Fully Baked Left Wing Vegan Cookies

It seems that young university types who would think themselves as liberal are actually quite conservative. Banning the Sun newspaper, pop songs and books that does not fit their moral compass or outlook. It sounds like the 1950's only with extra bandwidth.

I would certainly be against mandatory sensitivity training brain washing as portrayed here.

Penn wrote: »

"Extreme" anything is wrong, just like the weather being "too hot" or "too cold". If it's "too" anything, it's objectionable.

That being said, the article in the OP reads more like "I have to take other people's feelings into account when I say or do something? What is this? Nazi Germany?!" rather than making a coherent, salient point about whether some of the measures to promote tolerance and prevent offense have gone "too" far.

Taking feelings into account is something most people do everyday when dealing with people face to face in their daily lives. Banning a pop song from a campus because it may 'interfere' with a students mental wellbeing is just plain ol authoritarianism.

fisgon wrote: »

Again, I have to ask, why is this assumption that Atheist = left-wing going unchallenged? Atheists can be anything, conservative, liberal, communist, free-marketeers, etc. The OP seems to be assuming that all atheists here will somehow be on the side of the student extremism (if indeed that is what is happening), but there is no mention of atheism or religion in the piece at all.

Seems like a strange assumption to make. Again, what is the relevance of this story to A&A or to religion or non-believers in general?

Where did I assume this? Posting something does not mean I am projecting.

Many many things are posted in A&A that have nothing to do with atheism or religion but we still debate other things, like this one. This has been given the OK by the mods.

Well it would seem that the reporter in this Spectator article has an unlikely ally in Chris Rock (and indirectly George Carlin who is often mentioned here)

http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/chris-rock-frank-rich-in-conversation.html

What do you make of the attempt to bar Bill Maher from speaking at Berkeley for his riff on Muslims?

Well, I love Bill, but I stopped playing colleges, and the reason is because they’re way too conservative.

In their political views?

Not in their political views — not like they’re voting Republican — but in their social views and their willingness not to offend anybody. Kids raised on a culture of “We’re not going to keep score in the game because we don’t want anybody to lose.” Or just ignoring race to a fault. You can’t say “the black kid over there.” No, it’s “the guy with the red shoes.” You can’t even be offensive on your way to being inoffensive.

When did you start to notice this?

About eight years ago. Probably a couple of tours ago. It was just like, This is not as much fun as it used to be. I remember talking to George Carlin before he died and him saying the exact same thing.

So, what has happened in the last 10 years or so that has brought about this religious devotion to political correctness where the biggest modern sin is to offend someone or a group of people. Are we just more sensitive or just more tolerant whereby we are actually more intolerant to people who don't share our view points?

Gbear wrote: »

I've been trying to work out why I get riled up by leftist nonsense even more than right-wing nonsense.

I think it's something to do with (rightly or wrongly) dismissing the right-wingers as poorly educated crazies from the arsehole of nowhere. If your culture firmly rejects science as a dangerous distraction from religion, it's no wonder you're going to believe bollocks like Creationism.

The stuff from the left, on the other hand, seems to be exported straight from universities - centers of learning. It feels like they should know better.

One explanation could be that, despite large numbers of people getting third level education these days, the rates at which they're taught critical thinking, skepticism and generally more science-based disciplines is still relatively low.

I think we're superficially "educating" our populations in the western world but there are still huge gaps in people's knowledge and that has lead to a large anti-intellectual and anti-rational bent on the left of the political spectrum that causes the same kind of politicisation of empirical issues as can be seen with climate change, evolution and so forth.

So the far right rejects the premise of science from the off (at least when it suits them) in favour of fantasy.
The far left superficially accepts logic and reason but, through the Dunning-Kruger effect, miss the point and commit the same logical fallacies.

Forgive the rambling. It's almost certainly more complicated than that but it feels like that's at least part of it.

I must agree with a lot of this. For me personally I do not see the extreme right as much of a threat than I do with the extreme left as the extreme left's moral arguments and value system are becoming the norm. We are moving away from faith based superstition regarding race and homosexuals (well in the western world anyway, lets leave the Muslim world out this as we will upset some people) into a more open and 'live and let live' society. The Puritan society of say the 1950's is well and truly gone. However, we seem to be slowly frog marching ourselves into a new age of liberal totalitarianism where groups who take offense to matters get on the airways/web and shutdown debate, pass moral judgement and create a veil of silence where openness, debate is curtailed ushering in an era of conservatism (in the name of equality) which many of us thought was behind us.

As mentioned, take the new Sex bill that is before the Dail that will criminalise men who pay for sex (women don't pay for sex apparently!). Ivana Bacik has an impressive CV no doubt yet she is the classic looney feminist. One on hand she would use the argument that a woman has a right to do with her body as she pleases in the abortion debate, yet on the other hand she wants to curtail this right that a woman cannot sell her body for sex. One one hand she says that women and men are equal in all matters especially when raising a child (the sex of parents do not matter) given the debate on gay marriage on the other hand she will argue vehemently for women quotas in boardrooms and politics (I thought sex did not matter? ). It does not take someone to have a PHD to see the glaring hypocracsy in her own moral compas. I suppose this is why she is un-electable given the multiple times she has tried.

Yet, she (and others) like her would see themselves as the bastion of enlightenment and intelligence, steering society into an age of truth, logic and reason.

Take the Victoria Secret issue that emerged yesterday. The Irish Times would see itself as the national newspaper of record and reason and would claim to have a certain standard. It would certainly look down on the tabloids as rag tag publication and would definitely think itself superior than say the Indo and Examiner. The journalists who work there would think the same. "We are the best of the best!" Yet, when you read that tripe that Anthea McTiernam wrote one has to wonder if the emperor has no clothes. She is not the only one. Fintan O'Toole, Una Mullaly and of course how can we leave out John Waters yet he comes from the other side of the same coin.

Just take a read if you may at some of the tripe that Una Mullally regularly comes out with. Its god awful.

So why is this? Why do journalists who went to trinity, who did their BA and MA in journalism, maybe went on to do some fancy PHD in something or other continiously get it so wrong. People don't really think through the issues anymore. Critical thinking of a subject or coming to an argument about a subject rarely happens.

Take this youtube clip from the start until 2:30.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuGdlhKT5-M

This is not really a clip about David Starkey (even though I do agree with what he says), it is about the reaction of those who hear him e.g. @1.00. They just cannot believe or even contemplate the words coming from his mouth, yet on clear reflection after a few minutes they make perfect sense. These people in the screenshot are a Labour MP and representative from the Professional Footballers Association. Sure they speak well enough a sign of a good education but can they think?

The Labour MP in question is Rachel Reeves who went to a private girls school, is a graduate of Oxford with a major in Politics, Economics and Philosophy and also has a Masters in Economics. Pretty impressive, yet she cannot even entertain the point that David Starkey was trying to make, instead she pulls a face... I thought it was very illuminating personally which illustrates how detached many of our 'leaders' in the press, universities, NGO's, politicians are from day to day life. Many people like this exist in this enlightened bubble where their views are rarely if ever challenged and when Universities then take the stance that some topics cannot even be challenged on campus then what hope do we have to educate people in critical thinking?