>Who is deeming it unacceptable?
The Anointed Ones. Your personal betters. Your minders. Your racial superiors. The elites. The morally sound. The pure. The pious. The Intellectuals. Every single person that deems to be better than you in some way, and has the ability to use enough force to do it. The narcissists. The sociopaths.
But of course, it is part of the SJW ethos that the think they are smarter and morally superior to you. Their entire world view depends on this. They are the Anointed, you are the masses, and if you do not accept the pronouncements the Anointed make, this makes you evil by definition.
Thomas Sowell lays it all out in his book Visions of the Anointed. This really should be required reading for anyone who opposes SJW idiocy, because it makes it so clear why SJWs do what they do.
The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy by Thomas Sowell
>The Vision of the Anointed is a devastating critique of the mind-set behind the failed social policies of the past thirty years. Thomas Sowell sees what has happened not as a series of isolated mistakes but as a logical consequence of a vision whose defects have led to disasters in education, crime, family disintegration, and other social pathology. In this book, "politically correct" theory is repeatedly confronted with facts -- and sharp contradictions between the two are explained in terms of a whole set of self-congratulatory assumptions held by political and intellectual elites. These elites -- the anointed -- often consider themselves "thinking people," but much of what they call thinking turns out, on examination, to be rhetorical assertion, followed by evasions of mounting evidence against those assertions.
"Vaccines work!"
COVID vaccine didn't work
"It could have been worse without it!"
Thomas Sowell has a great book about this phenomenon. We can't beat them if we don't know their track record.
>By all means, let the harmful disinformation continue to poison intelligent discourse! My liberties!!!
Ah, the cry of the Anointed.
Try reading the book I linked, he's talking about you.
So I’m guessing you’re not actually a Neoliberal, because you must of missed Sowells, Friedman, and others view on the subject.
>entirely natural that white males dominate leadership positions
Well it might have something to do with being a white majority country? Especially the UK, and that said the white males in question usually come from upper middle class/upper class backgrounds it perfectly makes sense.
Why? I’d take a guess you could do an analysIs of any top private firm leadership positions and you’ll find the majority of those people come from upper middle class to upper class backgrounds. The reason is simple their parents afford them a superior education, and thus have better qualifications.
Why are the majority of people in said positions also taller than average?
Again your making arguments based on equity not equality. also you have not a single data point that supports your claims. Your looking for problems where their are none; all there are, are differences in individual choices between me and women.
And again you completely ignore blind recruitment which controls for subconscious bias and eliminates sexism/racism in hiring.
It’s funny because your beliefs are almost religious in nature, but here this might help you out. It’s a book by a black male.
https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X
I take it you're a democrat.
Welfare, public housing, food stamps, quotas for colleges and jobs, cozying up race-baiters like Al Sharpton, the war on drugs (democrat backed), the war on poverty (democrat proposed)...all of these have had huge negative impacts on the black community which quantifiable, nobody can really argue against.
And the assumption that I am backing Trump (which I am not) just goes to show the problem with the current intelligencia in America is incredibly destructive.
I seem to remember rich white men freeing the slaves. Or did you not take a history class?
If you dare, you might enjoy this book: https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X
I'd never seen this before. Great speech; thank you for posting it.
That said I feel a bit convicted to explain why Mr. Atkinson's arguments, while perfectly sensible, seem to have fallen flat, given that in the ensuing years censorship has only gotten worse (as u/Mcnst pointed out).
I'm a relative newcomer here, and my habits lean somewhat toward "try-harding," so I'll commence with the summary before I wax overly loquacious:
TL;DR: He wasn't wrong about anything, but he doesn't directly address any of the deeply-held beliefs (conscious or subconscious) of the modern SJW either. He (quite rightly) calls for "more speech" to hammer out social, political or scientific issues, but to the SJW, speech is not a tool for humans to collectively, collaboratively and oftentimes adversarially figure out reality. Rather it's a tool for them to literally create reality in whatever image the SJW hive-mind decides is proper. "Postmodernism" is the operative philosophical parasite here, incase you've never heard of it, along with a few aliases like "Critical Theory," which is enjoying lots of press these days with the CRT debacle in the US.
Alright lads and ladies, onto the effort-post. At the risk of distorting Mr. Atkinson's argument I will rephrase it thusly:
1) There exists a single objective reality (or, truth exists, if you will). We all inhabit a single universe together, and it's up to us to discover how it works and harness our knowledge to improve the human condition in order to minimize the suffering of humans, animals, plants, etc...(we're at like 1990 Star Trek: TNG levels of Liberalism here, which I was raised on and agree with).
