Professor fired over Va. Tech discussion

rebornFixer

Uncle Leo wrote:

You need to bone up on your liberal bashing.

Seriously ... That comment wasn't "liberal bashing", Captain Defensive. It was university-bashing, if anything. My point was that free discourse doesn't really exist on most campuses, and I stick by it. You can get away with more public comments as long as they reflect a leftist political bias.
Like I said, its true up here, at the very least. Maybe the U.S. is different.

Uncle Leo

reborncareerist wrote:

Seriously ... That comment wasn't "liberal bashing", Captain Defensive. It was university-bashing, if anything. My point was that free discourse doesn't really exist on most campuses, and I stick by it. You can get away with more public comments as long as they reflect a leftist political bias.
Like I said, its true up here, at the very least. Maybe the U.S. is different.

Relax. I was long done thinking about your posts when I told the poster that Communist is a word used in liberal bashing (which is undeniably true). While his question related to my response to your post, our conversation at that point was an unrelated tangent.

rebornFixer

Uncle Leo wrote:

Relax. I was long done thinking about your posts when I told the poster that Communist is a word used in liberal bashing (which is undeniably true). While his question related to my response to your post, our conversation at that point was an unrelated tangent.

Sorry ... Its keeps coming up and I wish it would die. In truth, I shouldn't have made the comment (which itself was kinda tangential).

Uncle Leo

reborncareerist wrote:

Seriously ... That comment wasn't "liberal bashing", Captain Defensive. It was university-bashing, if anything. My point was that free discourse doesn't really exist on most campuses, and I stick by it. You can get away with more public comments as long as they reflect a leftist political bias.
Like I said, its true up here, at the very least. Maybe the U.S. is different.

Well then, just for my amusement, I'll give you my take.

There are segments on campus (though keep in mind, the University of Wisconsin-Madision is up there with Boulder and Berkely) that are liberal--i.e. the student body and the faculty are more liberal than would be reflected in society. In most courses, it's a non-issue. In some, the discourse is very liberal, based primarily on the students that take it. Nevertheless, I have no recollection of a time where the minority viewpoint was shut up just for being "wrong." My best example was a Poli Sci course I took--Politics of Social Welfare. It was a very discussion-centered course. There was one hard core conservative. I disagreed with him 80% of the time, but recognized his points as well thought out. The students in the class hammered him--with primarilly reasonable dialogue. It was 1 vs. 20. But no students (and most importantly the professor) ever shut him down.

My four years is just that. A four year anecdote from one person. I am not saying that dialoge from "dissenters" is never shut down. But like abuse of food stamps or racist cops, we sometimes tend to make the anecdotes the rule. Even if this is an instance of shutting up a conservative (which I tend not to think it was), it's just an anecdote.

Believe me, I felt like I was being shut out alot, as a liberal from about 2002-2004.

Pearl Jam and toast

Byrnzie wrote:

So you equate people gathering in secret - speak easy's - and drinking alcohol, and generally having a good time, to violent criminal activity involving guns?
Somehow, I think one of the above stands out slightly more than the other, and so is therefore easier to curb, and to impose stricter sentences on.

The illegal alcohol trade back then caused a huge surge in crime (and the modern war on drugs is immeasureably even larger than that). Yes, I think it's an accurate issue to compare the illegal gun trade to. I fucking HATE guns, but I'm not gonna be naive about the effects of gun control.

However, as it relates to the VT shooting, gun control definetly needs to be tighter. I say this in reference to the ease in which a 19 year old with severe documented mental/social problems, who had been institutionalized before, who's teachers had recently spoken out about their concerns with him (specifically his creative writing teacher about his extremely violent writings), could buy a gun (two, even) and ammunition that he apparently bought off Ebay.

Illegalizing guns isn't all that gun control is about.

Ahnimus

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