Any "university" or "college" that can't tolerate non-PC opinions isn't a college at all.
The policy we're talking about isn't about "tolerating" opinion, it is about using taxpayer funded resources to promote and advertise those opinions. That is not OK.
In class, you should be able speak your mind in whatever PC or non-PC way you like.
Please. It's because universities are overwhelmingly run by a single ideology (in this case, leftism, but in another time or universe, rightism).
If they're private universities, they can choose whatever ideology or speech codes they like, and students can choose whether to attend or not.
If they're public universities, strong restrictions on free speech on campus are a consequence of restrictions on the use of public funds and resources to promote personal political and religious views.
I think too, that as speech becomes based on private technology
"Becomes?" Printing presses, newspapers, radio stations, and television have always been "private technology" and privately owned, and they have exercised strong control over speech. Lower prices have made free speech far more accessible to people.
It would probably be a good idea to consider something similar to "common carrier status" for Internet providers, prohibiting them explicitly from exercising any control. But that would be an innovation in free speech and mass media.
The fact is that free speech in America has been getting more and more curtailed.
"Free speech" means that the government doesn't punish you for what you say. Legally, free speech has been increasing steadily: you can say things now about sex, politics, and religion that would have landed you in legal trouble half a century ago.
But "free speech" doesn't mean that you can say anything anywhere without consequences. Your fellow citizens can still punish you for what you say. Business can refuse to deal with you. Liberal universities can kick you out for spewing Christian fundamentalist nonsense, and Christian universities can kick you out for spewing progressive nonsense. That's what living in a free country means. And thanks to the Internet, we have more opportunity to engage in free speech than ever before.
The sky isn't falling on free speech; quite the opposite, free speech is legally protected than ever before and there are more venues for it than ever before. The only thing anybody might reasonably complain about is that tax dollars are used so widely to support one or the other viewpoint indirectly. That's not new, but that kind of (unconstitutional) government support has shifted from conservative causes to liberal causes. The answer is not to shift it back, the answer is to eliminate such government involvement.
Norfolk State: "The policy broadly prohibits using any university internet technology resources "to further personal views" or "religious or political causes."
If you use taxpayer funded university resources to promote religious causes, that arguably violates the establishment clause.
If you want to promote your personal views, pay for your own website or attend and pay for a private university, don't do it with tax dollars.
The premise that anybody should be able to say anything on any campus is wrong, legally, philosophically, and historically. Universities are (for the most part) private institutions, and they can decide what speech is permissible on campus and as part of the educational experience. Good universities will, of course, try to present a wide range of viewpoints, but what they present and how they present it is still up to them. Nor does it seem to me that this has changed a great deal over time. Even in the 1960's, people were protesting and getting arrested because their views differed from those of the institution; if they had agreed, there wouldn't have been any need for protest. Publicly financed universities face a special problem, in that tax dollars may not be used to promote religion and that there are a few other restrictions. That's OK: if you don't like those restrictions, don't attend a public university. That's also why public universities should probably also be only a small component of the overall mix of educational institutions.
Rather than making all universities some kind of free speech compromise in which everybody can say anything except when it offends anybody, we should have a diversity of public and private institutions based on many different viewpoints and ideologies, and people pick and choose the institutions that they think meets their requirements.
Well, he works for SAP, he needs large numbers of low-skill laborers for the kind of software they produce. I tend to think that's not the future of the software industry.
God doesn't torture his people, even if he does permit wicked people to torture people for a short while to prove a point to Satan
The deity described in the Bible doesn't just permit evil to occur, he blackmails people into committing murder and genocide, and even does the killing himself.
That was chosen as the symbol of the covenant with Abraham leading up to the Mosaic era,
So? What kind of twisted deity has an obsession with boy penises?
Two things: First, the concept of God creating man "male and female" is a recurring theme throughout the first dozen chapters of Genesis.
All species of mammals are sexually dimorphic; for almost none of them is heterosexual monogamy normal behavior.
Second, monogamy helps slow the spread of STDs.
"Don't sleep around" is good advice; "punish the homosexuals and adulterers by death" is evil.
If there are even a dozen righteous people in a city, God doesn't destroy it.--Genesis 18:16-33.