2) Humans have developed a unique capacity for both spoken and written language, our most invaluable tool for struggling with both reality and each other in order to understand reality, sift out the truth and shape the world according to our vision.
3) Therefore, it is essential that this tool of language be employed in every possible instance, including scientific journalism, comedy, blog posts, or what have you. We need not fear false language (or hateful, or bigoted, etc...), since we believe in things like the Scientific Method and Democracy, which are mechanisms that we've developed for every person to voice their opinion in the inevitable pursuit of discerning the truth from falsehood.
4) Any curtailment on this process of freezepeach represents a threat by the powerful to reshape the reality of the "low-profile" and the "vulnerable" to their whims, since it's unnecessary to control speech or thought if your sole interest is the discovery of the truth.
Onto the SJW counterpoints in this regard:
1) No SJW ever addresses the metaphysical nature of reality because...
2) It ultimately doesn't matter whether objective reality exists or not. Language is so hopelessly fraught with power and privilege and bigotry that we can never hope to reach any meaningful understanding with each other with such a flawed tool. Therefore, it may as well not exist, but that won't stop us from making it our bludgeon. The only thing that matters is how we talk about reality. We can make reality into whatever we want as long as we can convince enough people to talk about it in accordance with our vision.
3) Therefore, it is essential that we exercise the utmost control upon the words (and hence, thoughts) that the Plebes are allowed to manifest.
4) Any deviation from our absolute control shall be labeled as "bigotry," "hate-speech" or otherwise, and our sheep will follow right along because we've already captivated both their morality and their prospects of social inclusion.
Upvote for more effort-posting lads and ladies. There's plenty more I could go into.
Here is the book he wrote in 1995 about the deep state, but he uses the term anointed to describe them... 25 years later, this rings extremely true and has come to fruition, the deep state has been plotting this moment for a very long time it seems.
https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-Congratulation-Social-Policy/dp/046508995X
Sowell covers the "legacy of slavery" (higher poverty and single family household rates for blacks were not caused by such a thing), the need for sex education in schools (which actually encouraged more teens to "experiment"), and how certain people are used as mascots by the anointed (such as violent criminals and the homeless, who need to be coddled by society because "we" somehow "failed them"), among many other examples ranging from economic to medical to the social.
> I'm not saying that all people who are pro-life are pro-life because they hate women. But a LOT of anti-choice thought is really informed by anti-woman views. That pregnancy is a righteous consequence for bad women who are having sex they shouldn't be having, and that by getting abortions they are unfairly evading their punishment. That women get abortions because they are selfish and cruel and lazy. Or that they're SO STUPID that they are probably just getting an abortion on a whim and need "counseling" in which they're told a bunch of lies about abortion, and a three-day waiting period.
Well, ok, I'm not one of those people.
>It needs to be legal in situations where we know the baby isn't going to live and an induced labor (rather than a c-section, which is very expensive, and it's kind of understandable that a woman wouldn't want to go through that for a baby that isn't going to live, isn't it?) is the only option.
I did specify "elective" abortions, which wouldn't be what you're talking about.
>Another thing to consider is this -- if made illegal, abortions will happen anyway. They existed before Roe v Wade, and they will happen if it is overturned.
Isn't this the same argument that we make when we argue that gun control is a bad idea? It's one of the pro gun arguments I find less convincing, honestly.
>Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of pro-lifers think differently about abortion when the issue becomes personal to them.
Let's be real, most people on both sides don't have their positions fully thought through. Donald Trump himself attributed his change from pro choice to pro life based on a personal experience.
>What happened is friends of mine years ago were going to have a child, and it was going to be aborted. And it wasn’t aborted. And that child today is a total superstar, a great, great child. And I saw that. And I saw other instances.
>If you really, really want to reduce abortion, sincerely and not because you want to punish women, the answer really isn't in making it illegal.
There's a lot you can do to reduce theft and murder other than making it illegal, but that's a necessary first step, no?
>Comprehensive sex-ed
Not necessarily opposed, but the evidence of this working is not very good. This is actually a great example of social programs failing miserably. When sex education first started being implemented in the 1960s, fertility rates had been declining for more than a decade. Venereal disease was also declining. The rate of infection for gonorrhea, for example, had declined every year from 1950 to 1959, and the rate of syphilis infection, by 1960, was less than half of what it was in 1950. This was the "crisis" sex education was designed to solve.
