The issue of illiberal censorship from the left or right is related to flat out book banning though not entirely the same. We still need to deal with it, as well as fight censorship in its many forms, and illuminating the nuances of the situation in a peaceful and civilized manner will help us navigate toward a better way to deal with argument itself. Some are out there taking the lead in this regard, and that's a lucky thing for all of us(hint: check out a site called The Bulwark). Moving forward, we can continue to learn how to better share information and support art and free expression in the digital age, while at least most of the time supporting each other.
I listened to Will on Monday's podcast and was appalled at his comparison of President to Trump.
l do think Biden is too old and can't perform in public, and to say that up against Trump, that Trump would seem COHERENT? Are you kidding, Trump coherent? When has he every been coherent. Please stop spreading the myth that Biden is too old.
"The DOJ did not charge Mike Pence over the missing docs. There are no investigations, grand juries, or special counsels looking at Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, or any other candidate."
They will if & when one becomes GOP frontrunner. Hey, I'm finally getting the hang of BS artistry.
Bullshit absolutely scares me more than mere lying. On one level it shows privilege. Someone who feels free to not care about truth or lies. They don’t care if they’re “caught” lying or not as they will spin it in whatever way suits them. In another level bullshit is worse because it’s easier to suck people in. If it’s just lying, people can smell it but bullshit gets past them. It doesn’t have to make sense. It really is about the dopamine hits.
Thanks for highlighting Kathy Young's latest, "The Book Banners of the Left", Charlie. Well researched and well thought out as usual, well written as usual, and also as usual, attracting all the usual bile from all the Usual Suspects. Brava, Kathy, keep up the good work! Never let the haters get you down.
Some conservatives are going beyond silly claims that the Democrats’ DOJ will indict, prosecute, and persecute any Republican candidate in 2024 to demanding retaliation. Kurt Schlichter is pretty much calling for some Republican state attorney general to file RICO charges against Fauci and colleagues over their actions leading to violations of people’s civil rights during Covid. I have read similar things with different proposed targets, such as Joe or Hunter Biden or the SPLC elsewhere. The general claim is that the Democrats have annulled the normal rules of political behavior, and it is necessary for Republicans to respond in kind to keep the Dems from ruining the country and making its people serfs. There is a lot of that sort of talk going around. People still fail to see that Trump’s case and crimes are unusual, and that attempts to bring him to justice do not presage a Democrat pogrom against their political opponents. The Trumpist slogan that they are not after Trump but rather after you with him being only in the way plays well with a lot of people. That is worrisome. Scaring the wits out of people, whether over evil Democrats, apocalyptic climate change, or whatever, is a common trick of power seekers, and it has been known to work. I don’t know if the fear on this can be assuaged with Trump so trying hard to stir it up, but it would be a good idea to try. It might help to make sure Trump is treated completely fairly. Jack Smith has strong, valid cases in both of his indictments. The case in New York is weak, and it might be better for it to be dismissed. It also might be a good idea to cut the case in Georgia back from an attempt to use RICO to rope in people who are not criminals and punish people for things that are not crimes to one only on Trump trying to manufacture votes to give him the state in 2020. Such careful fairness might calm down some of his followers and help at least some of them to understand the man is a criminal. I also think that in calling former congressman Gohmert the dumbest member of the house Charlie is unfairly slighting a large bipartisan cohort of worthy candidates for that distinction.
I was pleasantly surprised -- elated, in fact -- by Tim's revelation that Gohmert is a FORMER Congressman. Somehow, that happy fact had escaped me. With him out of contention, I have to agree with you that there are too many likely candidates to choose from. It may be necessary for all the members of the Freedumb Caucus to rotate the title.
It'd be surprising if your grandson were behind his American contemporaries in science or math. If France teaches English English, 'M'rk'n English could be a problem. If his courses would include American history, woo boy he's gonna be behind given no US grade school. OTOH, French class should be une brise.