Mass murderers usually attempt to justify their actions, that doesn't make their actions right. A moral and just deity who wants to set an example for humans doesn't just swoop in, say "these people aren't righteous" and kills them. But these biblical stories did set examples that generations of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mass murderers have used as justification and followed.
The clearest explanation I've read of how the Bible treats the problem
The Bible is a haphazard and logically inconsistent collection of writings to begin with; it doesn't matter how it "treats" anything, because if you start with something inconsistent, you can infer anything you like. The most glaring inconsistency is the numerous evil acts the god of the Bible commits, while other parts of the Bible refer to him as moral, just, and merciful. And to resolve this inconsistency, people like you come up with all sorts of hare brained explanations, instead of facing the fact that the Bible is inconsistent nonsense.
There may or may not be a single creator-deity, but if there is, the Abrahamic religions and the Bible have nothing to do with him, except for bits and pieces of philosophy they mostly plagiarized from other sources.
God has principles and purposes that do not change (Malachi 3:6),... The Mosaic Law was God's covenant with humanity during what I called the "plan C" era,
So, this almighty, omniscient being revealed this "plan" to an insignificant desert tribe, who he then proceeded to decimate and torture for a few more millennia. And then he maybe sends Jesus or Mohammed or whoever else, or maybe not; his original chosen people don't seem to think so. And this god's biggest concerns are chopping of parts of someone's wiener and who you go to bed with, while occasionally ordering his people to commit genocides. Sure, that makes sense.
Maybe there is an intelligent creator, maybe not. But if there is, Christianity, Judaism, or Islam have nothing to do with such a being; they are simply a collection of common philosophical ideas plagiarized from other religions, superstitions, and a lot of fraud and cultism.
We had 1 good president and all of you get your panties in a bunch because he lied.
I don't know who you mean by "all of you". I had no problem with Clinton; I thought he was one of the better presidents in a long time. He was also very popular and would probably easily have won a third term, so people knew it.
Bush and Obama got reelected because their challengers were awful. But far fewer people were worshiping Bush as blindly as people are worshiping Obama.
This is the responsibility of the executive branch. Obama had four years to fix this, and it would have been easy for him to do this. Yet it's gotten worse rather than better.
Most of the safety systems and "home comforts" in modern cars trickle down from the top end of the market. Mercedes were the first to use (and develop) ABS, for example.
Most of us cannot spare the time from our primary pursuits to fulfill the daily needs of a peacekeeping force. Few of us can afford upwards of $250000 for our very own personal fire engines, for that matter. So in lieu of other means, we pay money. Since people are also not virtuous enough to contribute freely for the common good, we levy an assessment and call it "taxes".
Some taxes are a good thing: taxes for schools, fire engines, etc. Furthermore, those are self-limiting: if a community makes poor decisions with their spending, they will do less well, and they'll get less revenue in taxes. And people generally have good information about where their local taxes are spent. The deal with local taxes is: "you choose to live here, you pay these taxes" and "we spend them wisely or we suffer".
All of that breaks down at the federal level: your federal tax dollars are spent on bailing out banks and failing industries, hare-brained schemes for education, and to give people who are no part of your community and hate your guts free stuff. You have no choice at the federal level and things become so dilute and complex that control mechanisms that keep things in check at the local level don't work.
In that case I'm guessing that you have never actually met a Libertarian. I am a Libertarian myself and I don't believe in any taxes at all. So I guess I'm an existence proof
There is a wide range of libertarians and libertarian beliefs. You are at one extreme. People like you call themselves "libertarians", but I doubt you are in any way representative.
Limited government Libertarians mostly believe that the government should raise money via some form of voluntary contribution.
You get that because you have freedom of movement: if you want a low tax/low government environment, you move to a place that gives you that. But communities certainly have a right to decide that if you live within their borders, you should contribute to common expenses. The problem in the US is that the federal government is taking over more and more functions and that that leaves people without a choice.
If we reduce the federal government to its constitutionally intended functions, mostly national defense, federal taxes would be extremely low (they could likely be financed without income tax), and you could choose between Massachusetts and Texas depending on what level of taxation you like.
Government is the reason you are alive. If it weren't for government, a polluter would have no reason to not poison your air or water supply for his profit (power).
True, but the question is how government should deal with such externalities: regulation, law suits, planning, penalties, etc. Parties and political ideologies don't differ on the need to make sure that people pay for the costs that they impose on society, but on how that is achieved.
