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  1. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Sidelining God–> The “New Deal”–>Benjamin Spock/Boomers as Parents –>Helicopter-Lawnmower parents–>Angry Snowflakes…

    • #1
  2. ST Member
    ST
    @

    All of their lives they’ve heard nothing but how intolerable “hate speech” is and no one on the Right pushing back against this nonsense.  No wonder that in their little snowflake hearts no speech is better than hate speech.

    • #2
  3. Mike LaRoche Inactive
    Mike LaRoche
    @MikeLaRoche

    Time for the snowflakes to melt.

    • #3
  4. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):
    Time for the snowflakes to melt.

    When they meltdown, MLR, they become like volcanic ash, don’t they?  Deprogramming, like from those Seventies cults, for instructors, too.

    • #4
  5. David H Dennis Coolidge
    David H Dennis
    @DavidDennis

    “doesn’t reinforce their happiness?”

    That seems like a curious turn of phrase.  Do you think that if their beliefs were proved wrong, it would make them desperately unhappy, in the same way as though, say, their girlfriend left them, or they ran out of money, or whatever?

    What is it about these beliefs that gives them the power to make people miserable?

    If someone proved that my conservative beliefs were wrong, well, I still have my photography :).  That’s a lot different emotionally than, say, leaving my girlfriend or losing all my money and having to work for a living, or being homeless, etc.  Those are things that would leave me in emotional turmoil for sure.  Although I believe passionately in conservative politics, I don’t think that if I was given valid arguments against them, I would suffer from genuine, punch in the stomach-grade emotional turmoil.

     

    • #5
  6. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    ST (View Comment):
    no one on the Right pushing back against this nonsense.

    Conservatives seem to have hidden behind their ‘minority’ status – and trusted in the power of the ideas themselves – to attract others, for too long…Can’t hide and be passive anymore. The “Silent Majority’s” heirs need to speak. (Or, have we all turned “purple”?)  Serious question…

    • #6
  7. Judithann Campbell Member
    Judithann Campbell
    @

    Nanda Panjandrum (View Comment):

    ST (View Comment):
    no one on the Right pushing back against this nonsense.

    Conservatives seem to have hidden behind their ‘minority’ status – and trusted in the power of the ideas themselves – to attract others, for too long…Can’t hide and be passive anymore. The “Silent Majority’s” heirs need to speak. (Or, have we all turned “purple”?) Serious question…

    I was born and raised in Massachusetts, and educated by liberal nuns who used to instruct us on which democrats we should instruct our parents to vote for. Bless them, when it came to politics they were dingbats, but even they understood the principle of free speech. We were 7 or 8? 8 or 9? when the subjects of things like racism and th e Ku Klux Clan came up; as children, we questioned why racist people were allowed to spew racism. The nuns patiently explained to us how crucial free speech is, and how if free speech isn’t protected for everyone, then no one is safe. And as children, when it was explained to us, we understood.

    Of course, these same nuns used to tape our mouths shut when we talked out of order, and they would tie our shoelaces together if we didn’t stay put during class :) Liberalism isn’t what it used to be.

    • #7
  8. Mountie Coolidge
    Mountie
    @Mountie

    It’s really not hard to understand.

     
    Jonah once said “The right thinks the left if wrong, the left thinks the right is evil”. And that pretty much sums it up, because you don’t compromise with evil, you don’t give it space to grow, you don’t apply ethics to its eradication, it’s an any-means-to-the-end war. We are talking about evil after all.

     
    Picture the poor snowflake: their grandparents fought the Nazi’s, their parents marched against segregation and VietNam (or at least they’ll say they did even if they really only spent their time stoned out), and the snowflake…… nothing to fight. That is until their progressive overlords enlighten them to the evil-women-hating-gay-baiting-Wall-Street-loving-Christian-bigot Republicans. Well low and behold, now the snowflakes have a real true enemy to take to the streets against. A real V for Vendetta crusade. Something to tell the next generation about.

     
    These people are Fascist. Plain and simple. I no longer think they are wrong. I now believe they are evil.

