Despite Jacob’s vast knowledge and wisdom of the universe at 28 years old, I don’t think I’d want today’s youth listening to the next Jim Jones disciple. 

10 hours ago, Quiet Boy said:

Often, it’s hard for teachers to tell whether a student is being truly red-pilled in the sense that they’re being radicalized online, or whether they’re parroting views that they’ve grown up with in their conservative households. Tessa, a 29-year-old in the Midwest who teaches 14- to 18-year-olds at a private school for students with learning impairments, says that while many of her students "simply take on the talking points and politics of their conservative parents,” this can make them especially ripe targets for full-blown radicalization and infatuation with far-right figures. "A few started listening to Joe Rogan’s podcast, which led to them reading Jordan Peterson’s books,” she says. "I think that Joe Rogan’s ideology is the biggest threat to critical thinking in the last decade.”

https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/red-pilled-radicalized-students-teachers

Smh.  Joe Rogan is among the least biased personalities in the public theater.  How anyone can call him "alt-right” is beyond logic and devoid of rational thought:  

3 hours ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

Would you feel differently if the article was about children of liberal parents being predisposed to radicalization via socialist and communist conspiracy theorist online?

Did you get up in arms when articles popped up after terrorist attacks talking about 2nd generation Muslims being predisposed to Islamic radicalization?

That's the effect being talked about. The article above specifically mentions the challenge of separating students who are simply politically conservative from those who are being radicalized. If you read the article itself rather than pulling portions that seem incendiary out of context, it's highlighting instances where students have actually been radicalized to the level where students who simply held conservative beliefs previously started to espouse radical viewpoints: "tweeting that if homosexuals weren’t willing to change their ways, they should be killed," "tell my class the earth is flat during our gravity lessons, and it was so difficult to explain to him that it can’t be true." 

I'm not saying this article isn't click-bait junk, but I'm a bit curious if the we'd see the same reaction that political preferences cannot be discussed by teachers if the concerns raised were of Marxist or Islamic radicalization.

And I'm sorry but Joe Rogan is not one of the great critical thinkers of our time

 

Luckily we don’t have to deal with that problem, because the low performing students who become teachers are almost all liberals.

And I’m sorry, but relative to the left, Joe Rogan might as well be Aristotle when it comes to critical thinking.

On 8/20/2020 at 9:07 AM, Kz! said:

OK, this is more important to contain than the coronavirus:

Stay safe out there, fellas.

 

4 hours ago, NCTANK said:

maybe their political preference is their own efen business 

 

20 minutes ago, VanHammersly said:

 

 

Little bit of a difference between a minor at school and adults moving into your area and destroying it with their political beliefs.

It kind of becomes your business when a bunch of locusts flee the areas they destroyed and then try to do the exact same thing to the area you live in.

 

2 minutes ago, TEW said:

Little bit of a difference between a minor at school and adults moving into your area and destroying it with their political beliefs.

It kind of becomes your business when a bunch of locusts flee the areas they destroyed and then try to do the exact same thing to the area you live in.

 

 

5 hours ago, NCTANK said:

maybe their political preference is their own efen business 

 

Just now, VanHammersly said:

 

 

No, it’s not their own efen business because, unlike minors in a school, they can vote.

This is the problem with electoral politics. Everyone’s politics becomes everyone’s business because your neighbor’s whims are made manifest at the level of the state with all of the terrible power and coercion that it entails.

Just now, TEW said:

No, it’s not their own efen business because, unlike minors in a school, they can vote.

This is the problem with electoral politics. Everyone’s politics becomes everyone’s business because your neighbor’s whims are made manifest at the level of the state with all of the terrible power and coercion that it entails.

It’s still their own effing business.  Deal with it. 

Just now, VanHammersly said:

It’s still their own effing business.  Deal with it. 

No, it isn’t. Locust liberals moving to conservative areas and then voting for locust liberal policies is a public problem.

2 minutes ago, TEW said:

No, it isn’t. Locust liberals moving to conservative areas and then voting for locust liberal policies is a public problem.

it’s there effing business dude. 

33 minutes ago, VanHammersly said:

it’s there effing business dude. 

So when conservatives ban gay marriage, it’s their effing business?

2 hours ago, TEW said:

No, it’s not their own efen business because, unlike minors in a school, they can vote.

This is the problem with electoral politics. Everyone’s politics becomes everyone’s business because your neighbor’s whims are made manifest at the level of the state with all of the terrible power and coercion that it entails.

Yeah, I hate it when other citizens disagree with my worldview and use their voting rights to try and change things.

It's like they think they're entitled to representation or something.

2 hours ago, TEW said:

No, it’s not their own efen business because, unlike minors in a school, they can vote.

This is the problem with electoral politics. Everyone’s politics becomes everyone’s business because your neighbor’s whims are made manifest at the level of the state with all of the terrible power and coercion that it entails.

The alternative being what exactly?

23 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

Yeah, I hate it when other citizens disagree with my worldview and use their voting rights to try and change things.

It's like they think they're entitled to representation or something.

It’s different when they flee the monster they created and then make a new monster. 

8 minutes ago, DEagle7 said:

The alternative being what exactly?

There are plenty of alternatives, though that wasn’t my point. You can have anything from fixed policy to a dictatorship. All have their own problems.

4 minutes ago, Bill said:

It’s different when they flee the monster they created and then make a new monster. 

The reasons for the migration are manifold, and cannot be reduced down to "they're fleeing California because it sucks."

The primary reason is simple: the cost of living, particularly related to housing, is resulting in people making the rational choice to "flee". These people are, by and large, firmly middle class and often professional, whose employers have made the calculation that expanding to places like Austin makes sense.

