The Rise of the Intolerant Left | Newgeography.com
"In the past, the right, notably the segment affiliated with religious belief, was closely associated with censorship and control of thought. Today, enforced orthodoxy derives primarily from the left, emboldened by near total control of the media, university curricula and cultural products. Remarkably, a recent study by the Atlantic found that “the most politically intolerant Americans” tend be white, highly educated urban progressives. Conservatives may have once driven intolerance from the pulpit and the press, but they no longer have the ability to exercise thought control in a meaningful way. Long ago, religious zealots embraced feudal ideals, but increasingly it’s the ultra-secular progressives who reprise the role of Medieval Inquisitors." The progressive leftists are the new secular, atheistic cultists. "At the heart of intolerance lies with the notion of “absolute truth.” Traditionally, Western liberalism embraced the ideal of healthy debate and interchange about values and objectives. Liberals and conservatives alike took empiricism and rationality seriously. Today these ideals are being undermined by a fevered rush to reject empiricism and complexity. “There’s a lot of people more concerned about being precisely, factually, and semantically correct than about being morally right,” suggests the left’s super-star Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez . This emphasis on intent and “morality” reflects a more Medieval attitude than that of a reasoned politics that grows from facts and evidence." If you disagree and argue your position, the progressives will scream, "facts be damned, off with his head!" "The globally ascendant environmental movement follows the Medieval script perhaps more than any element on the left. Theirs is also a movement defined by imminent apocalypse, with mankind’s fate doomed by natural disasters, like fires, sea level rise, or even unusual weather brought about by our own sinfulness. There’s increasingly little debate even about the best ways to address climate issues without undermining the economy. Today, even distinguished skeptics deeply concerned about the impact of manmade warming such as veteran climate scientists like Roger Pielke and Judith Curry or economist Bjorn Lonborg have been essentially driven out from most mainstream media. No longer willing to countenance any dissent, many scientific associations have become open advocates for a particular climate agenda. Modern media all too often reflect what the RAND Corporation calls “truth decay,” that is, substituting assertion over evidence, if evidence diverges from the accepted narrative embraced by journalists. There is, for example, a refusal to confront the long history of exaggerations in environmental prophecies — dating back at least to the late 1960s. But whenever the apocalypse fails to appear at its appointed time, the green priesthood simply pushes the timeline further out again, knowing full well the media will not report on their misleading prognostications." Secular cults like climate alarmism and environmentalism are always the most deadly, they have nothing outside of the cultists to rein in their most base instincts, and the result is what we saw in the USSR or Maoist China, industrial-scale mass murder. Our universities, once the seat of free speech, are now the seat of indoctrination. There is no education; there is indoctrination. The result, outside of the STEM courses is a disconnect between what employers want and need and what the propagandists and indoctrinators want to indoctrinate the students to believe. So, one half of the college graduating class will not be able to find work which requires a college degree. These graduates are credentialed but incapable of performing work at a college degree level. So, they make lattes. "Free speech’s future prospects are not made brighter by an internet controlled by a handful of tech oligarchs. Nearly two-thirds of readers now get their news through Facebook and Google; as those tech companies systematically destroy the economics of the news business, their dominance will only grow, particularly among the young. Based largely in the Bay Area — a hotbed of progressive sentiment — these firms use algorithms to suppress anything they find mildly disturbing. This has already resulted in the mass de-platforming of largely conservative voices on outlets such as Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter. The power over information wielded by the oligarchs, the shaping of the next generation by the progressive professoriate and cultural clerisy represent a clear danger to the future of free thought. It will take a concerted effort by people of good will, both left and right, to demand a return to appreciation of the great thinkers of the past and humankind’s beautiful diversity of thought. We can’t let our cultural legacy be squelched by today’s inquisitors." NewSpeak is designed to eliminate words which can be used to discuss ideas threatening to the cult and to force compliance. The intolerance and hate we see today come from the progressive left. Why is Kotkin still on the left?
Comments
|
AuthorMaddog Categories
All
|