A big part of the issue is that for some time, the main response from the far left to criticism has been to label any disagreement as due to racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia or some other kind of phobia. You see that at the BLM protest at W&M. There is no possible way for the ACLU to be a white supremacist organization. However, the BLM activists label the ACLU as racist because they defend free speech.
When people inhabit such a parallel world, they cannot be reasoned with.
I think you are proving my point @zinhead. Each side puts 100% of the blame on the other. There is no middle ground left to seek. So they will resort to brute force to sort it out. There is no other place to go really.
And then the fringe right uses examples of the fringe left’s sometimes-imagined observations of racism/etc. to draw others into the idea that actual racism/etc. is acceptable or desirable. It looks like the fringe right has been much more successful in mainstreaming its views.
“The statement is insensitive to those who don’t recognize the singularity of sexuality.”
No it’s not. I didn’t say ONLY. 
Same thing, remember?
“And then the fringe right uses examples of the fringe left’s sometimes-imagined observations of racism/etc. to draw others into the idea that actual racism/etc. is acceptable or desirable.”
Or even nonexistent.
I was entirely serious in my suggestion that colleges use the commitment to free speech issue as an essay prompt. If they truly want to encourage open and civil dialogue, start by screening for it. Frankly, that seems more vital right now that screening for algebra ability in the SAT.
" free speech issue as an essay prompt"
Bright college applicants are capable of giving adcoms what they want. A lot of essays are crafted for their audience.
I think it is a false premise to think that incidents like the one in the OP are that widespread. Colleges continue to have open, civil discourse and atmospheres of learning. It happens every day.
What we are reading about on college campuses is just a microcosm of what exists outside those campus gates. I actually no longer look forward to social gatherings with couples we have known for years because I know that at some point in the evening the conversation will turn to politics. People have drawn their battle lines and there really is no use in “civil discussion” – no one is changing anyone’s mind. Add in a few cocktails and I have seen it turn downright ugly with people insulting friends they have know for decades.
I think we are all at an impasse.
That would be obvious as an explicitly political test (and problematic for public schools for that reason), and most applicants, even if they believe otherwise, will try to write a politically correct answer to such a question.
As ugly as it may seem, freedom of speech still applies to speech that advocates against freedom of speech.
How do you see that? Other than Foxnews and a few fringe websites, the left controls the news media, the popular culture and the education system from K through grad schools. On social issue after social issue, the left has had their way.
There’s at least four flaws in this, and ignores lots of reasons why perceptions of racial bias might be only loosely coupled to actual racial bias.
The right controls the national government, and at least one prominent mainstream right politician has suggested that fringe racists are “very fine people”, while another has indicated that one making a “textbook definition of a racist comment” is still endorsable.
Regarding the media, everyone can choose his/her own media sources, and people do just that. Most people now favor their ideological bubble news sources, and seem to be gravitating toward the fringier ones. But note that, among the cable news channels, Fox’ viewership is nearly as large as that of MSNBC and CNN put together (though MSNBC, which is more explicitly left-opinionated, is significantly larger than CNN). So much for the left controlling the news media.
I thought the responses in #'s 88 and 89 just came from some “canned script” of talking points that both sides circulate to their loyalists.
Given that there has been no widespread protests in the BLM movement against the ACLU, I’m not sure why anyone would use the actions of a handful of misguided students (who seem to be mostly white) on a small college campus to represent anything other than what that small handful of students believe. If there is a widespread BLM revolt against the ACLU, can someone provide a link that isn’t the dozens of articles that have appeared in fringe right news sites that are all about the same single event?
It appears this protest began because some W&M students were very upset because they were in Charlotte and narrowly missed being hurt in the car attack and have focused their anger at the ACLU. They aren’t the first group to focus their anger on the ACLU – attacks on the ACLU have come from both the right and the left over the last few decades.
Some of you may be old enough to remember that in 1988 George H W Bush called Mike Dukakis a “card carrying member of the ACLU” as an innuendo to hint that he wasn’t a loyal and patriotic American but possibly a card carrying Communist sympathizer. There were quite a few years in there where the right had succeeded in making the ACLU something that Americans were supposed to fear as unpatriotic.
A small group of college students did something worthy of criticism. Turning that into a widespread attack on BLM because these seemingly mostly white students identify with a small local campus-based group of BLM seems like something people would do to pursue an agenda rather than engage in real discussion.
Very true. For proof, just consider the people that buy lottery tickets.
Ok, now you’ve gone too far! I don’t care if I’m more likely to be eaten by a shark driving home after buying the ticket, if the pot is >$200M I’m buying a ticket!
I thank you for contributing to the government’s coffers.
And there’s some hope for you winning as well. Sharknado showed there was a surprisingly high chance of being eaten by a shark on your drive home.
Hey, for $2 you get a lot of fantasizing for a few hours or days. That has it’s own value. Don’t knock it. 
Observer12, the ACLU is not conducting a nationwide speech tour. At this event, it was shut down, just as far too many speakers have been shut down or disinvited on campuses ranging from a former Secretary of State to the head of the world bank. This is not one isolated incident at a small college; the trade publication for higher ed frequently cites reports from professors that free speech in endangered on their campuses.
There seem to be two discussions going on here:
Do we also have a sexual assault problem on campus? Are there suddenly huge numbers of male students who are turning college campuses into dangerous places where all women feel threatened because sexual assaults are now so pervasive on campus in a way that never happened back in the halcyon days of the 1960s, 70s, 80s? Back when there was no sexual assault and conservatives could speak freely?
There have been some incidents where conservatives were unable to speak. The students shouting them down were wrong. But these are dwarfed by the many hundreds of times that conservatives have spoken without being shut down. Only the media doesn’t cover the stories that say “conservatives allowed to speak”. But there are conservative speakers at colleges every day who aren’t shut down.
I believe that the William & Mary students were wrong. But the free speech in universities advocates were MIA when U. of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill was fired for expressing offensive views. They were MIA when the NJ community college professor who appeared on Fox News defending BLM was fired. And I’m not hypocritical enough to insist that those few actions demonstrate some crisis on campus where no left wing professor is allowed to speak without being fired. Should I be doing what the right wing media does to gain some political advantage?
The ACLU will defend ALL free speech, whether it offends the left or the right. That’s why the BLM has not condemned the organization. The fact that a handful of mostly white students who self-identify with a small college’s BLM chapter shut down an ACLU speaker tells me that there are some misguided students on campuses. Just like there were misguided students on campuses for the last 5 decades. On both the right and the left. Professors have been fired for being too far on the left. It’s possible to exaggerate some wrong actions into a serious crisis. Perhaps. But if so, it is a “crisis” that college campuses have experienced for the last 40 years.
You have to put this protest in its local context. It was the ACLU that sided with the Alt.Right forces in Charlottesvillee to allow their protest to stay in the downtown park as opposed to being moved to a different location. Given this, I can see how some would see the ACLU as standing with White Supremacy.
Much like with Skokie in the 1970’s the ACLU’s absolutism puts them with some nasty compatriots. I understand their point of view and agree with their their approach.