    • #8
  9. civil westman Inactive
    civil westman
    @user_646399

    Free opposing speech is more akin to attacking their religion. They have no other source of meaning in life than the struggle to establish a progressive utopia here on Earth. Note the juvenile zeal (tantrums), the rubrics, saints and devils, the death penalty for apostates. Remind you of any other totalitarian worldview?

    • #9
  10. Melissa Praemonitus Member
    Melissa Praemonitus
    @6foot2inhighheels

    David H Dennis (View Comment):
    “doesn’t reinforce their happiness?”

    That seems like a curious turn of phrase. Do you think that if their beliefs were proved wrong, it would make them desperately unhappy, in the same way as though, say, their girlfriend left them, or they ran out of money, or whatever?

    What is it about these beliefs that gives them the power to make people miserable?

    If someone proved that my conservative beliefs were wrong, well, I still have my photography :). That’s a lot different emotionally than, say, leaving my girlfriend or losing all my money and having to work for a living, or being homeless, etc. Those are things that would leave me in emotional turmoil for sure. Although I believe passionately in conservative politics, I don’t think that if I was given valid arguments against them, I would suffer from genuine, punch in the stomach-grade emotional turmoil.

    I’ve increasingly observed a trendy belief that “happiness” is inborn, and must be nurtured and protected by the authorities, not pursued in the ever-challenging course of life.  Therefore, every verbal slight becomes an occasion to chip away at someone’s natural joy and turn them into a victim.  We have mansplaining, cultural appropriation, white privilege, and an increasing number of words we are not allowed to say, even in private, all in the service of ensuring no one’s feelings are hurt.

    I like having a conversation, so I almost always post very short pieces here on Ricochet as prompts.  For me, it’s much more fun to start down a meandering path together than stake out the entire map and defy anyone to challenge the plan.  But then, I’m not a know-it-all liberal.

    • #10
  11. Melissa Praemonitus Member
    Melissa Praemonitus
    @6foot2inhighheels

    Nanda Panjandrum (View Comment):
    Sidelining God–> The “New Deal”–>Benjamin Spock/Boomers as Parents –>Helicopter-Lawnmower parents–>Angry Snowflakes…

    Great points as always Nanda.  It starts with sidelining God of course; when there is no higher authority than the government, our path to tyranny is short and painful.

    • #11
  12. Melissa Praemonitus Member
    Melissa Praemonitus
    @6foot2inhighheels

    ST (View Comment):
    All of their lives they’ve heard nothing but how intolerable “hate speech” is and no one on the Right pushing back against this nonsense. No wonder that in their little snowflake hearts no speech is better than hate speech.

    I have occasion to listen to a lot of 20-somethings these days, and it’s shocking how many of them believe that sticks and stones will break your bones, but words can leave everlasting painful scars that ruin your life.

    • #12
  13. Melissa Praemonitus Member
    Melissa Praemonitus
    @6foot2inhighheels

    Mike LaRoche (View Comment):
    Time for the snowflakes to melt.

    Nanda Panjandrum (View Comment):

    ST (View Comment):
    no one on the Right pushing back against this nonsense.

    Conservatives seem to have hidden behind their ‘minority’ status – and trusted in the power of the ideas themselves – to attract others, for too long…Can’t hide and be passive anymore. The “Silent Majority’s” heirs need to speak. (Or, have we all turned “purple”?) Serious question…

    You’ve identified something really important, Nanda.  People eventually do take action when pushed too far, but by then, it’s too late. We now exist in a reality where we fully expect violence at a Ben Shapiro or Ann Coulter speech on a publicly funded campus venue. So most conservatives stay home and hope for the best.

    • #13
  14. Melissa Praemonitus Member
    Melissa Praemonitus
    @6foot2inhighheels

    Judithann Campbell (View Comment):

    Nanda Panjandrum (View Comment):

    ST (View Comment):
    no one on the Right pushing back against this nonsense.

