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Post by michaelw on Mar 3, 2017 18:21:41 GMT -5
www.the-american-interest.com/2017/03/03/college-protestors-send-professor-to-the-er/First Milo got shut down. Then Gavin McInnes. Now a professor had to go to the ER after being physically attacked by a protestor. But surely, this was justified, because she must've been a Nazi, right? Not quite. Some kind of fascist? Not really. Well, surely she shouldn't have been allowed to speak for some reason. Protesters wouldn't harm an innocent person. Actually, she wasn't even a speaker. The speaker was Charles Murray, the controversial author of The Bell Curve. Allison Stranger, the professor of political science who was attacked and had to go to the emergency room, was just hanging out with him. Great to to see that freedom of thought and freedom of association are alive and well.
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Post by nighttimer on Mar 3, 2017 18:48:56 GMT -5
Great to to see that freedom of thought and freedom of association are alive and well. It sure is. So is White Supremacy.If Charles Murray were a card-carrying, cross-burning Neo-Nazi, KKK, White Nationalist like David Duke, there would be no question of any respectable institution of higher learning declining to grant him a forum to spew his bigoted filth. However, because Murray wears a tie and a suit and comes across as educated, sophisticated and genteel, the junk science of his debunked eugenics is somehow considered acceptable. It is not. Racism whether it comes from a sheet-wearing slob or an educated sociologist is still noxious and deserves to be treated with disdain and contempt. But not with violence. So before anyone gets their undies in a wad and tries to spin my words into saying something they are not, let me make myself perfectly clear: I denounce any attempt to physically assault, or harm Murray or hurt anyone caught up in the melee and anyone caught for attempting to do so should face the full force of the law. This is not a man who should be regarded with sympathy. I want Charles Murray exposed as a fraud and treated like a pariah, not made into a martyr.
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Post by michaelw on Mar 3, 2017 19:07:26 GMT -5
And it only took 800 words to get to that part. But seriously, this should be obvious to everyone, that this is the wrong approach. I get it; you get it too. I'm sure others on this forum do as well. But I just find it absurd that so many people apparently don't.
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Post by nighttimer on Mar 3, 2017 19:49:02 GMT -5
And it only took 800 words to get to that part. 701 of those words belong to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Since you hadn't done it, I felt it necessary to establish Charles Murray isn't simply a dotty old man with some cracked beliefs, but a fucking racist prick who has established himself as being richly deserving of being protested.
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Post by michaelw on Mar 3, 2017 20:32:02 GMT -5
Honestly, I don't much care if it's richly deserved or not. People have a right to protest anyone, regardless of whether the person actually deserves to be protested. People can protest the world's greatest humanitarians if they want, and that's fine too.
What I can't stand is the shutting down of speech, or the attempts to do so. And in this case, it went much farther than that. "Charles Murray=racist prick, therefore Allison Stranger deserves to go to the ER" doesn't make much sense at all, but apparently nowadays it does for some of the people at Middlebury. Unbelievable.
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Post by nighttimer on Mar 4, 2017 1:24:06 GMT -5
That's where we see things much differently. You think it's a terrible thing the free speech rights of a White supremacist are being suppressed. I don't give a damn about that. To me, the far greater offense is Murray's hate speech is provided a forum merely because it is cloaked in a far more palatable form than a white sheet or a swastizka.
Free speech is not freedom from responsibility for that speech. You're offended by Murray being shouted down. I'm offended in his eyes I, and anyone like me is automatically inferior to him because we weren't born White.
I don't worry about bigots feeling persecuted. That's a luxury I leave to others who can afford it because it's not their intelligence and humanity being denied and demeaned.
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Post by michaelw on Mar 4, 2017 2:39:38 GMT -5
You're offended by Murray being shouted down. I'm offended in his eyes I, and anyone like me is automatically inferior to him because we weren't born White. I think both are a problem, racism of course being the much more pervasive problem, IMO. But again, this wasn't just a case of someone being shouted down.
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Post by robeiae on Mar 5, 2017 7:54:12 GMT -5
I thought Coming Apart was pretty good, pretty thought-provoking. I read The Bell Curve ages ago and while I felt it interesting, I also thought it was deeply flawed, that it was putting way too much stock in the concept of I.Q. But I never read it as particularly racist in orientation, especially with regard to white supremacy. Indeed, if I recall correctly, the data in the book would make Asians and Jews the top-o-the-heap, if one assumed the arguments therein are 100% genetic-based (and they are not). Regardless, I'm not sure how anything Murray wrote makes Stranger a fair target for violent protesters. That said, there is a counter-narrative to the events: I think it likely that the truth--as usual--lies somewhere in the middle, that there's plenty of blame to go around.
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Post by Amadan on Mar 5, 2017 9:15:21 GMT -5
Agreed, the claims in The Bell Curve itself are not inherently racist - some of the conclusions Murray seems to have drawn from it are.
