The Intolerance Of The "Tolerant"
Last night, at a friend's party, I joked that I might wear black for the next four years while Donald Trump is President -- and let me be clear on this, not that I liked the corrupt Hillary Clinton. (It's just that I found her a corrupt adult, who doesn't have all the impulsivity of an 8-year-old.)
But what I try to do is be open to people who don't think exactly the way I do. I'm an atheist and a strong supporter of gay rights (including the right to marry the one person they love), but I respect that Christians may not want to make cakes for gay weddings.
Not because they necessarily hate gay people -- and it's really none of our business why they don't want to do it -- but because they have a religious objection to gay marriage.
The same goes for that designer (whom I had never heard of) who was all over the news for saying she wouldn't design dresses (if asked!) for Melania Trump. I think that should be her right, but I suspect that many will hold a designer like that to a different standard.
Nick Kristof has a piece in The New York Times on what's going on on campuses -- how they've become echo chambers for liberal thought and why that's dangerous:
To be fully educated, students should encounter not only Plato, but also Republicans.We liberals are adept at pointing out the hypocrisies of Trump, but we should also address our own hypocrisy in terrain we govern, such as most universities: Too often, we embrace diversity of all kinds except for ideological. Repeated studies have found that about 10 percent of professors in the social sciences or the humanities are Republicans.
We champion tolerance, except for conservatives and evangelical Christians. We want to be inclusive of people who don't look like us -- so long as they think like us.
I fear that liberal outrage at Trump's presidency will exacerbate the problem of liberal echo chambers, by creating a more hostile environment for conservatives and evangelicals. Already, the lack of ideological diversity on campuses is a disservice to the students and to liberalism itself, with liberalism collapsing on some campuses into self-parody.
...The weakest argument against intellectual diversity is that conservatives or evangelicals have nothing to add to the conversation. "The idea that conservative ideas are dumb is so preposterous that you have to live in an echo chamber to think of it," Sunstein told me.
Of course, we shouldn't empower racists and misogynists on campuses. But whatever some liberals think, "conservative" and "bigot" are not synonyms.
One of America's most eminent scientists is Francis Collins, an evangelical Christian who is director of the National Institutes of Health. Few scholars had as much impact on modern thought as Gary Becker, the conservative University of Chicago economist. Condoleezza Rice, a secretary of state for George W. Bush, would add value to any campus.
I'm not arguing for affirmative action for conservatives -- partly because conservative academics say they don't want preferences. But I do think we can try harder to recruit job applicants who represent diverse views, to bring conservative speakers to campuses and to avoid a hostile work environment for conservatives and evangelicals.
via @CHSommers
At this point why bother.
No one cares if the snowflakes grow up or not.
Even if they do they will not accept responsibility for their inability to succeed. It will be someone else's fault.
As Leona points out, there are too many people. Might as well let the herd thin itself out naturally.
Bob in texas at December 11, 2016 9:14 AM
Methinks that Marc Jacobs is doing the fashion designer version of Negging a woman.
At this point he probably has the perfect dress for Melania for the presidential inauguration and is expecting her to cave to his demands.
Sixclaws at December 11, 2016 9:46 AM
You really think things will change? these are progressives we're talking about, and they won't rest until all the witches have been purged.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/12/10/college-instructor-tells-students-trumps-election-was-an-act-of-terrorism/?utm_term=.406e9bdf63b0
Keep humping that chicken. To coin a phrase, this is how you got Trump.
I R A Darth Aggie at December 11, 2016 9:51 AM
My own life's experiences have taught me that "liberals" ("progressives," or whatever they want to call themselves thesedays) are the MOST intolerant bunch I have ever had to deal with.
Never, NEVER, have I met a self-called conservative who would tell me to my face that they "hate" me because I am gay; but, boy, have I met plenty of those on the left who will tell me that I am "stupid," "ignorant," "evil," or just tell me to my face that they "hate" me because I do not think like them.
IRA Darth Aggie is right - this is how we got Trump.
Further, my own experiences have also taught me that whatever "charge" the Democrats (and others on the left) throw at Republicans is really something that they, themselves, are guilty of.
For example - it was a Andrew Jackson, a Democrat, who pushed through the laws that forced the Trail of Tears to happen.
It was Democrats who passed Jim Crow laws forcing racial segregation.
It was FDR, a Democrat, who signed the laws forcing Japanese-Americans out of the "exclusion" zone on the West Coast during WWII; and many of them into "camps."
It was Bill Clinton, a Democrat, who sexually assaulted women while in power.
It was the News Media (and the Democrats) who made the "fake news" claim of "hands up, don't shoot" and other such lies. (hmm, it seems to me there was also a "report" against George Bush skipping the draft - something which Bill Clinton DID do.)
