Academic Freedom Hypocrisy
The USC College Republicans sponsored (with the help of Campus Security) an ugly little bit of hypocrisy last night. David Horowitz, the right wing thug who runs the infamous academic blacklist (above) called Discover the Networks at the Horowitz “Freedom” Center, gave a speech to the Republican’s on campus. Needless to say, the hall was not filled, but for some reason, campus security kept quite a few students who didn’t agree with Horowitz out of the hall. The ones who did get in, were thrown out once they began their silent protest.
Heather Larabee, the assistant dean of students and director of Campus Activities said students were removed because they had disrupted the event. “They were blocking the views of people behind them, so that’s why they were asked to leave. Had they stood up silently and in the back rows, Horowitz would have been able to see them and that would have been fine,” she said.
Horowitz of course has an Alice in Wonderland view of all of this, claiming his academic freedom is being impinged because a few students stood up to protest his hate speech.
Horowitz said the groups protesting the College Republicans’ event and attempting to obstruct the speaker they invited should be put on probation for “a heinous assault on USC students. The administration itself is allowing this fascist attempt at free speech … to defile College Republicans,” he said, calling the protestors “lunatics the university refuses to discipline.”
Horowitz’s Discover the Network site has already put several USC professors including Annenberg’s Robert Scheer on his blacklist. The handy tool provided above allows College Conservatives to submit their own professors as candidates for the blacklist, which Horowitz promises to “research, compile and add to our resource.” The professors would then join other blacklisted “radicals” such as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, religion scholar Karen Armstrong, University of Michigan Middle East scholar Juan Cole and a list of 500 others.
The very notion that the USC administration would cooperate with Horowitz’s Brownshirt tactics and assertions is an embarrassment.
As Tim Wise said, “there are plenty of assholes on both the right and left of the political spectrum, and David Horowitz has the distinction of having been both in the course of one lifetime”
As Tim Wise said, “there are plenty of assholes on both the right and left of the political spectrum, and David Horowitz has the distinction of having been both in the course of one lifetime”
Anybody want to pick up the task of creating a place to log and track all the Horowitzes of the world? Maybe categories and a points system for intellectual dishonesty, academic fraud, getting caught bent over in a men’s room, fucking another woman while your wife is dying of cancer while shouting “Family Values!,” all that stuff? Or is there a site already?
It’s hard for liberals and progressives to play hardball. We tend so strongly to tolerance and forgiveness and all that. Because we are so various, so beautiful and so new, we don’t have a neat set of litmus-test, hot button, flag-waving “things” that form a rallying point and help activate that “enemy” response. But that kind of makes us resemble the “boy in the bubble,” with no immune system to react to the pathogens that swirl around us.
Maybe having a convenient list capturing the names, ranks and depravities of the other type of people would draw a little attention to the hypocrisy and over time change the narrative’s vector? Wonder if maybe some of the Horowitzes would even court inclusion and add substantiation, as proof of their “conservative” bone-the-Fidos?
Anybody want to pick up the task of creating a place to log and track all the Horowitzes of the world? Maybe categories and a points system for intellectual dishonesty, academic fraud, getting caught bent over in a men’s room, fucking another woman while your wife is dying of cancer while shouting “Family Values!,” all that stuff? Or is there a site already?
It’s hard for liberals and progressives to play hardball. We tend so strongly to tolerance and forgiveness and all that. Because we are so various, so beautiful and so new, we don’t have a neat set of litmus-test, hot button, flag-waving “things” that form a rallying point and help activate that “enemy” response. But that kind of makes us resemble the “boy in the bubble,” with no immune system to react to the pathogens that swirl around us.
Maybe having a convenient list capturing the names, ranks and depravities of the other type of people would draw a little attention to the hypocrisy and over time change the narrative’s vector? Wonder if maybe some of the Horowitzes would even court inclusion and add substantiation, as proof of their “conservative” bone-the-Fidos?
Ironic that the party who says they represent ‘American Values’ are usually the first ones to try and take away any of those values from someone they disagree with.
Ironic that the party who says they represent ‘American Values’ are usually the first ones to try and take away any of those values from someone they disagree with.
One particular favorite is Newt (a spotted, slimy amhibian) “Fucking another woman while my wife has cancer is a Family Value” Gingrich, who is back in the saddle again.
Breast-beating and chest-thumping like this is one of the ways that what we call “fascists” rise to power. That’s helped by several of the apparently hard-wired knots of neurons in way too many human brains, that will just thrive on cognitive dissonance and hatred of “the other.”
Keep your weapons clean, your clips full and always be ready.
