The anti-free speech left

[FA_Q2]

Please give me ONE example of right wing being for free speech they don't agree with ?

They want football players fired for not standing for the anthem!

So just to be clear, you think at your place of employment you have free speech? Why don't you test that out?

That was funny, as if you have a job ...

I like the logic. Colin has free speech, we don't, we cannot criticize him. You're an imbecile, wheelchair boy. Give me a nice rendition of ... Timmy!

You start a thread implying that the RIGHT is for free speech. A typical b/s move by right wingers .

The left ain't perfect , but they are for freedom of speech far more than the right is .

Actually, he did no such thing. He started a thread about the left being against free speech. That implies nothing on the right but in typical fashion here it is just fine as long as you think the other side as guilty as you.

 

[FA_Q2]

It's sad that the bastions of anti-free speech hate are schools.

- The faculty and students of "liberal" universities melt down when anyone not hard left is going to speak at commencement or anything else and they shout down anyone who disagrees with them on campus. And administrators are supporting them.

- As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views while they are endlessly subjected to leftist ideology ... from the teachers. Teachers routinely punish our kids with poor grades for even suggesting non-liberal ideas in their work.

- You can be pro-Muslim or other religions and speak to it, but if you're Christian or Jewish then STFU about your views, no one wants to hear it. By no one I mean the leftists.

Wasn't education where we were supposed to be able to express and explore all thought? So where are you, leftists? Why are you not only not being outraged at the limit of speech, but you cheer it on? Don't tell me you lied? Really, don't, you don't have to.

And why am I paying for this? It's no wonder the left grow up to throttle free speech, it's what you teach your children. And you wonder why Trump won ...

I admit we can be intolerant assholes but you guys are just as bad so stop pretending

We can? What have libertarians done to try to limit free speech?

I was going to thank you for the honesty in the first half, but you finished it with your intellectually obtuse, everyone not a Democrat is a Republican, duh, dar, drool. Tell me again how you're smarter than Republicans because you aren't all black and white like they are. They usually have no problem understanding I'm not Republican or Democrat. They're just smarter than you are

Libertarians are conservatives you stupid son of a bitch. And they are basically Republicans except they believe in paying no taxes. How the fuck are you going to pay for a broken stop light with no taxes, dumbshit? Get off your high horse

That is an extremely ignorant statement about libertarians in general. It is not even in the ballpark.

 

[Yarddog]

So, we see "Waaaaaa! Leftists hate free speech!" is today's whiny delusional talking point, being there are so many threads here on it now. The righties certainly are a reliable bunch of parrots.

What's the next one? Righties, you all better run and check. You wouldn't want to be the last cultist to repeat the latest dumb cult talking points. That would be so humiliating.

What are you even talking about? it's the Left that thinks it knows whats good for everyone and that kids cannot be challenged to think. Thus they must be put in cocoons called safe spaces. They are the party that bans books and tells us that boys and girls can't be traumatized by being called boys and girls, they have to find a gender neutral middleground to keep 2% of the population happy. What is wrong with you people?

Huckleberry Finn removes N-word: Political correctness takes on Mark Twain's classic | Daily Mail Online

 

[peabody]

It's sad that the bastions of anti-free speech hate are schools.

- The faculty and students of "liberal" universities melt down when anyone not hard left is going to speak at commencement or anything else and they shout down anyone who disagrees with them on campus. And administrators are supporting them.

- As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views while they are endlessly subjected to leftist ideology ... from the teachers. Teachers routinely punish our kids with poor grades for even suggesting non-liberal ideas in their work.

- You can be pro-Muslim or other religions and speak to it, but if you're Christian or Jewish then STFU about your views, no one wants to hear it. By no one I mean the leftists.

Wasn't education where we were supposed to be able to express and explore all thought? So where are you, leftists? Why are you not only not being outraged at the limit of speech, but you cheer it on? Don't tell me you lied? Really, don't, you don't have to.

And why am I paying for this? It's no wonder the left grow up to throttle free speech, it's what you teach your children. And you wonder why Trump won ...

I admit we can be intolerant assholes but you guys are just as bad so stop pretending

We can? What have libertarians done to try to limit free speech?

I was going to thank you for the honesty in the first half, but you finished it with your intellectually obtuse, everyone not a Democrat is a Republican, duh, dar, drool. Tell me again how you're smarter than Republicans because you aren't all black and white like they are. They usually have no problem understanding I'm not Republican or Democrat. They're just smarter than you are

Libertarians are conservatives you stupid son of a bitch. And they are basically Republicans except they believe in paying no taxes. How the fuck are you going to pay for a broken stop light with no taxes, dumbshit? Get off your high horse

That is an extremely ignorant statement about libertarians in general. It is not even in the ballpark.

Actually, it's quite accurate

 

[Moonglow]

- As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views while they are endlessly subjected to leftist ideology ... from the teachers. Teachers routinely punish our kids with poor grades for even suggesting non-liberal ideas in their work.

You do not know what goes on in every public school K-12....Which is proved by the obvious fallacious statement in the quote...

 

[FA_Q2]

- As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views while they are endlessly subjected to leftist ideology ... from the teachers. Teachers routinely punish our kids with poor grades for even suggesting non-liberal ideas in their work.

You do not know what goes on in every public school K-12....Which is proved by the obvious fallacious statement in the quote...

No one knows what goes on in ALL the public schools. Most of us are quite aware of what happens in MOST of them though and he is quite right. There is a clear liberal bias in education today. To deny that is just plain ignorant.

 

[usmbguest5318]

I put shit in your mouth.

Did you mean to put a question mark of incredulity at the end of that sentence?

I don't have a problem with non-liberal ideals, per se, only with the stupid ones audaciously articulated by airheads

This is the crux of your post and discussion. Since you are OK with leftists deciding what is stupid. What are you going to say if that gets turned around?

If I believed in your standard that only those without stupid ideas should have free speech and I were deciding, you'd be the one not speaking due to your intolerance to other ideas and arrogance that you think it's up to you and the left to decide what should be allowed to be heard.

That's seriously in your view the role of faculty and administrators? To decide who should be heard? It's no wonder there is no diversity of thought in the left. Sounds pretty stupid to me when you all parrot each other. Still, my strategy is to counter your lies and ignorance, not silence you as you chose to do to me

I am not okay with letting anyone decide for me what is stupid. I do that for myself. I will never delegate that away.

And yet you're willing to judge others and decide for them. Typical liberal

Why do you keep trying to put words in my mouth? If you want to know what I'm willing to do and how I see something, why can't you just ask a neutrally phrased question? Is it because you just want to think what you want to think and then make self affirming statements about it rather than finding out what actually is so?

The above dialogue illustrates the problems I have with your comments.

• "Willing to judge" - You present that in the absolute. When it's appropriate that I judge, I will. Some of those situations will be subjective in nature, and in those cases, I will use the body of knowledge I have to induct a decision or I will remove myself from the role that calls me to make the decision and defer to someone who's better situated to make it.
  
  You might think of it as the difference between strategic and tactical, or "forest and trees," or macro and micro level decisions. When I'm charged to decide about a strategic aspect of a matter, I may well choose a tactic that some tactical advisors think "not so good." They may even speak out about it, and I'll tolerate that to a point. But at the end of the day, when implementing a strategy, one has to choose the tactic(s) that best supports the strategy, not the tactic that is best in its own right for achieving whatever the tactic seeks to achieve. We all understand that concept - discretion is the better part of valor - yet not many good at applying it, even fewer have experience applying it in large scale situations such as the man
  
  There are plenty of times when I won't make a judgement. Similarly, there times when I judge within a negative liberty construct and other times a positive one. And sometimes I have to weigh one against the other.

[/QUOTE]I put shit in your mouth. I wrote the OP and you came back with that non-liberal views are stupid and you don't want to hear them[/QUOTE]

• I don't want to hear stupid views/statements/ideas. What's a stupid view? One that won't hold up under rigorous, sound scrutiny:
  • ideas that that rest in part or totally on material factual inaccuracies;
  • ideas that are contextually out of place;
  • ideas that are weakly presented and that are not (near) universally (save by "quacks") understood and accepted by people who are experts on the topic
• I sometimes will tolerate stupid questions, but nearly never stupid statements.

Regarding your OP and its protestations...Are you speaking of your own experiences, those of your kids, someone else's, the majority of students in schools of higher education? I don't know, but what I can't tell from what you wrote:

• You wrote only generalities and offered no specific supporting examples for any of your claims -- not even an attempt to support their existential pervasiveness:
  • No specific mention of a purportedly liberal (not in the political sense) college whereat politically non-liberal teens (presumably freshmen or sophomores) routinely are "berated" into silence (Frankly, after watching the 2016 U.S. election cycle, I think if one can't handle some berating, one should not live in the U.S. Half of what Trump did, and continues to even now, is berate people and their ideas.)
  • No example of a college whereat leftist ideology is presented near exclusively and conservative ideology is never or "uber" infrequently offered.
  • No specific illustration of college kids being punished with poor grades, to say nothing of noting the type of assignment and class(s) you have in mind.
  • No instance of Christians or Jews being genuinely squelched.
  • No factual metrics about what share of colleges and universities offer no officially recognized clubs catering to whatever -- Jewishness, Christianity, conservatism, etc. -- and that will make your claim be anything more than just something anecdotal, if that even, that you are bitching about.
  • No specific examples of college liberals in authority advocating for speech restrictions

Let me explain why I mentioned those things....The heart of your question is "why does the left not understand negative liberty as it applies to free speech/expression on college campuses?" What's unclear to me is just how to answer your question, and that's unclear because nothing in your post indicates just where you sit on the liberty continuum that ranges from 100% negative liberty to 100% positive liberty. In short, you don't provide enough information in your OP for readers to know what your philosophical position is. Your political position - clearly is an "us and them" one - is obvious, but it must stand on some principled philosophy, and what that is is unclear.

The theoretical underpinnings are important for this topic because they are really well understood and expounded upon. The question traces to Aristotle and Cicero. It reappears in Hobbes' Leviathan. Mill directly handles it in "On Liberty." Berlin, Pettit, Rothbard, Pocock, Wood, Skinner, Oldfield, Viroli and others have ad nauseum covered the topic. Christman unites them and recasts the central questions about them and their usefulness, but in doing so merely offers a different cognitive conception, but not an existentially different model of liberty's dimensions and consequences.

That's the philosophical approach. How do negative and positive liberty theory manifest themselves where the salt hits the road in academic settings? Well, for Americans anyway, the answer is made clear in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. "Educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns"....The First Amendment rights of students "are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings." Hazelwood informs the extent of discretion state school administrators may exercise. Period.

At private schools, there's not much to say. They mostly get to restrain or permit whatever suits them. To see what sorts of expression colleges curtail, take a look at student organizations found in various colleges and universities.

