Daily email for April 27, 2016.
What in the world is the matter with Americans — or the entire West, for that matter?
How have we allowed ourselves to be lectured to on “tolerance” by savages who would have us imprisoned if they had the chance?
Think I’m exaggerating?
What else could the Orwellian term “hate speech” be about if not to designate some speech as not being legally protected?
What happens to people when they lack legal protection?
You see where this is going.
Just two days ago, delicate flowers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst shouted “hate speech!” and “f*** you!” during speeches by Tom Woods Show guests Milo Yiannopoulos (episode 576) and Christina Hoff Sommers (episode 625), as well as Steven Crowder.
“Stop talking to us like children,” shouted one irony-deficient protestor.
“Then stop acting like a child,” said Christina Hoff Sommers.
The speakers were booed and given the middle finger by many students as they took the stage.
I wonder how many libertarian or conservative students have acted like this toward speakers they find offensive. (Forgive me for using the sissy word “offensive,” by the way.)
One student handed out a flyer in opposition to the speakers that read, in part: “[You] all demonstrate either that you don’t give a s*** about people’s trauma and pain and think it’s funny to thrust people into states of panic and distress OR that you fundamentally do not understand what a trigger is, what it means to be triggered, and what a trigger warning is meant to prevent.”
How about a third option? Maybe they don’t feel compelled to cater to totalitarian crybabies.
Maybe they think it’s an indefensible double standard that non-leftists have to tolerate nonstop leftism all over campus, but the leftists whose opinions dominate every aspect of college life can’t bring themselves to sit quietly through one event.
I report this to you in part because today I released episode 649 of my show, with James Kalb, author of The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisitorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command.
Jim’s a smart guy and a good guy, and his book (the majority of which I agree with) challenged my views more than any book I’ve read in the past ten years.
Jim thinks there isn’t as much daylight between classical liberalism (e.g., John Locke) and modern liberalism (e.g., John Rawls, Barack Obama) as many libertarians would like to think. I’m not convinced, and did my best to push back.
Listen here:
Tom Woods
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