“Some arguments aren’t worth engaging with, and quite frankly are dangerous for even existing. ..The burden is not on us to talk our mouths dry and educate others, and frankly it is past the point of being an intellectual challenge. It’s an insult to our personhood, experience and rights to have to hold some of these “debates.” …Abort the conversation.”
—Yale Daily News columnist Bianca Nan, in her essay rejecting the concept of civil discourse and debate among students on issues she has made up her mind regarding what the “right” answer is.
20 years old, after nearly three years of education at one of the nation’s elite institutions of higher learning, and this is what Bianca Nan has learned. Not only is she and her ideological clones right about a wide range of political and social issues, but it is a waste of time to even listen to differing views and debate their validity, because such points of view are inherently dangerous and not worthy of debate.
What issues does she consider so settled and self-evident to right-thinking people that her virtuous and superior viewpoint cannot and should not be challenged? Not just abortion, though that is certainly one: she writes,
“I should not have…entertained such discourse; to bring the legality of abortion into question, then frame the debate around whether and when a fetus became a person was a red herring, a false path meant to distract someone from the true issue and its massive repercussions for bodily autonomy and reproductive rights. The discussion never should have been entertained, because simply opening space for this “logical, respectful” debate itself is a threat to human rights that should never be up for debate.”
The “true issue” is, after all, what abortion activists say it is. Argument over! Other issues that Tan insists are a waste of time and respect include illegal immigration (the obvious, undeniable truth is that they are just immigrants, and immigration is a human right), which she mentions specifically, and, I’m guessing, the need to eliminate fossil fuels, the importance of banning “hate speech,” the justness of special benefits and favored status for “historically marginalized people,” why the United States government should pay for universal health care, a guaranteed living wage and every individual’s right to adequate shelter and sustenance, and that all but the most violent crimes be decriminalized.
These positions are just right, that’s all, and anyone who doesn’t agree isn’t worthy of respect or consideration. Nan is certain that logical debate is futile, which presumably includes her totalitarian views expressed in her column.
Please note that she is not referring to debates with deranged fanatics over whether the Holocaust happened, whether the earth is flat, whether the moon landing was faked or Trump really won in a landslide. Her standard is literally whether another intelligent human being refuses to accept the cant she has been indoctrinated to believe. Hers is the attitude of the cultist and true believer who has walled herself off from any information, analysis or arguments that might shake her believe in her own righteousness.
And that is where her Yale education has brought her in less than three years. She won’t swerve from that one-way world view in the time remaining, because she has learned that arguments that might change her mind—anyone else’s, presumably, are dangerous.
She is a young, emerging totalitarian.
Ethics Alarms 
Jawohl, mein fuehrer!
The biatch has already spent three years at Yale, why not broaden her educational experience and wrap it all up in North Korea?
“ Some arguments aren’t worth engaging with, and quite frankly are dangerous for even existing.”
Moron!
Ironically, if you are never challenged intellectually, you become intellectually challenged. (I just came up with that.)
And, she defends that mind-set.
I am fortunate. I went to St. John’s College. A common touchstone of that experience is that we studied geo-centric astronomy for almost a year.
We studied an astronomical system that we knew was not correct! And why? Because it was so damn accurate!! That mathematics was superb. It was meticulous in detail. It was incredibly informative and enlightening.
And, it was incorrect.
Then, we studied Copernicus. Simpler, but still wrong.
There is a benefit to understanding, even studying, bad ideas.
My study of Ptolemaic astronomy has prepared me to consider all kinds of nonsense. Aristotle wrote about natural slaves (Gasp!); Hegel did too, I think (sorry, I was not paying attention).
There are no dangerous arguments—if you have a brain to analyze them.
I don’t shy away from even the craziest conspiracy theories. Figuring out why I disagree with Holocaust deniers or flat-earthers or moon-landing people requires actual thought. Often, it is not much thought. But, it requires you to discard your biases and attempt to understand why you think what you think.
You can not be very enlightened if you only study people who thought correctly. It will mean ignoring every one of your predecessors who tried to figure things out. You can learn quite a lot from them.
In the history of the world, a lot of smart people have thought incorrect things—even more than have thought correct things. Bianca Nun, is far less interesting, even if she has never had an incorrect thought in her life.
You can learn a lot more by studying the Pre-Socratics than you can by listening to Bianca Nan.
Even worse: You will learn far more from Aristotle (who thought there were natural slaves, women were inferior, the earth did not move, and there were four humors) than you will ever learn by listening to Bianca Nan.