    Conservatives seem to have hidden behind their ‘minority’ status – and trusted in the power of the ideas themselves – to attract others, for too long…Can’t hide and be passive anymore. The “Silent Majority’s” heirs need to speak. (Or, have we all turned “purple”?) Serious question…

    I was born and raised in Massachusetts, and educated by liberal nuns who used to instruct us on which democrats we should instruct our parents to vote for. Bless them, when it came to politics they were dingbats, but even they understood the principle of free speech. We were 7 or 8? 8 or 9? when the subjects of things like racism and th e Ku Klux Clan came up; as children, we questioned why racist people were allowed to spew racism. The nuns patiently explained to us how crucial free speech is, and how if free speech isn’t protected for everyone, then no one is safe. And as children, when it was explained to us, we understood.

    Of course, these same nuns used to tape our mouths shut when we talked out of order, and they would tie our shoelaces together if we didn’t stay put during class ? Liberalism isn’t what it used to be.

    It’s been years since I’ve heard the phrase, “You can say what you want; it’s a free country.”  Perhaps because I was an opinionated little brat, I heard it constantly while growing up.

    • #14
  15. ST Member
    ST
    @

    Melissa Praemonitus (View Comment):
    It’s been years since I’ve heard the phrase, “You can say what you want; it’s a free country.”

    WOW!  So true.  Used to hear that a lot, usually shortened to, “It’s a free country.”  You just reminded me that I have not heard that in ages.

    As Pres. Trump might say /Tweet:  Sad.

    • #15
  16. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Melissa Praemonitus (View Comment):
    It’s been years since I’ve heard the phrase, “You can say what you want; it’s a free country.

    That’s because it’s not a particularly free country anymore.  “Three Felonies a Day.”

    • #16
  17. civil westman Inactive
    civil westman
    @user_646399

    Randy Webster (View Comment):

    Melissa Praemonitus (View Comment):
    It’s been years since I’ve heard the phrase, “You can say what you want; it’s a free country.

    That’s because it’s not a particularly free country anymore. “Three Felonies a Day.”

    This is a sad (and frightening) truth. We don’t yet call them political prisoners, but we have them. It is not possible for anyone unfortunate enough to come to the attention of – and be disliked by – a prosecutor for political reasons, to escape prosecution for something. Ask Scooter Libby. Exception: if your name is Hillary Clinton.

    • #17
  18. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    David H Dennis (View Comment):
    “doesn’t reinforce their happiness?”

    That seems like a curious turn of phrase. Do you think that if their beliefs were proved wrong, it would make them desperately unhappy, in the same way as though, say, their girlfriend left them, or they ran out of money, or whatever?

    What is it about these beliefs that gives them the power to make people miserable?

    If someone proved that my conservative beliefs were wrong, well, I still have my photography :). That’s a lot different emotionally than, say, leaving my girlfriend or losing all my money and having to work for a living, or being homeless, etc. Those are things that would leave me in emotional turmoil for sure. Although I believe passionately in conservative politics, I don’t think that if I was given valid arguments against them, I would suffer from genuine, punch in the stomach-grade emotional turmoil.

    You’d be surprised, maybe, David. I certainly found giving up my progressive beliefs quite stomach-churning.

    There is a purely intellectual discomfort that comes from losing the sense that you have a reasonable grasp of reality.  If you realize you’ve been wrong about issue X for twenty years, and might therefore be wrong about a lot of other things too, oh and by the way, you can’t believe your former sources of information and institutions you unthinkingly trusted (Yale University, for example) aren’t reliable either…that’s confidence-crushing.

    More uncomfortable still is being disappointed in people that you’ve always loved and admired—to recognize their intellectual or moral blindness or (worse) cowardice. And it’s downright miserable to be rejected by them, even if you know they’re wrong.

     

    • #18
  19. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    You’d be surprised, maybe, David. I certainly found giving up my progressive beliefs quite stomach-churning.

