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puddingmouse
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22 Mar 2012, 3:41 pm

I enjoyed reading your post, but I doubt there is anyone who believes all those fallacies that you listed.


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Billybones
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22 Mar 2012, 6:00 pm

TM wrote:
In essence PC is a violation of freedom of expression.


Criticism of homophobia, misogyny, racism, etc. is routinely dismissed as "political correctness", but how does THAT constitute a violation of anyone's freedom of expression? The cries of "oppression", "intolerance" or "persecution" that we constantly hear from the right-wing media machine ring hollow. Always when we see a story that falls under the rubric of PC, it's nothing but cooked-up BS.



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22 Mar 2012, 6:06 pm

You know their is a such thing as atheism fundamentalism I happen to know a few of them personally.



TM
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23 Mar 2012, 10:36 am

Billybones wrote:
TM wrote:
In essence PC is a violation of freedom of expression.


Criticism of homophobia, misogyny, racism, etc. is routinely dismissed as "political correctness", but how does THAT constitute a violation of anyone's freedom of expression? The cries of "oppression", "intolerance" or "persecution" that we constantly hear from the right-wing media machine ring hollow. Always when we see a story that falls under the rubric of PC, it's nothing but cooked-up BS.


Anything that limits a person from expressing exactly what they want to express is a violation of freedom of expression. Furthermore, homophobia, misogyny and racism are 3 cards that are pulled so often and in so many differing contexts while being completely and utterly subjective to the person pulling the card. In essence, PC makes it worse to offend someone than to be offended, yet there is no law that I know of that protects people from being offended and there shouldn't be.

When you have to adapt your expression it is per definition a reduction in freedom of speech.

What I would love is for the "PC" crowd to actually be consistent in their applications, because funnily enough we have a bunch of PC'ers in the Islam thread calling people out for not being PC, while they are at the same time de facto defending racism, misogyny and homophobia.



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23 Mar 2012, 2:55 pm

puddingmouse wrote:
I enjoyed reading your post, but I doubt there is anyone who believes all those fallacies that you listed.

I agree. There are probably people out there who are rabidly jump-down-your throat about any subject you care to name, from vaccines to 9/11 to moon landings, but most of them are not representative of the entire sub-population's views (or level of extremism) on said topic. Most moms, even most moms in the organic/natural/free-range movement, are not rabidly anti-vax. Tarring the 'natural' movement with the anti-vax brush is illogical. Likewise, most blacks do not believe that 'white men are responsible for all of their problems,' and most women do not believe that 'men are responsible for all of their problems.' Big contributers, maybe, but not responsible for all of it.



WilliamWDelaney
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23 Mar 2012, 4:05 pm

Ancalagon wrote:
What it sounds like to me is a left-wing rant against left-wing crazy people, not a rant against the left at all.
Thank you very much for saying with one sentence what took me several pages to say.

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Overall, I thought it was an excellent post that said something well worth saying.
And, with entirely different reason, thank you.



WilliamWDelaney
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23 Mar 2012, 4:08 pm

puddingmouse wrote:
I enjoyed reading your post, but I doubt there is anyone who believes all those fallacies that you listed.
In fact, my pretext for choosing some of those points was to point out how a perfectly valid belief can be turned into a ret*d fundamentalist cult.



JNathanK
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23 Mar 2012, 6:42 pm

heavenlyabyss wrote:
I think you are attacking either strawmen or trolls. You can't trust the view of an internet post. People who post on the internet religiously are often odd to begin with. You can't trust people in the media either. Same holds true for them. The only people you can really trust is those who stay silent and you don't know their points of view to begin with for the very fact tha tthey are silent.


Yah, the media isn't reality. It takes reality and filters and simplifies it through caricaturization and exaggeration to push public opinion toward a certain end. There really isn't any objectivity in the MSM, especially talk radio.

What I find with the internet is you can find any and every perspective. People only search and follow their biases in google search engines. If you spend all your time chatting on a liberal or conservative forum, you're only going to reinforce whatever views you have.

The problem I have with the PC strawman is its usually directed at more liberal leaning views by conservatives. The PC allegation is that the other side isn't being objective and is only regurgitating the party line in the face of facts.