And the results don't seem very good. As sex education spread through the education systems in the 1970s, the trends above reversed. From 1970 to 1980, the pregnancy rate among 15 to 19 year old females rose from 68 per thousand to 96 per thousand respectively. Among unmarried girls in the 15 to 17 year old brackets, birth rates rose 29% between 1970 and 1984, despite a massive increase in abortions, which doubled during the same period. Among girls under 15, abortions surpassed the number of live births by 1974. The reason why is pretty easy to find; according to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the percentage of unmarried teenage girls who engaged in sexual activity was higher at every age 15 to 19 in 1976 than it had been just 5 years earlier. The rate of teenage gonorrhea tripled between 1956 and 1975. All data is from Vision of the Anointed, pages 15-20. So, maybe this is unfortunate case of correlation without causation. But it is not supported at all by the evidence that sex education reduces pregnancy.
>free birth control, free condoms
These things are legitimately not that expensive. I don't think it's too much to ask to just not put that there without putting that thing on it first.
>improvements to social programs that help single mothers
The reason this is a poor idea is that it encourages people to become single mothers. As I'll explain later, that's very, very bad for society.
>subsidized day care so those women can work
Don't really have an invested opinion either way but I think if you're going to have children, you should be working out how you're going to be taking care of them beforehand. Personal responsibility, you might call it.
>keep funding CHiP
Which republicans voted to do, against disproportionately democratic opposition, sure.
>fund things that make it more economically feasible to raise a child
I actually agree with this, which is why I'm glad Rubio/Lee pushed for a modification to the tax bill to let parents save up for college before the child is born.
>Oh, and for the love of god, get your Republican friends to stop shaming single mothers all the time, Jesus.
The conservative opposition to single parenthood doesn't have that much to do with abortion iirc, but more to do with the fact children of single parents are much more likely to get involved in crime, fall behind in education, do drugs, etc etc etc. Even Barack Obama can't ignore the problem, which disproportionately hurts the black community.
>It's horrible and grotesque and honestly a very weird thing to do if you oppose abortions. The conservative approach to this issue DOES. NOT. WORK.
This does not appeal to be backed by the empirical evidence. We've tried the left's approach and things have gotten worse over the same period.
>It only works if everyone is perfect, if people only ever have sex when they want to and can afford to have a child, if all pregnancies are perfect, if there are no single mothers, and if no one would ever break the law in a desperate situation like an unwanted pregnancy.
Nobody needs a world where those things never happen, they just need to not be endemic. Hence why conservatives stress personal responsibility.
>That's just not the world we live in, and if we genuinely want things to be better, we have to work with the world we have.
I'm still rather confused. Even if I grant literally everything else about your post, I still don't see how it invalidates the pro life position. If that is indeed a person, does it not have the same rights as every other person, everything else be damned?
I don't know of any books, but there must be some out there. The book I read, that changed my life, and the way I look at studies today was this one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/046508995X/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
It is called the "Vision of the Anointed". I can give you the synopsis if you want.
Basically, it comes down to, the plan is good, the people are to stupid to follow it. Ever get skin cancer? Blame it on yourself for not using sunscreen.
​
Are you to fat? Move more eat less, because it is your own fault that you are fat.
All of these things scream to me, the plan is good, the people are to stupid to follow it.
Not the first poster but I can take this one. This is one of the first myths Thomas Sowell busts in The Vision of the Anointed. I'd recommend buying the book, but in lieu of that here's an online version, relevant part starts around page 26.
>As early as 1968, nearly half of all schools in the country-public and private, religious and secu-lar-had sex education, and it was rapidly growing.49 As sex edu-cation programs spread widely through the American educational system during the 1970s, the pregnancy rate among 15-to 19-year-old females rose from approximately 68 per thousand in 1970 to approximately 96 per thousand by 1980.50 Among unmarried girls in the 15-to 17 -year-old bracket, birth rates rose 29 percent between 1970 and 1984,51 despite a massive increase in abor-tions, which more than doubled during the same period. Among girls under 15, the number of abortions surpassed the number of live births by 1974.52 The reason was not hard to find: According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, the percentage of unmarried teenage girls who had engaged in sex was higher at every age from 15 through 19 by 1976 than it was just five years earlier.53 The rate of teenage gonorrhea tripled between 1956 and 1975.54 Sar-gent Shriver, former head of the Office of Economic Opportunity, which led the early charge for more sex education and "family planning" clinics, testified candidly to a congressional committee in 1978: "Just as venereal disease has skyrocketed 350% in the last 15 years when we have had more clinics, more pills, and more sex education than ever in history, teen-age pregnancy has risen."55 Such candor was, however, the exception rather than the rule among those who had pushed for sex education and birth con-trol ("family planning") clinics