Ben Shapiro at U. Minnesota: ‘Socialism is Tyranny’
“The notion of socialism is that you do not own your own freedom”
Conservative author and activist Ben Shapiro spoke at the University of Minnesota this week, despite protests from campus progressives. During his talk, he offered a sharp distinction between socialism and capitalism.
As usual, a massive security presence was required for the event.
Anders Hagstrom reports at the Daily Caller:
Hundreds Of Police Officers Protect Audience At Ben Shapiro’s St. Paul Speech
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro’s appearance at the University of Minnesota went off without incident Monday night, thanks to 100 cops who surrounded the lecture hall with concrete barriers.
Dozens of protesters gathered outside the lecture hall in an attempt to prevent people from attending, but they were held back by police, City Pages reported Tuesday. The largest obstacle to attendance, however, was the venue itself. U of M students requested a larger event venue for Shapiro’s speech, but the administration relegated him to the smaller 400-person venue after students protested and claimed he was a white nationalist. As a result, there wasn’t enough room for many of the students who wished to attend.
“We’re besieged because of our views,” Abdi Mohamed told, who was turned away from the venue for lack of space, told City Pages. “We have to have this militaristic guard just to share a couple opinions.”
Shapiro noted that many college-aged people today seem to want socialism. But as he pointed out, socialism is the opposite of freedom.
From the FOX News Insider:
‘Socialism Itself Is Tyranny’: Shapiro Addresses MN College Students Amid Protests
In his speech, Shapiro touched on a number of subjects, including the “tyranny” of socialism.
“Capitalism is good because capitalism is freedom,” Shapiro argued. “Socialism is bad because socialism is tyranny. Not ‘it’s an aspect of tyranny.’ Socialism itself is tyranny.”
He explained that the core principle of socialism is that an individual’s labor is owed to society.
“The notion of socialism is that you do not own your own freedom, you do not own your own time, you do not own your own labor, you do not own your own work, you do not own the products of your own work,” Shapiro said.
He said the notion of capitalism, on the other hand, is that you own all of those things and must engage in a free exchange with others who do not owe you anything.
Watch the video below:
We shouldn’t be surprised that so many young people today find socialism appealing. They have been told all their lives that everything must be fair. Now they are being told by people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren that college should be free and that poverty is the fault of people who have more wealth than others.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
Childhood might be considered a form of socialism (if not communism) and With protracted “childhood” extending deeper into what was formally adulthood , why wouldn’t some want this perceived easy path in life? It is learned misbehavior.
Under both socialism and capitalism the vast majority of people work for a boss. The boss is the parent. 100 years ago, before we added a component of socialism to our system, bosses could monitor whether you went to church, could inspect your home and even require you to buy from the company store. We have moderated those gross violations of our liberty with changes in social mores, unions and government. The 40 hour week was not because capitalism wanted it: “If you don’t come in on Sunday, don’t come in on Monday”.
Why would being controlled by an organization that cares only about profit ( essentially a sociopath) be better than democratic socialism as practiced in Nordic countries like Norway and Denmark?
I understand that many people who comment here are more influenced by theory than fact. The only history they are site is Russian Communism and its off-shoots. That is not socialism.
“That is not socialism”. No, that would be the National Socialist German Workers Party AKA the Nazis.
Troll
Oh Kettle, thou art black! — YellowPot.
“Why would being controlled by an organization that cares only about profit ( essentially a sociopath) …”
Your strawman exposes your BS.
“The boss is the parent.”
I’ll stop ingesting your pablum right there. As usual, you are completely full of it. An employee and an employer engage in a voluntary exchange of services for payment. Nothing more, nothing less. Good God, grow up and take some responsibility for yourself and your actions.
So you think companies are “sociopaths” and purely driven by profit motive, huh? But I bet you spew the party line on the “gender wage gap” don’t ya? Then why don’t companies employ only women if they’re so cheap to hire?
‘Voluntary’. Nice theory.