What exactly is your notion of free speech, and I mean "speech" in the broadest sense, expression? When it comes to squelching expression, consider this. Is not expression in collegiate settings encouraged or discouraged by the mere presence of a group organized for the purpose of a given form of expression? I certainly think so.

• Private and religious
  • Brigham Young -- Mormon
    
    BYU Hawaii -- I just put the photo in because the place is so gorgeous. Gotta give Mormons props on architecture. I sure hope they teach classes outdoors. How do you go inside the buildings when that's what it looks like outside?
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Southern Virginia University -- Mormon
  • Liberty University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
  • St. Olaf College -- Protestant (not Mormon) (My nod to "Rose")
  • Santa Clara University -- Roman Catholic
  • Georgetown University -- Roman Catholic
  • Seton Hall University -- Roman Catholic
  • Brandeis University -- Jewish
  • Yeshiva University -- Jewish
  • Pepperdine University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
• Public
  • University of Virginia
  • University of Mississippi
  • University of Michigan
• Private - Secular
  • Williams College
  • Amherst College
  • Princeton

To put that list together, I had to lookup faith-based universities. I had no trouble finding several sites that identify them. What I was shocked to find is that not one of them includes Georgetown University, Villanova, the several Loyolas, Gonzaga, Xavier, Marquette, St. Joseph's, Seton Hall, Fordham, U. of Portland, or even Notre Dame.

As I perused the student organizations at the schools above, it seems to me if there's any expression squelching going on, it happens more at religious schools than anywhere else. I realize the list is anecdotal, so maybe someone else wants to look at other schools.​

Free speech at colleges and universities has at least three dimensions: liberty for student expressions in the abstract of their own views, freedom to express information/ideas that directly or indirectly pertain to the institution itself, and that for employees. I happen to think that any employer has the right to do what it needs to in order to control the messages disseminated about it; everyone ought be accorded the respect of telling their own story rather than having it be told by others. In a courtroom, it's different, but in terms of general public discourse, organizations, including schools, are right to restrict the disclosure of information that may defame them. You don't air your "dirty linen," do you? You expect your family and friends who know of it to keep it to themselves as well, right?

You repeatedly talk about "liberals" and "non-liberals," yet nearly every U.S. citizen is a liberal. (click the link) Here again, you've left unclear just who or what kind of people you mean. What is clear is that colleges and universities are the places you declare have abrogated student liberty. That notion is preposterous when considered in terms of America's colleges and universities because the point of being a collegian is to develop to the fullest one's "manifest destiny;" institutions of higher learning exist to enable individuals to form themselves so they can realize their utmost positive liberty.


Wrapping all the above together:
I can understand how applications of positive liberty theory can, uncurtailed, lead to authoritarianism. I also get that the U.S. doesn't provide an environment for authoritarian anything to get anywhere, but, sure, it can make small inroads here and there. I can't think of any situation where I wasn't free to express myself. I can think of situations where doing so may have been accompanied by undesirable (to me) consequences, but I'm not going to complain about that because I knew the consequences before I "spoke"/acted, so if I wanted to speak, I did and will again.

Freedom doesn't mean free from outcomes; it means free to choose, speak or act. A variety of outcomes may ensue. Readers who clicked on and read the content at this post's second link understand that, which is not to say the notion isn't rebuttable, but that if one wants to rebut, modify or refute it, fine, but I'm not likely to respond well to some half-baked BS (aka stupid) response/"tweet" that fails to apply what one will find at the noted link and others in this post.

As for my position on positive and negative liberty, well, I want both at differing times. Going about the mundanity of daily life, and other "cut and dried" circumstances, I want as much negative liberty as everyone else has. When I'm considering issues about what individuals may pursue in their lives, I advocate for positive liberty in as equal measures as possible for all. It depends on the situation. I can't just say one or the other notion of liberty is always right; I don't think either is, which is why when it comes to free speech on college campuses, without details, I have no basis for forming a judgment.

And that is why you got the inane and unexplained remark that commenced my participation in this thread. I'd have been more than happy to go straight to the negative and positive liberty philosophical discussion. Truth be told, when I saw your thread title, I was fully expecting that your OP would be tailored for exactly that type of discussion, albeit with a new twist on the ideas of the thinkers such as those whom I mentioned earlier. When I saw what you did post, I thought, "okay, I'll take the bait and reply with a classic taut that has as its natural intellectual response some sort of exposition directly addressing negative and positive notions of freedom."

That, as we see, is not how you responded. Thus here we are with me having to lay out all the various aspects that came to mind as a result of your OP, something I'd not have done were the OP focused, either rhetorically, abstractly, via reference to liberal philosophers' ideas or by detailed illustration.

An example that facilitates discussion of liberty:

Jack’s living in New York. He’d like go to California to visit family. Under a negative conception of liberty, Jack is free to go to California if nobody is actively preventing him from doing so. Thus his negative freedom would be violated if his neighbor locked Jack in the basement, or if someone stole his car.

But what if Jack’s so poor that he can’t afford a car or a plane ticket? What if Jack is sick and so not physically up to the trip? In these instances, no person prevents Jack from going to California, so Jack’s negative liberty remains intact. Yet he lacks the capacity to fulfill his desire and so, from a positive liberty standpoint, he is unfree.

Within the context of political philosophy - within the context of what the state is permitted to do and what it ought to do - a government protects Jack’s negative liberty by discouraging the neighbor from locking Jack up and likewise the thief from stealing Jack’s car. If dissuasion is ineffective, the state may punish the perpetrators, thus (we hope) reducing the likelihood of other, similar liberties violations. In addition to - or instead of - punishing violations, the state might force the violator to compensate Jack, striving to make him whole.

On the other hand, a state tasked with directly promoting Jack’s positive liberty might tax its citizens in order to buy Jack the car he couldn’t otherwise afford. Or it might use that revenue to pay for the medical care Jack needs to get back on his feet so he can travel. A positive liberty focused state would take active steps to assure Jack isn’t just free to pursue his desires, but also has the resources to attain them.​

To close, I'll simply point out that for all the recrimination about liberals, Democrats, being socialists, the fact is that socialists and Marxists do not distinguish between negative and positive liberty. Recall what I said about stupid comments/statements. The instant I see a self-professed conservative, in a discussion that boils down to differences over ideas of positive and negative liberty, equate liberalism with socialism/Marxism, I know immediately they don't know what they are talking about because people in those two camps don't distinguish as Democrats, Republicans, Anarchists and Libertarians do.

Summary of Hazelwood:

US Supreme Court decisions define the scope of the First Amendment in public school settings. Public schools must have a valid basis to limit free speech rights, and can't act on an undifferentiated fear or apprehension. Schools can:

• Limit speech based on a reasonable expectation that it will cause a material and substantial disruption of school activities or invade the rights of others
• Prohibit obscene or vulgar language

Schools can also limit speech if it's in the form of a threat. Not just any expression is a threat, though. Threats must:

• Be perceived as a threat by others
• Be clear and convincing, causing others to believe it will be carried out
• Cause other students to fear for their safety

 

[Seawytch]

President Barack Hussein Obama - "So don’t try to shut folks out, don’t try to shut them down, no matter how much you might disagree with them. There's been a trend around the country of trying to get colleges to disinvite speakers with a different point of view, or disrupt a politician’s rally. Don’t do that -- no matter how ridiculous or offensive you might find the things that come out of their mouths. Because as my grandmother used to tell me, every time a fool speaks, they are just advertising their own ignorance. Let them talk. Let them talk. If you don’t, you just make them a victim, and then they can avoid accountability."

Petulant Elect Donald Jerkoff Trump - "Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag -- if they do, there must be consequences -- perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!"


Tell me that adorable story about the "anti free speech" left again?

 

[kaz]

Republicans aren't against immigration, you stupid fuck, they are against illegal immigration. Stop being a retard

I've been telling Republicans that but they think Republicans were going to stop importing Mexicans and Muslims until

A. Our people were working and wages were up
B. Terrorism was solved. No Muslims.

Correll will want to hear about this.

How do you keep your balance with all that spinning? And wanting to not be blown up by terrorists has nothing to do with legal or illegal immigration. If you have a valid point down there somewhere, why do you have to hide it under all those layers of manure?

I'm just saying amnesty is coming and they won't stop importing middle East people.

I wish they would stop importing anyone we don't need. No bringing poor Somali refugees to Wisconsin and put them in an already poor community. Doesn't make sense

No one is objecting to allowing Mexicans to legally immigrate here, it's the illegal immigration that is opposed. And most people who support restricting Muslims are referring to terror exporting countries, not all Muslims.

You take people like Odium who's not even a Republican or on the right and talk about all Republicans like they are him. It's ridiculous butt hurt. Elections have consequences. Grow up

Correll wants immigration stopped till the millions of Americans are working.

So that's your standard? If you can name one person on the right who thinks something then that means the right thinks it? When I said "no one," wow, you took that way literally. I meant there is no material group.

The right overwhelmingly support legal immigration and oppose illegal immigration. It's just the way it is.

Now tell me that's your standard on the left. If I can name one poster who thinks something, the left thinks that? And so the standard changed ...

 

[kaz]

It's sad that the bastions of anti-free speech hate are schools.

- The faculty and students of "liberal" universities melt down when anyone not hard left is going to speak at commencement or anything else and they shout down anyone who disagrees with them on campus. And administrators are supporting them.

- As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views while they are endlessly subjected to leftist ideology ... from the teachers. Teachers routinely punish our kids with poor grades for even suggesting non-liberal ideas in their work.

- You can be pro-Muslim or other religions and speak to it, but if you're Christian or Jewish then STFU about your views, no one wants to hear it. By no one I mean the leftists.

Wasn't education where we were supposed to be able to express and explore all thought? So where are you, leftists? Why are you not only not being outraged at the limit of speech, but you cheer it on? Don't tell me you lied? Really, don't, you don't have to.

And why am I paying for this? It's no wonder the left grow up to throttle free speech, it's what you teach your children. And you wonder why Trump won ...

It's been a while since I went to college but I don't remember anything being off limits. Hell, I remember one gathering during the Iran hostage crisis where one guy got up and defended the actions of the Iranians (the vast majority were on the other side).

Where is this locked down school of which you speak?

Do you read? Seriously? If you want more information that's one thing. But to say you've never heard of this and have no idea what I'm talking about, I can't take you seriously. Obviously every time it flies right by you because all you want to hear is the left

I want you to tell me your specific experience with what you're talking about. Of course we've all heard the extreme bullshit spouted by right wing sources like Fox News. Where do your kids get berated for having conservative views?

Did you not take note of the examples already linked?

He'd never acknowledge any evidence. If he would, he'd have seen it. He's a dry hole

 

[kaz]

Please give me ONE example of right wing being for free speech they don't agree with ?

They want football players fired for not standing for the anthem!

So just to be clear, you think at your place of employment you have free speech? Why don't you test that out?

That was funny, as if you have a job ...