One particular favorite is Newt (a spotted, slimy amhibian) “Fucking another woman while my wife has cancer is a Family Value” Gingrich, who is back in the saddle again.
Breast-beating and chest-thumping like this is one of the ways that what we call “fascists” rise to power. That’s helped by several of the apparently hard-wired knots of neurons in way too many human brains, that will just thrive on cognitive dissonance and hatred of “the other.”
Keep your weapons clean, your clips full and always be ready.
good advice.
good advice.
I like Bob Scheer. If he could just get over that last hump of demonizing the market pricing system, he’d be a full-blown classical liberal.
I like Bob Scheer. If he could just get over that last hump of demonizing the market pricing system, he’d be a full-blown classical liberal.
OT, I think. Or maybe not.
This is a link to a lecture given tonight by the main writer & producer of an Australian satirical and frequently controversial TV program.
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2009/11/07/2735643.htm?site=sydney
The guts of it is an argument about true audiences, tolerance, and manufactured outrage by the offenderati – I hope you find it interesting.
The show is called “The Chaser’s War on Everything”, the speaker is Julian Morrow.
I guess there is a link – this is manufactured outrage using techniques developed by the Stasi (and some crypto-religious institutions) and espoused by shock-jocks.
OT, I think. Or maybe not.
This is a link to a lecture given tonight by the main writer & producer of an Australian satirical and frequently controversial TV program.
http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2009/11/07/2735643.htm?site=sydney
The guts of it is an argument about true audiences, tolerance, and manufactured outrage by the offenderati – I hope you find it interesting.
The show is called “The Chaser’s War on Everything”, the speaker is Julian Morrow.
I guess there is a link – this is manufactured outrage using techniques developed by the Stasi (and some crypto-religious institutions) and espoused by shock-jocks.
And here on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVsF9a-PcMA
And here on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVsF9a-PcMA
And here on Youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVsF9a-PcMA
I love Jon’s tags for this post: “Censorship, Education, Journalism, Polititics”. These are a few of my favorite things!
Horowitz is an obnoxious person, with a strange sense of fairness. Concerning the obnoxiousness, it’s really creepy that he’s running this high-tech cultural revolution in which he incites students to rat out their teachers (as though the latter deserved the ratting).
With regard to his queer sense of fairness, it seems that he’s quite too far in his quest to demonstrate that the American professoriat now is, for the most part, in lockstep with an academic orthodoxy born of Vietnam and Watergate. My point is, so what?
While I do think that student hecklers who attempt to stifle guest speakers probably ought to be tased, still I’d take greater pleasure in the spectacle of Horowitz’s tasing. Thing is, he’s mean.
I love Jon’s tags for this post: “Censorship, Education, Journalism, Polititics”. These are a few of my favorite things!
Horowitz is an obnoxious person, with a strange sense of fairness. Concerning the obnoxiousness, it’s really creepy that he’s running this high-tech cultural revolution in which he incites students to rat out their teachers (as though the latter deserved the ratting).
With regard to his queer sense of fairness, it seems that he’s quite too far in his quest to demonstrate that the American professoriat now is, for the most part, in lockstep with an academic orthodoxy born of Vietnam and Watergate. My point is, so what?
While I do think that student hecklers who attempt to stifle guest speakers probably ought to be tased, still I’d take greater pleasure in the spectacle of Horowitz’s tasing. Thing is, he’s mean.
I love Jon’s tags for this post: “Censorship, Education, Journalism, Polititics”. These are a few of my favorite things!
Horowitz is an obnoxious person, with a strange sense of fairness. Concerning the obnoxiousness, it’s really creepy that he’s running this high-tech cultural revolution in which he incites students to rat out their teachers (as though the latter deserved the ratting).
With regard to his queer sense of fairness, it seems that he’s quite too far in his quest to demonstrate that the American professoriat now is, for the most part, in lockstep with an academic orthodoxy born of Vietnam and Watergate. My point is, so what?
While I do think that student hecklers who attempt to stifle guest speakers probably ought to be tased, still I’d take greater pleasure in the spectacle of Horowitz’s tasing. Thing is, he’s mean.
So was Roy Cohn, and Richard Milhous Nixon. Most lefties are too soft to be mean. As to “So what?” First, I doubt there’s any kind of “Left-Liberal Evil Academic Orthodoxy,” any more than there’s a “Left-Liberal Bias To The Media.” Both are Big Lie rhetoric from the lizard brains. And second, you know where that kind of enemy-listing leads, so it does matter.