I'm skeptical of the counter-narrative - that always appears in student newspapers afterward. "We were peacefully protesting, and the pigs security personnel were REALLY aggressive and she accidentally got her hair pulled and maybe someone bumped her..."
The truth probably is somewhere in between, but standard justification 101 when accused of violence is claiming the other guy started it and was worse.
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Post by robeiae on Mar 9, 2017 9:13:07 GMT -5
Well, I looked into the stuff some more and now I agree: the counter-narrative looks to be a load of crap. Here's a video of the event inside the hall, including the speakers before Murray: www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6EASuhefeIAt 7:00, the University president starts speaking. She takes issue with Murray, though she really doesn't offer any justifications in that regard. Given than Murray is there to talk about Coming Apart, which is hardly T he Bell Curve, that's pretty sad. Here's a full accounting of the evening: thefederalist.com/2017/03/07/middlebury-college-enabled-student-riot-charles-murrays-visit/Note that Stanger was not there in support of Murray. Indeed, she was there to take him to task, though not with violence. All in all, it was a thoroughly pathetic protest held by people who appear incapable of independent thought. The violence was the just the icing on the cake.
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Post by nighttimer on Mar 9, 2017 10:48:21 GMT -5
I thought Coming Apart was pretty good, pretty thought-provoking. I read The Bell Curve ages ago and while I felt it interesting, I also thought it was deeply flawed, that it was putting way too much stock in the concept of I.Q. But I never read it as particularly racist in orientation, especially with regard to white supremacy. Agreed, the claims in The Bell Curve itself are not inherently racist - some of the conclusions Murray seems to have drawn from it are. A piece of hackwork whose premise is Blacks and Latinos are genetically inferior to Whites and predisposed to lower intelligence isn't racist? Such a stance is not inhererently racist, but it certainly is enabling racism and that's worse. At 7:00, the University president starts speaking. She takes issue with Murray, though she really doesn't offer any justifications in that regard. Given than Murray is there to talk about Coming Apart, which is hardly T he Bell Curve, that's pretty sad. The "justification" to take issue with Murray starts with The Bell Curve to Losing Ground to Coming Apart. If William Pierce had decided to write cookbooks after The Turner Diaries, that would still be "justification" enough to dog him out every time he appeared in public. What happened to the professor was indeed pathetic. The nodding and winking at junk science bigotry is even more so.
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Post by robeiae on Mar 9, 2017 12:18:22 GMT -5
I'd be more inclined to consider your POV if there was any evidence that you'd actually read any of the books, because it doesn't look like you have, at all.
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Post by Vince524 on Mar 9, 2017 12:52:34 GMT -5
So I've never heard of this dude before this thread. I took a peek and his wikki page. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Murray_(political_scientist)Not the best arbiter of everything about him for sure. I'm not sure I see from a quick reading where he's racist. I also don't think I agree with much of what he's saying, but he may have some important points. All of that notwithstanding, if I were a college student and he were speaking, I might want to hear what he has to say. I have the ability to listen and decide for myself if I agree, disagree, or even a little of both, on my own. One of the things that jumped out at me was this:
I agree with #1. I don't know that I agree or disagree with #2, but how can most kids be below average. Isn't the average arrived at because of where everyone tests at or something like that? Like, in a room of 100 people, the average height is 5'10". So would most people be under that height? Wouldn't you find most people around that height?
In terms of #3, I think too much emphasis is put on college. There's nothing wrong with someone who learns a trade and earns a living as a welder, plumber or carpenter. If someone has no aptitude for being a doctor or lawyer or such, much less a passion to become one, why not be something like that, and have no student debt? That doesn't make one lesser. A lot of doctors wouldn't know how to fix a sink or repair an engine.
I'm not even sure what to make of #4.
All of this is discussion worthy. But there are some who feel that discussion shouldn't be had. And that's an issue.
ETA: I meant to add that I disagree with any system that 'tells' someone else what they should or could do. Lot's of kids need the encouragement. For some, education in science and math come easy, but other's struggle. If the goal is important enough to them, they can overcome. For example, James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader had a speech impediment as a child. www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1255955/James-Earl-Jones-My-stutter-bad-I-barely-spoke-years.html
I don't think there's a magical formula.
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Post by Amadan on Mar 9, 2017 13:18:50 GMT -5
A piece of hackwork whose premise is Blacks and Latinos are genetically inferior to Whites and predisposed to lower intelligence isn't racist? Such a stance is not inhererently racist, but it certainly is enabling racism and that's worse. That's not what The Bell Curve says. Even reading the Wikipedia article about it, you'd know that's not the book's premise.
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Post by michaelw on Mar 9, 2017 17:00:58 GMT -5
I'd be more inclined to consider your POV if there was any evidence that you'd actually read any of the books, because it doesn't look like you have, at all. To be fair, I haven't read Murray's books either. But even if one assumes for the sake of argument that he's racist, that changes nothing for me. The rightness or wrongness of what happened at Middlebury just doesn't hinge on that particular question, IMO.
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