"Members of historically disadvantaged groups have an interest in laws that protect their rights" as well as laws that guarantee them a share of the spoils, like university admissions, medical internships, jobs and promotions, preferential access to government programs, regardless of individual achievement or merit.
still not sure what a "group right" is, since we're a nation of individual rights. If you decide to join the LGB club tomorrow, which rights will you then be denied that you previously had? No one ever addresses that question.
Best answer is in R.A.B. Butler's classic "The Roots of National Socialism", where he traced the origins of Nazi ideology to the 18th century Prussian Johan Herder, who developed the idea of "group rights" as separate from "individual rights" and from the "rights of kings".
These were the ideas that there was an entity, the group, whose rights were higher than those of individuals and to which individuals had to subordinate.
One can see how that mentality could eventually evolve into Nazism, where the rights of one group overpower any individual right as well as the rights of anyone not belonging to the group.
Butler finds that Germany separated from the West when individual rights, enshrined in England's Glorious Revolution and France's Rights of Man became dominant there while Germany kept the notion that individual rights ranked below the rights of the nation.
Long-winded comment, no doubt, but I find Butler's ideas are the best way to understand where DEI and affirmative action are taking the US. An American example is when black intellectuals like Thomas Sowell or Glenn Loury are attacked as "race traitors" for criticizing affirmative action; their right to free speech is considered less important than their obligation to protect entitlements for their group.
[Butler's book is the most frequently cited reference in Hayek's "Road to Serfdom". It seems out of print now but if you come across a used copy, grab it with both hands and never let go. I did but now stand corrected as you can download it at
"An American example is when black intellectuals like Thomas Sowell or Glenn Loury are attacked as "race traitors" for criticizing affirmative action; their right to free speech is considered less important than their obligation to protect entitlements for their group."
Exercising your own right to free speech in order to criticize a second person's speech does not affect that second person's right to free speech.
"Exercising your own right to free speech in order to criticize a second person's speech does not affect that second person's right to free speech"
Misses the point: criticizing someone's free speech only because it might offend the group they belong to places the individual's right to free speech below the group's rights.
It's a blindingly obvious that being criticized doesn't abolish one's right to free speech. But it will if they continue to claim that you can't be allowed to speak if it violates a group's rights. That's what those critics of Thomas Sowell are saying, although not the First Amendment.
"criticizing someone's free speech only because it might offend the group they belong to places the individual's right to free speech below the group's rights"
What does assuming this is the reasoning without evidence do?
Most people do not choose ideology at all, if anything they choose party. Ideologies and policy views are volatile with the exception of race and abortion which are somewhat more stable. Kinder and Kalmoe make this case quite convincingly in "neither liberal nor conservative". Ideology is basically a non-factor for 80% of people, so Nate's theory seems to hold more water.
That makes more sense. Ideology is a set of principles that are consistently applied to policy. I don't think that's what most people do. Party alignment is more temperamental and cultural.
People have interests. They need to be part of coalitions to express those interests. Sometimes they adopt stances they don't believe in because it's part of being in the coalition. That's how you get people who care about abortion supporting affirmative action (and vice versa) even if they aren't really on board with the less salient issue that brought them into the coalition.
Nate, we've already seen plenty of op-eds demonizing the students protesting for the basic human rights of 2 million individuals being killed based on their ethnicity (wonder if there's a shorter term for that?). We don't need another. Stick to data and numbers.
The only people killed for their ethnicity were the Israelis on Oct 7: Hamas killed or kidnapped every single Jewish person they could get their hands on that day. Gaza's population is 2.3m, up from 350,000 when Israel took control in 1967: doesn't sound like killing 2m for ethnicity.
Neither does an Israeli hospital giving a Gaza woman the same state of the art pacemaker that Israel's PM got a few months before
Are you saying that Israel is killing Palestinians because of their politics? Do they have them fill out a questionnaire before they decide which ones to kill and which ones to spare?
What you are suggesting is way more Nazi-like than the reality. The reality is that the killing is indisciminate because Israel is more interested in hunting down Hamas than sparing innocent bystanders — which is still absolutely horrible, don't get me wrong: it certainly leads to a lot more killing of children, who have not made any political choices and whose only crime is being born in Palestine.
Whataboutism at its finest. Well done. Is Israel killing Hamas, or are they collectively punishing over 2 million people because of their ethnicity? Give me a number of how many innocent people you're OK with killing.
