The new Victorians

@lemon-lime said
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/victor-davis-hanson-progressives-free-expression-victorians

A half-century ago, progressives used to push limitless free expression, blasting conservatives for their allegedly blinkered traditionalism. They boasted of obliterating once-normal boundaries in art, music and literature to allow nudity, profanity, sexuality and anti-American boilerplate.

Now?

The left is Victorian — increasingly puritanical, regressive and hypersensitive. Even totalitarian censorship and book-burning have weirdly become part of their by-any-means-necessary methods.

University of California, Berkeley, professor Grace Lavery was so outraged by author Abigail Shrier’s latest book, “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters,” that she went well beyond the usual calls to ban the book. Lavery advocated burning Shrier’s book.

“I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier’s book and burn it on a pyre,” Lavery tweeted last month.

Did the self-appointed liberal watchdog the American Civil Liberties Union step in to defend free expression?

No. One ACLU official poured gas on the book-burning fire.

“Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on,” tweeted Chase Strangio, the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice.


Strangio later clarified that he was not speaking for the ACLU and said he deleted his tweet because "there were relentless calls to have me fired, which I found exhausting as I was navigating work and childcare."

Note all of these melodramatic humanitarian verbs such as “steal,” “burn” and “die.”

Cambridge student defends Jordan Peterson after university revokes fellowshipVideo
Staffers at the Canadian branch of Penguin Random House recently confronted management over the company’s publication of libertarian Jordan Peterson’s new book “Beyond Order,” a sequel to his earlier best-seller “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.”

What were their objections to the book? Peterson, who has criticized the notion of white privilege and contends that masculinity is under attack, was accused of “white supremacy,” “hate speech” and “transphobia.” These are simply our generation’s synonyms for their predecessors’ bogeyman labels “heretic,” “witch” and “communist.”

Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter are more refined in suppressing books, films, communications and ideas they don’t like — and don’t want others to like either.

Author and former New York Times reporter Alex Berenson self-published a series of pamphlets on Amazon that offer a dissenting view about the efficacy of forced coronavirus lockdowns. Suddenly, Amazon blocked his most recent installment — at least until public pressure forced the multibillion-dollar company to relent.

Larry Elder: Trump won his other campaign -- to destroy mainstream media's credibility
Sally Pipes: Officials ignore their own stay-at-home COVID-19 restrictions — it’s infuriating
Tucker Carlson: The Christmas lockdowns are here — but not for those who ordered them
Amazon did something similar to Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele, declining to stream his documentary “What Killed Michael Brown?” about the fatal 2014 shooting of Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, and race relations in America. Once again, public outrage forced the company to back down from what appears to be a systematic and ideologically driven effort to stop the dissemination of books and films that don’t advance the progressive/regressive cause.

Note the pattern here. Publishers and platforms are not arguing that these books and films are mediocre. After all, they had initially agreed to publish or disseminate all of them.

Their subsequent flips and flops arise from fundamentalist progressive pressure of the sort used by social media to de-platform and cancel unwelcome politics and ideology.

So the First Amendment of the once freest nation in the world is comatose. This time its enemies are not hooded Klansmen seeking to intimidate African Americans or right-wing conspiracy theorists rooting out supposed communists.

No, the culprits are progressives and leftist elites in publishing, the media, Silicon Valley, academia, entertainment and government. They so lack confidence in the logic and persuasiveness of their own arguments that in fear they increasingly try to ban whatever bothers them.

The classic “To Kill a Mockingbird” and other books about racial issues were banned from the curriculum in the Burbank (California) Unified School District last month.

The left did not just oppose the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; it sought to destroy his career and reputation through smears.

Professors at Stanford University hounded Hoover Institution fellow and public health expert Dr. Scott Atlas. His apparent crime was advising President Trump that lockdowns and quarantines might ultimately cause more damage than COVID-19 itself. Atlas resigned from his role as Trump’s coronavirus adviser earlier this week.

Efforts to censor, cancel, discredit or destroy the work of anyone with contrasting viewpoints are canonized by the wealthy, powerful left-wing elites and their institutions.

In Orwellian fashion, they have redefined being illiberal and vindictive as being woke, enlightened and progressive — and for the public good rather than their own interests.

How ironic that the kindred spirits of today’s progressives are not Socrates, Galileo and Harper Lee, but the Athenian mob, Joseph McCarthy and the Taliban.

Past and present, all of these zealots and character assassins cloaked their intolerance in the pretense that they were advancing truth — by destroying it.


https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/victor-davis-hanson-progressives-free-expression-victorians

@lemon-lime said
A half-century ago, progressives used to push limitless free expression, blasting conservatives for their allegedly blinkered traditionalism. They boasted of obliterating once-normal boundaries in art, music and literature to allow nudity, profanity, sexuality and anti-American boilerplate.

Now?

The left is Victorian — increasingly puritanical, regressive and hyperse ...[text shortened]... it.


https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/victor-davis-hanson-progressives-free-expression-victorians

Jesus, you're right; you can't read anywhere right wing views in the US.

Thanks for pointing this out although I'm sure the progressive book burners will soon have this thread deleted.

@lemon-lime said
The left is Victorian — increasingly puritanical, regressive and hypersensitive. Even totalitarian censorship and book-burning have weirdly become part of their by-any-means-necessary methods.

This is just code for "I want to use to the N word in public".

Every time conserves complain about "censorship" it's always because they want to say something offensive about another race, religion, women or LGBT members.