20 Years ago my firm received an offer of work from IBM. I met with the manager after receiving the proposed contract and said that I would like some minor changes. He laughed. The facility in which we were speaking had 5000 workers and multiple layers of management. He said that no one on site had the authority to change one word of the contract. In fact, it would need to go up multiple layers at IBM headquarters.
The imbalance in power is enormous. It is only voluntary if you can afford to say no.
Granted I was providing excellent, but not extraordinary, talent. If you are truly brilliant you might be able to negotiate on something like equal terms. But most people, by definition, are not brilliant.
Your theory belongs in one of them there ivory tower lib institutions like Harvard.
IBM did not force you to take the job. It was a ” take it or leave it ” proposition. You had a right to walk away. You didn’t get the job…maybe their loss also. Socialism requires people being hired who disagree?
Socialism is just a few doors up from communism. As Lenin wrote…the path to communism is through trade unionism.
You had the choice to find work elsewhere, start your own company, work freelance, etc. Yes, your work there was voluntary.
“‘Voluntary’. Nice theory.”
Yes, it is a nice theory.
It’s a nice theory because it comports more to reality than anything you’ve spat out on here.
“20 Years ago my firm received an offer of work from IBM. -”
Translation: OH BOO HOO!
Woe is me, because my VOLUNTARILY seeking a job at Someone Else’s Company involved accepting their terms of employment, and very little ability to change them.
And thus I’m going to try and claim this somehow represents the absence of a voluntary element in economics RATHER THAN A REPRESENTATION OF IT.
Because you know, it’s not like you had a huge amount of power to tell a 16th century slave driver in Mesopotamia or the Caribbean Islands- or a worker in a “Marxist Socialist” state- “I want to change some terms of my employment” at all, or “I want to quit.”
“The imbalance in power is enormous.”
Yes, it is. But that isn’t surprising.
After all, THEY ARE THERE PROVIDING YOU THE JOB. They have a source of employment that will continue to exist tomorrow whether or not you agree to it or not.
They can realistically wager that you are coming to seek work From Them. And that if you say no, they can go and find someone else who will happily Eat Your Lunch.
They might be Wrong on that wager, as major strikes or boycotts show. But they’re probably not.
That’s because historically, labor is a *Buyer’s Market.*
But it isn’t always that way, and it doesn’t mean there aren’t situations where you can make the employers come begging on their hands and knees for you. Heck, even for the rank and file unskilled farmer.
There’s a reason why wages rose massively after the Black Death, and why even with the force of Law and Terror trying to limit them in ways unthinkable in any capitalist system for the past 200 years most towns, lords, and so on caved and kept shifting their terms of employment to be more favorable.
This is simply how economics works.
“It is only voluntary if you can afford to say no.”
No, it’s always voluntary.
Not having it be voluntary is being dragged into a slave galley and forced to work their hours on their terms or being thrown overboard to your death.
What this really means is It’s Voluntary, but you don’t want to consider it as such because *voluntarily* picking one choice results in Bad or Unfortunate things happening.
And this is yet another reason why I disdain socialism because it winds up cheapening free will and human agency like it does almost everything else.
“Granted I was providing excellent, but not extraordinary, talent. If you are truly brilliant you might be able to negotiate on something like equal terms. But most people, by definition, are not brilliant.”
Which goes back to the Buyer’s Market issue. And how almost every market for labor in most parts of history is a Bear Market.
You want to negotiate on equal terms when you’re just excellent or even below? Find the right market and right situation. Again, you had Not-even-Excellent farm workers in the aftermath of the Black Death being able to use their negotiating power to great effect because they realized the lords couldn’t go just anywhere and pick up anyone.
Unfortunately, such situations have Never been common and are now even less so.
“Your theory belongs in one of them there ivory tower lib institutions like Harvard.”
This is ironic, considering your rhetoric and writing looks like some of the stuff I’ve seen shoved out of the sphincters of Ivory Tower Socialists.
Turtler, if you’re gonna do that you’ll need to bring your own mop and bucket.
Ever heard of Lilly Ledbetter?