I like the logic. Colin has free speech, we don't, we cannot criticize him. You're an imbecile, wheelchair boy. Give me a nice rendition of ... Timmy!

You start a thread implying that the RIGHT is for free speech. A typical b/s move by right wingers .

The left ain't perfect , but they are for freedom of speech far more than the right is .

Actually, he did no such thing. He started a thread about the left being against free speech. That implies nothing on the right but in typical fashion here it is just fine as long as you think the other side as guilty as you.

Thank you, Timmy is stupid as shit. I appreciate you actually reading what I actually said

 

[kaz]

It's sad that the bastions of anti-free speech hate are schools.

- The faculty and students of "liberal" universities melt down when anyone not hard left is going to speak at commencement or anything else and they shout down anyone who disagrees with them on campus. And administrators are supporting them.

- As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views while they are endlessly subjected to leftist ideology ... from the teachers. Teachers routinely punish our kids with poor grades for even suggesting non-liberal ideas in their work.

- You can be pro-Muslim or other religions and speak to it, but if you're Christian or Jewish then STFU about your views, no one wants to hear it. By no one I mean the leftists.

Wasn't education where we were supposed to be able to express and explore all thought? So where are you, leftists? Why are you not only not being outraged at the limit of speech, but you cheer it on? Don't tell me you lied? Really, don't, you don't have to.

And why am I paying for this? It's no wonder the left grow up to throttle free speech, it's what you teach your children. And you wonder why Trump won ...

I admit we can be intolerant assholes but you guys are just as bad so stop pretending

We can? What have libertarians done to try to limit free speech?

I was going to thank you for the honesty in the first half, but you finished it with your intellectually obtuse, everyone not a Democrat is a Republican, duh, dar, drool. Tell me again how you're smarter than Republicans because you aren't all black and white like they are. They usually have no problem understanding I'm not Republican or Democrat. They're just smarter than you are

Libertarians are conservatives you stupid son of a bitch. And they are basically Republicans except they believe in paying no taxes. How the fuck are you going to pay for a broken stop light with no taxes, dumbshit? Get off your high horse

That is an extremely ignorant statement about libertarians in general. It is not even in the ballpark.

Actually, it's quite accurate

You don't know what you're talking about.

We're "basically Republicans except they believe in paying no taxes." First all, we're not anarchists, moron. We do believe in taxes. What we primarily disagree with regarding taxes is wealth redistribution. And unlike Republicans we're socially liberal and think drugs, prostitution, gambling, gay sex, euthanasia and all other morality laws should be repealed and we support a far smaller military focused on defense of the US. You're really that stupid

 

[kaz]

I put shit in your mouth.

Did you mean to put a question mark of incredulity at the end of that sentence?

I don't have a problem with non-liberal ideals, per se, only with the stupid ones audaciously articulated by airheads

This is the crux of your post and discussion. Since you are OK with leftists deciding what is stupid. What are you going to say if that gets turned around?

If I believed in your standard that only those without stupid ideas should have free speech and I were deciding, you'd be the one not speaking due to your intolerance to other ideas and arrogance that you think it's up to you and the left to decide what should be allowed to be heard.

That's seriously in your view the role of faculty and administrators? To decide who should be heard? It's no wonder there is no diversity of thought in the left. Sounds pretty stupid to me when you all parrot each other. Still, my strategy is to counter your lies and ignorance, not silence you as you chose to do to me

I am not okay with letting anyone decide for me what is stupid. I do that for myself. I will never delegate that away.

And yet you're willing to judge others and decide for them. Typical liberal

Why do you keep trying to put words in my mouth? If you want to know what I'm willing to do and how I see something, why can't you just ask a neutrally phrased question? Is it because you just want to think what you want to think and then make self affirming statements about it rather than finding out what actually is so?

The above dialogue illustrates the problems I have with your comments.

• "Willing to judge" - You present that in the absolute. When it's appropriate that I judge, I will. Some of those situations will be subjective in nature, and in those cases, I will use the body of knowledge I have to induct a decision or I will remove myself from the role that calls me to make the decision and defer to someone who's better situated to make it.
  
  You might think of it as the difference between strategic and tactical, or "forest and trees," or macro and micro level decisions. When I'm charged to decide about a strategic aspect of a matter, I may well choose a tactic that some tactical advisors think "not so good." They may even speak out about it, and I'll tolerate that to a point. But at the end of the day, when implementing a strategy, one has to choose the tactic(s) that best supports the strategy, not the tactic that is best in its own right for achieving whatever the tactic seeks to achieve. We all understand that concept - discretion is the better part of valor - yet not many good at applying it, even fewer have experience applying it in large scale situations such as the man
  
  There are plenty of times when I won't make a judgement. Similarly, there times when I judge within a negative liberty construct and other times a positive one. And sometimes I have to weigh one against the other.

I put shit in your mouth. I wrote the OP and you came back with that non-liberal views are stupid and you don't want to hear them

• I don't want to hear stupid views/statements/ideas. What's a stupid view? One that won't hold up under rigorous, sound scrutiny:
  • ideas that that rest in part or totally on material factual inaccuracies;
  • ideas that are contextually out of place;
  • ideas that are weakly presented and that are not (near) universally (save by "quacks") understood and accepted by people who are experts on the topic
• I sometimes will tolerate stupid questions, but nearly never stupid statements.

Regarding your OP and its protestations...Are you speaking of your own experiences, those of your kids, someone else's, the majority of students in schools of higher education? I don't know, but what I can't tell from what you wrote:

• You wrote only generalities and offered no specific supporting examples for any of your claims -- not even an attempt to support their existential pervasiveness:
  • No specific mention of a purportedly liberal (not in the political sense) college whereat politically non-liberal teens (presumably freshmen or sophomores) routinely are "berated" into silence (Frankly, after watching the 2016 U.S. election cycle, I think if one can't handle some berating, one should not live in the U.S. Half of what Trump did, and continues to even now, is berate people and their ideas.)
  • No example of a college whereat leftist ideology is presented near exclusively and conservative ideology is never or "uber" infrequently offered.
  • No specific illustration of college kids being punished with poor grades, to say nothing of noting the type of assignment and class(s) you have in mind.
  • No instance of Christians or Jews being genuinely squelched.
  • No factual metrics about what share of colleges and universities offer no officially recognized clubs catering to whatever -- Jewishness, Christianity, conservatism, etc. -- and that will make your claim be anything more than just something anecdotal, if that even, that you are bitching about.
  • No specific examples of college liberals in authority advocating for speech restrictions

Let me explain why I mentioned those things....The heart of your question is "why does the left not understand negative liberty as it applies to free speech/expression on college campuses?" What's unclear to me is just how to answer your question, and that's unclear because nothing in your post indicates just where you sit on the liberty continuum that ranges from 100% negative liberty to 100% positive liberty. In short, you don't provide enough information in your OP for readers to know what your philosophical position is. Your political position - clearly is an "us and them" one - is obvious, but it must stand on some principled philosophy, and what that is is unclear.

The theoretical underpinnings are important for this topic because they are really well understood and expounded upon. The question traces to Aristotle and Cicero. It reappears in Hobbes' Leviathan. Mill directly handles it in "On Liberty." Berlin, Pettit, Rothbard, Pocock, Wood, Skinner, Oldfield, Viroli and others have ad nauseum covered the topic. Christman unites them and recasts the central questions about them and their usefulness, but in doing so merely offers a different cognitive conception, but not an existentially different model of liberty's dimensions and consequences.

That's the philosophical approach. How do negative and positive liberty theory manifest themselves where the salt hits the road in academic settings? Well, for Americans anyway, the answer is made clear in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. "Educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns"....The First Amendment rights of students "are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings." Hazelwood informs the extent of discretion state school administrators may exercise. Period.

At private schools, there's not much to say. They mostly get to restrain or permit whatever suits them. To see what sorts of expression colleges curtail, take a look at student organizations found in various colleges and universities.

What exactly is your notion of free speech, and I mean "speech" in the broadest sense, expression? When it comes to squelching expression, consider this. Is not expression in collegiate settings encouraged or discouraged by the mere presence of a group organized for the purpose of a given form of expression? I certainly think so.

• Private and religious
  • Brigham Young -- Mormon
    
    BYU Hawaii -- I just put the photo in because the place is so gorgeous. Gotta give Mormons props on architecture. I sure hope they teach classes outdoors. How do you go inside the buildings when that's what it looks like outside?
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Southern Virginia University -- Mormon
  • Liberty University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
  • St. Olaf College -- Protestant (not Mormon) (My nod to "Rose")
  • Santa Clara University -- Roman Catholic
  • Georgetown University -- Roman Catholic
  • Seton Hall University -- Roman Catholic
  • Brandeis University -- Jewish
  • Yeshiva University -- Jewish
  • Pepperdine University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
• Public
  • University of Virginia
  • University of Mississippi
  • University of Michigan
• Private - Secular
  • Williams College
  • Amherst College
  • Princeton

To put that list together, I had to lookup faith-based universities. I had no trouble finding several sites that identify them. What I was shocked to find is that not one of them includes Georgetown University, Villanova, the several Loyolas, Gonzaga, Xavier, Marquette, St. Joseph's, Seton Hall, Fordham, U. of Portland, or even Notre Dame.

As I perused the student organizations at the schools above, it seems to me if there's any expression squelching going on, it happens more at religious schools than anywhere else. I realize the list is anecdotal, so maybe someone else wants to look at other schools.​

Free speech at colleges and universities has at least three dimensions: liberty for student expressions in the abstract of their own views, freedom to express information/ideas that directly or indirectly pertain to the institution itself, and that for employees. I happen to think that any employer has the right to do what it needs to in order to control the messages disseminated about it; everyone ought be accorded the respect of telling their own story rather than having it be told by others. In a courtroom, it's different, but in terms of general public discourse, organizations, including schools, are right to restrict the disclosure of information that may defame them. You don't air your "dirty linen," do you? You expect your family and friends who know of it to keep it to themselves as well, right?

You repeatedly talk about "liberals" and "non-liberals," yet nearly every U.S. citizen is a liberal. (click the link) Here again, you've left unclear just who or what kind of people you mean. What is clear is that colleges and universities are the places you declare have abrogated student liberty. That notion is preposterous when considered in terms of America's colleges and universities because the point of being a collegian is to develop to the fullest one's "manifest destiny;" institutions of higher learning exist to enable individuals to form themselves so they can realize their utmost positive liberty.


Wrapping all the above together:
I can understand how applications of positive liberty theory can, uncurtailed, lead to authoritarianism. I also get that the U.S. doesn't provide an environment for authoritarian anything to get anywhere, but, sure, it can make small inroads here and there. I can't think of any situation where I wasn't free to express myself. I can think of situations where doing so may have been accompanied by undesirable (to me) consequences, but I'm not going to complain about that because I knew the consequences before I "spoke"/acted, so if I wanted to speak, I did and will again.