-Jut
COTD. Jut, you are the man. You are what makes small, liberal arts colleges what they are supposed to be be.
I’m thinking we sen Ms. Nan back to Vietnam or wherever she or her parents came from so she can fully enjoy the wonders of Ho Chi Mihn’s revolution. What is wrong with the United States? Why do we let all these sworn enemies into the country and then treat them like royalty?
I think a lot of this idea that you just shut the other side down started, or at least its most recent incarnation started, during the gay marriage conflict. Many of the proponents of gay marriage said that those opposed should simply be shut out of the debate and given the same respect that you give or don’t give to those who believe the Earth is flat.
The thing is, it worked. You would regularly see lawsuits regarding gay marriage that the major law firms and high profile attorneys just wouldn’t touch. Since it worked there, the left has applied it everywhere. It’s really easy to win the game when the other side is not allowed to take the field. It’s really easy to win the war when the other side is not allowed to field an army.
That’s why you heard a lot of talk 3 years ago that you are either anti-racist or you are racist, there’s no such thing as just being not racist. That’s also what gave birth to the concept of antifa and their rhetoric that if you are not anti-fascist you are fascist. Now you have people saying that there are no two sides to the abortion question, you are either for it or…there is no or. There’s simply no room for another side in this discussion, in fact it’s not a discussion.
The left has now set themselves up as the nation’s parents, teachers, and policemen. If you dare to even assert your own thoughts, you just get told “shut up, I’m not going to argue or debate this with you.” Get your ass up to bed right now or I’ll flog you. Speak only when you’re spoken to, or it’s a trip to the principal’s office for you. Shut up, this isn’t a discussion, take your ball and bat and get off this property and do it now, or I’ll hit you a few times with the leather thongs of my nightstick, put you in cuffs and take you home in a police car, wear your mom will give you 10 hits with a wooden spoon and warn you to wait until your father gets home, when you will really get a severe beating.
Sounds pretty tyrannical, no? That’s ultimately what people like this are, petty tyrants who who just use force to get done what they want done, no matter what anyone else thinks or wants. Most of them seem to think that it’s perfectly all right because they know what’s good for everybody else and anyone who disagrees with them is simply wrong.
C.S. Lewis once wrote something to the effect that the worst villain is the one who thinks he is doing good. An evil villain may eventually reach the point where his hunger for evil is satisfied, but a villain who thinks he does what he does because it is for everyone else’s own good will never be satisfied. He might be right, in some cases, but I think the script writers of the movie Tombstone were more right when they had Doc Holliday describe sociopathic gunfighter Johnny Ringo as man with a hole in his heart, and no matter what he does, he can never kill enough, or steal enough, or inflict enough pain to fill it, because he’s angry at the world for being born. I think a lot of the enemies of society, particularly from those particular sectors of society that grow up believing the day or by nature oppressed and were brought into an oppressive world that seeks to do nothing but crush them, abuse them, and deny them their fair share eventually develop that hole in their hearts. That’s where you get the crazed activist shouting that slaves built this country while he tries to burn it down and the raging feminist demanding that she be allowed to say and do whatever she thinks best and everyone else just needs to shut up and stand aside. It’s also where you get the mentality that it’s perfectly okay to intimidate, attack, and even murder those who disagree with you.
That’s not the basis for a free society. That’s not even the basis for a heavily regulated society such as we see emerging in Canada and Europe. I’m not sure it’s even a basis for any kind of society except maybe Pol Pot’s Cambodia, where just looking too well educated meant a trip out to The killing Fields to be clubbed to death with a pick or a hoe, revolutionary France, where you can get your head chopped off for any reason or no reason, or some of these Islamic warlord States, where women get beaten if they dare even show themselves in public, where gay men get thrown off rooftops, and where radio stations have to use sound effects in between news broadcasts because music is strictly forbidden and can result in severe physical punishment or death.
There’s a powerful rush that comes from having unlimited power and being able to use that power to silence or destroy those who you disagree with, or eventually just because you can. As I have pointed out in the past, however, there is a limit to how far this overuse and abuse of power goes. Eventually you end up with your own head on the block or stabbed to death in your bath or blown away by a “whiff of grapeshot,” or you meet some other unpleasant fate either by those more ruthless than you or those who you pushed to the point where they have nothing to lose. There is nothing quite so dangerous as someone who believes he has nothing to lose. Do you really want someone sneeringly saying “you’re the Duke, A number one,” as he stands over your bullet riddled body?