Yet, everyone of these charges - racial hatred, racial segregation, the war on women, and now "fake news" which Hillary says is what cost her the election - are thrown by Democrats against the Republicans; even though the Democrats and their mouthpieces the news media are MORE guilty.
charles at December 11, 2016 1:07 PM
I agree w/Charles.
No Obama administration official has been kicked out of the door for not reviewing social media of Islamic immigrants which might have saved the lives of the San Bernadino victims, no MSM harshness towards the Deporter-in-Chief, no honest soul-searching questioning of the many civilians killed by drones, and on and on (ignore the IRS, EPA, etc.).
"We will put coal miners out of work." How insensitive, coarse, and inhumane to PEOPLE can one be. But The Dems Applauded!
Sick puppies. All of them. Adult behavior that should be shamed by the MSM but they are one. FAKE NEWS? Ha Ha Ha. Their not so subtle bias makes their news fake.
Bob in Texas at December 11, 2016 3:27 PM
It is unlikely the universities can be saved at this point. They are so intolerant and bigoted that I don't see change as possible. Throwing a few token 'conservatives' into the mix is purely marketing. And nothing more. It is far simpler and more cost effective to just start up a new university instead and let the rot take down the current ones.
Ben at December 11, 2016 4:49 PM
Alkon: "I think that should be her right, but I suspect that many will hold a designer like that to a different standard."
It depends, I think, on the relative political, religious and moral ideologies of the designer and the customer. I doubt that a conservative, fundamentalist, Christian wedding dress designer would be any more likely to get away with declining the business of a gay customer than Christian bakers, photographers, printers and pizzerias.
To "progressives", whether something someone says, does, or refuses to do is right or wrong, good or evil, doesn't depend on the nature of their words or actions, but on who they are. In this "progressives" are very consistent and predictable.
I once had a gay patient who designed and hand-made ball gowns for gay men. The artistry and detail were amazing. And in the big and tall sizes his gowns were... breathtaking. Not that that has anything to do with the topic; it just made me think of it.
Ken R at December 11, 2016 11:03 PM
"At this point he probably has the perfect dress for Melania for the presidential inauguration and is expecting her to cave to his demands"
Lol you obviously don't know designers like Tom Ford or Marc Jacobs.
They ban people from wearing their designs all the time. I know Tom Ford was doing it before Trump became president because he always found Melania tacky af and he is super anal retentive about every little aspect regarding his brand. All the big designers have a banned list.
He's quite the genius but is insufferable like every other designer. The thing about Ford is that he has the sales and artistic merit to back up whatever the hell he wants to do so almost no one opposes him except YSL when he was alive.
Ppen at December 12, 2016 6:39 AM
"You really think things will change? "
I don't things will change with the Progressives as such. At this point, the die is already cast, and the outcome for the universities and the snowflakes is inevitable at this point. We are going to wind up with 20 million people who will have to be institutionalized because they will be incapable of taking the slightest bit of responsibility for their own lives. What will decide the matter is how the rest of society responds to and manages the problem. That includes the non-snowflake Millennials, the X'ers (who will be approaching what previous generations have considered retirement age, as all this is happening), and the post-Millennials.
As for liberalism, it's hard to say because our last contact with actual American liberalism was in the early 1960s. That was when the Marxist Left began the rape and pillage of its territory, culminating in the Left planting its flag in the conquered lands at the 1968 Democratic Convention (the previous incarnation of "this is how you get Trump"). Liberalism has been missing and presumed dead since then. I don't have a good feel for where American liberalism would be today, intellectually, had it survived. Part of it morphed and became libertarian conservatism, and that leaves what remains without a lot of its substance.
Cousin Dave at December 12, 2016 7:08 AM
You don't institutionalize them CD. You ignore them. And then they noisily starve to death all of their own. All you have to do is realize, you didn't break them, you can't fix them, and they aren't your problem either.
Ben at December 12, 2016 9:07 AM
It was FDR, a Democrat, who signed the laws forcing Japanese-Americans out of the "exclusion" zone on the West Coast during WWII; and many of them into "camps."
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You think a Republican president wouldn't have done the same thing, more or less, at that time? Why not? I think it's safe to assume that FDR, given how many enemies he had, could only go so far in his liberal policies without throwing a bone to racist voters at least once or twice.
And it was Truman who desegregated the troops...and LBJ who said "We shall overcome." Even if that went against his personal inclinations - I don't know if it did or not.
And personally, IF asked, I would advise against any woman's being alone with any man who's rich and powerful and/or a celebrity, regardless of political affiliation.
lenona at December 12, 2016 11:47 AM
You think a Republican president wouldn't have done the same thing, more or less, at that time?
Immaterial, republicans dont bill themselves as the only, and morally superior, champions of civil rights in the whole of the history of mankind
lujlp at December 12, 2016 4:00 PM
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