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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 18, 2025

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So you explicitly agree with the woke leftists that professors and researchers with "bad opinions" should be punished even if it's not irrelevant to their work?

Will you be upset if the left comes back into power and explicitly targets all conservatives with funding cuts after you've said it's now ok to do?

  • -16

Progressives already do that, and have loudly proclaimed for years it is OK to do. So I will not be upset because it is expected behavior from them.

What conservatives are there? Certainly none in academia. The left already uses its power to purge conservatives as much as they possibly can.

I believe in free speech and other such natural rights, so it should not happen. I also think that

This isn't about moral rectitude, it's about what's possible. You can't start shooting kulaks and demand they not shoot back because God commanded that thou shalt not kill.

I'm simply informing you of what's possible in the political climate created by such acts. Which is exactly what I was warning everyone would happen ten years ago.

The left wing has thoroughly destroyed the classical liberal fort on its advance, and now that the advance has stopped, it can't hide behind its walls whilst retreating. Actions have consequences.

I believe in free speech and other such natural rights, so it should not happen. I also think that

Well you say that and yet nothing in the following sentences expresses any idea that it is wrong to target researchers and scientists for their personal political beliefs. In fact all the effort seems dedicated to defending the idea of targeted wrongthink suppression.

  • -11

Do you really want me to tell you that universities should not exist as such because they are State funded propaganda machines and thus undermine the very foundations of truth seeking by connecting it to power, and thus by their very structure can only be tools of modernist totalitarianism?

We can get into it. But it's off topic. And you don't seem to understand the difference between description and prescription anyways so it's a non starter.

"You can't understand the nature of politics and hold Liberal ideals" is a nonsense argument. Bertrand de Jouvenel exists. My commitment to liberty does not require me to hold any delusions about the necessity for the leader of a coalition to punish his enemies and reward his friends.

Recognizing the nature of the world is only supporting its tragedy in the mind of a child.