I think we should consider Vivek's presence a positive at this point. I think he only steals from Trump, which means there's a slim possibility that Trump can be a victim of vote splitting, too. Which means if someone like Haley were to emerge as the consensus normal candidate, she could win a plurality. I see DeSantis as stealing from both camps, so I'm not sure he even matters. This is of course still unlikely, but having a place for MAGAs to go if Trump's legal woes start to bring him down in polls is a good thing. And having a not anti-Trump but smart, capable and even slightly moderate person like Haley on the rise makes me think there actually is a chance that the normies consolidate, which I wasn't optimistic about before due to DeSantis's weakness and the lack of a leading alternative.
Of course, I think Haley beats Biden, so there's that. But I'll take that over the chance of another Trump term.
Sometime you are given advise that you never forget (and frankly will take to the grave). I received such advise as I was preparing for the oral section of my (medical) board exam. A senior attending told me: you will not fail if you can’t answer a question....provided that you where to find the answer. HOWEVER, you will fail if you BULLSHIT. I need to order this book.
Ramaswany is a boring little prick who is already approaching his half life end. Ahmari has been one of the banes of my online life for years - first at the WSJ then as an incoherent and dishonest Christian radical populist / now a pseudo - socialist? Applebaum is right - he should be ignored
I strongly agree with Cathy Young. She is NOT saying that right-wing government sponsored book bans are the same thing as left-wing illiberal attacks on books. But they are similar. They have similar effects on publications and freedom of speech. The examples she cites such as absurd notions about cultural appropriation cause actual harm here in the real world, even though they do not come from government. I have been translating Japanese for 50 years. I know a lot about Japan. Anyone knows they have appropriated far more from the West than we appropriated from them, but it would be preposterous to say this caused harm, or Japanese people shouldn’t have done it, or they have no right to play baseball, wear suits, or eat spaghetti.
For the last 30 years I have been working with a beleaguered group of several hundred scientists. They are from mainstream universities and labs such as Los Alamos. Many of them are distinguished, two with Nobel laureates. They have been under attack this whole time in the mass media, on the internet, and in Wikipedia because they are studying cold fusion (the Fleischmann Pons effect). Their careers were derailed, they were fired from their jobs, their personal lives were ruined in some cases. Even though this research is now being funded by the DARPA, NASA, the Army and the Navy, they are still accused of being “liars, lunatics and frauds” as the Washington Post put it. They are not being attacked by the government; on the contrary, only DARPA and NASA treat them decently. They are not being attacked by a conspiracy. All of the attacks come from individuals, such as jealous academic scientists and the editors at the New York Times and the Washington Post, who to my certain knowledge cannot tell the difference between power and energy and have no idea what the laws of thermodynamics are. (Those laws are proof that cold fusion is real.) There are hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in mainstream journals from 180 labs, but these critics have not read a single one of them. That is what the critics themselves told me.
This is what happens when ignorant fools use the internet and social media to spout off about subjects they know nothing about. You end up with “cultural appropriation” and idiotic nonsense drowning out peer-reviewed, replicated experimental science.
Tangential to your point, but I am compelled to point out that things like Japanese people playing baseball are not cultural appropriation, they're just culture. "Appropriation" means taking, not joining, not building upon. Japanese baseball does not misuse or devalue American baseball, but appreciates it, expands upon it, and enriches it in return.
Nobody said they are "the same." Young & I say they have similar effects. They both cause harm. Government coercive power is far more dangerous, but stupid people in the public also cause harm. The ruin reputations and destroy people's lives. They prevent publication of worthwhile books. They spread vile anti-vaccination lies and kill hundreds of thousands of people. These are very serious problems.
Are you seriously saying that anti-vaccination speech does not cause harm?!? Or that QANON speech, and claims that the 2020 election was stolen do not cause harm? These are all allowed as free speech, but they cause terrible harm.
My example may seem far-fetched, but it was the first major example of internet based "cancel culture" in the late 20th century. It was carried out by academic scientists who supposedly believe in academic freedom and free enquiry.
This is very much on my mind today because I am (virtually) participating in a 5-day international conference on the subject, with loads of boring scientific presentations from the usual suspects at NASA, the Army Corps of Engineering, the ENEA and other European and Japanese science agencies. Middle aged researchers from central casting such as Dr. Teresa Benyo and her 75 colleagues working on this at NASA. (See her photo, slide and video link here: https://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=522.)
