Mars Cheung

A believer in building a better world via dialectic with the aim towards the moral arc. Community Engagement Coordinator @AtheistsLiberty

[Mars Cheung @SecularRonin]

I’m finding that many have been less than principled, or just downright ignorant, in this area. And it’s not the only one.

Don’t claim to be defender of ideas and principles if you’re going to toss them aside when they’re inconvenient. So disgusted with what I’ve been seeing.

[Freddie Sayers @freddiesayers]

We have very regrettably had to cancel our @Econoclasts event with Hasan Piker this week. He was going to be challenged in a new and interesting way — now that cannot happen.

@UnHerd stands for free thinking, free enquiry and free expression. For meeting bad arguments with counter-arguments, not cancelling or "de-platforming". The ideal of free speech only counts if you defend the right of those you strongly disagree with to speak. Otherwise it is meaningless.

Personally I have been very depressed by people on the political Right who have talked the talk on free speech for years — we have campaigned alongside them against censorship over Covid, gender and much else — but who are now seemingly all too happy to forcibly silence people they don't agree with.

We will continue to fight against intellectual dishonesty, illiberalism and boneheadedness whichever political colour it takes.

[Eli Steele @Hebro_Steele]

Longtime friends and colleagues Shelby Steele and Thomas Sowell have warned the West for decades that its most poisonous enemies are white guilt and the racially engineered diversity racket. They argued that it would breed tribal hatred and undermine the West's greatest creation: the individual. Henry Nowak was not treated as an individual but as a representative of a race deemed guilty due to its white skin.

“White guilt morally and culturally disarms the West. It makes the First World apologetic. And this, of course, only inflames the narcissism of the ineffectual.” -- Shelby Steele

“We are among the biggest fools in history if we keep on paying people to make us hate each other. Whether it is called by pretty names like 'multiculturalism,' 'diversity' or gender awareness,' that is what it all boils down to.” -- Thomas Sowell

[Mars Cheung @SecularRonin]

@SwipeWright Utterly trash human being.

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

A university is not a mirror.

Students do not need a better-lit reflection of themselves. They need exposure to people who know things they don’t, see things they miss, and may even be wrong in useful ways.

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

The best advice I ever got came from @TheFIREorg co-founder Harvey Silverglate: “Pick your ten.”

Choose the small group of people whose judgment you actually trust, people who know you, love you, and will still tell you the truth when you’re wrong.

[Michael Shermer @michaelshermer]

Why the academia shifted its telos from truth (veritas) to "speaking truth to power," which has nothing to do with truth & everything to do with power.
They have embraced Marxist praxis:
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it."
https://t.co/yYsBraa14K

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

After publishing Better Angels and Enlightenment Now, I learned that many academic historians become enraged if one notes anything bad that non-Western civilizations did (e.g., slavery, raiding and feuding, harems, human sacrifice, theocratic despots, suicide terrorism), or anything good that Western civilization did (e.g., The Enlightenment), despite the obvious fact that all civilizations did good and bad things, and everything has to come from somewhere. | Does Western Civilisation Exist? James Kierstead on Ancient Greece, Christianity, and the West | Quillette Cetera Ep. 63 https://t.co/V8FupiGECy

[Mars Cheung @SecularRonin]

@IonaItalia 😊

[Saganism @Saganismm]

“When two opposite points of view are expressed with equal intensity, the truth does not necessarily lie exactly halfway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong.”

— Richard Dawkins

[Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom]

I wonder if there's anything in the Bible about golden idols and stuff

[Making Sense Podcast @MakingSenseHQ]

NEW EPISODE
Hasan Piker, Islamism, Making Sense Community, and More (Ep. 474)
Sam and Jaron discuss the launch of Making Sense Community, Sam’s Ben Shapiro conversation, NYT's embrace of Hasan Piker, Zohran Mamdani’s approach to Islamism, and the misuse of the word genocide.

[Mars Cheung @SecularRonin]

@buttonslives @suzylebo @SwipeWright Congratulations Colin and Christina!😊

[Angel Eduardo @StrangelEdweird]

The first issue of @thefireorg’s FIRE Quarterly magazine with me as Managing Editor!

Thanks to amazing graphic design from Jackson Fleagle and contributions from several FIRE staff, this thing looks fantastic.

Want a copy? Become a FIRE member at https://t.co/M98Xin38EN!

[Mars Cheung @SecularRonin]

@mysteriouskat Better Angels of Our Nature, The Moral Landscape, Free Speech by J Mchangama. The Blank Slate, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, End of Faith, The System of Liberty, Constitution of Knowledge, The Moral Arc, Why Evolution Is True, Faith Vs Fact, Discrimination and Disparities…

[Greg Lukianoff @glukianoff]

There is a reason authoritarians censor first and justify it later.

When words are treated as violence, actual violence starts to look like self-defense. And that’s just societal regression with better branding.

[Michael Shermer @michaelshermer]

I'm very pleased and proud to be published by @JHUPress
Get your signed copies here:
https://t.co/LccdrCn9Et

[Brad Polumbo @brad_polumbo]

Doesn't matter whether you approve of the joke or despise it: It's extremely inappropriate for the president of the United States to pressure private companies to fire comedians who mock him.

The Right would've (rightly) melted down if Obama or Biden had ever done this.

[Steven Pinker @sapinker]

We should oppose the Trump administration's abuse of the law to intimidate and cripple private advocacy organizations they don't like. But what they say about the Southern Poverty Law Center (which I used to donate to) is, unfortunately, correct: It “long ago abandoned civil rights work and turned into a partisan smear machine.” Among the targets in its McCarthyite "Hate Watch" list are ordinary academic behavioral geneticists whose research challenges the blank slate. https://t.co/uI6L6Da8wX

[Colin Wright @SwipeWright]

Regardless of your personal views on Pride events, if you had to choose between living in one of two hypothetical countries you knew nothing about except that one had Pride events and the other had none, you would almost certainly prefer living in the country with Pride events.

[Jacob Mchangama @JMchangama]

Joined @Yascha_Mounk to discuss the global free speech recession and how democracies are treating online speech not as a competitive advantage, but as a Trojan horse — from ineffective hate speech laws and militant democracy to the risks of ending anonymity.