Re hecklers, there’s these so-fraudulently-labeled “Town Hall Meetings.” I’ve been to a few real actual participatory democracy town hall meetings in various place over the years, and while there’s occasional fisticuffs both physical and verbal, especially where autocrats rule from the dais, the new made-for-sound-bite “town hall” thing has none of the civilizing advantages of small-town life, where you have to see the other folks in church and at the market and on the street. I see where some social scientist is positing that “social networking” is filling the hole left by urbanification and secular selfishness that passes for culture and economy. And the kind of tasing I’d like to see Horowitz and other breeders of self-promoting, self-advantaging social cancer get is the kind the Emperor dishes out in the “Star Trek” series.
So was Roy Cohn, and Richard Milhous Nixon. Most lefties are too soft to be mean. As to “So what?” First, I doubt there’s any kind of “Left-Liberal Evil Academic Orthodoxy,” any more than there’s a “Left-Liberal Bias To The Media.” Both are Big Lie rhetoric from the lizard brains. And second, you know where that kind of enemy-listing leads, so it does matter.
Re hecklers, there’s these so-fraudulently-labeled “Town Hall Meetings.” I’ve been to a few real actual participatory democracy town hall meetings in various place over the years, and while there’s occasional fisticuffs both physical and verbal, especially where autocrats rule from the dais, the new made-for-sound-bite “town hall” thing has none of the civilizing advantages of small-town life, where you have to see the other folks in church and at the market and on the street. I see where some social scientist is positing that “social networking” is filling the hole left by urbanification and secular selfishness that passes for culture and economy. And the kind of tasing I’d like to see Horowitz and other breeders of self-promoting, self-advantaging social cancer get is the kind the Emperor dishes out in the “Star Trek” series.
So was Roy Cohn, and Richard Milhous Nixon. Most lefties are too soft to be mean. As to “So what?” First, I doubt there’s any kind of “Left-Liberal Evil Academic Orthodoxy,” any more than there’s a “Left-Liberal Bias To The Media.” Both are Big Lie rhetoric from the lizard brains. And second, you know where that kind of enemy-listing leads, so it does matter.
Re hecklers, there’s these so-fraudulently-labeled “Town Hall Meetings.” I’ve been to a few real actual participatory democracy town hall meetings in various place over the years, and while there’s occasional fisticuffs both physical and verbal, especially where autocrats rule from the dais, the new made-for-sound-bite “town hall” thing has none of the civilizing advantages of small-town life, where you have to see the other folks in church and at the market and on the street. I see where some social scientist is positing that “social networking” is filling the hole left by urbanification and secular selfishness that passes for culture and economy. And the kind of tasing I’d like to see Horowitz and other breeders of self-promoting, self-advantaging social cancer get is the kind the Emperor dishes out in the “Star Trek” series.
Most lefties aren’t mean? Hmmm. Ever had a teamster rep come to your set? More broadly, have you been to NYC or talked to people that work in film and tv?
Mean jerks are all across the spectrum… Except maybe real yogis and bundhists. They seem to have some personal baggage together.
Most lefties aren’t mean? Hmmm. Ever had a teamster rep come to your set? More broadly, have you been to NYC or talked to people that work in film and tv?
Mean jerks are all across the spectrum… Except maybe real yogis and bundhists. They seem to have some personal baggage together.
Most lefties aren’t mean? Hmmm. Ever had a teamster rep come to your set? More broadly, have you been to NYC or talked to people that work in film and tv?
Mean jerks are all across the spectrum… Except maybe real yogis and bundhists. They seem to have some personal baggage together.
Only way a teamsters rep is a “leftie” is if that’s the hand he writes and wipes with. Unless in your world anyone on the Labor side is ipso facto a”leftist.” And you think the residents of NYC, where my daughter and grandchildren live in one of the boroughs, and formerly up at 126th and St. Nicholas, and the Big Media Moguls, are “lefties?” Again, only if you do the Humpty-Dumpty thing and insist that words mean exactly what you want them to mean, nothing more and nothing less.
You may see a path to personal power and success through being in the possible vanguard of something that sounds to me, living near Clearwater, FL, a lot like Scientology’s dogma. You have your scriptures, I have mine. I’m just starting on one that seems to include a lot of clues to achieving the synthesis that the dialectic (or Interregnum, as it were) is obviously ready for and demanding: “The Great Derangement, etc., etc.,” by one Matt Taibbi. I for one am hoping to spend a lot more time actually face-to-face with people, hopefully not just to do the town-meeting grandstanding and single-interest politicking that Taibbi so aptly observes and describes, but to actually find some workable ways to Beat the System (into the ground.) Libertarianism is about as likely a rallying point and Founding Text for humans who hope for something better than Planet of The Apes or Mad Max or Soylent Green in our species’ future, as following Mitt Romney or Ted Hagee into Hell is likely to extend our species’ stay on Planet Earth.