Some REALLY stupid laws were passed during that brief period of time that Obama was POTUS and the Dims controlled both houses of Congress. This is one example. Obamacare is another. So what’s your point? That Dims are stupid and can’t grasp basic economics or math?
Where do you live? If you are here in America I suggest you immigrate to Denmark or Norway and bathe yourself in their wonderful socialism. This is America, the bastion of capitalism, and I ask politely for you to thank God for your freedom to whine.
I should thank some imaginary supernatural being for capitalism? Isn’t the bible all about feudalism.
Ever heard of the divine right of kings? When did Jesus become a capitalist?
There is no need for me to go elsewhere. I was born here. I am a citizen here. This country is famous for taking some of the best ideas in the world along with inventing them. I have relatives in Canada and they are bemused at the idea that their healthcare system is so terrible. No I don’t plan on moving there, either.
The lure of Socialism is that everybody can be on the best side of “Divine Right of Kings” .. who ever seeks the job of “serf”
YellowGrifterInChief
When you show yourself to be so profoundly ignorant of the content of the Bible, people conclude that you are likely to be similarly ignorant of the other topics you speak of.
Since you refer to God as “imaginary”, you reveal that you are in rebellion against him since the existence of God is something which is impossible to not know.
What do you think God did to you which causes you to hate him?
“I should thank some imaginary supernatural being for capitalism?”
Probably.
” Isn’t the bible all about feudalism.”
Answer: NO. ABSOLUTELY NOT.
Because contrary to some historically and theologically illiterate morons (such as yourself), feudalism does not mean “any situation with a King and a bunch of nobility.”
Actual feudalism as we’d think of it was a product of the LATE Roman Empire and particularly its’ breakdown. When society had to rebuild itself from the ashes and largely did so under this sort of highly stratified system in which most parts of society exchanged services for protection and support. And in which contrary to what people tend to thought, the Lord usually had obligations to those peasants tilling his fields like they did to him.
(Those obligations were not EQUAL mind, but they existed andat least in theory went both ways).
This kind of system Did Not Exist in the Bronze Age, and only very crude similarities with it existed in places like the Persian Empire and Archaic Greece.
Most of the Bible takes place in a typical Middle Eastern polity, either a Theocracy (like during the Books of Judges) or an Absolute Monarchy (unusually moderated by the Prophets).
The proper comparisons are to places like Ur, Akkad, and Egypt, not to Agenvin England or the Holy Roman Empire.
“Ever heard of the divine right of kings?”
Yeah, I have.
It notably DOES NOT APPEAR like it’s usually formulated in the Bible. In part because God is an active player with an active servant (the Prophet).
God opposes attempts to institute a monarchy except by Popular demand, and when he does so he retains the right to crown a King but also to *take that crown away and give it to someone else.*
And in fact the Bible treats Kingship as something to be looked at VERY SUSPICIOUSLY, has all Kings be sinners, and most of them be holding the office unjustly.
This is why for every King David there is Abimelech, Herod, Herod Antipas, Pharoah, and so on.
“When did Jesus become a capitalist?”
You really haven’t read the Bible, have you Nimrod?
Study Matthew:25, the Parable of Talents, Nimrod.
Which quite LITERALLY talks about how to ethically invest one’s Capital in the marketplace.
To cite just one example.
This is a reason why ignorant socialist atheists should not try and lecture people on the Bible or sociology.
“There is no need for me to go elsewhere.”
The fact that you deem there to be No Need underlines how shallow your socialist beliefs are compared to the likes of-say- Marx and his rivals.
“I was born here. I am a citizen here.”
Indeed.
” This country is famous for taking some of the best ideas in the world along with inventing them. ”
And rejecting the trash.
Like Socialists.
“I have relatives in Canada and they are bemused at the idea that their healthcare system is so terrible.”
Take your relatives and`try to get in a Canadian clinic during the weekend.
Or study who makes their dialysis machines.
Or have a nice, sweet family movie time. “Invasion of the Barbarians”, made by a left of center Quebecois film director about the Canadian Health Care system and Medical Tourism to the US.
