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Oh so what you're saying is that the Dems should go nuclear next election and cut funding for all conservatives unless they go woke and we should go into an arms war of being the Serious Threat each time one group is in power?
Or are only conservatives morally justified in destroying science for culture war issues?
For years, classical liberals, right-wingers, and classical liberals thrown into the right-wing pit of deplorables have been making that argument -- "what if they did the same to you?". For years, it has fallen on deaf ears. For that argument to work, when the deterrent fails the reprisals must be taken.
The laws are flat and this IS the devil rounding on the left.
Anyway, what are they going to do, revoke tax-exempt status for conservative universities until they bend the knee? Or maybe require Catholics to pay for abortions?
So do you think there should be a censorship arms war or do you want more academic freedom?
What are you positing as the mechanism to get from here to there?
It doesn't seem to have been an option of the last several decades. Supreme Court cases do nothing, black-letter civil rights law does nothing, hitting them in the wallet might have an effect.
There were probably better ways to do it than this, I would agree. But if the alternative is doing nothing and letting progressives keep degrading the institutions, so be it
The mechanism is that instead of limiting free speech and punishing academics for wrongthink, we win at free speech by fighting for the principle. This is what principled libertarian first amendment groups like FIRE are doing.
Allowing shitflinging competitions and "you started it" accusations to consume our freedoms will not restore our freedoms, it just creates a downward spiral. As we can see right now, we're even creating new theories of legal harassment.
We're downward spiraling already when principles are abandoned for revenge grievances. Defending freedom is not and never will be easy.
They failed. Utterly.
Don't confuse not having perfect and permanent success with a failure, or you'll let your free speech rights keep slipping further and further away.
As I said, they failed, utterly. Their protests fell on deaf ears and the academy became more and more exclusive of any opposing views. It turns out that a key part of enforcing ones free speech rights is force.
Oh ok, are you gonna use force to start enforcing free speech rights being targeted by the government now?
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