    There is a purely intellectual discomfort that comes from losing the sense that you have a reasonable grasp of reality. If you realize you’ve been wrong about issue X for twenty years, and might therefore be wrong about a lot of other things too, oh and by the way, you can’t believe your former sources of information and institutions you unthinkingly trusted (Yale University, for example) aren’t reliable either…that’s confidence-crushing.

    More uncomfortable still is being disappointed in people that you’ve always loved and admired—to recognize their intellectual or moral blindness or (worse) cowardice. And it’s downright miserable to be rejected by them, even if you know they’re wrong.

    Prophecy and wisdom here…Let us be attentive. (Hello, Kate!)

    • #19
  20. Remodern America Inactive
    Remodern America
    @RemodernAmerica

    It may be after the Battle of Berkeley, and the latest maneuverings that Milo and Ann Coulter have announced, this situation may be building to a finalizing crescendo.

    • #20
  21. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    civil westman (View Comment):
    Free opposing speech is more akin to attacking their religion. They have no other source of meaning in life than the struggle to establish a progressive utopia here on Earth.

    Sebastian Haffner, who grew up in Germany between the wars, made some relevant points.  He said that when the political and economic situation stabilized, during the Stresemann chancellorship and:

    The last ten years were forgotten like a bad dream. The Day of Judgment was remote again, and there was no demand for saviors or revolutionaries…There was an ample measure of freedom, peace, and order, everywhere the most well-meaning liberal-mindedness, good wages, good food and a little political boredom. everyone was cordially invited to concentrate on their personal lives, to arrange their affairs according to their own taste and to find their own paths to happiness.

    …not everyone was happy about it:

    A generation of young Germans had become accustomed to having the entire content of their lives delivered gratis, so to speak, by the public sphere, all the raw material for their deeper emotions…Now that these deliveries suddently ceased, people were left helpless, impoverished, robbed, and disappointed. They had never learned how to live from within themselves, how to make an ordinary private life great, beautiful and worth while, how to enjoy it and make it interesting. So they regarded the end of political tension and the return of private liberty not as a gift, but as a deprivation. They were bored, their minds strayed to silly thoughts, and they began to sulk.

    To be precise (the occasion demands precision, because in my opinion it provides the key to the contemporary period of history): it was not the entire generation of young Germans. Not every single individual reacted in this fashion. There were some who learned during this period, belatedly and a little clumsily, as it were, how to live. they began to enjoy their own lives, weaned themselves from the cheap intoxication of the sports of war and revolution, and started to develop their own personalities. It was at this time that, invisibly and unnoticed, the Germans divided into those who later became Nazis and those who would remain non-Nazis.

    Link

     

    • #21
  22. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    David H Dennis (View Comment):
    Do you think that if their beliefs were proved wrong, it would make them desperately unhappy, in the same way as though, say, their girlfriend left them, or they ran out of money, or whatever?

    But for many of them, their believes can’t be proved wrong in any way that they will accept.  See Arthur Koestler on closed systems:

    A closed sysem has three peculiarities. Firstly, it claims to represent a truth of universal validity, capable of explaining all phenomena, and to have a cure for all that ails man. In the second place, it is a system which cannot be refuted by evidence, because all potentially damaging data are automatically processed and reinterpreted to make them fit the expected pattern. The processing is done by sophisticated methods of causistry, centered on axioms of great emotive power, and indifferent to the rules of common logic; it is a kind of Wonderland croquet, played with mobile hoops. In the third place, it is a system which invalidates criticism by shifting the argument to the subjective motivation of the critic, and deducing his motivation from the axioms of the system itself. The orthodox Freudian school in its early stages approximated a closed system; if you argued that for such and such reasons you doubted the existence of the so-called castration complex, the Freudian’s prompt answer was that your argument betrayed an unconscious resistance indicating that you ourself have a castration complex; you were caught in a vicious circle. Similarly, if you argued with a Stalinist that to make a pact with Hitler was not a nice thing to do he would explain that your bourgeois class-consciousness made you unable to understand the dialectics of history…In short, the closed system excludes the possibility of objective argument by two related proceedings: (a) facts are deprived of their value as evidence by scholastic processing; (b) objections are invalidated by shifting the argument to the personal motive behind the objection. This procedure is legitimate according to the closed system’s rules of the game which, however absurd they seem to the outsider, have a great coherence and inner consistency.