Or just have them ask my Mom, who helped package much of the surplus equipment we had on hand in California so it could be FLOWN UP to Canada on long term borrowing agreemente because the Canadian health care system doesn’t allocate enough money to produce enough modern equipment, let alone do R&D into new ones on the scale the US does.
“No I don’t plan on moving there, either.”
Then you have chosen your lot and done so *Voluntarily.*
And your future kvetching on the matter will be factored in as such.
We also comment about that Socialist haven called Venezuela.
While Hugo Chavez’s daughter walked away with billions of dollars (now in offshore banks) and Nicolás Maduro remains physically “prosperous”, most Venezuelans are on the “Socialist diet” and have lost on average 24 pounds in the last year.
… but I’m sure this isn’t Socialism either, because .. failure
.. Oh look, they are delaying the next election
Turtler, I salute you. Unfortunately, you can never get through to a socialist like Yellow because you are arguing against his religion, but well done none the less.
The never ending war between socialism and capitalism seems to be the struggle between Cain and Able in modern times.
Where “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” actually works is in a loving family where discipline includes properly determining what “from each according to his ability” looks like. Socialism ignores that society’s problems come from selfish human nature, not some external structure. Capitalism (I prefer the term “free enterprise”) properly carried out seeks to harness human self interest for the benefit of all. Should be learned in elementary school rather than the “school of hard knocks.”
Capitalism solves the problem of selfishness? That is rich (pun intended).
In a free market, each individual acting in his/her self interest maximizes utility for both the individual and the society as a whole. It’s an amazing idea… we don’t need centralized planning by “the best men” for almost anything at all!
Free markets have created more wealth, lifted more people out of poverty and improved the life spans and standard of living for more people than all the other systems combined.
“Capitalism solves the problem of selfishness? That is rich (pun intended).”
No, your incompetent straw manning is Rich. Which makes it much richer than a society that actually adopted the policies you shill for.
No Chowderhead, jlronning’s post DOES NOT Claim that Capitalism “solves the problem of selfishness.” Which is fortunate because if it had I would have to criticize him for it, because I do not see the problem of human selfishness being solved by humans.
What he DOES claim is that Capitalism *harnesses* human self-interest and selfishness. Which is unquestionably true. As does the fact that it tends to work to the common benefit, as the Green Revolution and medical research shows.
No, capitalism ACCEPTS human greed, harnesses it. It doesn’t pretend it can be abolished.
“School of hard knocks”
Class is in session in Venezuela.
You will want to give a close listen to Ben here…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10chth9Af5c
…or you could be the kind of moral cowards who down-vote posts which only offer information.
Up to you…
Facts don’t care about anybody’s feelings
Rags rote:
or you could be the kind of moral cowards who down-vote posts which only offer information.
You say the only reason someone would downvote you is because they are ‘moral cowards’. How megalomaniacal of you to ignore the possibilities that they disagree with the information you presented or because they are expressing disgust at your constant haughty preaching.
The hubris you show by posting a link to a 45 minute video and telling us ‘You will want to give a close listen to Ben here…‘ has a lot more to do with the downvotes you got than anyone’s cowardice. Like we have nothing better to do than waste our time figuring out which 30 secs your mind found interesting.
That’s a rational view so I expect you to reject it.
VaPigman frothed…
Golly, Piglet, it’s hard to know if you address me or Mike LaChance here.
When I offer a link to some information, you’re free to ignore it. You’re free to take exception to its content. You’re even free to mindlessly condemn me for offering it in true Stalinist ThoughtPolicing mode.
You default to the hind-most. Always.
Heh…!!!
rags rote:
Golly, Piglet, it’s hard to know if you address me or Mike LaChance here.
No one with a functioning brain found it hard to know who I was addressing.
When I offer a link to some information, you’re free to ignore it. You’re free to take exception to its content. You’re even free to mindlessly condemn me for offering it in true Stalinist ThoughtPolicing mode.