The truth is right wingers, as well as left wingers, have a party line that contradicts the complexities of objective reality. The only problem is people with strong political opinions tend to be egoistic (you have to be to think you have the world all figured out like they do), and they don't really understand what's going on because of how stuck in their own paradigm they are. If you think all Jews are evil or that all blacks are stupid, you're following a party line just as much as a left winger who things all rich people or all white people are evil. Yah, there's dumb blacks, there's greedy Jews, there's evil, rich white men, and the idealogues all notice that, because it confirms the paradigm they're emotionally invested in. However their ideological filters don't allow them to notice Jews that are just normal people, or a rich guy that gives to charity, or a black person that isn't a gang banger, etc etc.

I notice these unabashedly proud "non-pc" people on the internet are just damn rude. They think they're just being truthful by offending people's sensitivities, but they're only doing that because they have the luxury to do so through the anonymity of the internet. Nobodies going to kick their ass through the DSL line for going off on some tirade against Jews or women. They don't realize that they are following a political correctness relative to their own ideology though, even though it might not be in the line of left-liberal-progressive thought.



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23 Mar 2012, 10:01 pm

TM wrote:
Anything that limits a person from expressing exactly what they want to express is a violation of freedom of expression.


Criticism isn't the same thing as censorship. One shouldn't make the mistake of conflating the two.

The United States has some of the strongest protections for free speech in the world, though it isn't perfect in this regard. However, just about every instance where speech has been subjected to prior restraint censorship, or an actual or threatened prosecution, the action has come from the right, not the left. This notion of some leftist PC cabal posing a threat to our freedom is pure BS.



TM
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24 Mar 2012, 7:48 am

Billybones wrote:
TM wrote:
Anything that limits a person from expressing exactly what they want to express is a violation of freedom of expression.


Criticism isn't the same thing as censorship. One shouldn't make the mistake of conflating the two.

The United States has some of the strongest protections for free speech in the world, though it isn't perfect in this regard. However, just about every instance where speech has been subjected to prior restraint censorship, or an actual or threatened prosecution, the action has come from the right, not the left. This notion of some leftist PC cabal posing a threat to our freedom is pure BS.


If there are sanctions put against you, such as sensitivity training, anger management or you get fired, then that's censorship as far as I'm concerned. Do we really have to do the list of people who got fired or suffered sanctions for saying something that isn't PC?



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24 Mar 2012, 9:44 am

TM wrote:
Billybones wrote:
TM wrote:
Anything that limits a person from expressing exactly what they want to express is a violation of freedom of expression.


Criticism isn't the same thing as censorship. One shouldn't make the mistake of conflating the two.

The United States has some of the strongest protections for free speech in the world, though it isn't perfect in this regard. However, just about every instance where speech has been subjected to prior restraint censorship, or an actual or threatened prosecution, the action has come from the right, not the left. This notion of some leftist PC cabal posing a threat to our freedom is pure BS.


If there are sanctions put against you, such as sensitivity training, anger management or you get fired, then that's censorship as far as I'm concerned. Do we really have to do the list of people who got fired or suffered sanctions for saying something that isn't PC?


the matter of free expression extends to your employers as well, if he doesnt want to employ someone because of something they say he is free to fire you.
making all the fired people irrelevant if what you claim is that pc kills freedom of expression, legal sanctions however is more of a grey area and i do think anger management or sensitivity trainng as a punishment for stating an opinion to be detestable, if they threatened or harmed the individuals however it can be deserved.

if your sensitivity training or anger managemnt is a condition for your further employment then the same argument of freedom of opinion applies,


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WilliamWDelaney
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24 Mar 2012, 10:35 am

JNathanK wrote:
The problem I have with the PC strawman is its usually directed at more liberal leaning views by conservatives. The PC allegation is that the other side isn't being objective and is only regurgitating the party line in the face of facts.
You can dismiss just about any general criticism as a straw man. It's gotten to be a pretty bogus objection because most people at this point who use it fail to grasp what the fallacy actually is. The fallacy we used to call a "straw man" is a (usually deliberate) misrepresentation of another person's views that is then proven to be irrational and silly, and this is presented to an audience as an actual attack on the views that were supposedly represented by the straw man. The reason that the old "straw man" objection does not apply in this case is that I have implied that there is a more rational way to approach all points of view listed, and the driving point of my argument was that an irrational, closed-minded outlook (fundamentalism) tends to lead to the caricature. Therefore, the "straw man" objection doe not apply, period.

