USA Politics

bearfan said:
Reverse your statement .... group of students that want to promote the removal of gay marriage ... can they exclude gays because for whatever reason it causes them mental stress or discomfort
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The difference here is that one is a protected class under US law...and one isn't. Oh, and I have never heard of a single person diagnosed with PTSD because they were attacked for being straight/Christian/anti-gay marriage, etc.

bearfan said:
If you are arguing certain points of view .. then we are back to safe spaces being designed to being some kind of echo chamber that accepts no opposing viewpoints
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That's what any freedom of association is. The Republicans have created the largest echo chamber in the free world via their freedom of association, and it's slowly murdering their party. But these are not people who are arguing points of view with themselves - they are areas where people can not be harassed or shouted down. If that group wants their idea to compete, they still need to emerge into the marketplace.

In the end, I'm very concerned about our concept of freedom of speech when it comes to mental duress. Study after study after study shows us that words can cause legitimate harm to certain people. That words are weapons. And I'm starting to wonder if there's a difference between words and ideas. I certainly don't want to take down anyone's right to their ideas. But I am thinking we need to look closer at what constitutes harassment.
 
Protected classes are a whole other issue ... but what it really comes down to is are you going to give a group of people rights that infringe on the rights of others in a public institution.
 
If you want to look at some actual examples of how safe spaces are being used .. took 2 seconds to google these 3 ... this is what safe spaces is in reality

Nashville Public Library officials have told Nashville’s chapter of Black Lives Matter that meetings that welcome only people of color can’t take place inside the city’s libraries.
That decision has outraged members of Black Lives Matter, who say the library canceled all future meetings the group had organized for later this month.
But library officials say they’re simply enforcing a library policy that says all meetings at their facilities must be open to the general public and news media.
“The library didn’t cancel anyone’s meeting,” said library spokeswoman Emily Waltenbaugh, referring to a Black Lives Matter meeting for Saturday morning that the organization has now rescheduled for a church instead.
“We’re a library,” she said. “We’re taxpayer funded. We have to be open to anyone anytime.”
For the past few months, Black Lives Matter in Nashville has held its chapter meetings at the North Branch Library in North Nashville.

[FONT=arial, sans-serif]http://www.tennessean.com/story/new...y-rule-runs-afoul-nashville-library/80606970/

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A Black History Month event at Oak Park and River Forest High School may have kick-started a schoolwide discussion on race — but not in the way school officials intended.
Several white parents, none of whom would speak on the record, expressed confusion and dismay that their children were prevented from participating in a "Black Lives Matter" event Feb. 27 that was limited to black students only.
In a news release sent out after the event, school officials said they had heard the complaints about the event.
"(Some) students and parents expressed confusion and concern about the event being for black students only," the release said. "Information about the event lacked clarity about this aspect of the conversation, and the high school is committed to improving communications in the future."

[FONT=Georgia, Droid Serif, serif]http://www.chicagotribune.com/subur...lack-lives-matter-tl-0312-20150306-story.html

You can see their moronic demands in the article
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Segregated ‘safe spaces’
Black college students across the country have demanded that they be segregated from white peers, calling for “safe spaces” on campuses meant only for so-called students of color.
The requests for segregated spaces are found among some of the demand lists put forth by students who took part in protests this fall alleging their campuses are oppressive, discriminatory, and represent institutionalized racism.
The demands have been presented to campus administrators and are chronicled byTheDemands.org, a website run by a racial advocacy group called the Black Liberation Collective.
Not all of the 76 demand lists, each from a different university, seek segregated spaces — but several do.
At UCLA, the Afrikan Student Union is insisting upon an “Afrikan Diaspora floor” as well as an “Afro-house.”
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Who cares how it started, this is what it has become and this is exactly what the university is saying will not happen there
 
bearfan said:
Who cares how it started, this is what it has become and this is exactly what the university is saying will not happen there
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No, actually, the university said, no safe spaces are going to be allowed. They didn't say that, "safe spaces used to divide people by race are not allowed".
 
You can support the concept of safe space for survivors of various types of harassment and assaults while not supporting groups that exclude people based on race.
 
I think those are called group sessions ... I can be made to buy something like that is different and maybe a really narrow exclusion. But on campuses, we are seeing "safe spaces" being used by essentially political groups, groups that have some genetic aspect in common excluding others.