Only way a teamsters rep is a “leftie” is if that’s the hand he writes and wipes with. Unless in your world anyone on the Labor side is ipso facto a”leftist.” And you think the residents of NYC, where my daughter and grandchildren live in one of the boroughs, and formerly up at 126th and St. Nicholas, and the Big Media Moguls, are “lefties?” Again, only if you do the Humpty-Dumpty thing and insist that words mean exactly what you want them to mean, nothing more and nothing less.
You may see a path to personal power and success through being in the possible vanguard of something that sounds to me, living near Clearwater, FL, a lot like Scientology’s dogma. You have your scriptures, I have mine. I’m just starting on one that seems to include a lot of clues to achieving the synthesis that the dialectic (or Interregnum, as it were) is obviously ready for and demanding: “The Great Derangement, etc., etc.,” by one Matt Taibbi. I for one am hoping to spend a lot more time actually face-to-face with people, hopefully not just to do the town-meeting grandstanding and single-interest politicking that Taibbi so aptly observes and describes, but to actually find some workable ways to Beat the System (into the ground.) Libertarianism is about as likely a rallying point and Founding Text for humans who hope for something better than Planet of The Apes or Mad Max or Soylent Green in our species’ future, as following Mitt Romney or Ted Hagee into Hell is likely to extend our species’ stay on Planet Earth.
Only way a teamsters rep is a “leftie” is if that’s the hand he writes and wipes with. Unless in your world anyone on the Labor side is ipso facto a”leftist.” And you think the residents of NYC, where my daughter and grandchildren live in one of the boroughs, and formerly up at 126th and St. Nicholas, and the Big Media Moguls, are “lefties?” Again, only if you do the Humpty-Dumpty thing and insist that words mean exactly what you want them to mean, nothing more and nothing less.
You may see a path to personal power and success through being in the possible vanguard of something that sounds to me, living near Clearwater, FL, a lot like Scientology’s dogma. You have your scriptures, I have mine. I’m just starting on one that seems to include a lot of clues to achieving the synthesis that the dialectic (or Interregnum, as it were) is obviously ready for and demanding: “The Great Derangement, etc., etc.,” by one Matt Taibbi. I for one am hoping to spend a lot more time actually face-to-face with people, hopefully not just to do the town-meeting grandstanding and single-interest politicking that Taibbi so aptly observes and describes, but to actually find some workable ways to Beat the System (into the ground.) Libertarianism is about as likely a rallying point and Founding Text for humans who hope for something better than Planet of The Apes or Mad Max or Soylent Green in our species’ future, as following Mitt Romney or Ted Hagee into Hell is likely to extend our species’ stay on Planet Earth.
Good point on the teamsters not being “leftists”. Big labor may be aligned with the political left, but it’s true that the philosophical left is a different thing.
But, here’s the funny thing JTMcPhee. You’re mean to me in this forum all the time. This response is mean. I’m a big boy. I can take it. I welcome it even, as your approach sharpens my thinking (when it’s not bewildering it). But you attack my thing and charicature it in ways that are beyond the scope of anything I’ve posted here on a routine basis.
So, yes, leftists, tried and true, can indeed be mean, just like right-wingers. And red-staters can (and many in fact do) give more to charity than the limo lefties of your depictions.
Personally, though, I’m not a fan of this leftie-rightie-fightie. Too many of my good friends who I love and care about are progressives. Generalizations about people of this sort aren’t productive. Neither are your generalized attacks on what you paint to be my ideology.
Best of all, there’s this Gem:
“Libertarianism is about as likely a rallying point and Founding Text for humans who hope for something better than Planet of The Apes or Mad Max or Soylent Green in our species’ future, as following Mitt Romney or Ted Hagee into Hell is likely to extend our species’ stay on Planet Earth.”
The founding text of the United States of America and its authors are pretty much live free or die libertarian ideologues. For all our problems, that libertarian foundation of America has proven to be the most successful rallying point and Founding text in all of human history. We are the longest standing constitutional republic built on the libertarian principles of John Locke, Adam Smith and the notion of natural rights.
If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it. So far, though, it’s all beautifully poetic fluff.
I welcome more from you JTM. I’m curious, but so far disappointed.
Good point on the teamsters not being “leftists”. Big labor may be aligned with the political left, but it’s true that the philosophical left is a different thing.
But, here’s the funny thing JTMcPhee. You’re mean to me in this forum all the time. This response is mean. I’m a big boy. I can take it. I welcome it even, as your approach sharpens my thinking (when it’s not bewildering it). But you attack my thing and charicature it in ways that are beyond the scope of anything I’ve posted here on a routine basis.