The lie in your statement is that you went on, ‘in true Stalinist ThoughtPolicing mode’, to call them ‘moral cowards’ for disagreeing with you. I attacked your lie. Anyone with a functioning brain figured that out, so you deflection failed.
You’re just like the idiots trying to silence Shapiro. Same exact impulse, Piglet.
Thanks for showing your stripe! Again…
“The lie in your statement is that you went on, ‘in true Stalinist ThoughtPolicing mode’, to call them ‘moral cowards’ for disagreeing with you. I attacked your lie.”
But YOUR lie, liar, is that nobody “disagreed with me”. I have disagreements with people all time in perfect civility. I don’t lay back when attached, however.
As you have noticed, Piglet. You are a moral coward, and so are your fellow cultists here.
rags rote:
But YOUR lie, liar, is that nobody “disagreed with me”
They disagreed with your post and expressed their disagreement as a down vote. For that you called them ‘moral cowards’. Why do you continue to lie about it when the facts are plain as day?
You’re just like the idiots trying to silence Shapiro. Same exact impulse, Piglet.
Thanks for showing your stripe! Again…
There’s no stated “disagreement”. There’s just the usual turd-swirl of shutupery, liar. Just your Stalinist ThoughtPolicing at work.
rags,
Since when does a disagreement have to be stated to exist? For centuries, people have expressed their disagreement by walking away from speakers without any other comment. The downvote is the internet equivalent of walking away. Of not raising your hand when a show of hands is requested. The speaker can judge the crowd’s acceptance of his position by how many leave. It’s your megalonamia that makes you think it’s an attempt to silence you – you aren’t really that important.
It is, however, funny that you find a few downvotes so troubling. Especially when one considers your history on LI.
When I offer a link to some information, you’re free to ignore it. You’re free to take exception to its content. You’re even free to mindlessly condemn me for offering it in true Stalinist ThoughtPolicing mode.
You default to the hind-most. Always.
Heh…!!!
rags rote:
When I offer a link to some information, you’re free to ignore it. You’re free to take exception to its content. You’re even free to mindlessly condemn me for offering it in true Stalinist ThoughtPolicing mode.
You say we are ‘moral cowards’ engaged in ‘Stalinist ThoughtPolicing’ if we downvote it without giving you a reason.
I can just downvote any other LI member and not be called a ‘moral coward’. As a capitalist consumer I have to ask: What do you think you contribute to the LI experience that justifies the added expense of dealing with you? Why does criticism of you take on a moral dimension?
I call YOU a moral coward because you are a frothing T-rump cultist who CANNOT refrain from attacking me personally every time I post anything critical of your Great Goad Cheeto.
And you’re a habitual liar.
You NEVER meet a critique on substance. You deflect and attack. You’re a disgusting anti-American.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUu_MyWu4n8
Here’s another one, Piglet. Like salt on a slug…!!!
Thank you for proving me right!
rags rote:
I call YOU a moral coward because you are a frothing T-rump cultist who CANNOT refrain from attacking me personally every time I post anything critical of your Great Goad Cheeto.
And you’re a habitual liar.
You NEVER meet a critique on substance. You deflect and attack. You’re a disgusting anti-American.
What a thin skinned, whining coward you are. Your stock in trade on LI is the personal attack on those you disagree with. When you call people ‘T-rump cultists’, ‘moral cowards’ and all your other ‘cute’ names, you are committing the personal attacks for which you are now condemning others. Don’t claim you have never downvoted a link type post without a comment – no one will believe you. Were you a moral coward when you did it? And here you are whining like a little baby because someone downvoted you. It must be hell for you, living in TX surrounded by real men. Do you stuff a sock in your pants when you go cruising?