It irks me to no end that liberal editors at the Washington Post and the New York Times insist these hundreds of scientists are all "liars, frauds and lunatics." I assure you, those editors would not know a calorimeter if it bit them on the butt! I have talked to them. They know nothing, yet they think it is perfectly okay to denounce scientists, shred their reputations, and make false accusations. These liberals are no better than the anti-vaccination right wingers.
I agree. And all the Cathy Young hate appearing below is totally uncalled-for. The haters seem to have found a new target, now that they've been set straight that Mona Charen is off-limits. Interesting that the ones they tend to target are the women on the Bulwark.
It literally has nothing to do with Cathy’s gender. This is a poor deflection. Her entire argument is that there are certain people that are above criticism. That’s the extent of it. Because the entire problem of “cancel culture” is people using their speech.
You argument is literally that I wouldn’t say this column is nonsensical to Cathy’s face? If you were honest that you wish some people’s speech counted for less than the speech of others, at least you’d be honest. And I have no problem saying that to your face either.
Doesn't Vivek Ramaswamy realize that if he were standing near the Jacksonville shooter, he would have been shot for being a person of color?
The issue of illiberal censorship from the left or right is related to flat out book banning though not entirely the same. We still need to deal with it, as well as fight censorship in its many forms, and illuminating the nuances of the situation in a peaceful and civilized manner will help us navigate toward a better way to deal with argument itself. Some are out there taking the lead in this regard, and that's a lucky thing for all of us(hint: check out a site called The Bulwark). Moving forward, we can continue to learn how to better share information and support art and free expression in the digital age, while at least most of the time supporting each other.
I listened to Will on Monday's podcast and was appalled at his comparison of President to Trump.
l do think Biden is too old and can't perform in public, and to say that up against Trump, that Trump would seem COHERENT? Are you kidding, Trump coherent? When has he every been coherent. Please stop spreading the myth that Biden is too old.
"The DOJ did not charge Mike Pence over the missing docs. There are no investigations, grand juries, or special counsels looking at Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Tim Scott, or any other candidate."
They will if & when one becomes GOP frontrunner. Hey, I'm finally getting the hang of BS artistry.
Tremendous essay today by Mona Charen on abortion. Mona always does great work, creating thoughtful pieces on a plethora of serious issues.
Bullshit absolutely scares me more than mere lying. On one level it shows privilege. Someone who feels free to not care about truth or lies. They don’t care if they’re “caught” lying or not as they will spin it in whatever way suits them. In another level bullshit is worse because it’s easier to suck people in. If it’s just lying, people can smell it but bullshit gets past them. It doesn’t have to make sense. It really is about the dopamine hits.
Thanks for highlighting Kathy Young's latest, "The Book Banners of the Left", Charlie. Well researched and well thought out as usual, well written as usual, and also as usual, attracting all the usual bile from all the Usual Suspects. Brava, Kathy, keep up the good work! Never let the haters get you down.
Some conservatives are going beyond silly claims that the Democrats’ DOJ will indict, prosecute, and persecute any Republican candidate in 2024 to demanding retaliation. Kurt Schlichter is pretty much calling for some Republican state attorney general to file RICO charges against Fauci and colleagues over their actions leading to violations of people’s civil rights during Covid. I have read similar things with different proposed targets, such as Joe or Hunter Biden or the SPLC elsewhere. The general claim is that the Democrats have annulled the normal rules of political behavior, and it is necessary for Republicans to respond in kind to keep the Dems from ruining the country and making its people serfs. There is a lot of that sort of talk going around. People still fail to see that Trump’s case and crimes are unusual, and that attempts to bring him to justice do not presage a Democrat pogrom against their political opponents. The Trumpist slogan that they are not after Trump but rather after you with him being only in the way plays well with a lot of people. That is worrisome. Scaring the wits out of people, whether over evil Democrats, apocalyptic climate change, or whatever, is a common trick of power seekers, and it has been known to work. I don’t know if the fear on this can be assuaged with Trump so trying hard to stir it up, but it would be a good idea to try. It might help to make sure Trump is treated completely fairly. Jack Smith has strong, valid cases in both of his indictments. The case in New York is weak, and it might be better for it to be dismissed. It also might be a good idea to cut the case in Georgia back from an attempt to use RICO to rope in people who are not criminals and punish people for things that are not crimes to one only on Trump trying to manufacture votes to give him the state in 2020. Such careful fairness might calm down some of his followers and help at least some of them to understand the man is a criminal. I also think that in calling former congressman Gohmert the dumbest member of the house Charlie is unfairly slighting a large bipartisan cohort of worthy candidates for that distinction.