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
That sums up why we are where we are.
When the Right were the moral busybodies, their claims were at least tempered by the fact that many (even self-aware righties) rejected the right’s claims to moral superiority because it generally came from God.
Now that the Left has adopted a religion, they’ve assumed moral superiority. However, their religion is young and susceptible to all the frailties of young religions–unearned self-assuredness, a scary level of unthinking devotion, a willingness to put others to the sword to enforce, etc., etc. Combine that with the fact that the Left’s religion really sucks from a theological point of view, which I’ve outlined in other comments, and you’ve got people who will literally attack those who aren’t as “tolerant” as they are.
Bullseye.
And don’t forget, the gentlemanly Bushes of Yale let the Clintons and Lannie Davises lose on the country. Dopes.
But wait! There’s MORE from New Haven!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11979497/Yale-University-hosts-anti-semitic-speaker-second-night-Passover-diversity-program.html
Maybe they just should have never started letting Jews into Yale and the rest of the Ivy League! I guess the last fifty or sixty years were just an aberration. Larry Tribe and Alan Dershowitz should have just stayed at CUNY and Brandeis, you know, those Jewish schools.
They tried to keep them out. That is why the SAT was invented.
And as reported in New Haven’s fishwrapper of record:
Alleged antisemitic activist speaks on campus, raising questions about free speech
Other Bill:
The odd quote there is: “Bouteldja also blames Jews for their near-extermination by the Nazis, claiming that they ‘tolerated Nazism before it was inflicted on them.”
It is almost as if she is inviting her own elimination. If we tolerate her, it is our fault if she wreaks havoc on us.
-Jut
JUT wrote -“Ironically, if you are never challenged intellectually, you become intellectually challenged.”
I love that. Might use it as my epitaph.
I won’t lay all the blame on Yale for churning out these bigots. It could simply be that Yale’s entry system is such that hive minds collect in that location. As such, it becomes self-reinforcing. Closed minded people seek out institutions with populations that validate their bigoted beliefs.
Yale didn’t help but Bianca’s current state hasn’t entirely been its fault. Bianca is 20 which means she was born in 2002 or 2003. She was just starting school when Obama took office and she spent much of her growing up under that administration and all that came with it. She spent the rest of it under the toxic environment of anti-Trumpism and the pandemic.
Her education during that time likely progressed to this point, double down upon by her teachers, the news media and the entertainment industry, to say nothing of the internet which has existed in the entirety of her life.
Yale is just placing the finishing touches on her indoctrination and will give her the Ivy League diploma that will prove to the world that said indoctrination was only a top-notch education that will open doors for her across the country.
I knew when I wrote “There is a LOT more in that article!!” in the Friday Open Forum that this article deserved it’s own post in the Ethics Alarms archives.
As far as I’m concerned, Hyerim Bianca Nam is proof positive that there has been ideological and social (cultish) brainwashing indoctrination happening in our society for decades, but it’s clear that it’s been kicked into high gear over the last 15+ years. Hama, and those that think like her, are the direct recipients of this brainwashing indoctrination. Just think, these coddled psychological snowflakes are the current social activists that will walk straight into prominent positions of power in the new social order structure that’s being built upon their ignorance.
This is what culture war does to feeble minds and far too many parents have raised their children to be feeble minded sheeple in a world filled with participation trophies.
I wouldn’t say that there are no dangerous ideas. But I would say that, if there are any dangerous ideas, the idea that some select cabal of people can be safely trusted to decide what all other human beings may say, hear, or think must count among the most dangerous of all.
What’s ironic is that the irony in advocating and demanding the restriction of the very freedom (free expression) that allows those morons to express their idiotic and vile views is lost on them.
Yet another evidence of the complete take over of the academy by extreme leftists. Those kids are, more often than not, victims of the real villains: those political activists (lefties) masquerading as “professors” and “teachers.”
Ultimately, however, it’s the GOP’s fault. People like me have been sounding the alarm on left’s takeover of education for 20+ yrs. The GOP instead have focused on wasteful foreign adventures and lost social issues, and its voters continue to hold the naive belief that those kids will grow out of it (especially naive when the Dems blatantly kept prolonging adolescence).