    The atmosphere inside the closed system is highly charged; it is an emoional hothouse…The trained, “closed-minded” theologian, psychoanalyst, or Marxist can at any time make mincemeat of his “open-minded” adversary and thus prove the superiority of his system to the world and to himself.

    “Progressivism” and closed systems

    • #22
  23. Concretevol Thatcher
    Concretevol
    @Concretevol

    I don’t know about “young people”.  Former dem presidential candidate and DNC head Howard Dean recently tweeted this:

    • #23
  24. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    It’s an example of the truism that every principle, taken to its most extreme point, turns into its exact opposite.  After all,  “You can’t say that!” is speech, too.

    We can guarantee everyone freedom OF speech, but if we do, we can’t guarantee everyone freedom FROM speech.  Same thing with freedom of religion.  And  in both instances, when people start demanding “freedom from” , then “freedom of” is doomed.

    • #24
  25. Ansonia Member
    Ansonia
    @Ansonia

    These students are younger than a lot of the old people here were at their age. They’re also less well informed. So, they’re easily manipulated by certain professors and administrators.

    • #25
  26. Bob Thompson Member
    Bob Thompson
    @BobThompson

    David H Dennis (View Comment):
    “doesn’t reinforce their happiness?”

    That seems like a curious turn of phrase

    I must agree. I have three children each of whom was taught that they are solely responsible for their happiness and not to try to place that responsibility on anyone else. I have never heard the subject raised by any of them except a couple of times to reiterate what they had been taught and they knew it to be true. I have seven grandchildren, four are young college age adults, and to all appearances they have learned that they are responsible for their own happiness. Of course, they are still young, but I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.

    I think we are dealing here with at least two other factors that are not to be attributed to the young people themselves. I’ve seen several very mature college level administrators or academics defend these attacks on free speech, examples are at Middlebury College, Wellesley College, Claremont Colleges, and UC Berkeley. The second thing is that it appears there may be money behind some of these violent demonstrations.

    This definitely is the point where those who care about true free speech need to get front and center to assist speakers like Ann Coulter, Charles Murray, Condi Rice, and anyone else being systematically attacked as ‘bigoted’ and being denied their free speech right, particularly at public institutions. When there is violence, laws must be enforced by local authorities and the DoJ needs to insure that the civil rights of all Americans are protected.

    • #26
  27. Hypatia Member
    Hypatia
    @

    Where, where but here have Pride and Truth

    That long to give themselves for wage

    To shake their wicked sides at Youth

    Restraining reckless Middle Age!”

     

    –Yeats, ” On Hearing that the Students at our New University Have Joined the Agitation  Against Immoral Literature”

    • #27
  28. Percival Thatcher
    Percival
    @Percival

    Remodern America (View Comment):
    It may be after the Battle of Berkeley, and the latest maneuverings that Milo and Ann Coulter have announced, this situation may be building to a finalizing crescendo.

    Could be that even the professional communicators of a progressive bent have glimpsed a future in which they themselves may be denounced for being insufficiently “correct.” The travails of Erika Christakis ought to give them pause.

    • #28
  29. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Hypatia (View Comment):
    After all, “You can’t say that!” is speech, too.

    That’s true.  But hitting me over the head to keep me from saying it isn’t.

    • #29
  30. Randy Webster Inactive
    Randy Webster
    @RandyWebster

    Percival (View Comment):

    Remodern America (View Comment):
    It may be after the Battle of Berkeley, and the latest maneuverings that Milo and Ann Coulter have announced, this situation may be building to a finalizing crescendo.

    Could be that even the professional communicators of a progressive bent have glimpsed a future in which they themselves may be denounced for being insufficiently “correct.” The travails of Erika Christakis ought to give them pause.

    She went from being a progressive to being a reactionary in the blink of an eye.

    • #30
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