So, your government steps in and makes sure you are safe and sound, by limiting other people's powers. Did you thank government for your protection? You should.
Problem is that many of these governmental mechanisms are also subject to abuse. So, the very mechanisms meant to protect you often are misused by corporations and individuals to enrich themselves at your cost, making you worse off. Much of what is being sold to you as being for your protection (bank regulation, health care, etc.) is actually just hidden gifts to industry and special interests.
That's why we need a balance between liberty and governmental protection. Not everybody who says that they are looking out for you are actually doing so, even if they sincerely believe it themselves.
Aren't you thinking of a Libertarian? I've never met a Republican who advocated no taxes at all.
Libertarians stand for smaller government, and for moving government functions from the federal to the state and local level, as originally envisioned by the constitution. That doesn't mean "no taxes", it means lower federal taxes.
Republicans are not Libertarians
There are many people with libertarian beliefs in the US, and they make up a large chunk of Republican voters.
Remember, the GOP represents interests of monopolist business owners that seek to eliminate competition through government regulation. They do not represent interests of the public.
Wow, you're just the good little propaganda drone for the Democrats.
In fact, both parties are in the pockets of (different) special interests. It's the balance between the two that keeps our democracy limping along.
Apple is less and less relevant as a smartphone maker, but they are quite relevant as a patent troll, PR powerhouse, and company that regularly rips off other people's inventions.
Next you're going to tell me Ferrari or Mercedes are irrelevant in the auto world because Ford outsell them "21:1 (or more)"
How are they "relevant"? Ferrari or Mercedes could stop making passenger cars tomorrow and almost nobody would care. Have they contributed any innovation in recent years anybody cares about?
You've keep making factually wrong statements (I'm paraphrasing): "racial differences are so small they only matter at the tails", "racial differences are due to expectations (racism?)", "schools are driving towards an equilibrium". I gave you links disproving each of those views, yet you keep arguing as if they didn't exist.
I'm saying these differences are real but nothing more than a historical accident and utterly irrelevant. They are neither a consequence of biology nor a consequence of racism, they are nobody's fault, and they are going to be with us for many more generations no matter what we do.
How do you explain the observed differences? What do you think we should do about them?
No, we are not saying the same thing at all. You assume that "race" is an intrinsic property, but that position is inherently racist; you simply try to soften the impact of your racism by assuming that it shouldn't make a difference and then dismiss data that contradicts your belief and assume that we're "driving towards an equilibrium".
Race isn't an intrinsic property, it's just a label we attach to groups of people and their offspring, sometimes only based on parentage, sometimes based on a few superficial traits unrelated to anything else. But intelligence is still a strongly heritable trait. If you were to take an otherwise random group of a thousand highly performing African American school children today, moved them all to an island, and followed them generation after generation, their great grandchildren would still be highly performing. Same if you took a group of highly performing Presbyterians, midgets, or people whose last name started with the letter "Q". Traits often remain correlated in populations even though they are otherwise totally unrelated, and even if they have no biological basis at all.
Office Pro HD, Business Calendar, Firefox, Chromium, outliners, Mint, BTEP, ConnectBot, VNC, and of course the media players. I'm probably forgetting some.
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The policy we're talking about isn't about "tolerating" opinion, it is about using taxpayer funded resources to promote and advertise those opinions. That is not OK.
In class, you should be able speak your mind in whatever PC or non-PC way you like.
If they're private universities, they can choose whatever ideology or speech codes they like, and students can choose whether to attend or not.
If they're public universities, strong restrictions on free speech on campus are a consequence of restrictions on the use of public funds and resources to promote personal political and religious views.
"Becomes?" Printing presses, newspapers, radio stations, and television have always been "private technology" and privately owned, and they have exercised strong control over speech. Lower prices have made free speech far more accessible to people.
It would probably be a good idea to consider something similar to "common carrier status" for Internet providers, prohibiting them explicitly from exercising any control. But that would be an innovation in free speech and mass media.
"Free speech" means that the government doesn't punish you for what you say. Legally, free speech has been increasing steadily: you can say things now about sex, politics, and religion that would have landed you in legal trouble half a century ago.