Freedom doesn't mean free from outcomes; it means free to choose, speak or act. A variety of outcomes may ensue. Readers who clicked on and read the content at this post's second link understand that, which is not to say the notion isn't rebuttable, but that if one wants to rebut, modify or refute it, fine, but I'm not likely to respond well to some half-baked BS (aka stupid) response/"tweet" that fails to apply what one will find at the noted link and others in this post.

As for my position on positive and negative liberty, well, I want both at differing times. Going about the mundanity of daily life, and other "cut and dried" circumstances, I want as much negative liberty as everyone else has. When I'm considering issues about what individuals may pursue in their lives, I advocate for positive liberty in as equal measures as possible for all. It depends on the situation. I can't just say one or the other notion of liberty is always right; I don't think either is, which is why when it comes to free speech on college campuses, without details, I have no basis for forming a judgment.

And that is why you got the inane and unexplained remark that commenced my participation in this thread. I'd have been more than happy to go straight to the negative and positive liberty philosophical discussion. Truth be told, when I saw your thread title, I was fully expecting that your OP would be tailored for exactly that type of discussion, albeit with a new twist on the ideas of the thinkers such as those whom I mentioned earlier. When I saw what you did post, I thought, "okay, I'll take the bait and reply with a classic taut that has as its natural intellectual response some sort of exposition directly addressing negative and positive notions of freedom."

That, as we see, is not how you responded. Thus here we are with me having to lay out all the various aspects that came to mind as a result of your OP, something I'd not have done were the OP focused, either rhetorically, abstractly, via reference to liberal philosophers' ideas or by detailed illustration.

An example that facilitates discussion of liberty:

Jack’s living in New York. He’d like go to California to visit family. Under a negative conception of liberty, Jack is free to go to California if nobody is actively preventing him from doing so. Thus his negative freedom would be violated if his neighbor locked Jack in the basement, or if someone stole his car.

But what if Jack’s so poor that he can’t afford a car or a plane ticket? What if Jack is sick and so not physically up to the trip? In these instances, no person prevents Jack from going to California, so Jack’s negative liberty remains intact. Yet he lacks the capacity to fulfill his desire and so, from a positive liberty standpoint, he is unfree.

Within the context of political philosophy - within the context of what the state is permitted to do and what it ought to do - a government protects Jack’s negative liberty by discouraging the neighbor from locking Jack up and likewise the thief from stealing Jack’s car. If dissuasion is ineffective, the state may punish the perpetrators, thus (we hope) reducing the likelihood of other, similar liberties violations. In addition to - or instead of - punishing violations, the state might force the violator to compensate Jack, striving to make him whole.

On the other hand, a state tasked with directly promoting Jack’s positive liberty might tax its citizens in order to buy Jack the car he couldn’t otherwise afford. Or it might use that revenue to pay for the medical care Jack needs to get back on his feet so he can travel. A positive liberty focused state would take active steps to assure Jack isn’t just free to pursue his desires, but also has the resources to attain them.​

To close, I'll simply point out that for all the recrimination about liberals, Democrats, being socialists, the fact is that socialists and Marxists do not distinguish between negative and positive liberty. Recall what I said about stupid comments/statements. The instant I see a self-professed conservative, in a discussion that boils down to differences over ideas of positive and negative liberty, equate liberalism with socialism/Marxism, I know immediately they don't know what they are talking about because people in those two camps don't distinguish as Democrats, Republicans, Anarchists and Libertarians do.

Summary of Hazelwood:

US Supreme Court decisions define the scope of the First Amendment in public school settings. Public schools must have a valid basis to limit free speech rights, and can't act on an undifferentiated fear or apprehension. Schools can:

• Limit speech based on a reasonable expectation that it will cause a material and substantial disruption of school activities or invade the rights of others
• Prohibit obscene or vulgar language

Schools can also limit speech if it's in the form of a threat. Not just any expression is a threat, though. Threats must:

• Be perceived as a threat by others
• Be clear and convincing, causing others to believe it will be carried out
• Cause other students to fear for their safety

Your first response to the point on shutting down opponents views, your opponents views are stupid. You can't spin your way out of that

As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views

Assuming that is true - and as we are talking about young conservatives, I shall take it to be so - there is a very fine reason for it. It is almost certainly an effort to inculcate those young geysers of sophistry with the notion that it’s better they keep mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt. It is a school, after all.

 

[usmbguest5318]

I put shit in your mouth.

Did you mean to put a question mark of incredulity at the end of that sentence?

I am not okay with letting anyone decide for me what is stupid. I do that for myself. I will never delegate that away.

And yet you're willing to judge others and decide for them. Typical liberal

Why do you keep trying to put words in my mouth? If you want to know what I'm willing to do and how I see something, why can't you just ask a neutrally phrased question? Is it because you just want to think what you want to think and then make self affirming statements about it rather than finding out what actually is so?

The above dialogue illustrates the problems I have with your comments.

• "Willing to judge" - You present that in the absolute. When it's appropriate that I judge, I will. Some of those situations will be subjective in nature, and in those cases, I will use the body of knowledge I have to induct a decision or I will remove myself from the role that calls me to make the decision and defer to someone who's better situated to make it.
  
  You might think of it as the difference between strategic and tactical, or "forest and trees," or macro and micro level decisions. When I'm charged to decide about a strategic aspect of a matter, I may well choose a tactic that some tactical advisors think "not so good." They may even speak out about it, and I'll tolerate that to a point. But at the end of the day, when implementing a strategy, one has to choose the tactic(s) that best supports the strategy, not the tactic that is best in its own right for achieving whatever the tactic seeks to achieve. We all understand that concept - discretion is the better part of valor - yet not many good at applying it, even fewer have experience applying it in large scale situations such as the man
  
  There are plenty of times when I won't make a judgement. Similarly, there times when I judge within a negative liberty construct and other times a positive one. And sometimes I have to weigh one against the other.

I put shit in your mouth. I wrote the OP and you came back with that non-liberal views are stupid and you don't want to hear them

• I don't want to hear stupid views/statements/ideas. What's a stupid view? One that won't hold up under rigorous, sound scrutiny:
  • ideas that that rest in part or totally on material factual inaccuracies;
  • ideas that are contextually out of place;
  • ideas that are weakly presented and that are not (near) universally (save by "quacks") understood and accepted by people who are experts on the topic
• I sometimes will tolerate stupid questions, but nearly never stupid statements.

Regarding your OP and its protestations...Are you speaking of your own experiences, those of your kids, someone else's, the majority of students in schools of higher education? I don't know, but what I can't tell from what you wrote:

• You wrote only generalities and offered no specific supporting examples for any of your claims -- not even an attempt to support their existential pervasiveness:
  • No specific mention of a purportedly liberal (not in the political sense) college whereat politically non-liberal teens (presumably freshmen or sophomores) routinely are "berated" into silence (Frankly, after watching the 2016 U.S. election cycle, I think if one can't handle some berating, one should not live in the U.S. Half of what Trump did, and continues to even now, is berate people and their ideas.)
  • No example of a college whereat leftist ideology is presented near exclusively and conservative ideology is never or "uber" infrequently offered.
  • No specific illustration of college kids being punished with poor grades, to say nothing of noting the type of assignment and class(s) you have in mind.
  • No instance of Christians or Jews being genuinely squelched.
  • No factual metrics about what share of colleges and universities offer no officially recognized clubs catering to whatever -- Jewishness, Christianity, conservatism, etc. -- and that will make your claim be anything more than just something anecdotal, if that even, that you are bitching about.
  • No specific examples of college liberals in authority advocating for speech restrictions

Let me explain why I mentioned those things....The heart of your question is "why does the left not understand negative liberty as it applies to free speech/expression on college campuses?" What's unclear to me is just how to answer your question, and that's unclear because nothing in your post indicates just where you sit on the liberty continuum that ranges from 100% negative liberty to 100% positive liberty. In short, you don't provide enough information in your OP for readers to know what your philosophical position is. Your political position - clearly is an "us and them" one - is obvious, but it must stand on some principled philosophy, and what that is is unclear.

The theoretical underpinnings are important for this topic because they are really well understood and expounded upon. The question traces to Aristotle and Cicero. It reappears in Hobbes' Leviathan. Mill directly handles it in "On Liberty." Berlin, Pettit, Rothbard, Pocock, Wood, Skinner, Oldfield, Viroli and others have ad nauseum covered the topic. Christman unites them and recasts the central questions about them and their usefulness, but in doing so merely offers a different cognitive conception, but not an existentially different model of liberty's dimensions and consequences.

That's the philosophical approach. How do negative and positive liberty theory manifest themselves where the salt hits the road in academic settings? Well, for Americans anyway, the answer is made clear in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. "Educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns"....The First Amendment rights of students "are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings." Hazelwood informs the extent of discretion state school administrators may exercise. Period.

At private schools, there's not much to say. They mostly get to restrain or permit whatever suits them. To see what sorts of expression colleges curtail, take a look at student organizations found in various colleges and universities.

What exactly is your notion of free speech, and I mean "speech" in the broadest sense, expression? When it comes to squelching expression, consider this. Is not expression in collegiate settings encouraged or discouraged by the mere presence of a group organized for the purpose of a given form of expression? I certainly think so.

• Private and religious
  • Brigham Young -- Mormon
    
    BYU Hawaii -- I just put the photo in because the place is so gorgeous. Gotta give Mormons props on architecture. I sure hope they teach classes outdoors. How do you go inside the buildings when that's what it looks like outside?
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Southern Virginia University -- Mormon
  • Liberty University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
  • St. Olaf College -- Protestant (not Mormon) (My nod to "Rose")
  • Santa Clara University -- Roman Catholic
  • Georgetown University -- Roman Catholic
  • Seton Hall University -- Roman Catholic
  • Brandeis University -- Jewish
  • Yeshiva University -- Jewish
  • Pepperdine University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
• Public
  • University of Virginia
  • University of Mississippi
  • University of Michigan
• Private - Secular
  • Williams College
  • Amherst College
  • Princeton

To put that list together, I had to lookup faith-based universities. I had no trouble finding several sites that identify them. What I was shocked to find is that not one of them includes Georgetown University, Villanova, the several Loyolas, Gonzaga, Xavier, Marquette, St. Joseph's, Seton Hall, Fordham, U. of Portland, or even Notre Dame.

As I perused the student organizations at the schools above, it seems to me if there's any expression squelching going on, it happens more at religious schools than anywhere else. I realize the list is anecdotal, so maybe someone else wants to look at other schools.​

Free speech at colleges and universities has at least three dimensions: liberty for student expressions in the abstract of their own views, freedom to express information/ideas that directly or indirectly pertain to the institution itself, and that for employees. I happen to think that any employer has the right to do what it needs to in order to control the messages disseminated about it; everyone ought be accorded the respect of telling their own story rather than having it be told by others. In a courtroom, it's different, but in terms of general public discourse, organizations, including schools, are right to restrict the disclosure of information that may defame them. You don't air your "dirty linen," do you? You expect your family and friends who know of it to keep it to themselves as well, right?