The problem for you is not that I don’t critique on substance, but that I DO. I hold you accountable for the consequences of your positions. You worked to defeat Trump, knowing that it meant Hillary would be elected. That is a fact – it’s substance. You claimed then and now that you are a great conservative defender. That you claimed it is a fact – it’s substance. Together, those facts logically raise the question of how electing her was better for conservativism. You have stated that your goal is to advance conservativism, making the question substantive. It’s even more substantive when, as you continue to do, you insult the intelligence and integrity of those who voted for Trump while refusing to explain, with presenting any substance, why defeating him was better for the cause. Why can’t / won’t you explain? Is it because your claim is wrong – that electing Trump was better than defeating him and that you lack the courage to admit it? You offer no explanation – no reasoning – no substance to back up your oft repeated claims. Why don’t you? Are you a sham? A fraud?
The same is true on gun control. If you had successfully defeated Trump, a president Hillary would have appointed RBG II, not Gorsuch, would have banned the 2A, and would have a court that would deliver it. That’s what you would have given us, and it was known on Nov 8 that it would be the result of her victory. All that is fact – it’s substance. Yet, after working to defeat Trump and allow that to happen, you tried to paint yourself as the defender of the 2A over a proposed ban on bump stocks. That you claimed it is a fact – it’s substance. Substance that raises, again, the question of why defeating him was better for the cause. Why Hillary’s law and Hillary’s court is better than his. And with even more urgency, since you are trying to fraudulently wrap yourself in a flag you worked to destroy. And again your answer is to deflect and attack those who ask the substantive questions, instead of making your case.
No, the fraud here who won’t answer on substance is rags. The hypocrite here is rags. The moral coward here is rags.
So again I ask:
What do you think you contribute to the LI experience that justifies the added expense of dealing with you? Why does criticism of you take on a moral dimension?
If you have a point to make, make it. We aren’t going to bother watching some 45 minute video because you link to it.
Fine. Always your choice.
The point IS that Shapiro (the subject of this whole post) has a lot of good points to consider. If you want.
https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/the-remnant-with-jonah-goldberg/24-lawyer-guns-money-minus-the-money/
Here’s some more information. But be careful! It would require over an hour of your time to gain it…!!!
I commend it to you, for your consideration.
It is not a surprise that many students think that socialism is a good thing. For the most part they are a net drag on the country. They take more, sometimes much more, from society than they give, and will for the foreseeable future. Food stamps, welfare payments, subsidized housing, free schooling, the list goes on. Someday soon, I hope, they will be cut off and forced to live off their own labors, as meager as they are. Not too many jobs out there for women’s study majors out there. Too bad, I hope they like Ramen Noodles.
if we lived by the 10 commandments then charity and love one another would take care of many of societal’s problems –
BUT WE DO NOT and so socialism was invented to take the place of morality by brutality.
see North Korea and the various gulags.
we keep the age of children from what was once below the age of propagation to the age of propaganda.
Hollywood acts as if ‘real life’ only exists on the silver screen’
‘you want the truth ?
you can’t hanle the truth !’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk
Norway is a brutal place. They have many gulags called ski resorts.
The state has large ownership positions in key industrial sectors, such as the strategic petroleum sector (Statoil), hydroelectric energy production (Statkraft), aluminum production (Norsk Hydro), the largest Norwegian bank (DNB) and telecommunication provider (Telenor).
In part because they are flush with wealth from North Sea. It is when the money runs out that the “fun” begins. societies should be measured by how functional they are when times get tough. They did produce a Quisling though.
So, you favor national socialism?
Do you know how to say “national socialism” in German, and how the Germans reduced the phrase during their experiment with same?
“Norway is a brutal place. They have many gulags called ski resorts.”
Norway’s also a capitalist democracy, not a Socialist state. No, not even a “Democratic Socialist” one, nimrod.
“The state has large ownership positions in key industrial sectors,-”
And THERE is the key difference.
Actual Socialism- as in the theory, not whatever YellowStreak claims- involves ownership of All the economic sectors by a collective body.
Not just “large ownership positions” in “key” sectors.
At most, Norway is a hybrid economy on a mostly capitalist, free market base.
