ones are in contrast.
Well, as a woman, I have a very different take on these issues; and we can probably explore that in my thread about rape and victim-blaming. I'm probably going to come out sounding all feminist on this one though I'd certainly be interested to see where we might end up in discussion on the topic.
I haven't come upon that thread yet. Where is it?
Well, and good, but sorry, the guilt should be there; people in my humble opinion seem to be rewriting history to make the villains out to be the minorities when it's been well-documented that the majority are the ones to blame for much of the status quo. So, I'm not going to award anyone the "get-out-of-jail card" like in Monopoly except here it's in terms of correctly identifying guilt and feeling it deservedly.
Guilt for who and for what? Should you feel guilty because you are a Muslim and islamists exist? Should every white person feel guilty for what happened to the native populations Europeans of that era eradicated? Should modern day Germans feel guilty for the holocaust? Why? The former in each case is not in any way responsible for the latter.
Would we want to, for example, invite Neo-Nazi individuals like Craig Cobb who believes in the inferiority of the black race and fighting their influence and presence by promoting the building of all-white communities? Or do we invite Farid Mortazavi to talk about the rightness of the Holocaust cartoons in Iran? Seriously, freedom of speech should not extend to including hate speech; it's not about the "thin skins" of others that might take offense but about how "thick-headed" these individuals are that they want the right to offend and spew hate speech and want to promote it as a collective good.
I see no reason to invite them. I see no reason to forbid them an invitation either. The only reason I wouldn't bringing them in is because there are better speakers to bring in. That said, I wouldn't mind listening to what Farid Mortazavi has to say and why he thinks holocaust cartoons are important, if he can do it in a calm manner. I may learn something. I may get an insight into why he thinks what he does and what may break him out of it.
Don't you see the irony of painting the people who won't agree with Maajid Nawaz or Sam Harris as "regressive left" which I personally see as sophisticated name-calling that is meant to put a question mark on their validity and base.
That would be ironic, but that isn't what I am doing. You can disagree with people all you want and it doesn't make you regressive.
Regressive is about forbidding people to speak and then pretending you know what they meant to say, like Cenk telling an author of a book he he hasn't read what it really says. Regressive is about "Safe Spaces" where your ideas won't be challenged, and "Trigger Warnings", and the search for "Micro-Aggressions" to be offended over. Regressive is about Identity Politics and the Oppression Olympics, where people compete to be or find groups more oppressed than other groups, and then treat individuals within them as if they are all the same and give them the exclusive right to speak with impunity. If you're not doing this, you are not part of the regressive left.
(Peace be upon you)
= F(n-1) + F(n-2) for n>2