I was pleasantly surprised -- elated, in fact -- by Tim's revelation that Gohmert is a FORMER Congressman. Somehow, that happy fact had escaped me. With him out of contention, I have to agree with you that there are too many likely candidates to choose from. It may be necessary for all the members of the Freedumb Caucus to rotate the title.
Happy bake sales at your grandson's school.
Gonna teach him American football? Baseball?
It'd be surprising if your grandson were behind his American contemporaries in science or math. If France teaches English English, 'M'rk'n English could be a problem. If his courses would include American history, woo boy he's gonna be behind given no US grade school. OTOH, French class should be une brise.
I think we should consider Vivek's presence a positive at this point. I think he only steals from Trump, which means there's a slim possibility that Trump can be a victim of vote splitting, too. Which means if someone like Haley were to emerge as the consensus normal candidate, she could win a plurality. I see DeSantis as stealing from both camps, so I'm not sure he even matters. This is of course still unlikely, but having a place for MAGAs to go if Trump's legal woes start to bring him down in polls is a good thing. And having a not anti-Trump but smart, capable and even slightly moderate person like Haley on the rise makes me think there actually is a chance that the normies consolidate, which I wasn't optimistic about before due to DeSantis's weakness and the lack of a leading alternative.
Of course, I think Haley beats Biden, so there's that. But I'll take that over the chance of another Trump term.
The cheap shot went right over my head.😬
Probably because I don't know who Anne Applebaum is, or to whom she is referring.
And I have no idea what the whispered phrase means.
I know I could research it, but doesn't someone on this thread want to show me how smart you are?
And please don't Bullshit me!🤣
Sohrab Amari was recently featured on Persuasion. Some of his thoughts are ... challenging:
https://www.persuasion.community/p/ahmari#details
But believe me, I haven't even started showing you how smart I am, just whom I subscribe to. 😉
My mug caption choice would be ...
"Lock Who the F$#k up ?"
Sometime you are given advise that you never forget (and frankly will take to the grave). I received such advise as I was preparing for the oral section of my (medical) board exam. A senior attending told me: you will not fail if you can’t answer a question....provided that you where to find the answer. HOWEVER, you will fail if you BULLSHIT. I need to order this book.
Ramaswany is a boring little prick who is already approaching his half life end. Ahmari has been one of the banes of my online life for years - first at the WSJ then as an incoherent and dishonest Christian radical populist / now a pseudo - socialist? Applebaum is right - he should be ignored
Applebaum is usually right, and Ahmari is vile, not unlike Ramaswamy, but in a different way.
I strongly agree with Cathy Young. She is NOT saying that right-wing government sponsored book bans are the same thing as left-wing illiberal attacks on books. But they are similar. They have similar effects on publications and freedom of speech. The examples she cites such as absurd notions about cultural appropriation cause actual harm here in the real world, even though they do not come from government. I have been translating Japanese for 50 years. I know a lot about Japan. Anyone knows they have appropriated far more from the West than we appropriated from them, but it would be preposterous to say this caused harm, or Japanese people shouldn’t have done it, or they have no right to play baseball, wear suits, or eat spaghetti.