You repeatedly talk about "liberals" and "non-liberals," yet nearly every U.S. citizen is a liberal. (click the link) Here again, you've left unclear just who or what kind of people you mean. What is clear is that colleges and universities are the places you declare have abrogated student liberty. That notion is preposterous when considered in terms of America's colleges and universities because the point of being a collegian is to develop to the fullest one's "manifest destiny;" institutions of higher learning exist to enable individuals to form themselves so they can realize their utmost positive liberty.


Wrapping all the above together:
I can understand how applications of positive liberty theory can, uncurtailed, lead to authoritarianism. I also get that the U.S. doesn't provide an environment for authoritarian anything to get anywhere, but, sure, it can make small inroads here and there. I can't think of any situation where I wasn't free to express myself. I can think of situations where doing so may have been accompanied by undesirable (to me) consequences, but I'm not going to complain about that because I knew the consequences before I "spoke"/acted, so if I wanted to speak, I did and will again.

Freedom doesn't mean free from outcomes; it means free to choose, speak or act. A variety of outcomes may ensue. Readers who clicked on and read the content at this post's second link understand that, which is not to say the notion isn't rebuttable, but that if one wants to rebut, modify or refute it, fine, but I'm not likely to respond well to some half-baked BS (aka stupid) response/"tweet" that fails to apply what one will find at the noted link and others in this post.

As for my position on positive and negative liberty, well, I want both at differing times. Going about the mundanity of daily life, and other "cut and dried" circumstances, I want as much negative liberty as everyone else has. When I'm considering issues about what individuals may pursue in their lives, I advocate for positive liberty in as equal measures as possible for all. It depends on the situation. I can't just say one or the other notion of liberty is always right; I don't think either is, which is why when it comes to free speech on college campuses, without details, I have no basis for forming a judgment.

And that is why you got the inane and unexplained remark that commenced my participation in this thread. I'd have been more than happy to go straight to the negative and positive liberty philosophical discussion. Truth be told, when I saw your thread title, I was fully expecting that your OP would be tailored for exactly that type of discussion, albeit with a new twist on the ideas of the thinkers such as those whom I mentioned earlier. When I saw what you did post, I thought, "okay, I'll take the bait and reply with a classic taut that has as its natural intellectual response some sort of exposition directly addressing negative and positive notions of freedom."

That, as we see, is not how you responded. Thus here we are with me having to lay out all the various aspects that came to mind as a result of your OP, something I'd not have done were the OP focused, either rhetorically, abstractly, via reference to liberal philosophers' ideas or by detailed illustration.

An example that facilitates discussion of liberty:

Jack’s living in New York. He’d like go to California to visit family. Under a negative conception of liberty, Jack is free to go to California if nobody is actively preventing him from doing so. Thus his negative freedom would be violated if his neighbor locked Jack in the basement, or if someone stole his car.

But what if Jack’s so poor that he can’t afford a car or a plane ticket? What if Jack is sick and so not physically up to the trip? In these instances, no person prevents Jack from going to California, so Jack’s negative liberty remains intact. Yet he lacks the capacity to fulfill his desire and so, from a positive liberty standpoint, he is unfree.

Within the context of political philosophy - within the context of what the state is permitted to do and what it ought to do - a government protects Jack’s negative liberty by discouraging the neighbor from locking Jack up and likewise the thief from stealing Jack’s car. If dissuasion is ineffective, the state may punish the perpetrators, thus (we hope) reducing the likelihood of other, similar liberties violations. In addition to - or instead of - punishing violations, the state might force the violator to compensate Jack, striving to make him whole.

On the other hand, a state tasked with directly promoting Jack’s positive liberty might tax its citizens in order to buy Jack the car he couldn’t otherwise afford. Or it might use that revenue to pay for the medical care Jack needs to get back on his feet so he can travel. A positive liberty focused state would take active steps to assure Jack isn’t just free to pursue his desires, but also has the resources to attain them.​

To close, I'll simply point out that for all the recrimination about liberals, Democrats, being socialists, the fact is that socialists and Marxists do not distinguish between negative and positive liberty. Recall what I said about stupid comments/statements. The instant I see a self-professed conservative, in a discussion that boils down to differences over ideas of positive and negative liberty, equate liberalism with socialism/Marxism, I know immediately they don't know what they are talking about because people in those two camps don't distinguish as Democrats, Republicans, Anarchists and Libertarians do.

Summary of Hazelwood:

US Supreme Court decisions define the scope of the First Amendment in public school settings. Public schools must have a valid basis to limit free speech rights, and can't act on an undifferentiated fear or apprehension. Schools can:

• Limit speech based on a reasonable expectation that it will cause a material and substantial disruption of school activities or invade the rights of others
• Prohibit obscene or vulgar language

Schools can also limit speech if it's in the form of a threat. Not just any expression is a threat, though. Threats must:

• Be perceived as a threat by others
• Be clear and convincing, causing others to believe it will be carried out
• Cause other students to fear for their safety

Your first response to the point on shutting down opponents views, your opponents views are stupid. You can't spin your way out of that

As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views

Assuming that is true - and as we are talking about young conservatives, I shall take it to be so - there is a very fine reason for it. It is almost certainly an effort to inculcate those young geysers of sophistry with the notion that it’s better they keep mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt. It is a school, after all.

Well, the fact is that some of them are, and the ones that are don't need to be heard outside of an explicitly, rather than tangentially, didactic setting.

 

[kaz]

I put shit in your mouth.

Did you mean to put a question mark of incredulity at the end of that sentence?

And yet you're willing to judge others and decide for them. Typical liberal

The above dialogue illustrates the problems I have with your comments.

• "Willing to judge" - You present that in the absolute. When it's appropriate that I judge, I will. Some of those situations will be subjective in nature, and in those cases, I will use the body of knowledge I have to induct a decision or I will remove myself from the role that calls me to make the decision and defer to someone who's better situated to make it.
  
  You might think of it as the difference between strategic and tactical, or "forest and trees," or macro and micro level decisions. When I'm charged to decide about a strategic aspect of a matter, I may well choose a tactic that some tactical advisors think "not so good." They may even speak out about it, and I'll tolerate that to a point. But at the end of the day, when implementing a strategy, one has to choose the tactic(s) that best supports the strategy, not the tactic that is best in its own right for achieving whatever the tactic seeks to achieve. We all understand that concept - discretion is the better part of valor - yet not many good at applying it, even fewer have experience applying it in large scale situations such as the man
  
  There are plenty of times when I won't make a judgement. Similarly, there times when I judge within a negative liberty construct and other times a positive one. And sometimes I have to weigh one against the other.

I put shit in your mouth. I wrote the OP and you came back with that non-liberal views are stupid and you don't want to hear them

• I don't want to hear stupid views/statements/ideas. What's a stupid view? One that won't hold up under rigorous, sound scrutiny:
  • ideas that that rest in part or totally on material factual inaccuracies;
  • ideas that are contextually out of place;
  • ideas that are weakly presented and that are not (near) universally (save by "quacks") understood and accepted by people who are experts on the topic
• I sometimes will tolerate stupid questions, but nearly never stupid statements.

Regarding your OP and its protestations...Are you speaking of your own experiences, those of your kids, someone else's, the majority of students in schools of higher education? I don't know, but what I can't tell from what you wrote:

• You wrote only generalities and offered no specific supporting examples for any of your claims -- not even an attempt to support their existential pervasiveness:
  • No specific mention of a purportedly liberal (not in the political sense) college whereat politically non-liberal teens (presumably freshmen or sophomores) routinely are "berated" into silence (Frankly, after watching the 2016 U.S. election cycle, I think if one can't handle some berating, one should not live in the U.S. Half of what Trump did, and continues to even now, is berate people and their ideas.)
  • No example of a college whereat leftist ideology is presented near exclusively and conservative ideology is never or "uber" infrequently offered.
  • No specific illustration of college kids being punished with poor grades, to say nothing of noting the type of assignment and class(s) you have in mind.
  • No instance of Christians or Jews being genuinely squelched.
  • No factual metrics about what share of colleges and universities offer no officially recognized clubs catering to whatever -- Jewishness, Christianity, conservatism, etc. -- and that will make your claim be anything more than just something anecdotal, if that even, that you are bitching about.
  • No specific examples of college liberals in authority advocating for speech restrictions

Let me explain why I mentioned those things....The heart of your question is "why does the left not understand negative liberty as it applies to free speech/expression on college campuses?" What's unclear to me is just how to answer your question, and that's unclear because nothing in your post indicates just where you sit on the liberty continuum that ranges from 100% negative liberty to 100% positive liberty. In short, you don't provide enough information in your OP for readers to know what your philosophical position is. Your political position - clearly is an "us and them" one - is obvious, but it must stand on some principled philosophy, and what that is is unclear.

The theoretical underpinnings are important for this topic because they are really well understood and expounded upon. The question traces to Aristotle and Cicero. It reappears in Hobbes' Leviathan. Mill directly handles it in "On Liberty." Berlin, Pettit, Rothbard, Pocock, Wood, Skinner, Oldfield, Viroli and others have ad nauseum covered the topic. Christman unites them and recasts the central questions about them and their usefulness, but in doing so merely offers a different cognitive conception, but not an existentially different model of liberty's dimensions and consequences.

That's the philosophical approach. How do negative and positive liberty theory manifest themselves where the salt hits the road in academic settings? Well, for Americans anyway, the answer is made clear in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. "Educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns"....The First Amendment rights of students "are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings." Hazelwood informs the extent of discretion state school administrators may exercise. Period.

At private schools, there's not much to say. They mostly get to restrain or permit whatever suits them. To see what sorts of expression colleges curtail, take a look at student organizations found in various colleges and universities.

What exactly is your notion of free speech, and I mean "speech" in the broadest sense, expression? When it comes to squelching expression, consider this. Is not expression in collegiate settings encouraged or discouraged by the mere presence of a group organized for the purpose of a given form of expression? I certainly think so.

• Private and religious
  • Brigham Young -- Mormon
    
    BYU Hawaii -- I just put the photo in because the place is so gorgeous. Gotta give Mormons props on architecture. I sure hope they teach classes outdoors. How do you go inside the buildings when that's what it looks like outside?
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Southern Virginia University -- Mormon
  • Liberty University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
  • St. Olaf College -- Protestant (not Mormon) (My nod to "Rose")
  • Santa Clara University -- Roman Catholic
  • Georgetown University -- Roman Catholic
  • Seton Hall University -- Roman Catholic
  • Brandeis University -- Jewish
  • Yeshiva University -- Jewish
  • Pepperdine University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
• Public
  • University of Virginia
  • University of Mississippi
  • University of Michigan
• Private - Secular
  • Williams College
  • Amherst College
  • Princeton

To put that list together, I had to lookup faith-based universities. I had no trouble finding several sites that identify them. What I was shocked to find is that not one of them includes Georgetown University, Villanova, the several Loyolas, Gonzaga, Xavier, Marquette, St. Joseph's, Seton Hall, Fordham, U. of Portland, or even Notre Dame.

