Posted by DanielCC  6/18/2016 4:41 am | #11 |
Ultimately I suspect the question of 'PCness' boils down to the old conundrum of whether or to what extent a society should seek to censure hate speech. The 'PC' camp obviously falls on the pro side of this debate - unfortunately however the influence of New Left ideas has left many of them with a complete disregard for the Principle of Difference Blindness: were that principle applied consistently then people would recognize that a hip sic Afro-American Gender Studies lecturer complaining about a department being filled with ‘old, bearded white guys’ is equivalent to one putting up the old ‘No Blacks, Dogs or Irish’ sign. If one gets into an argument with a PC proponent it's an advisable tactic to try to get them to apply their principles consistently.
Last edited by DanielCC (6/18/2016 4:41 am)
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Posted by Greg 6/18/2016 11:13 am | #12 |
DanielCC wrote:
Ultimately I suspect the question of 'PCness' boils down to the old conundrum of whether or to what extent a society should seek to censure hate speech.
A lot of people who would not call themselves PC think censuring hate speech is acceptable (sometimes, at least). Much of the question has to do with what counts as hate speech.
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Posted by iwpoe 6/18/2016 2:49 pm | #13 |
I'm fine policing speech that leads to direct action. But I am by no means comfortable giving over to the state the power to police "hate speech", not if what you're aiming for is popular representation. Incitement might be a different matter, but not speech itself.
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
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Posted by iwpoe 6/19/2016 8:20 pm | #14 |
Also, since all of us clearly, at least on some level, care about the Arts and Humanities, let's also not forget about stunts like this:
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/06/15/yale-may-cave-on-english-poets-course-after-students-called-it-too-white.html?intcmp=ob_article_sidebar_video&intcmp=obinsite
It's somewhat hard to call that mere politeness.
I'm probably one of like 5 conservative continentalists I've ever met who are still living, and I had really hoped we'd gotten past all the "dead white male" shit in the 90s. Who knew students would end up taking that seriously? Alan Bloom is still extremely relevant.
Last edited by iwpoe (6/19/2016 8:23 pm)
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
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Posted by Greg 6/20/2016 7:34 am | #15 |
I'm fine policing speech that leads to direct action. But I am by no means comfortable giving over to the state the power to police "hate speech", not if what you're aiming for is popular representation. Incitement might be a different matter, but not speech itself.
I'm not sure where I stand on the state's involvement.
It's often thought that politically incorrect speech that apparently does not lead to direct action still sustains "structures of oppression," by altering people's attitudes and legitimizing poor treatment of minorities. In that way political correctness has a kind of consequentialist structure, where the interests of minorities are supposed to be maximized and are incommensurable with the interests of anyone else.
I would also distinguish between the attitude that the state takes toward "hate speech" and the attitude that society should take toward it. It might be admitted that the state shouldn't punish people who engage in otherwise harmless hate speech, but nevertheless they can be practically excluded from academic discussion, since the people doing the excluding aren't the state.
An analogy: It's sometimes noted that due process isn't realized in university sexual assault trials. Sometimes it is responded that universities aren't the United States government and constitutional protections of due process do not bind them. While that may be the legal fact of the matter, that does not mean that due process is not a reasonable constraint to place on any such proceedings, and it shouldn't be forgone just because it can be forgone. So also for the freedom of academic discussion.
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Posted by iwpoe 6/20/2016 10:05 pm | #16 |
The problem for me is that the part of the cultural revolution I've subscribed to, given my acquiescence to Modern politics, were those arguments which strongly liberalized the treatment of profanity. I cannot with any amount of intellectual honesty support the harsh treatment of hate speech and the soft treatment of profanity at once, primarily because all of the arguments about profanity and the boundary pushing aspects of profanity that I found important for popular politics apply equally as well to hate speech. Conservatives can see clearly enough how trying to take political action against radical Islam or Islamic immigration can quickly slide into so-called hate speech. Those on the left ought to be able to see how down the road revolutionary or liberationist movements can easily be labeled hate speech just as well. There is no "safe" popular politics: popular political action is accomplished on the boarder realm of speech, and unless you want to construe hate speech very strictly, I'm going to consider it a political danger that there be broad open restriction on the use of speech.
Last edited by iwpoe (6/20/2016 10:38 pm)
Fighting to the death "the noonday demon" of Acedia.
My Books
It is precisely “values” that are the powerless and threadbare mask of the objectification of beings, an objectification that has become flat and devoid of background. No one dies for mere values.
~Martin Heidegger
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