But "free speech" doesn't mean that you can say anything anywhere without consequences. Your fellow citizens can still punish you for what you say. Business can refuse to deal with you. Liberal universities can kick you out for spewing Christian fundamentalist nonsense, and Christian universities can kick you out for spewing progressive nonsense. That's what living in a free country means. And thanks to the Internet, we have more opportunity to engage in free speech than ever before.
The sky isn't falling on free speech; quite the opposite, free speech is legally protected than ever before and there are more venues for it than ever before. The only thing anybody might reasonably complain about is that tax dollars are used so widely to support one or the other viewpoint indirectly. That's not new, but that kind of (unconstitutional) government support has shifted from conservative causes to liberal causes. The answer is not to shift it back, the answer is to eliminate such government involvement.
If you use taxpayer funded university resources to promote religious causes, that arguably violates the establishment clause.
If you want to promote your personal views, pay for your own website or attend and pay for a private university, don't do it with tax dollars.
The premise that anybody should be able to say anything on any campus is wrong, legally, philosophically, and historically. Universities are (for the most part) private institutions, and they can decide what speech is permissible on campus and as part of the educational experience. Good universities will, of course, try to present a wide range of viewpoints, but what they present and how they present it is still up to them. Nor does it seem to me that this has changed a great deal over time. Even in the 1960's, people were protesting and getting arrested because their views differed from those of the institution; if they had agreed, there wouldn't have been any need for protest. Publicly financed universities face a special problem, in that tax dollars may not be used to promote religion and that there are a few other restrictions. That's OK: if you don't like those restrictions, don't attend a public university. That's also why public universities should probably also be only a small component of the overall mix of educational institutions.
Rather than making all universities some kind of free speech compromise in which everybody can say anything except when it offends anybody, we should have a diversity of public and private institutions based on many different viewpoints and ideologies, and people pick and choose the institutions that they think meets their requirements.
Well, he works for SAP, he needs large numbers of low-skill laborers for the kind of software they produce. I tend to think that's not the future of the software industry.
The deity described in the Bible doesn't just permit evil to occur, he blackmails people into committing murder and genocide, and even does the killing himself.
So? What kind of twisted deity has an obsession with boy penises?
All species of mammals are sexually dimorphic; for almost none of them is heterosexual monogamy normal behavior.
"Don't sleep around" is good advice; "punish the homosexuals and adulterers by death" is evil.
Mass murderers usually attempt to justify their actions, that doesn't make their actions right. A moral and just deity who wants to set an example for humans doesn't just swoop in, say "these people aren't righteous" and kills them. But these biblical stories did set examples that generations of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim mass murderers have used as justification and followed.
The Bible is a haphazard and logically inconsistent collection of writings to begin with; it doesn't matter how it "treats" anything, because if you start with something inconsistent, you can infer anything you like. The most glaring inconsistency is the numerous evil acts the god of the Bible commits, while other parts of the Bible refer to him as moral, just, and merciful. And to resolve this inconsistency, people like you come up with all sorts of hare brained explanations, instead of facing the fact that the Bible is inconsistent nonsense.
There may or may not be a single creator-deity, but if there is, the Abrahamic religions and the Bible have nothing to do with him, except for bits and pieces of philosophy they mostly plagiarized from other sources.
So, this almighty, omniscient being revealed this "plan" to an insignificant desert tribe, who he then proceeded to decimate and torture for a few more millennia. And then he maybe sends Jesus or Mohammed or whoever else, or maybe not; his original chosen people don't seem to think so. And this god's biggest concerns are chopping of parts of someone's wiener and who you go to bed with, while occasionally ordering his people to commit genocides. Sure, that makes sense.
Maybe there is an intelligent creator, maybe not. But if there is, Christianity, Judaism, or Islam have nothing to do with such a being; they are simply a collection of common philosophical ideas plagiarized from other religions, superstitions, and a lot of fraud and cultism.
I don't know who you mean by "all of you". I had no problem with Clinton; I thought he was one of the better presidents in a long time. He was also very popular and would probably easily have won a third term, so people knew it.
Bush and Obama got reelected because their challengers were awful. But far fewer people were worshiping Bush as blindly as people are worshiping Obama.
The entire page is a single Flash file. If you think there's "nothing wrong" with that, you're living in the last century of web design.
This is the responsibility of the executive branch. Obama had four years to fix this, and it would have been easy for him to do this. Yet it's gotten worse rather than better.
But if this is his website, he deserves to get arrested.
