Trolls Will Save The World; Breitbart, 8/20/16

Milo, Breitbart; Trolls Will Save The World:

"A warped currency today governs popular culture. Instead of creativity, talent and boldness, those who succeed are often those who can best demonstrate outrage, grievance and victimhood. Even conservatives are buying into it. Witness, in the days since Breitbart executive chairman Stephen K. Bannon was announced as Donald Trump’s campaign manager, how establishment stooges have bought into the worst smear-tactics of the left. As with the left, nothing is evaluated on its quality, or whether it’s factually accurate, thought-provoking or even amusing: only whether it can be deemed sexist, racist or homophobic.

Campuses are where the illness takes its most severe form. Students running for safe spaces at the slightest hint of a challenge to their coddled worldview. Faculties and administrations desperately trying to sabotage visits from conservative speakers (often me!) to avoid the inevitable complaints from tearful lefty students.

In this maelstrom of grievance, there is one group boldly swimming against the tide: trolls.

Trolling has become a byword for everything the left disagrees with, particularly if it’s boisterous, mischievous and provocative. Even straightforward political disagreement, not intended to provoke, is sometimes described as “trolling” by leftists who can’t tell the difference between someone who doesn’t believe as they do and an “abuser” or “harasser.”...

...I believe there’s one environment where trolls have yet to fully penetrate, and where they could make all the difference: the university campus.

This is the epicenter of the feelings-focused, danger-phobic, coddling culture described by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff in their viral Atlantic essay. This is where the disease starts, adopts its most virulent form, and then spreads itself out, diluted, to the rest of society. This is the place where the doctrine of political correctness is freshest, and also where its adherents are at their most fragile. This, more than anywhere else, is where we need to see frog memes."

"On “political correctness""; jensorensen.com, August 2016

Jen Sorensen:

"On “political correctness""

‘Politically incorrect’ ideas are mostly rude, not brave; Washington Post, 8/11/16

Alyssa Rosenberg, Washington Post; ‘Politically incorrect’ ideas are mostly rude, not brave:

"But what if the things people have held themselves back from saying for fear of social censure aren’t inherently meaningful? The sad thing about so much supposed truth-telling is that their supposed transgressions aren’t remotely risky. They’re just rude...

Presenting commonplace unpleasantness as an act of moral courage is a nifty bit of reframing. This formulation allows its practitioners to treat their own laziness, meanness and self-indulgence as ethically and politically meaningful, when in fact they’re anything but. We may not be able to afford the suppression of important ideas in the public sphere. But people who rail against political correctness need better examples if they’re going to insist that kindness and decency are threats to the republic."

Obama Thinks Students Should Stop Stifling Debate On Campus; HuffingtonPost.com, 9/15/15

Tyler Kingkade, HuffingtonPost.com; Obama Thinks Students Should Stop Stifling Debate On Campus:

"President Barack Obama wants college students to hear the arguments of people they disagree with, not try to block them from speaking...

"I've heard some college campuses where they don't want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative or they don't want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African-Americans or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women," Obama said. "I gotta tell you I don't agree with that either. I don't agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of view."

The president said that when he was in school, listening to people he disagreed with helped to test his own assumptions and sometimes led him to change his mind.

"Sometimes I realized maybe I've been too narrow-minded, maybe I didn't take this into account, maybe I should see this person's perspective," Obama said. "That's what college, in part, is all about...""

"Part of what a college education is for is to be real people, to be citizens -- not to protect them from discomforts of life," Stone told The Huffington Post...

The professor theorized that students have been "indoctrinated" by their parents that they are "entitled to be safe and comfortable."

"The consequence, I guess, of parents that are hovering all the time and telling everyone they're the best," Stone said."

New Hampshire university's language guide launches war of words; Reuters, 7/29/15

Reuters; New Hampshire university's language guide launches war of words:

"The university's president, Mark Huddleston, said on Wednesday that the guide was not school policy.

"I am troubled by many things in the language guide, especially the suggestion that the use of the term 'American' is misplaced or offensive," Huddleston said in a statement. "The only UNH policy on speech is that it is free and unfettered on our campuses. It is ironic that what was probably a well-meaning effort to be 'sensitive' proves offensive to many people, myself included."

According to its authors, the guide seeks to "invite inclusive excellence" at the university.

"This guide is not a means to censor but rather to create dialogues of inclusion where all of us feel comfortable and welcomed," states the guide, which is posted on the university’s website."