from Arnold's review: "Conway says that resistance to authoritarianism can be self-defeating if it takes on authoritarian forms. ... Conway asks, 'Do you want the temporary satisfaction of crushing you enemies or do you want your children to grow up in a free society? Because ultimately, you cannot have both. p. 239'"
Yes, indeed. A big deal on Boston news programs today is the detention and revocation of student visas of people who have been publicly anti-Israel or pro-Hamas. Lots of demonstrations against it, almost entirely by lefties. One can defend the revocations and point out the hypocrisy of shouting "free speech" today when a year ago you shouted, "hate has no home here; hate speech is not free speech." Or you can feel hopeful that the left may start to realize that speech isn't really free if somebody can suppress it by labeling it hate. And that free is better.
We can only have a free society with lots of cooperation.
Cooperation evolves from … Tit for Tat.
Conservatives have had their voices censored, and censured, by claims about how hurtful & harmful their words are. To teach Dems how free is better, they need an incentive to learn. Deportation for those inciting illegal violence is far less problematic than censoring Murray’s accurate data about IQ, which Democrats have been doing for decades.
In fact I don’t think most Dems who support censorship of hate speech, against conservatives, will learn to support free speech soon, but instead show their hypocrisy more clearly.
Cooperation does not evolve from straight Tit for Tat. Playing Don't Cooperate in response to the other player's Don't Cooperate leads to mutual Don't Cooperate out to eternity. Getting beat up by Nazis didn't turn Communists into libertarians. It just confirmed them in their, "We are all good and they are all bad, so we have to be just like them to defeat them."
There has to be some way out. There has to be the possibility of mutual non-destruction. Now, maybe deporting nasty people will send enough people searching for a way out that free speech gets resuscitated on the left. "If Donald Trump can do that, maybe strong free speech is our only way to be truly safe." But that means "the right" has to be willing to go along with strong free speech protections. That means, among other things, that you don't just get rid of DEI offices. You make it a point to firmly and politely refuse when any group tries to get you to shut down any sort of speech they don't like.
https://www.econlib.org/library/columns/y2025/klingauthoritarianism.html
The link to Arnold's review of the book.
Also the much earlier link to Arnold's review of Liberal Fascism by (part of the Current Thing that Arnold's not quite talking about ) Jonah Goldberg:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160730033838/http://www.ideasinactiontv.com/tcs_daily/2008/01/jonah-goldbergs-revisionist-f-bomb.html
from Arnold's review: "Conway says that resistance to authoritarianism can be self-defeating if it takes on authoritarian forms. ... Conway asks, 'Do you want the temporary satisfaction of crushing you enemies or do you want your children to grow up in a free society? Because ultimately, you cannot have both. p. 239'"
Yes, indeed. A big deal on Boston news programs today is the detention and revocation of student visas of people who have been publicly anti-Israel or pro-Hamas. Lots of demonstrations against it, almost entirely by lefties. One can defend the revocations and point out the hypocrisy of shouting "free speech" today when a year ago you shouted, "hate has no home here; hate speech is not free speech." Or you can feel hopeful that the left may start to realize that speech isn't really free if somebody can suppress it by labeling it hate. And that free is better.
We can only have a free society with lots of cooperation.
Cooperation evolves from … Tit for Tat.
Conservatives have had their voices censored, and censured, by claims about how hurtful & harmful their words are. To teach Dems how free is better, they need an incentive to learn. Deportation for those inciting illegal violence is far less problematic than censoring Murray’s accurate data about IQ, which Democrats have been doing for decades.
In fact I don’t think most Dems who support censorship of hate speech, against conservatives, will learn to support free speech soon, but instead show their hypocrisy more clearly.
Cooperation does not evolve from straight Tit for Tat. Playing Don't Cooperate in response to the other player's Don't Cooperate leads to mutual Don't Cooperate out to eternity. Getting beat up by Nazis didn't turn Communists into libertarians. It just confirmed them in their, "We are all good and they are all bad, so we have to be just like them to defeat them."
There has to be some way out. There has to be the possibility of mutual non-destruction. Now, maybe deporting nasty people will send enough people searching for a way out that free speech gets resuscitated on the left. "If Donald Trump can do that, maybe strong free speech is our only way to be truly safe." But that means "the right" has to be willing to go along with strong free speech protections. That means, among other things, that you don't just get rid of DEI offices. You make it a point to firmly and politely refuse when any group tries to get you to shut down any sort of speech they don't like.
I like Phil. He’s good.