I would be willing to be any amount that I can find (from legitimate mainstream sources .. no HuffPo, Breibart, op-eds, actual meeting invites etc) many many more examples of safe spaces being for those purposes that anyone could for "guy who does not like gays walks into a LGBT group" and the like on campuses .. because the reality is that is what safe spaces have become
 
LC, can you show me an example of a public space where I (a middle-age straight white male) should be excluded because of my race, age and gender? Can you show me an example of a space where a young, gay black female should be excluded because of her age, race, or gender?

I have not been following the debate as it pertains to American universities and I'd appreciate it if you could move back from specifics and talk about this on a philosophical level.

I'm not a fan of absolutes, but I tend to view these issues through the lens that I describe in the first paragraph.
I find this conversation fascinating
 
Anyone else see Hillary's speech on the alt-right? Considering the low standard I hold her too, I thought her speech was pretty good.
 
CNN has a decent story on all this safe space stuff

http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/26/us/university-of-chicago-trigger-warnings-safe-spaces/


One section

As Northwestern President Morton Schapiro wrote in 2015, "We all deserve safe spaces."
He offered an example of black students declining a request from white students to sit with them at lunch in the interest of "engaging in the kind of uncomfortable learning the college encourages."
"Those black students had every right to enjoy their lunches in peace. There are plenty of times and places to engage in uncomfortable learning, but that wasn't one of them. The white students, while well-meaning, didn't have the right to unilaterally decide when uncomfortable learning would take place," he wrote.
 
I have a lot of issues with the Libertarian Party and what they stand for (I'm very much a Democrat supporter), but Johnson is a far, far better candidate than Hillary or Trump. Not anything ground-breaking, but it takes very little to be better than the pair of candidates we have today.
 
I always liked what they stood for ... not "pure" .. whatever the fuck that means Libertarian... but the basic notion of being fiscally conservative and socially liberal. Weld, the VP candidate did more to advance gay rights in the US while Dems like Hillary were still saying marriage is between a man and a woman ... talking about mass incarceration of blacks while Hillary was calling them super predators .. etc, etc etc

Johnson and Weld are easily the best ticket they have put forward and seem to be fairly pragmatic about what they could accomplish
 
I saw the Libertarian town hall and thought Weld came off much better than Johnson.
 
I thought so too .. I like Johnson, but think they might be better off if the ticket was flipped .. though you can say the same about the GOP and the Dems
 
I think people severely underestimate the place of bureaucracy in today's society. Nobody is advocating for unnecessary bureaucracy, and it is important to shave off the fat, but campaigning for minimal government is unrealistic, especially in a country as diverse and large as the USA. Bureaucracy IS efficient, and it minimises error.

While I do believe in capitalism, I think the primary reason for financial strife in our current climate is not keeping big businesses on a leash to make high-risk, high-return investments. Laissez-faire goes against that, and instead allows more high-risk investments, which in a sense is a lose-lose situation. If they pay off, disparity between citizens increases, although my larger concern is if it doesn't pay off, and we enter economic recession as a result.

And I would say the USA, as the only official super-power in the world today, holds a responsibility for interventionism, so long as it is justified. Non-interventionism sounds like an ubiquitous demand, which is honestly unfeasible, especially in today's climate.

Those are my three main issues with the Libertarian party.
 
For your big business argument, them getting massive tax favors and just flat out cash from government .. party in power really does not matter ... does not help any of that at all. Add to that, some of those high risk investments are prodded by government ... see FNMA ... essentially a government agency massively lowering requirements for loans and pushing home equity loans with the goal of increasing home ownership in the country.

Minus that pressure and had they kept their requirements to purchase loans where they were prior to the mid-late 90s the amount of bad loans made would have been minimal .. for the fact lenders would not have been able to bundle them up and sell them upstream

We are about (within the next 5 years) to see the same thing in the health insurance markets.

For government size, they have proposed cutting 20% .. realistically that is not going to pass Congress ... I think though they can at least keep it from getting worse and maybe a tiny decline. Hillary promised everything to everyone and Trump is pretty much doing the same ... I think the choice there is pretty much status quo to minimally better versus a decent expansion and more layers of crap

Interventionism, is one are I disagree with the Libertarian Party to a degree, I think the US needs to be involved in the world, but smartly. In one case here I actually do agree with Trump, we need to rethink NATO ... it should still exist, but it's original purpose is gone and adjustments need to be made and add to that, some countries are not keeping up their contribution levels.
 
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