As I perused the student organizations at the schools above, it seems to me if there's any expression squelching going on, it happens more at religious schools than anywhere else. I realize the list is anecdotal, so maybe someone else wants to look at other schools.​

Free speech at colleges and universities has at least three dimensions: liberty for student expressions in the abstract of their own views, freedom to express information/ideas that directly or indirectly pertain to the institution itself, and that for employees. I happen to think that any employer has the right to do what it needs to in order to control the messages disseminated about it; everyone ought be accorded the respect of telling their own story rather than having it be told by others. In a courtroom, it's different, but in terms of general public discourse, organizations, including schools, are right to restrict the disclosure of information that may defame them. You don't air your "dirty linen," do you? You expect your family and friends who know of it to keep it to themselves as well, right?

You repeatedly talk about "liberals" and "non-liberals," yet nearly every U.S. citizen is a liberal. (click the link) Here again, you've left unclear just who or what kind of people you mean. What is clear is that colleges and universities are the places you declare have abrogated student liberty. That notion is preposterous when considered in terms of America's colleges and universities because the point of being a collegian is to develop to the fullest one's "manifest destiny;" institutions of higher learning exist to enable individuals to form themselves so they can realize their utmost positive liberty.


Wrapping all the above together:
I can understand how applications of positive liberty theory can, uncurtailed, lead to authoritarianism. I also get that the U.S. doesn't provide an environment for authoritarian anything to get anywhere, but, sure, it can make small inroads here and there. I can't think of any situation where I wasn't free to express myself. I can think of situations where doing so may have been accompanied by undesirable (to me) consequences, but I'm not going to complain about that because I knew the consequences before I "spoke"/acted, so if I wanted to speak, I did and will again.

Freedom doesn't mean free from outcomes; it means free to choose, speak or act. A variety of outcomes may ensue. Readers who clicked on and read the content at this post's second link understand that, which is not to say the notion isn't rebuttable, but that if one wants to rebut, modify or refute it, fine, but I'm not likely to respond well to some half-baked BS (aka stupid) response/"tweet" that fails to apply what one will find at the noted link and others in this post.

As for my position on positive and negative liberty, well, I want both at differing times. Going about the mundanity of daily life, and other "cut and dried" circumstances, I want as much negative liberty as everyone else has. When I'm considering issues about what individuals may pursue in their lives, I advocate for positive liberty in as equal measures as possible for all. It depends on the situation. I can't just say one or the other notion of liberty is always right; I don't think either is, which is why when it comes to free speech on college campuses, without details, I have no basis for forming a judgment.

And that is why you got the inane and unexplained remark that commenced my participation in this thread. I'd have been more than happy to go straight to the negative and positive liberty philosophical discussion. Truth be told, when I saw your thread title, I was fully expecting that your OP would be tailored for exactly that type of discussion, albeit with a new twist on the ideas of the thinkers such as those whom I mentioned earlier. When I saw what you did post, I thought, "okay, I'll take the bait and reply with a classic taut that has as its natural intellectual response some sort of exposition directly addressing negative and positive notions of freedom."

That, as we see, is not how you responded. Thus here we are with me having to lay out all the various aspects that came to mind as a result of your OP, something I'd not have done were the OP focused, either rhetorically, abstractly, via reference to liberal philosophers' ideas or by detailed illustration.

An example that facilitates discussion of liberty:

Jack’s living in New York. He’d like go to California to visit family. Under a negative conception of liberty, Jack is free to go to California if nobody is actively preventing him from doing so. Thus his negative freedom would be violated if his neighbor locked Jack in the basement, or if someone stole his car.

But what if Jack’s so poor that he can’t afford a car or a plane ticket? What if Jack is sick and so not physically up to the trip? In these instances, no person prevents Jack from going to California, so Jack’s negative liberty remains intact. Yet he lacks the capacity to fulfill his desire and so, from a positive liberty standpoint, he is unfree.

Within the context of political philosophy - within the context of what the state is permitted to do and what it ought to do - a government protects Jack’s negative liberty by discouraging the neighbor from locking Jack up and likewise the thief from stealing Jack’s car. If dissuasion is ineffective, the state may punish the perpetrators, thus (we hope) reducing the likelihood of other, similar liberties violations. In addition to - or instead of - punishing violations, the state might force the violator to compensate Jack, striving to make him whole.

On the other hand, a state tasked with directly promoting Jack’s positive liberty might tax its citizens in order to buy Jack the car he couldn’t otherwise afford. Or it might use that revenue to pay for the medical care Jack needs to get back on his feet so he can travel. A positive liberty focused state would take active steps to assure Jack isn’t just free to pursue his desires, but also has the resources to attain them.​

To close, I'll simply point out that for all the recrimination about liberals, Democrats, being socialists, the fact is that socialists and Marxists do not distinguish between negative and positive liberty. Recall what I said about stupid comments/statements. The instant I see a self-professed conservative, in a discussion that boils down to differences over ideas of positive and negative liberty, equate liberalism with socialism/Marxism, I know immediately they don't know what they are talking about because people in those two camps don't distinguish as Democrats, Republicans, Anarchists and Libertarians do.

Summary of Hazelwood:

US Supreme Court decisions define the scope of the First Amendment in public school settings. Public schools must have a valid basis to limit free speech rights, and can't act on an undifferentiated fear or apprehension. Schools can:

• Limit speech based on a reasonable expectation that it will cause a material and substantial disruption of school activities or invade the rights of others
• Prohibit obscene or vulgar language

Schools can also limit speech if it's in the form of a threat. Not just any expression is a threat, though. Threats must:

• Be perceived as a threat by others
• Be clear and convincing, causing others to believe it will be carried out
• Cause other students to fear for their safety

Your first response to the point on shutting down opponents views, your opponents views are stupid. You can't spin your way out of that

As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views

Assuming that is true - and as we are talking about young conservatives, I shall take it to be so - there is a very fine reason for it. It is almost certainly an effort to inculcate those young geysers of sophistry with the notion that it’s better they keep mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt. It is a school, after all.

Well, the fact is that some of them are, and the ones that are don't need to be heard outside of an explicitly, rather than tangentially, didactic setting.

Yes, your statement was certainly patronizing. When someone other than leftists speak, you want it to not be "stupid." Which of course is not possible since we've already established they aren't a liberal. You know, the inherent truth of liberalism and all

 

[usmbguest5318]

Did you mean to put a question mark of incredulity at the end of that sentence?


The above dialogue illustrates the problems I have with your comments.

• "Willing to judge" - You present that in the absolute. When it's appropriate that I judge, I will. Some of those situations will be subjective in nature, and in those cases, I will use the body of knowledge I have to induct a decision or I will remove myself from the role that calls me to make the decision and defer to someone who's better situated to make it.
  
  You might think of it as the difference between strategic and tactical, or "forest and trees," or macro and micro level decisions. When I'm charged to decide about a strategic aspect of a matter, I may well choose a tactic that some tactical advisors think "not so good." They may even speak out about it, and I'll tolerate that to a point. But at the end of the day, when implementing a strategy, one has to choose the tactic(s) that best supports the strategy, not the tactic that is best in its own right for achieving whatever the tactic seeks to achieve. We all understand that concept - discretion is the better part of valor - yet not many good at applying it, even fewer have experience applying it in large scale situations such as the man
  
  There are plenty of times when I won't make a judgement. Similarly, there times when I judge within a negative liberty construct and other times a positive one. And sometimes I have to weigh one against the other.

I put shit in your mouth. I wrote the OP and you came back with that non-liberal views are stupid and you don't want to hear them

• I don't want to hear stupid views/statements/ideas. What's a stupid view? One that won't hold up under rigorous, sound scrutiny:
  • ideas that that rest in part or totally on material factual inaccuracies;
  • ideas that are contextually out of place;
  • ideas that are weakly presented and that are not (near) universally (save by "quacks") understood and accepted by people who are experts on the topic
• I sometimes will tolerate stupid questions, but nearly never stupid statements.

Regarding your OP and its protestations...Are you speaking of your own experiences, those of your kids, someone else's, the majority of students in schools of higher education? I don't know, but what I can't tell from what you wrote:

• You wrote only generalities and offered no specific supporting examples for any of your claims -- not even an attempt to support their existential pervasiveness:
  • No specific mention of a purportedly liberal (not in the political sense) college whereat politically non-liberal teens (presumably freshmen or sophomores) routinely are "berated" into silence (Frankly, after watching the 2016 U.S. election cycle, I think if one can't handle some berating, one should not live in the U.S. Half of what Trump did, and continues to even now, is berate people and their ideas.)
  • No example of a college whereat leftist ideology is presented near exclusively and conservative ideology is never or "uber" infrequently offered.
  • No specific illustration of college kids being punished with poor grades, to say nothing of noting the type of assignment and class(s) you have in mind.
  • No instance of Christians or Jews being genuinely squelched.
  • No factual metrics about what share of colleges and universities offer no officially recognized clubs catering to whatever -- Jewishness, Christianity, conservatism, etc. -- and that will make your claim be anything more than just something anecdotal, if that even, that you are bitching about.
  • No specific examples of college liberals in authority advocating for speech restrictions

Let me explain why I mentioned those things....The heart of your question is "why does the left not understand negative liberty as it applies to free speech/expression on college campuses?" What's unclear to me is just how to answer your question, and that's unclear because nothing in your post indicates just where you sit on the liberty continuum that ranges from 100% negative liberty to 100% positive liberty. In short, you don't provide enough information in your OP for readers to know what your philosophical position is. Your political position - clearly is an "us and them" one - is obvious, but it must stand on some principled philosophy, and what that is is unclear.

The theoretical underpinnings are important for this topic because they are really well understood and expounded upon. The question traces to Aristotle and Cicero. It reappears in Hobbes' Leviathan. Mill directly handles it in "On Liberty." Berlin, Pettit, Rothbard, Pocock, Wood, Skinner, Oldfield, Viroli and others have ad nauseum covered the topic. Christman unites them and recasts the central questions about them and their usefulness, but in doing so merely offers a different cognitive conception, but not an existentially different model of liberty's dimensions and consequences.

That's the philosophical approach. How do negative and positive liberty theory manifest themselves where the salt hits the road in academic settings? Well, for Americans anyway, the answer is made clear in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. "Educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns"....The First Amendment rights of students "are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings." Hazelwood informs the extent of discretion state school administrators may exercise. Period.

At private schools, there's not much to say. They mostly get to restrain or permit whatever suits them. To see what sorts of expression colleges curtail, take a look at student organizations found in various colleges and universities.

