Quote:
Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop
I don't think it's elliptical at all. He's responding to a bunch of people who have written a public statement fretting about the marketplace of ideas and urging, more or less, that the remedy to speech is more speech. He is saying, that only works if everyone is speaking in good faith, but many people are not, and it's not just right-wing trolls.
1) Holbo is not extreme left.
2) In what way does he lump together those people? What does he say about smart conservatives?
I'm not talking about the mob. I'm talking about Holbo. What does Holbo say that -- you think -- seeks to eliminate smart debate?
I think Holbo is more than happy to have a debate with anyone who will defend their first principles. He's a philosophy professor -- that's what they do.
Honestly, I have no idea what in Holbo's thread you think says this.
I think he has his finger on a very real problem, which is, what do you do when you are debating someone who is not speaking in good faith. A specific example is the people who raise concerns about transgender people and bathrooms:
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He focuses on the right wing as the cause. He suggests that it is okay to respond to ideas with cancel culture because the right is acting in bad faith. That’s a perverse notion. When someone argues in bad faith, you reply by pointing that out, not creating a media culture in which the non-woke are deplatformed.
The Harper’s writers said “No more cancellation.” He says we should allow some cancellation. The world is imperfect, so the imperfect act of cancellation is okay. I see the logic. But it’s not persuasive where the easier argument is what the left is doing to dishonest people on the right already: Calling out their bullshit.
There can be no defense of blind orthodoxy. And that’s what Harper’s was challenging. The very words, “in logical defense of orthodoxy” are an oxymoron.