Of course, "straw man" has so thoroughly lost its meaning these days that you can use it to dismiss just about anything you disagree with, and it's about as meaningless at this point as calling someone a "troll."

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The truth is right wingers, as well as left wingers, have a party line that contradicts the complexities of objective reality.
Yep.

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I notice these unabashedly proud "non-pc" people on the internet are just damn rude.
The problem is that you run into the same problem with lefties who have turned their set of beliefs into a ret*d fundamentalist cult.

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They don't realize that they are following a political correctness relative to their own ideology though, even though it might not be in the line of left-liberal-progressive thought.
Yep.



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24 Mar 2012, 10:55 am

Your post bullied me! Because I say so! How dare you say it didn't!! !


;-)


Great post though, for real. I enjoyed it.


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naturalplastic
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24 Mar 2012, 11:59 am

Too much of anything is too much.

Too much wholesome food.

Too much religious fanaticism ( ie litereal "Fundamentalism").

Too much concern about sensitivity to minorities ( ie too much political correctness) to the point of being absurd.

And too much verbiage in a single post ( ie ranting about what are actually different issues for several pages in the same post).



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24 Mar 2012, 2:08 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
And too much verbiage in a single post ( ie ranting about what are actually different issues for several pages in the same post).
Dude, I have people who disagree with me on just about everything, including a large portion of the OP, saying it was brilliant, and I hate, literally HATE people who complain about a post being too wordy, when nobody is forcing them to read the whole blasted thing. That's you, kid. If it's too much for your attention span, read the opening paragraph, the closing paragraph (where it says "in conclusion"), and skim the first and last sentences of everything else for whatever might catch your eye. They taught you this technique in third grade. The other content is there for those who want to read it.

And HELLO, the title included, "and related rants." Duh, now are you going to tell me that, after clicking on it and opening it, you didn't know what you were getting into? Did you seriously not put that together? Repeat, the title of the thread stated explicitly that the OP was going to cover diverse, loosely related subject matter. Do you realize how stupid it makes you look to then come and and whine about it, as if it had been forced on you somehow?



Billybones
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26 Mar 2012, 1:53 pm

TM wrote:
If there are sanctions put against you, such as sensitivity training, anger management or you get fired, then that's censorship as far as I'm concerned. Do we really have to do the list of people who got fired or suffered sanctions for saying something that isn't PC?


Oh, I can think of a few.

Bill Maher had his show cancelled by ABC because he made a comment about the commonplace of describing acts of terrorism as "cowardly". To paraphrase, he said that, however reprehensible their cause & their acts, the 9/11 hijackers were willing to die for their cause, while the United States killed by firing cruise missiles from thousands of miles away . . . that's cowardly.

Helen Thomas, the veteran White House correspondent, was fired by Hearst News Service for statements critical of Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands.

Eason Jordan was forced to resign as president of CNN for suggesting, at Davos, Switzerland, that the U.S. was deliberately targeting journalists in its wars. Though this statement is probably unprovable, there is certainly evidence to back this claim. But for what he said, truth is no defense. He impugned the conduct of the U.S. military, which is strictly out-of-bounds, & for this he was forced out.

Octavia Nasr, senior editor for Middle East affairs at CNN, was fired for a Twitter comment in which she expressed sadness at the death of Iraqi-born Lebanese Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, founder of Hizbullah.

It's one thing for an employer concerned about its public image to fire an employee for impolitic or unpopular statements. But it's on another level entirely when the sanction involves prosecution & imprisonment. Javed Iqbal, the owner of a satellite TV business in NYC that caters to Arabic-speaking viewers, was sentenced to 5 years & 9 months in federal prison for the crime of offering al-Manar (Hizbullah's TV channel) to subscribers.

Censorship is reprehensible. On that I think we can agree. But my point is that most censorship that results in real sanctions comes from the political right & is aimed at the left (especially those perceived as hostile to Israel), not the other way around. Yes, most often PC is a straw man, but apparently the label only applies when it's coming from the left.