@lemon-lime said
A half-century ago, progressives used to push limitless free expression, blasting conservatives for their allegedly blinkered traditionalism. They boasted of obliterating once-normal boundaries in art, music and literature to allow nudity, profanity, sexuality and anti-American boilerplate.

Now?

The left is Victorian — increasingly puritanical, regressive and hyperse ...[text shortened]... it.


https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/victor-davis-hanson-progressives-free-expression-victorians

Hook, line and sinker.

Open wide.

@no1marauder said
Jesus, you're right; you can't read anywhere right wing views in the US.

Thanks for pointing this out although I'm sure the progressive book burners will soon have this thread deleted.

I'm sure the progressive book burners will soon have this thread deleted.

Nah, I don't think so. I'm sure you would have already alerted the moderator if you could find anything ban-worthy in that article.

But you still have the ability to thumb down anything you don't like... right?
And (indulging yourselves in group-think) the awesome power to thumb each other up.

@vivify said
This is just code for "I want to use to the N word in public".

Every time conserves complain about "censorship" it's always because they want to say something offensive about another race, religion, women or LGBT members.

That is not true, sometimes we say things like, "Vivify, you are a major league liar"

@earl-of-trumps said
That is not true, sometimes we say things like, "Vivify, you are a major league liar"

Yawn.

@lemon-lime said
A half-century ago, progressives used to push limitless free expression, blasting conservatives for their allegedly blinkered traditionalism. They boasted of obliterating once-normal boundaries in art, music and literature to allow nudity, profanity, sexuality and anti-American boilerplate.

Now?

The left is Victorian — increasingly puritanical, regressive and hyperse ...[text shortened]... it.


https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/victor-davis-hanson-progressives-free-expression-victorians

What’s any of this got to do with “the left”?
That’s my major problem with the article.

The people the article is referring to are moral finger waggers, snow flakes of the worst kind.
And you find them in all political spectrums.
Pro-lifers, evangelalists and the pro-gun lobby are just such groups, for example.

I am the bloody left. And never would a book be burned (or maybe those god awful biographies of famous people... but one does need to stay warm in Winter!).

As for Jordan Peterson, bring the moron on.
Intellectually dismal argumentation, sold to you by cheap tricks.

Identity politics is another of those finger wagging statements the right and Peterson whine about. Whilst they themselves do exactly the same.

@lemon-lime said
A half-century ago, progressives used to push limitless free expression, blasting conservatives for their allegedly blinkered traditionalism. They boasted of obliterating once-normal boundaries in art, music and literature to allow nudity, profanity, sexuality and anti-American boilerplate.

Now?

The left is Victorian — increasingly puritanical, regressive and hyperse ...[text shortened]... it.


https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/victor-davis-hanson-progressives-free-expression-victorians

““Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on,” tweeted Chase Strangio, the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice.


Strangio later clarified that he was not speaking for the ACLU and said he deleted his tweet because "there were relentless calls to have me fired, which I found exhausting as I was navigating work and childcare." “

You probably should have omitted this it looks like this guys freedom of speech was being curtailed by someone too.
Just to be clear, if I find a book offensive and I decide to burn it as an individual that is not affecting anyone’s freedom of expression or speech. It’s nothing more than me expressing my views about the book and it’s content. It’s not until a government burns or bans a book that freedom of expression is being curtailed.
You don’t have to go all the way back to the Victorian era, you could check out the chilling effect of MacCarthyism on freedom of expression in the US.

@kevcvs57 said
““Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on,” tweeted Chase Strangio, the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice.


Strangio later clarified that he was not speaking for the ACLU and said he deleted his tweet because "there were relentless calls to have me fired, which I found exhausting as I was navigating work and childc ...[text shortened]... ian era, you could check out the chilling effect of MacCarthyism on freedom of expression in the US.

the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice... clarified that he was not speaking for the ACLU

Okay, the ACLU's deputy director for transgender justice attempts to distance himself from the ACLU. Got it.

he deleted his tweet because "there were relentless calls to have me fired, which I found exhausting as I was navigating work and childcare."

Translation: Oops, I sure didn't see that coming! I'm a very busy man and don't have time for this.
Classic example of someone who didn't "engage brain before putting mouth in gear".

You probably should have omitted this it looks like this guys freedom of speech was being curtailed by someone too.

Yeah, curtailed by the same group of people he identifies with and who supposedly agree with one another.

I'm guessing you don't see the irony in any of this.

Did the self-appointed liberal watchdog the American Civil Liberties Union step in to defend free expression?
No. One ACLU official poured gas on the book-burning fire.
“Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on,” tweeted Chase Strangio, the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice.

@lemon-lime said

the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice... clarified that he was not speaking for the ACLU

Okay, the ACLU's deputy director for transgender justice attempts to distance himself from the ACLU. Got it.

he deleted his tweet because "there were relentless calls to have me fired, which I found exhausting as I was navigating work and childcare. ...[text shortened]... I will die on,” tweeted Chase Strangio, the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice.

People are at liberty to burn any books they want as long as they’ve paid for them. They are also at liberty to encourage like minded people to do the same.
I believe they were encouraged to ‘steal the books’ and burn them and that is clearly wrong.
Other than that all you have is two people drawing criticism for their opinions which is the essence of free speech.
As I said give us a shout when your government starts burning books and smashing windows. But relax that would be 2025 at the earliest.

@earl-of-trumps said
@lemon-lime

I've been saying for the longest time that the neo leftists are totalitarian in nature.
And I am afraid that a one party system is what they want

When they get it, the blood letting starts

And you've been wrong for the longest time.