Barry Gold wrote:
>> Logically, if corporations have the same free speech rights as natural
>> persons, they should _also_ have the right to speak anonymously.
>>
>> OTOH, those rules were designed to protect ordinary people, who may be
>> at the mercy of employers, mobs, etc. Large corporations, people who
>> can afford to make political donations in the $millions, should be
>> able to weather the storm from unpopular opinions. They can afford
>> security (and usually already hire some). And I think the public has
>> _some_ interest in knowing who is trying to influence elections.
Fred Brown wrote:
> Certain politicians on both sides of the asile want to know who is
speaking out against them. There have been several attempts since CU to
craft legislation prohibiting anonymous political speech both at the
state and federal levels.
> And we are seeing what happens to people who speak out with unpopular
> opinions on our college campuses.
Not that much, really. They get yelled at, but when colleges -- at
least, government-run colleges, try to restrict free speech, the courts
intervene, as they should.
The whole "safe space" thing, "trigger warnings," etc. is just too
stupid for words. The whole idea of college, university, etc. is to
provide a place where ideas can compete and everybody gets to talk. As
you said below, if you don't like what is being said, stick your fingers
in your ears.
I've heard about -- but not seen definitive proof of -- campuses and
departments where a Conservative viewpoint will get you low grades. But
I suspect that (for example), if you submitted the modern equivalent of
John Maynard Keynes's doctoral dissertation at the University of
Chicago, you wouldn't get your PhD.
Or, how well do you think a paper (or classroom argument) defending
same-sex marriage would go over at TCU, Bob Jones University, SMU, etc.?
The reason I mention lack of proof is that I have no idea how
well-reasoned the "Conservative" viewpoints are. A lot of what I see on
the web is purely circular reasoning. One reason for coming here is that
_some_ of our Conservatives (most notably Oz and Kevin) can actually
construct a logical argument.
One Conservative in our local club (who, like too many Conservatives,
reads only Conservative sources and believes everything he reads there)
entered a discussion about GMO grain and monarch butterflies. He
said(*) that GMOs are not responsible for the severe decline in monarch
butterflies in the midwest.
Strictly speaking, he's right. It isn't the GMOs themselves that are
causing trouble for the midwest monarchs. It's the herbicide (Roundup)
that is used to inhibit weeds and allow putting the crop rows closer
together.
Most insects depend on some sort of camouflage to protect them from
predators. But monarchs have a distinctive and highly visible pattern on
their wings. That pattern is a warning to birds that might otherwise eat
the monarchs.
Monarch butterflies lay their eggs on milkweed plants (if there are any
available). The caterpillars eat the milkweed and store cardenolides,
which are poisonous to birds. A bird eats a monarch butterfly and
discovers that it tastes bitter. The bird also gets quite sick from the
cardenolides and other alkaloids that the caterpillar derived from the
milkweed.
Thus, birds learn not to eat monarchs, and the majority of the migration
either survives or dies of something other than predation.
Roundup kills milkweed, so the monarchs must lay their eggs on other
plants. That results in mature butterflies that don't have the milkweed
poisons in their cells, and don't poison birds. So the birds eat the
monarchs and only a small portion of the monarchs survive the annual
migration.
And _that_ is the problem with GMO grains and monarch butterflies:
Farmers buy GMO grains so they can use Roundup to kill weeds --
including milkweed. The result is monarchs that don't poison birds, and
the loss of almost all of the yearly migration to predation.
You can't depend on only one point of view. You need to do research. If
this guy's level of research is typical (he's a first-level manager at
the LA DWP), then there may be other problems with Conservative research
at the college level.
(*) Presumably parroting either a Conservative web page or Monsanto itself