For the last 30 years I have been working with a beleaguered group of several hundred scientists. They are from mainstream universities and labs such as Los Alamos. Many of them are distinguished, two with Nobel laureates. They have been under attack this whole time in the mass media, on the internet, and in Wikipedia because they are studying cold fusion (the Fleischmann Pons effect). Their careers were derailed, they were fired from their jobs, their personal lives were ruined in some cases. Even though this research is now being funded by the DARPA, NASA, the Army and the Navy, they are still accused of being “liars, lunatics and frauds” as the Washington Post put it. They are not being attacked by the government; on the contrary, only DARPA and NASA treat them decently. They are not being attacked by a conspiracy. All of the attacks come from individuals, such as jealous academic scientists and the editors at the New York Times and the Washington Post, who to my certain knowledge cannot tell the difference between power and energy and have no idea what the laws of thermodynamics are. (Those laws are proof that cold fusion is real.) There are hundreds of peer-reviewed papers in mainstream journals from 180 labs, but these critics have not read a single one of them. That is what the critics themselves told me.
This is what happens when ignorant fools use the internet and social media to spout off about subjects they know nothing about. You end up with “cultural appropriation” and idiotic nonsense drowning out peer-reviewed, replicated experimental science.
Tangential to your point, but I am compelled to point out that things like Japanese people playing baseball are not cultural appropriation, they're just culture. "Appropriation" means taking, not joining, not building upon. Japanese baseball does not misuse or devalue American baseball, but appreciates it, expands upon it, and enriches it in return.
Today I learned that actions enforced by the coercive power of the state are the same as people using their speech to criticize things. Incredible!
Nobody said they are "the same." Young & I say they have similar effects. They both cause harm. Government coercive power is far more dangerous, but stupid people in the public also cause harm. The ruin reputations and destroy people's lives. They prevent publication of worthwhile books. They spread vile anti-vaccination lies and kill hundreds of thousands of people. These are very serious problems.
Except they don’t have a similar effect. They don’t both cause harm. It’s simply speech and it isn’t illiberal. It can be stupid but that’s all it is.
Are you seriously saying that anti-vaccination speech does not cause harm?!? Or that QANON speech, and claims that the 2020 election was stolen do not cause harm? These are all allowed as free speech, but they cause terrible harm.
That doesn’t make the speech itself illiberal. That’s Cathy’s contention.
The speech she describes is illiberal. For example, suppressing books. Perhaps antivaccination speech is not illiberal, but it is dangerous.
My example may seem far-fetched, but it was the first major example of internet based "cancel culture" in the late 20th century. It was carried out by academic scientists who supposedly believe in academic freedom and free enquiry.
This is very much on my mind today because I am (virtually) participating in a 5-day international conference on the subject, with loads of boring scientific presentations from the usual suspects at NASA, the Army Corps of Engineering, the ENEA and other European and Japanese science agencies. Middle aged researchers from central casting such as Dr. Teresa Benyo and her 75 colleagues working on this at NASA. (See her photo, slide and video link here: https://lenr-canr.org/wordpress/?page_id=522.)
It irks me to no end that liberal editors at the Washington Post and the New York Times insist these hundreds of scientists are all "liars, frauds and lunatics." I assure you, those editors would not know a calorimeter if it bit them on the butt! I have talked to them. They know nothing, yet they think it is perfectly okay to denounce scientists, shred their reputations, and make false accusations. These liberals are no better than the anti-vaccination right wingers.
I agree. And all the Cathy Young hate appearing below is totally uncalled-for. The haters seem to have found a new target, now that they've been set straight that Mona Charen is off-limits. Interesting that the ones they tend to target are the women on the Bulwark.
It literally has nothing to do with Cathy’s gender. This is a poor deflection. Her entire argument is that there are certain people that are above criticism. That’s the extent of it. Because the entire problem of “cancel culture” is people using their speech.
You wrote: "Her entire argument is that there are certain people that are above criticism."
No, she did not say that. She did not say anything like that.
Because this is an extended struggle session about “cancel culture.”
Nonsense.
Profound response. On par with Cathy’s column.
I call 'em as I see 'em. I'm sure that you're probably a very nice person in Real Life, under your own name.
You argument is literally that I wouldn’t say this column is nonsensical to Cathy’s face? If you were honest that you wish some people’s speech counted for less than the speech of others, at least you’d be honest. And I have no problem saying that to your face either.
Thank you, Charlie, for your "Editor's Note," that when Gohmert was referring to a "very polite person," he meant Tim Miller.
Without your note, I would never have been able to guess that.... Not ever.