Offended by Words - Doug Stanhope

It is not difficult to define bad ideas. Any idea that leads to or advocates for the harmful or unfair treatment of people is a bad idea. Racist ideas, bigoted ideas of any kind, are all bad. If you can explain to me why they aren't, then I'll accept your first premise.

Because there are grey areas. I will agree that most people will agree that bigoted ideas in the context of hurting another human being due to race, color or nationality is wrong. But then there's the addendum "of any kind"...

Here's a specific example. My country accepts more immigrants per capita in the world, much more than no.2 on the list. We have problems with segregation and crime and are struggling to support our elders and youngsters because the immigrant pressure is so high. The logical idea then would be to put immigration levels somewhere closer to our nearest neighbors levels or the EU average and release some of the pressure so we can make sure we're not creating a situation where our elders gets mistreated in the retirement homes and immigrant youth doesn't grow up in ghettos with extreme employment rates and crime levels. This is the logic of it all.

But we're talking "of any kind here". And our ideas, your ideas, have gone so far that any who suggests this is branded as a racist. Those who do gets physically attacked by far left wing groups that openly work with the national media and government to stigmatize and persecute random people sharing random thought anonymously on the internet. And similar steps are being taken towards promoting a feminist ideal that openly states that men are scum, should be killed, etc.

Now all of these are "objective ideas". I support immigration. And I support gender equality. But somehow we ended up in a situation we're we had Tumblr takeover and what followed as a result of these "objective ideas" is not pretty. In hindsight... yea free speech is not a "bad idea" as it turns out. And I fear what type of society my kids will grow up in.

So this Tumblr ideal you're promoting doesn't work. Sooner or later someone will decide that one of your thoughts is "objectively bad" and by then it will be too late. That's the reality of what you are proposing. That people should have a mandate to control what other people think is ridiculous and even more so when the basis is an emotional response because who's to say the offended is using this to be the aggressor? There are so many ways to abuse feelgood-fascism because you can't even oppose it without automatically becoming a non-feelgood troublemaker.

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