So, yes, leftists, tried and true, can indeed be mean, just like right-wingers. And red-staters can (and many in fact do) give more to charity than the limo lefties of your depictions.
Personally, though, I’m not a fan of this leftie-rightie-fightie. Too many of my good friends who I love and care about are progressives. Generalizations about people of this sort aren’t productive. Neither are your generalized attacks on what you paint to be my ideology.
Best of all, there’s this Gem:
“Libertarianism is about as likely a rallying point and Founding Text for humans who hope for something better than Planet of The Apes or Mad Max or Soylent Green in our species’ future, as following Mitt Romney or Ted Hagee into Hell is likely to extend our species’ stay on Planet Earth.”
The founding text of the United States of America and its authors are pretty much live free or die libertarian ideologues. For all our problems, that libertarian foundation of America has proven to be the most successful rallying point and Founding text in all of human history. We are the longest standing constitutional republic built on the libertarian principles of John Locke, Adam Smith and the notion of natural rights.
If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it. So far, though, it’s all beautifully poetic fluff.
I welcome more from you JTM. I’m curious, but so far disappointed.
Good point on the teamsters not being “leftists”. Big labor may be aligned with the political left, but it’s true that the philosophical left is a different thing.
But, here’s the funny thing JTMcPhee. You’re mean to me in this forum all the time. This response is mean. I’m a big boy. I can take it. I welcome it even, as your approach sharpens my thinking (when it’s not bewildering it). But you attack my thing and charicature it in ways that are beyond the scope of anything I’ve posted here on a routine basis.
So, yes, leftists, tried and true, can indeed be mean, just like right-wingers. And red-staters can (and many in fact do) give more to charity than the limo lefties of your depictions.
Personally, though, I’m not a fan of this leftie-rightie-fightie. Too many of my good friends who I love and care about are progressives. Generalizations about people of this sort aren’t productive. Neither are your generalized attacks on what you paint to be my ideology.
Best of all, there’s this Gem:
“Libertarianism is about as likely a rallying point and Founding Text for humans who hope for something better than Planet of The Apes or Mad Max or Soylent Green in our species’ future, as following Mitt Romney or Ted Hagee into Hell is likely to extend our species’ stay on Planet Earth.”
The founding text of the United States of America and its authors are pretty much live free or die libertarian ideologues. For all our problems, that libertarian foundation of America has proven to be the most successful rallying point and Founding text in all of human history. We are the longest standing constitutional republic built on the libertarian principles of John Locke, Adam Smith and the notion of natural rights.
If you’ve got a better idea, I’d love to hear it. So far, though, it’s all beautifully poetic fluff.
I welcome more from you JTM. I’m curious, but so far disappointed.
btw…
“You may see a path to personal power and success through being in the possible vanguard of something that sounds to me, living near Clearwater, FL, a lot like Scientology’s dogma.”
Yeah, that’s not mean at all.
I have no interest in power. I seek success through honest hard work, dedication to the golden rule and a belief that when you follow your passions and treat people with dignity, good things happen.
In the end, so long as my family is happy and healthy and I get to hug and kiss them regularly, I have and will always have success in my life.
Now man up, stop seeking to marginalize my ideas through flowery obfuscation and smear my intentions with statements like the abov, and come back at me with some alternative models for how we humans can coordinate in this broader social order.
btw…
“You may see a path to personal power and success through being in the possible vanguard of something that sounds to me, living near Clearwater, FL, a lot like Scientology’s dogma.”
Yeah, that’s not mean at all.
I have no interest in power. I seek success through honest hard work, dedication to the golden rule and a belief that when you follow your passions and treat people with dignity, good things happen.
In the end, so long as my family is happy and healthy and I get to hug and kiss them regularly, I have and will always have success in my life.
Now man up, stop seeking to marginalize my ideas through flowery obfuscation and smear my intentions with statements like the abov, and come back at me with some alternative models for how we humans can coordinate in this broader social order.
btw…
“You may see a path to personal power and success through being in the possible vanguard of something that sounds to me, living near Clearwater, FL, a lot like Scientology’s dogma.”
Yeah, that’s not mean at all.
I have no interest in power. I seek success through honest hard work, dedication to the golden rule and a belief that when you follow your passions and treat people with dignity, good things happen.
In the end, so long as my family is happy and healthy and I get to hug and kiss them regularly, I have and will always have success in my life.
Now man up, stop seeking to marginalize my ideas through flowery obfuscation and smear my intentions with statements like the abov, and come back at me with some alternative models for how we humans can coordinate in this broader social order.