Links to Consider
More Warbyisms; Robert P. George and Yoram Hazony on anti-semitic speech; Alice Evans on non-Western marriage patterns; Rob Kurzban on weaponizing morality
There is a persistent pattern of progressives demanding respect for their moral judgements while clearly feeling entitled to treat others’ moral judgements with contempt.
…Perfectionist systems greatly understate the problems of order. You see this not only in Marxism and other forms of transformational politics, but also in libertarianism.
…the collective narcissism of Feminism, where to criticise men is feminism, but to criticise women is misogyny
I read some of the essay as channeling Thomas Sowell, whom he cites, on the constrained and unconstrained vision.
Steven Hayward reprints an argument between Robert P. George and Yoram Hazony on the topic of free speech in the wake of campus antisemitism.
George makes the case that the answer to disgusting speech is more speech.
The objective needs to be to expose our young men and women to a much broader range of perspectives. They need to encounter and engage the best arguments to be made on all sides of questions that divide our society. We need to empower students to think for themselves.
Independence of mind is the solution. A campus culture of robust free inquiry is what produces students who think for themselves. Students need to be challenged, not coddled, and certainly not catechized and indoctrinated.
Hazony argues that this time is different.
the universities, through an excess of liberality and toleration, have permitted the establishment on campus of organized groups of faculty and students advocating for white genocide and Jewish genocide. These are not supporters of free speech and independence of mind. They are unblushing totalitarians and apologists for the most extreme forms of violence imaginable. Their presence on the campus, combined with their vicious techniques of suppressing all opposition, have ended free speech and independence of mind in many of the most important universities.
It is inconceivable that a scholar such as yourself, who has witnessed all this at close range, cannot see that further calls for free speech and independence of mind are wildly inadequate to these circumstances. These institutions are either lost or on the verge of being lost, and yet you seem to endorse the very policies that brought us to this horrific and menacing crossroads–which is plainly a danger both to academia and to the nation these universities were designed to serve.
I will try to thread the needle between these two positions. I think that free speech is the right value. We should tolerate antisemitic speech.
What administrators should emphatically reject is the bullying, the intimidation, the “demands.” Call the police and bring charges against protesters who engage in vandalism and other forms of lawbreaking. Expel students who try to intimidate and shout down others. Then you will have a climate in which free speech can operate.
All castes in Medieval Rajasthan favoured early, arranged marriages. Peasant daughters were often married before 16. Breaking off engagements was considered humiliating, a terrible offence. This was enforced by the state - which fined or forbid cancellation of engagements.
…Across Eurasia, patrilocal clans secured wider cooperation through arranged marriage. Girls were socialised to please their in-laws and stay put. Her inability to credibly threaten exit gave in-laws the upper hand.
Western Europe escaped patrilocality thanks to a draconian Catholic Church. But divorce remained prohibited. It was only with sexual liberation and job-creating economic growth in the late 20th century that wives could actually leave.
We take it for granted that women are not given away by their parents as child brides and that they have the right to escape a bad marriage. But this is less the case outside of what Joseph Henrich dubbed WEIRD societies.
In a related essay, Evans writes,
Patrilocal social cooperation gave men’s families the upper hand. Mothers-in-law could assert their preferences - whether this was to exploit labour or enforce seclusion. Daughters-in-law were caught in what I call “The Patrilocal Trap”.
moral judgment isn’t for cooperation. It’s for side-taking.
It seems as though he is headed toward a view of morality that is cynical, even nihilistic. But he says,
when moral rules specify harmful acts and accusations are judged impartially by the evidence, much good can result
He goes on to accuse progressives of using moral judgment in the bad way, not in the good way.
Pointer from Rob Henderson.
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“It was only with sexual liberation and job-creating economic growth in the late 20th century that wives could actually leave.”
Before the Information Age, brute strength was often the key to survival and success. In such a world, women were likely to be treated as second class citizens. Once brains became more important than brawn, women could more easily compete.
Oddly, many feminists want to tear down the free market system that created the world in which they are on an equal - perhaps more than equal - footing with men.
I think your view is just the same as George's (which I also agree with). I don't think it will solve the problem, although it's all that can be done from the top down.
As long as students are willing to socially sanction each other for their beliefs, they will correctly feel controlled and constrained by their peers. What they need is a more tolerant "culture of free speech." But no one can or should force this on them, although admissions could help the situation somewhat if they wanted to.