What exactly is your notion of free speech, and I mean "speech" in the broadest sense, expression? When it comes to squelching expression, consider this. Is not expression in collegiate settings encouraged or discouraged by the mere presence of a group organized for the purpose of a given form of expression? I certainly think so.

• Private and religious
  • Brigham Young -- Mormon
    
    BYU Hawaii -- I just put the photo in because the place is so gorgeous. Gotta give Mormons props on architecture. I sure hope they teach classes outdoors. How do you go inside the buildings when that's what it looks like outside?
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Southern Virginia University -- Mormon
  • Liberty University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
  • St. Olaf College -- Protestant (not Mormon) (My nod to "Rose")
  • Santa Clara University -- Roman Catholic
  • Georgetown University -- Roman Catholic
  • Seton Hall University -- Roman Catholic
  • Brandeis University -- Jewish
  • Yeshiva University -- Jewish
  • Pepperdine University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
• Public
  • University of Virginia
  • University of Mississippi
  • University of Michigan
• Private - Secular
  • Williams College
  • Amherst College
  • Princeton

To put that list together, I had to lookup faith-based universities. I had no trouble finding several sites that identify them. What I was shocked to find is that not one of them includes Georgetown University, Villanova, the several Loyolas, Gonzaga, Xavier, Marquette, St. Joseph's, Seton Hall, Fordham, U. of Portland, or even Notre Dame.

As I perused the student organizations at the schools above, it seems to me if there's any expression squelching going on, it happens more at religious schools than anywhere else. I realize the list is anecdotal, so maybe someone else wants to look at other schools.​

Free speech at colleges and universities has at least three dimensions: liberty for student expressions in the abstract of their own views, freedom to express information/ideas that directly or indirectly pertain to the institution itself, and that for employees. I happen to think that any employer has the right to do what it needs to in order to control the messages disseminated about it; everyone ought be accorded the respect of telling their own story rather than having it be told by others. In a courtroom, it's different, but in terms of general public discourse, organizations, including schools, are right to restrict the disclosure of information that may defame them. You don't air your "dirty linen," do you? You expect your family and friends who know of it to keep it to themselves as well, right?

You repeatedly talk about "liberals" and "non-liberals," yet nearly every U.S. citizen is a liberal. (click the link) Here again, you've left unclear just who or what kind of people you mean. What is clear is that colleges and universities are the places you declare have abrogated student liberty. That notion is preposterous when considered in terms of America's colleges and universities because the point of being a collegian is to develop to the fullest one's "manifest destiny;" institutions of higher learning exist to enable individuals to form themselves so they can realize their utmost positive liberty.


Wrapping all the above together:
I can understand how applications of positive liberty theory can, uncurtailed, lead to authoritarianism. I also get that the U.S. doesn't provide an environment for authoritarian anything to get anywhere, but, sure, it can make small inroads here and there. I can't think of any situation where I wasn't free to express myself. I can think of situations where doing so may have been accompanied by undesirable (to me) consequences, but I'm not going to complain about that because I knew the consequences before I "spoke"/acted, so if I wanted to speak, I did and will again.

Freedom doesn't mean free from outcomes; it means free to choose, speak or act. A variety of outcomes may ensue. Readers who clicked on and read the content at this post's second link understand that, which is not to say the notion isn't rebuttable, but that if one wants to rebut, modify or refute it, fine, but I'm not likely to respond well to some half-baked BS (aka stupid) response/"tweet" that fails to apply what one will find at the noted link and others in this post.

As for my position on positive and negative liberty, well, I want both at differing times. Going about the mundanity of daily life, and other "cut and dried" circumstances, I want as much negative liberty as everyone else has. When I'm considering issues about what individuals may pursue in their lives, I advocate for positive liberty in as equal measures as possible for all. It depends on the situation. I can't just say one or the other notion of liberty is always right; I don't think either is, which is why when it comes to free speech on college campuses, without details, I have no basis for forming a judgment.

And that is why you got the inane and unexplained remark that commenced my participation in this thread. I'd have been more than happy to go straight to the negative and positive liberty philosophical discussion. Truth be told, when I saw your thread title, I was fully expecting that your OP would be tailored for exactly that type of discussion, albeit with a new twist on the ideas of the thinkers such as those whom I mentioned earlier. When I saw what you did post, I thought, "okay, I'll take the bait and reply with a classic taut that has as its natural intellectual response some sort of exposition directly addressing negative and positive notions of freedom."

That, as we see, is not how you responded. Thus here we are with me having to lay out all the various aspects that came to mind as a result of your OP, something I'd not have done were the OP focused, either rhetorically, abstractly, via reference to liberal philosophers' ideas or by detailed illustration.

An example that facilitates discussion of liberty:

Jack’s living in New York. He’d like go to California to visit family. Under a negative conception of liberty, Jack is free to go to California if nobody is actively preventing him from doing so. Thus his negative freedom would be violated if his neighbor locked Jack in the basement, or if someone stole his car.

But what if Jack’s so poor that he can’t afford a car or a plane ticket? What if Jack is sick and so not physically up to the trip? In these instances, no person prevents Jack from going to California, so Jack’s negative liberty remains intact. Yet he lacks the capacity to fulfill his desire and so, from a positive liberty standpoint, he is unfree.

Within the context of political philosophy - within the context of what the state is permitted to do and what it ought to do - a government protects Jack’s negative liberty by discouraging the neighbor from locking Jack up and likewise the thief from stealing Jack’s car. If dissuasion is ineffective, the state may punish the perpetrators, thus (we hope) reducing the likelihood of other, similar liberties violations. In addition to - or instead of - punishing violations, the state might force the violator to compensate Jack, striving to make him whole.

On the other hand, a state tasked with directly promoting Jack’s positive liberty might tax its citizens in order to buy Jack the car he couldn’t otherwise afford. Or it might use that revenue to pay for the medical care Jack needs to get back on his feet so he can travel. A positive liberty focused state would take active steps to assure Jack isn’t just free to pursue his desires, but also has the resources to attain them.​

To close, I'll simply point out that for all the recrimination about liberals, Democrats, being socialists, the fact is that socialists and Marxists do not distinguish between negative and positive liberty. Recall what I said about stupid comments/statements. The instant I see a self-professed conservative, in a discussion that boils down to differences over ideas of positive and negative liberty, equate liberalism with socialism/Marxism, I know immediately they don't know what they are talking about because people in those two camps don't distinguish as Democrats, Republicans, Anarchists and Libertarians do.

Summary of Hazelwood:

US Supreme Court decisions define the scope of the First Amendment in public school settings. Public schools must have a valid basis to limit free speech rights, and can't act on an undifferentiated fear or apprehension. Schools can:

• Limit speech based on a reasonable expectation that it will cause a material and substantial disruption of school activities or invade the rights of others
• Prohibit obscene or vulgar language

Schools can also limit speech if it's in the form of a threat. Not just any expression is a threat, though. Threats must:

• Be perceived as a threat by others
• Be clear and convincing, causing others to believe it will be carried out
• Cause other students to fear for their safety

Your first response to the point on shutting down opponents views, your opponents views are stupid. You can't spin your way out of that

As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views

Assuming that is true - and as we are talking about young conservatives, I shall take it to be so - there is a very fine reason for it. It is almost certainly an effort to inculcate those young geysers of sophistry with the notion that it’s better they keep mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt. It is a school, after all.

Well, the fact is that some of them are, and the ones that are don't need to be heard outside of an explicitly, rather than tangentially, didactic setting.

Yes, your statement was certainly patronizing. When someone other than leftists speak, you want it to not be "stupid." Which of course is not possible since we've already established they aren't a liberal. You know, the inherent truth of liberalism and all

I assure you that what I want in terms of soundness in the ideas others express has no ideological, temporal or topical limits.

 

[jon_berzerk]

It's sad that the bastions of anti-free speech hate are schools.

- The faculty and students of "liberal" universities melt down when anyone not hard left is going to speak at commencement or anything else and they shout down anyone who disagrees with them on campus. And administrators are supporting them.

- As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views while they are endlessly subjected to leftist ideology ... from the teachers. Teachers routinely punish our kids with poor grades for even suggesting non-liberal ideas in their work.

- You can be pro-Muslim or other religions and speak to it, but if you're Christian or Jewish then STFU about your views, no one wants to hear it. By no one I mean the leftists.

Wasn't education where we were supposed to be able to express and explore all thought? So where are you, leftists? Why are you not only not being outraged at the limit of speech, but you cheer it on? Don't tell me you lied? Really, don't, you don't have to.

And why am I paying for this? It's no wonder the left grow up to throttle free speech, it's what you teach your children. And you wonder why Trump won ...

it is almost a daily thing with these hard core leftists

Thankfully America is waking up to this bs

 

[usmbguest5318]

Yes, your statement was certainly patronizing. When someone other than leftists speak, you want it to not be "stupid." Which of course is not possible since we've already established they aren't a liberal. You know, the inherent truth of liberalism and all

I assure you that what I want in terms of soundness in the ideas others express has no ideological, temporal or topical limits.

To wit...Though I don't know which way any of these posters lean (I am indifferent about which way they lean.), I do know the comments/objections in the linked posts below don't have the degree of soundness I'd like see from anyone.

• http://www.usmessageboard.com/posts/16307194/ --> The idea's shortcomings are noted here.
  
• http://www.usmessageboard.com/posts/16306025/ --> The idea's shortcomings are noted here.

Those are but two illustrations that I mark only because they appeared very recently; thus they are fresh in my mind.

 

[kaz]

I put shit in your mouth. I wrote the OP and you came back with that non-liberal views are stupid and you don't want to hear them

• I don't want to hear stupid views/statements/ideas. What's a stupid view? One that won't hold up under rigorous, sound scrutiny:
  • ideas that that rest in part or totally on material factual inaccuracies;
  • ideas that are contextually out of place;
  • ideas that are weakly presented and that are not (near) universally (save by "quacks") understood and accepted by people who are experts on the topic
• I sometimes will tolerate stupid questions, but nearly never stupid statements.

Regarding your OP and its protestations...Are you speaking of your own experiences, those of your kids, someone else's, the majority of students in schools of higher education? I don't know, but what I can't tell from what you wrote:

• You wrote only generalities and offered no specific supporting examples for any of your claims -- not even an attempt to support their existential pervasiveness:
  • No specific mention of a purportedly liberal (not in the political sense) college whereat politically non-liberal teens (presumably freshmen or sophomores) routinely are "berated" into silence (Frankly, after watching the 2016 U.S. election cycle, I think if one can't handle some berating, one should not live in the U.S. Half of what Trump did, and continues to even now, is berate people and their ideas.)
  • No example of a college whereat leftist ideology is presented near exclusively and conservative ideology is never or "uber" infrequently offered.
  • No specific illustration of college kids being punished with poor grades, to say nothing of noting the type of assignment and class(s) you have in mind.
  • No instance of Christians or Jews being genuinely squelched.
  • No factual metrics about what share of colleges and universities offer no officially recognized clubs catering to whatever -- Jewishness, Christianity, conservatism, etc. -- and that will make your claim be anything more than just something anecdotal, if that even, that you are bitching about.
  • No specific examples of college liberals in authority advocating for speech restrictions

Let me explain why I mentioned those things....The heart of your question is "why does the left not understand negative liberty as it applies to free speech/expression on college campuses?" What's unclear to me is just how to answer your question, and that's unclear because nothing in your post indicates just where you sit on the liberty continuum that ranges from 100% negative liberty to 100% positive liberty. In short, you don't provide enough information in your OP for readers to know what your philosophical position is. Your political position - clearly is an "us and them" one - is obvious, but it must stand on some principled philosophy, and what that is is unclear.