The GOP is a corporate monopoly selling its voters to the highest bidder. It doesn’t have any interest in what the voters want, only it’s own profit margins. The voters are the product, not the business customers. It works in tandem with the DNC to maintain both corporations monopolies over a population they divide between them. When one company’s product starts to misbehave the other company provides incentives for the other’s to return in the form of social unrest and behavior that the other companies product will despise. This forces the product to behave in order to protect itself. All of this is intentional. The product is being redesigned to work better for the customers.
Null Pointer wrote, “The product [the voters] is being redesigned to work better for the customers.”
By “redesigned”, do you mean brainwashed?
Honest question: are you opposed to the existence of political parties?
In theory, political parties are basically collective bargaining units. I don’t have any objection to collective bargaining units so long as they function as advertised. Unions at one time were very useful for protecting workers rights. They have their place.
At this point, neither political parties nor unions actually function as advertised. I have a problem with the bait and switch. When all the collective bargaining units are collectively bargaining on a third parties behalf instead of the on the behalf of the people they are supposed to represent, something has gone wrong.
The redesign of the product goes far beyond brainwashing, but yes, that is definitely one of the components. Ron mentioned the deterioration of the education system. Part of that deterioration is the switch from education to indoctrination, but it also includes the dumbing down of entire generations. When some schools produce students who can neither read nor write obviously the purpose of those schools has been subverted to some other purpose.
I’m basically applying the concept of “If you aren’t paying for the product then you are the product” to a field other than social media. It seems to fit the political sphere perfectly and explains a lot of what people complain about. Why don’t politicians do what the voters vote for? The politicians were paid by someone other than the voters. Why are the borders open? It benefits large donors. Why has manufacturing all been offshored? It benefits large donors. Why does the US engage in so many useless wars? It benefits large donors.
Why is the education system a mess? It benefits large donors, and serves to keep the product docile and servile.
BTY: I work in manufacturing and I can tell you without a doubt that this statement “Why has manufacturing all been offshored?” is false. There is a LOT of small to medium sized (and even some large sized) manufacturing facilities all across the USA. These facilities are a core of small/medium town economic structures. Your statement talks as if they don’t exist and that is blatantly false.
I had a boss that looked into shifting some of our manufacturing to an offshore facility and when I caught wind of this I told him under no uncertain terms in front of the entire administrative and production staff that if he went there, I would permanently walk out the door. By the way, I’m the entire engineering department, design department, head of equipment maintenance & training, and I do all of the computer IT, production machine programming and website programming. It’s one of the relatively few times that I used my clout in the company to completely overruled a bad decision in progress by my boss.
Null Pointer,
Thanks for expanding your thinking on all that. I agree with much of what you wrote.
Null Pointer,
That’s some heavy stuff, and it’s terrifying that it fits with what we see in our reality.
Dang; what a great thread of comments!
EA is definitely quality over quantity and filled with individuals who really know how to organize their thoughts while educating and being persuasive.
Now having said that; I wonder how our cute little myopic co-ed would respond to all this?
I concur with Jut’s take on epistemology and with Null Pointer’s take on the status quo of political parties.
Nan’s ideology is authoritarian. She is willing to risk dogma and corruption because she thinks they will protect her from what she fears even more, which happens to be a different flavor of dogma and corruption. Corruption is more orderly than turmoil, but no more ethical. The principle is the same: crush them so they don’t crush you. Corruption just uses laws instead of swords. If you want to feel like you deserve to win, dogma has you covered. No matter what your story is, if it tells you why anyone who questions the story is evil, you can use it to justify anything you do to anyone else.
The Visionary Vocabulary pilot program is changing all that. It helps you open the minds of even hostile people, by finding the kernels of legitimate value and concern buried under their ideologies and shifting the conversation towards those value kernels so people realize what they’re actually fighting for. Value kernels are not mutually exclusive, so when you pluck them out of the toxic melange of knee-jerk assumptions and half-baked policies and gather them all together, you have the best chance of figuring out criteria people are willing to rely on to make decisions, and constructive approaches for setting up everyone in a stronger position to accomplish what they really care about.
With these techniques, you don’t have to start from a position of trust and respect. You can establish that quickly, easily, and reliably through the value identification process. Once your audience is engaged, they will easily understand and appreciate the value kernels of your own perspective. Then you can help them move away from destructive beliefs and policies.
Would that be worth an hour of your time?
This Woke Flake is the result of an insidious plan.
Read Prof Stanley Ridgleys book.
“The Dark World of Leftwing Brainwashing in our Universities “
I assume the “shut down your opponents and don’t let them speak” is a Saul Alinsky tactic.