And the Scandinavians had to B8tchslap Bernie Sanders for mischaracterizing their system in a shameless attempt to link them to something most of the world views (or viewed) as pretty good, and not to totalitarian nightmares like the actual states he tended to Go To.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2015/10/15/bernie-sanders-scandinavia-not-socialist-utopia/lUk9N7dZotJRbvn8PosoIN/story.html
Again, this is where I point out that for all of the rhetoric by ignorant Bernie Bros and their idol, Bernie actually has STAGGERINGLY LITTLE experience with even the systems he calls “democratic socialist” (like the Scandinavian states), but A LOT with UNdemocratic socialist ones like Venezuela, Cuba, Sandinista Nicaragua, and so forth.
This is why I view people like him as essentially intellectual paedos. People who prey on the naivety and lack of economic and civic knowledge of the average person in an attempt to shill something for their own benefit.
Well, I may not be the world’s greatest Scholar but I KNOW a little bit better.
It’s about time someone told them this. And that they needed security in order to hear someone speak the truth tells them something else important, too.
Go Ben!
In both Christianity and atheistic socialism we belong wholly to a god. In Christianity, the god is Yaweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In atheistic socialism, the god is the state.
Can we ban YellowGrifter, the Nazi and Soviet apologist? I don’t think respectable sites should be giving a platform for people who want to turn the US into another Cambodia, Zimbabwe, or Venezuela.
No. He needs a reference point. The joke about world domination by communism was that they would still need one capitalist country to base their economy against otherwise they would get lost.
Add South Africa now since they just voted to confiscate white owned farms….without compensation. How is that constitution in South Africa going Ruth B Ginsberg?
How Progressives Win the Culture War
David Brooks MARCH 1, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/01/opinion/progressives-win-culture-war.html
Two things have fundamentally changed the landscape. First, over the past two years conservatives have self-marginalized. In supporting Donald Trump they have tied themselves to a man whose racial prejudices, sexual behavior and personal morality put him beyond the pale of decent society.
While becoming the movement of Dinesh D’Souza, Sean Hannity and Franklin Graham, they have essentially expelled the leaders and thinkers who have purchase in mainstream culture. Conservatism is now less a political or philosophic movement and more a separatist subculture that participates in its own ostracism.
Second, progressives are getting better and more aggressive at silencing dissenting behavior. All sorts of formerly legitimate opinions have now been deemed beyond the pale on elite campuses. Speakers have been disinvited and careers destroyed. The boundaries are being redrawn across society.
In this last paragraph, David Brooks takes glee that progressives are no long liberals but fascists.
The only thing I’d say to my progressive friends is, be careful how you win your victories. It is one thing to win by persuasion and another thing to win by elite cultural intimidation. Illiberalism breeds illiberalism. Using elite power, whether economic or cultural, to silence less educated foes usually produces a backlash.
Conservatives have zero cultural power, but they have immense political power. Even today, voters trust Republicans on the gun issue more than Democrats. If you exile 40 percent of the country from respectable society they will mount a political backlash that will make Donald Trump look like Adlai Stevenson.
This happened already … dissing Romney begot Trump.
Rather than the alleged Russian trolls in so-called social media affecting elections, I’m much more concerned about the 75 year effort from the Left that created government unconstitutional institutions,
put terrorists into college professorships, who then went on to certify teachers, who then infiltrated the school system to brainwash our kids with their Soviet Bolshevik ideas. Collusion, multigenerational.
“Hundreds Of Police Officers Protect Audience At Ben Shapiro’s St. Paul Speech”
Allow me to reduce this to its most basic element:
“Hundreds Of Police Officers Protect Speech”
This is what progressives have brought us to – it takes police presence to defend free speech from leftists’ assaults (and that last word is used literally, not figuratively).
Rarely before have we seen such abject fear towards ideas that differ from what they have been exposed to. This terror of new ideas an the vigor with which they demand protection from these new ideas be stifled should speak volumes. Isn’t it amazing how close minded those are who scream the loudest about being open minded?
What the heck, is yellow the new official color of the democrats/communists? They got tired of stealing our blue for a while and don’t want to go back to red/pink yet?