The theoretical underpinnings are important for this topic because they are really well understood and expounded upon. The question traces to Aristotle and Cicero. It reappears in Hobbes' Leviathan. Mill directly handles it in "On Liberty." Berlin, Pettit, Rothbard, Pocock, Wood, Skinner, Oldfield, Viroli and others have ad nauseum covered the topic. Christman unites them and recasts the central questions about them and their usefulness, but in doing so merely offers a different cognitive conception, but not an existentially different model of liberty's dimensions and consequences.

That's the philosophical approach. How do negative and positive liberty theory manifest themselves where the salt hits the road in academic settings? Well, for Americans anyway, the answer is made clear in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. "Educators do not offend the First Amendment by exercising editorial control over the style and content of student speech in school-sponsored expressive activities so long as their actions are reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns"....The First Amendment rights of students "are not automatically coextensive with the rights of adults in other settings." Hazelwood informs the extent of discretion state school administrators may exercise. Period.

At private schools, there's not much to say. They mostly get to restrain or permit whatever suits them. To see what sorts of expression colleges curtail, take a look at student organizations found in various colleges and universities.

What exactly is your notion of free speech, and I mean "speech" in the broadest sense, expression? When it comes to squelching expression, consider this. Is not expression in collegiate settings encouraged or discouraged by the mere presence of a group organized for the purpose of a given form of expression? I certainly think so.

• Private and religious
  • Brigham Young -- Mormon
    
    BYU Hawaii -- I just put the photo in because the place is so gorgeous. Gotta give Mormons props on architecture. I sure hope they teach classes outdoors. How do you go inside the buildings when that's what it looks like outside?
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Southern Virginia University -- Mormon
  • Liberty University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
  • St. Olaf College -- Protestant (not Mormon) (My nod to "Rose")
  • Santa Clara University -- Roman Catholic
  • Georgetown University -- Roman Catholic
  • Seton Hall University -- Roman Catholic
  • Brandeis University -- Jewish
  • Yeshiva University -- Jewish
  • Pepperdine University -- Protestant (not Mormon)
• Public
  • University of Virginia
  • University of Mississippi
  • University of Michigan
• Private - Secular
  • Williams College
  • Amherst College
  • Princeton

To put that list together, I had to lookup faith-based universities. I had no trouble finding several sites that identify them. What I was shocked to find is that not one of them includes Georgetown University, Villanova, the several Loyolas, Gonzaga, Xavier, Marquette, St. Joseph's, Seton Hall, Fordham, U. of Portland, or even Notre Dame.

As I perused the student organizations at the schools above, it seems to me if there's any expression squelching going on, it happens more at religious schools than anywhere else. I realize the list is anecdotal, so maybe someone else wants to look at other schools.​

Free speech at colleges and universities has at least three dimensions: liberty for student expressions in the abstract of their own views, freedom to express information/ideas that directly or indirectly pertain to the institution itself, and that for employees. I happen to think that any employer has the right to do what it needs to in order to control the messages disseminated about it; everyone ought be accorded the respect of telling their own story rather than having it be told by others. In a courtroom, it's different, but in terms of general public discourse, organizations, including schools, are right to restrict the disclosure of information that may defame them. You don't air your "dirty linen," do you? You expect your family and friends who know of it to keep it to themselves as well, right?

You repeatedly talk about "liberals" and "non-liberals," yet nearly every U.S. citizen is a liberal. (click the link) Here again, you've left unclear just who or what kind of people you mean. What is clear is that colleges and universities are the places you declare have abrogated student liberty. That notion is preposterous when considered in terms of America's colleges and universities because the point of being a collegian is to develop to the fullest one's "manifest destiny;" institutions of higher learning exist to enable individuals to form themselves so they can realize their utmost positive liberty.


Wrapping all the above together:
I can understand how applications of positive liberty theory can, uncurtailed, lead to authoritarianism. I also get that the U.S. doesn't provide an environment for authoritarian anything to get anywhere, but, sure, it can make small inroads here and there. I can't think of any situation where I wasn't free to express myself. I can think of situations where doing so may have been accompanied by undesirable (to me) consequences, but I'm not going to complain about that because I knew the consequences before I "spoke"/acted, so if I wanted to speak, I did and will again.

Freedom doesn't mean free from outcomes; it means free to choose, speak or act. A variety of outcomes may ensue. Readers who clicked on and read the content at this post's second link understand that, which is not to say the notion isn't rebuttable, but that if one wants to rebut, modify or refute it, fine, but I'm not likely to respond well to some half-baked BS (aka stupid) response/"tweet" that fails to apply what one will find at the noted link and others in this post.

As for my position on positive and negative liberty, well, I want both at differing times. Going about the mundanity of daily life, and other "cut and dried" circumstances, I want as much negative liberty as everyone else has. When I'm considering issues about what individuals may pursue in their lives, I advocate for positive liberty in as equal measures as possible for all. It depends on the situation. I can't just say one or the other notion of liberty is always right; I don't think either is, which is why when it comes to free speech on college campuses, without details, I have no basis for forming a judgment.

And that is why you got the inane and unexplained remark that commenced my participation in this thread. I'd have been more than happy to go straight to the negative and positive liberty philosophical discussion. Truth be told, when I saw your thread title, I was fully expecting that your OP would be tailored for exactly that type of discussion, albeit with a new twist on the ideas of the thinkers such as those whom I mentioned earlier. When I saw what you did post, I thought, "okay, I'll take the bait and reply with a classic taut that has as its natural intellectual response some sort of exposition directly addressing negative and positive notions of freedom."

That, as we see, is not how you responded. Thus here we are with me having to lay out all the various aspects that came to mind as a result of your OP, something I'd not have done were the OP focused, either rhetorically, abstractly, via reference to liberal philosophers' ideas or by detailed illustration.

An example that facilitates discussion of liberty:

Jack’s living in New York. He’d like go to California to visit family. Under a negative conception of liberty, Jack is free to go to California if nobody is actively preventing him from doing so. Thus his negative freedom would be violated if his neighbor locked Jack in the basement, or if someone stole his car.

But what if Jack’s so poor that he can’t afford a car or a plane ticket? What if Jack is sick and so not physically up to the trip? In these instances, no person prevents Jack from going to California, so Jack’s negative liberty remains intact. Yet he lacks the capacity to fulfill his desire and so, from a positive liberty standpoint, he is unfree.

Within the context of political philosophy - within the context of what the state is permitted to do and what it ought to do - a government protects Jack’s negative liberty by discouraging the neighbor from locking Jack up and likewise the thief from stealing Jack’s car. If dissuasion is ineffective, the state may punish the perpetrators, thus (we hope) reducing the likelihood of other, similar liberties violations. In addition to - or instead of - punishing violations, the state might force the violator to compensate Jack, striving to make him whole.

On the other hand, a state tasked with directly promoting Jack’s positive liberty might tax its citizens in order to buy Jack the car he couldn’t otherwise afford. Or it might use that revenue to pay for the medical care Jack needs to get back on his feet so he can travel. A positive liberty focused state would take active steps to assure Jack isn’t just free to pursue his desires, but also has the resources to attain them.​

To close, I'll simply point out that for all the recrimination about liberals, Democrats, being socialists, the fact is that socialists and Marxists do not distinguish between negative and positive liberty. Recall what I said about stupid comments/statements. The instant I see a self-professed conservative, in a discussion that boils down to differences over ideas of positive and negative liberty, equate liberalism with socialism/Marxism, I know immediately they don't know what they are talking about because people in those two camps don't distinguish as Democrats, Republicans, Anarchists and Libertarians do.

Summary of Hazelwood:

US Supreme Court decisions define the scope of the First Amendment in public school settings. Public schools must have a valid basis to limit free speech rights, and can't act on an undifferentiated fear or apprehension. Schools can:

• Limit speech based on a reasonable expectation that it will cause a material and substantial disruption of school activities or invade the rights of others
• Prohibit obscene or vulgar language

Schools can also limit speech if it's in the form of a threat. Not just any expression is a threat, though. Threats must:

• Be perceived as a threat by others
• Be clear and convincing, causing others to believe it will be carried out
• Cause other students to fear for their safety

Your first response to the point on shutting down opponents views, your opponents views are stupid. You can't spin your way out of that

As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views

Assuming that is true - and as we are talking about young conservatives, I shall take it to be so - there is a very fine reason for it. It is almost certainly an effort to inculcate those young geysers of sophistry with the notion that it’s better they keep mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt. It is a school, after all.

Well, the fact is that some of them are, and the ones that are don't need to be heard outside of an explicitly, rather than tangentially, didactic setting.

Yes, your statement was certainly patronizing. When someone other than leftists speak, you want it to not be "stupid." Which of course is not possible since we've already established they aren't a liberal. You know, the inherent truth of liberalism and all

I assure you that what I want in terms of soundness in the ideas others express has no ideological, temporal or topical limits.

Not ideological? You're a complete and utter Democrat bitch. What the fuck are you talking about?

 

[hazlnut]

It's sad that the bastions of anti-free speech hate are schools.

- The faculty and students of "liberal" universities melt down when anyone not hard left is going to speak at commencement or anything else and they shout down anyone who disagrees with them on campus. And administrators are supporting them.

- As any parent of non-liberal teenagers knows, our children are berated into silence on their views while they are endlessly subjected to leftist ideology ... from the teachers. Teachers routinely punish our kids with poor grades for even suggesting non-liberal ideas in their work.

- You can be pro-Muslim or other religions and speak to it, but if you're Christian or Jewish then STFU about your views, no one wants to hear it. By no one I mean the leftists.

Wasn't education where we were supposed to be able to express and explore all thought? So where are you, leftists? Why are you not only not being outraged at the limit of speech, but you cheer it on? Don't tell me you lied? Really, don't, you don't have to.

And why am I paying for this? It's no wonder the left grow up to throttle free speech, it's what you teach your children. And you wonder why Trump won ...

Having a meltdown is free speech, you idiot.

Students protesting is free speech.

The first amendment protections don't protect you from your own stupidity and the backlash from smarter people.

LIke me.