[rubecube]

Of course I'm being superficial. It's a freaking message board and we're speaking in broad and abstract terms. I'll save the citations for my term papers.

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

There is no basis for determining who gains the privileged "unprivileged" status and the right to place barriers to expression in the name of preventing offense. This is fundamentally authoritarian.

What? How are the underprivileged placing barriers to expression by themselves expressing what is offensive?

It takes some balls to say this and accuse him of being disingenuous. For example, queer theory was the source of progress on gay rights? Really? I am extremely dubious, so please explain how. It seems to me that more or less progress on that issue has been heavily focused on equal rights. "Rights" being the operative term there.

Sorry, are you saying the initial push for gay rights didn't stem from queer activists? I didn't cite a single source for gay rights, just that the push to end oppression historically has generally been initiated by the oppressed, so to attribute it to the ideology of their oppressors is disingenuous. Saying that appeals to liberalism were a factor in the enhancement of gay rights is different than saying liberalism was the cause.

Examples, please? I suspect if we play them through, any resort to supposed empiricism as a tool of suppression will ultimately yield as a result of empiricism. I can't think of a single instance in history where a society has suffered as a result of too much rational, evidence-based thinking.

What empirical facts are necessary to determine that discriminating against people on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. is wrong, other than an acknowledgement of harm, which is probably more reliant on phenomenology than it is empiricism?

I again disagree, I think, but again you're being superficial and not fully explaining what you mean. For example, are you suggesting that the civil rights movement with the Black Panthers but without MLK would have succeeded? In my view, first, these are all very different stories and lumping them into a common narrative is foolish. But moreover, the success of civil rights, women's rights, gay rights have all involved a gradual recruitment of the majority to the minority's viewpoint.

No, not at all, they definitely required gradual recruitment, but the acts of extremism forced the issues into the spotlight.

This is baffling. I'm fairly certain it's completely wrong, but as you've again just superficially asserted it, instead of rejecting it I'll again ask you to explain how. Equality is fundamentally a liberal principle, for example, that may be enacted in socialist doctrine, but where does Kant come into it? You're just saying provocative things, there's no substance here.

I mean if you ignore the racist and sexist parts of Locke, you can say that equal rights are fundamentally liberal. Equal rights and equality aren't the same thing. Kant was in reference to the concepts of duty and responsibility, but I'm also not the first person to draw a connection between Kant and socialism

http://www.amazon.ca/Kantian-Ethics-.../dp/0872200272

Speaking in terms of rights, something like Article 5 of the UDHR owes much more to humanism than it does to liberalism.

Utter nonsense. First, no one has said that they're only possible in a liberal society, only that these principles have fostered the development of progress better than other alternatives that have been used.

Is that true though? Classical liberalism was used to justify the slave trade and colonialism when humanism was in favour of abolition.

Second, morality and social progress are fundamentally distinct things; one's abstract and the other is practical.

Oh come on. Any measure of social progress relies on subjectively selecting the indicators by which it's to be measured.

There isn't really any kind of comparison.

There is no equivalence here.

Why do you do this constantly? I never claimed there was equivalence.

You've done this a few times. Can you point to a specific piece that might be referred to to broaden my perspective on a particular issue we're talking about here?

I'm happy to, but you'll need to be specific on the question or the topic you're asking about.

It depends on how it's done, obviously. If, for example, I said I was pro-life, and was subsequently fired from my job, it would obviously have a chilling effect on speech.

Okay, but where has this been happening? Seems to me be that being pro-choice has always been the much more dangerous stance.

And again, some chill is to be expected, isn't it? Even if you were pro-life, would you be putting pro-life pamphlets with pictures of dead fetuses up in your workplace?

Absolutely they are. See: http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/70...eform-movement

Gotta go but those are my instant reactions anyway.

Yeah, Islam is a notable exception. There's definitely some terrific work being done by some Islamic scholars in this area.