The problem Microsoft has is neither with computer science nor with software engineering; their problem is with design, usability, and functionality.
Doesn't look like it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system
True, just not from Mercedes, Ferrari, or Apple.
Some taxes are a good thing: taxes for schools, fire engines, etc. Furthermore, those are self-limiting: if a community makes poor decisions with their spending, they will do less well, and they'll get less revenue in taxes. And people generally have good information about where their local taxes are spent. The deal with local taxes is: "you choose to live here, you pay these taxes" and "we spend them wisely or we suffer".
All of that breaks down at the federal level: your federal tax dollars are spent on bailing out banks and failing industries, hare-brained schemes for education, and to give people who are no part of your community and hate your guts free stuff. You have no choice at the federal level and things become so dilute and complex that control mechanisms that keep things in check at the local level don't work.
There is a wide range of libertarians and libertarian beliefs. You are at one extreme. People like you call themselves "libertarians", but I doubt you are in any way representative.
You get that because you have freedom of movement: if you want a low tax/low government environment, you move to a place that gives you that. But communities certainly have a right to decide that if you live within their borders, you should contribute to common expenses. The problem in the US is that the federal government is taking over more and more functions and that that leaves people without a choice.
If we reduce the federal government to its constitutionally intended functions, mostly national defense, federal taxes would be extremely low (they could likely be financed without income tax), and you could choose between Massachusetts and Texas depending on what level of taxation you like.
True, but the question is how government should deal with such externalities: regulation, law suits, planning, penalties, etc. Parties and political ideologies don't differ on the need to make sure that people pay for the costs that they impose on society, but on how that is achieved.
Problem is that many of these governmental mechanisms are also subject to abuse. So, the very mechanisms meant to protect you often are misused by corporations and individuals to enrich themselves at your cost, making you worse off. Much of what is being sold to you as being for your protection (bank regulation, health care, etc.) is actually just hidden gifts to industry and special interests.
That's why we need a balance between liberty and governmental protection. Not everybody who says that they are looking out for you are actually doing so, even if they sincerely believe it themselves.
Libertarians stand for smaller government, and for moving government functions from the federal to the state and local level, as originally envisioned by the constitution. That doesn't mean "no taxes", it means lower federal taxes.
There are many people with libertarian beliefs in the US, and they make up a large chunk of Republican voters.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_ideologies_in_the_United_States
Wow, you're just the good little propaganda drone for the Democrats.
In fact, both parties are in the pockets of (different) special interests. It's the balance between the two that keeps our democracy limping along.
Apple is less and less relevant as a smartphone maker, but they are quite relevant as a patent troll, PR powerhouse, and company that regularly rips off other people's inventions.
How are they "relevant"? Ferrari or Mercedes could stop making passenger cars tomorrow and almost nobody would care. Have they contributed any innovation in recent years anybody cares about?
You've keep making factually wrong statements (I'm paraphrasing): "racial differences are so small they only matter at the tails", "racial differences are due to expectations (racism?)", "schools are driving towards an equilibrium". I gave you links disproving each of those views, yet you keep arguing as if they didn't exist.
I'm saying these differences are real but nothing more than a historical accident and utterly irrelevant. They are neither a consequence of biology nor a consequence of racism, they are nobody's fault, and they are going to be with us for many more generations no matter what we do.
How do you explain the observed differences? What do you think we should do about them?
No, we are not saying the same thing at all. You assume that "race" is an intrinsic property, but that position is inherently racist; you simply try to soften the impact of your racism by assuming that it shouldn't make a difference and then dismiss data that contradicts your belief and assume that we're "driving towards an equilibrium".
Race isn't an intrinsic property, it's just a label we attach to groups of people and their offspring, sometimes only based on parentage, sometimes based on a few superficial traits unrelated to anything else. But intelligence is still a strongly heritable trait. If you were to take an otherwise random group of a thousand highly performing African American school children today, moved them all to an island, and followed them generation after generation, their great grandchildren would still be highly performing. Same if you took a group of highly performing Presbyterians, midgets, or people whose last name started with the letter "Q". Traits often remain correlated in populations even though they are otherwise totally unrelated, and even if they have no biological basis at all.
Office Pro HD, Business Calendar, Firefox, Chromium, outliners, Mint, BTEP, ConnectBot, VNC, and of course the media players. I'm probably forgetting some.