Freedom & Flourishing Project

Studying the history, theory, and practice of classical liberalism. “It’s the suede-denim secret police / They’ve come for your uncool niece”

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

@DavidDecosimo Communist parties have historically been quite hierarchical and top-down in their internal structure.

[Liz Mair @LizMair]

This is where your DSA problem is coming from, right here. It's all people who grew up upper middle class, or who inserted themselves into a traditionally upper middle class milieu, and then found out that no one wants to pay them $150k to hear them spout off Critical Theory.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

This is not the answer

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

Germany is considering up to five years in prison for publicly denying Israel’s right to exist.

However offensive one might consider the speech, letting the government decide which political positions are legal is a dangerous power.

[Matthew Lutz @MattLutzPhi]

The motte is "We don't want young earth creationists teaching geology."
The bailey is "We don't want people who disagree with us about any politically relevant issue teaching English."

[George Yancey @profyancey]

Given all the talk about viewpoint diversity and that I have published in the area of academic bias, I think I want to offer an extended comment. First, as to what viewpoint diversity means. I, and others, have produced evidence of political and religious discrimination in academia. It is not as some would say, “Well, I just do not want to hire someone who is a sexist or racist. The evidence shows that merely knowing someone is a Republican or an Evangelical will convince a nontrivial percentage of individuals that he or she should be hired. That is textbook discrimination where a person’s social identity in and of itself is the source of discrimination.

Second, this discrimination is part of what limits the scope of what we can study. Allow me one simple example. Since 2016, there has been a ton of research on white conservatives and Christians. The vast majority of it is critical of those groups, likely as they were the key to Trump’s victory. You know who we have not studied with a critical eye? White progressives. Oh, but those people are not bigots, right? How do you know that without studying them? Indeed, one of the knocks against conservatives is about how fearful they are, and yet I have a paper under review showing that progressives are more fearful than conservatives. Stop with the foolish – do we need to include the perspective of Nazis? Very real research questions are being left on the table because different perspectives have been shut down.

Third, when people are only surrounded by people who think like them, there is a strong tendency to be overconfident in their assessments. I am not saying there are no arguments in academia. I am saying that the scope of the arguments is so narrow because of what is not allowed. In my example above, it becomes easy to blame just about all the social conflict on white conservatives/Christians, which is what most of the work on these topics does. By all means, we need assessment with those groups, and perhaps they are more responsible for our social conflict than white progressives. But if they are not, or if the responsibility is relatively equal, it will be hard to see that in modern academia because nearly everyone agrees that the responsibility is mostly on the conservatives. Unless you put your argument into the fire for critique, you will not know whether you have a sound argument or not.

Fourth and finally, some have talked about how academics have made themselves vulnerable by pissing off half the country, and thus the resources that drive our work are at stake. That is a valid reason to consider as we look at viewpoint diversity. I prefer the other reasons given above since those are more centered morally and can lead to better science. However, if the practical reasons of stopping the threat of the cutting off of funds is what works, then so be it. Nonetheless, at the very least, more viewpoint diversity will better allow us to talk to the half of the country that voted for Trump (for the record, I have never voted for him nor will I ever vote for him). Even if you disagree with people, we have to learn how to communicate with them beyond dehumanizing stereotypes.

Anyway, that is my 2cents, well maybe a nickel, on the subject.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

For A&B

[🇺🇸 The American Culturist 🇺🇸 @MericaCulture]

Fun trivia: Retarded Communists kills 40 million

In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the "Eliminate Sparrows" campaign backed with extensive state propaganda to encourage kids to kill sparrows.

Why? Because he thought sparrows were stealing food from humans.

What happened? Without sparrows the locust population went out of control, decimated Chinese food supplies and roughly 40 million subsequently starved to death.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

@senderowiczj That's cold as ice

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

@Legal_Fil I heard it as, "ending the performative charade after milking it for political gain."

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

Very serious (and supercilious) intellectual thinks the Nichomachean Ethics doesn't have anything to teach moderns about morality.

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

I think the best reason to read The Iliad and The Odyssey is to remind ourselves how much progress has been made.

The ancients don't have much to teach us about morality and ethics. Rather, they're a reminder of how much humanity sucked before the Enlightenment.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

It doesn't sound mean, it sounds lazy and ignorant.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

@Mrmiked42 @joshshepperd self-own

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

Have you looked next door at the Ethnic Studies department?

[Josh Shepperd @joshshepperd]

Too many non-academic interweb gotcha editorialists are looking for hyperbolic examples to confirm an answer to a question that they’ve concluded in advance. And the question has nothing to do with education, evidence based research, or the history of ideas.

[Thomas S. Kidd @ThomasSKidd]

The snark actually proves the point. Confessional schools are quite clear about who they will and won't hire. Typical colleges and universities also have their own "tests of faith" that aren't publicly acknowledged but are just as ironclad.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

For A&B

[Justin Skycak @justinskycak]

The anti-memorization movement has left millions of students unable to think because every elementary operation consumes working memory.

For instance, solving equations feels smooth when basic arithmetic is automatic. It's like moving puzzle pieces around, and you just need to identify how they fit together.

But without automaticity on basic arithmetic, each puzzle piece is a heavy weight. You struggle to move them at all, much less figure out where they're supposed to go.

It’s the same all the way up the ladder of math: from arithmetic, to algebra, to calculus, to all sorts of university-level math and beyond.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

@Compagnondebad @BrandonWarmke So I guessed from your profile pic.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

@Compagnondebad @BrandonWarmke This is what might happen if there were dissenters around to point out the unargued assumptions (i.e. dogmas) of these disciplines. But there aren't, and it doesn't. I don't think we're disagreeing here.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

@Compagnondebad @BrandonWarmke And yet it is a foundational dogma of several disciplines, in particular of cultural anthropology. By their own admission.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

@Compagnondebad @BrandonWarmke Exactly so. But many of the orthodoxies that these disciplines insist are simply facts--facts that happen to have a leftist bias--are not really empirical questions either. Cultural relativism, for instance, is a normative claim not an empirical fact.

[Hunter DeButts @BillySullivan7]

@GordonaryGuy Regarding academia:

In June 2023, Boudin joined the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law as the founding executive director of the Criminal Law & Justice Center.

[Freedom & Flourishing Project @FandF_Project]

@foster_type Yet not even the most annoying person on that list!