A lot of THAT problem can be traced back to NIMBYism among, for example, the Silicon Valley elite, who certainly skew Democratic, and a concerted effort by many municipalities to discourage building high density housing.

This is still too reductionist, but it highlights a major factor here. They're not leaving the richest state in the Union because "it sucks". They're leaving it because there's not enough affordable housing due to high demand and NIMBYism.

11 minutes ago, Bill said:

It’s different when they flee the monster they created and then make a new monster. 

All the while being totally oblivious to the fact that this is what they are doing. It'll work this time, right?????

9 minutes ago, TEW said:

There are plenty of alternatives, though that wasn’t my point. You can have anything from fixed policy to a dictatorship. All have their own problems.

Best path is to eliminate representation for citizens I disagree with. Right?

7 minutes ago, TEW said:

There are plenty of alternatives, though that wasn’t my point. You can have anything from fixed policy to a dictatorship. All have their own problems.

Right, but I think we can all at least admit that dictatorships tend to have a smidge more problems than "electoral politics" no?

3 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

Best path is to eliminate representation for citizens I disagree with. Right?

I don’t think most people should have "representation” but I wouldn’t base it on political ideology.

No representation without net taxation.

Just now, DEagle7 said:

Right, but I think we can all at least admit that dictatorships tend to have a smidge more problems than "electoral politics" no?

Certainly historically, especially if you only focus on European countries.

To make a real judgement, I think we will need a few hundred years more of electoral politics to see how things go wrong and also to see how dictatorial politics adapt to the modern moral and ethical developments.

I think we’ve already seen a lot of cracks in electoral politics though. Hitler was elected. Putin was elected. Look around the Middle East or Africa to see what elections can look like.

Then there is the issue that universal suffrage is a relatively new phenomenon even within European derived electoral societies. In the US, lots of people were ineligible to vote until relatively recently. I think the US had it right in spirit with our founding: constitutionally limited government which basically prevents it from doing much of anything and a very narrow electorate with real skin in the game as landowners (I would update this to net tax payer) and military risk. 

38 minutes ago, TEW said:

Certainly historically, especially if you only focus on European countries.

To make a real judgement, I think we will need a few hundred years more of electoral politics to see how things go wrong and also to see how dictatorial politics adapt to the modern moral and ethical developments.

I think we’ve already seen a lot of cracks in electoral politics though. Hitler was elected. Putin was elected. Look around the Middle East or Africa to see what elections can look like.

Then there is the issue that universal suffrage is a relatively new phenomenon even within European derived electoral societies. In the US, lots of people were ineligible to vote until relatively recently. I think the US had it right in spirit with our founding: constitutionally limited government which basically prevents it from doing much of anything and a very narrow electorate with real skin in the game as landowners (I would update this to net tax payer) and military risk. 

I'd argue that a big part of the reason that elected officials like Hitler and Putin went bad is because they became more authoritarian so I'm not sure I buy that argument.

I don't agree with your opinion on sufferage but I at least get what you're saying. Trying to say that we don't know if representative electoral systems are better than dictatorships because we don't have enough data is a bit silly IMO though. No one is arguing that democracy is perfect, but we have plenty of data on dictatorships. 

Death to Democracy!!!!!!

25 minutes ago, 20dawk4life said:

Death to Democracy!!!!!!

have MERCY  🤣

1 minute ago, DEagle7 said:

I'd argue that a big part of the reason that elected officials like Hitler and Putin went bad is because they became more authoritarian so I'm not sure I buy that argument.

I don't agree with your opinion on sufferage but I at least get what you're saying. Trying to say that we don't know if representative electoral systems are better than dictatorships because we don't have enough data is a bit silly IMO though. No one is arguing that democracy is perfect, but we have plenty of data on dictatorships. 

 

 

 

To your first point on elected officials becoming more dictatorial, they were elected and enacted wildly popular things. That these things might be viewed as bad by us doesn’t change the fact that they came to fruition through the election system. You can’t just say that bad outcomes are bad because they became more dictatorial — you are conflating political power with political systems.

People can vote for horrible things, that doesn’t make them "more dictatorial.” For instance, many countries in the Middle East would and do elect people who would execute gays. That’s not because the leaders become more dictatorial, it’s because of who they elected.

To the second point, I don’t see what’s silly about it. We have thousands of years of history throughout every people on earth on dictators, true. But we have just a few hundred years on electoral politics, and then in relatively few countries and mostly under the best of circumstances.

It’s also pretty important to hold things relevant to their time period and culture for apples to apples comparisons. If you look at the 19th century, for instance, most dictatorships in Europe had banned slavery before the US. And, in fact, using the actual electoral system instead of war would have made it impossible for some time after that. In this case, on a truly equal playing field, the electoral styled system was morally inferior to the dictatorship styled system.

Taking that to the modern day, would a hypothetical dictator of a western country actually be worse? Seems to me it would depend on the man, which is of course the danger of such concentrated power. But the social norms are such that the downside risk would be severely limited compared to most historical examples, but you would get the upside of ease of action by the sovereign and also a better incentive structure than elected politicians.

In short, I don’t think it’s nearly as clear cut as you do. We are going to need to see the long term track record of elections measured in centuries to make a true judgement, and it would help to see what some dictators in the US or Western Europe actually look like. Maybe everything goes well. Maybe it doesn’t. But the current data is woefully incomplete to give a definitive answer.

29 minutes ago, 20dawk4life said:

Death to Democracy!!!!!!

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