Israel, unfortunately, has to kill civilians because Hamas deliberately hides behind them. Could Israel do more to avoid civilian deaths? Absolutely. But Israel wasn't reducing Gaza to rubble before 10/7, and they aren't the ones who placed rocket launchers in hospitals, mosques, and schools.
So the children elected Hamas? Did everyone in Gaza vote for Hamas, let me see those ballots from what surely must be a functioning Democracy if what you saw is true.
What about in the West Bank where settlers are invading and massacring entire towns with the support of the Israeli government and IDF? Did those towns in the West Bank also elect Hamas?
If I get mad at you and punch a random bystander, I am a bad person. If you take your revenge by punching a different random bystander, guess what — you are ALSO a bad person.
It is never OK to kill children. Saying, "But my enemy killed children first!" does not mean that even more children need to die now. WTF.
Furthermore, Hamas is a terrorist dictatorship. The last election was 18 years ago, and Hamas did not even get the majority of the vote (just 44%) but they seized power anyway and put an end to democracy.
If you think Hamas rules with the electoral consent of the people, you have a MUCH more positive opinion of Hamas than anyone I know of.
You can't trust approval polls conducted in nations ruled by dictators. Polls also claim that 4 out of 5 Russians approve of Russia's leadership, that 9 out of 10 Chinese approve of China's leadership, and that 10 out of 10 North Koreans approve of North Korea's Leadership:
Compare that to the approval ratings we see in functional democracies, where approval tends to hover around 40-50%, despite these nations having far more competent and benevolent leadership. To be honest, if I hear that any country has approval ratings higher than around 55%, I start to wonder about the right to free speech there.
If a murderer kills someone, then takes a hostage, should the police just let the murderer go? Also important to note that Israel's collateral deaths are fewer than what the Iraqi-led Arab coalition inflicted on civilians during its campaign against ISIL a few years ago ... when so-called "warriors" use women and children as shields, my morality is clear where the responsibility lies. Yours seem confused ....
The vast majority of sane people are in favor of seeking a resolution that does not require killing the hostage OR letting the criminal go, even though that takes more time and effort. It's not OK to just kill the hostage and say, "Well, our only other choice was to let the criminal go!"
>Also important to note that Israel's collateral deaths are fewer than what the Iraqi-led Arab coalition...
I'm not sure why this is supposed to matter? Lots of people kill people all the time, but it's still wrong to kill. Why base your morality on the actions of evil people? That just makes you evil, too.
If the neighbor you hate turns out to be a serial killer with five bodies in his basement, you don't get to say, "Well, fuck that guy then, I should be able to kill just ONE person. That's a lot less than HE killed!"
Are you disputing the number of children killed by Israel in their series of collective punishment attacks? I hope not, because only a disgusting human being would suggest that.
lol - so if we dare question Hamas' BS casualty numbers (which are never opened up to outside journalists or other observers for confirmation), then we're "disgusting human beings" in your view? Well, I guess that's still a step up from the Jews, who you clearly do not think are even human beings.
I think both sides have partly succeeded in making elections an existential question which has roots in policy, but is really cultural. So my friends on the right are convinced that liberals want a socialist/communist system with no guns, open borders and teachers that turn their kids gay or trans. My liberal friends are convinced that conservatives want a theocracy with only white straight men in charge, no regulations and no taxes. Oh and guns anywhere for anyone. So both sides view every election now as a threat to "My America."
The liberal vision of conservatives is a lot closer to what conservatives believe in reality than the conservative vision of liberals. I think that speaks a decent bit to how liberals are noticeably more in touch with reality compared to the other side.
Indeed. It's striking nowadays how many social conservatives are willing to say out loud that they want outcomes which not long ago had to be if anything "the quiet part". I'm old enough to still be startled by it, whereas my 31-year old offspring has no direct experience of a non-authoritarian conservative movement. To him my description of it is as current as how rotary telephones worked.
Interesting bc as a conservative I thought the opposite. It must simply be that we believe the caricatures of our opponents but not the ones they make of us.
But isn't "no human is illegal" a call for open borders? That's a standard left-wing talking point.
Isn’t the “American Dream” a standard talking point for conservatives? It seems odd that your type loves to hype up America as such a great place to live and then act surprised when millions flock here from countries ravaged by wars America funded.
What deeply terrifies me is that, politics as fitting in creates very strong incentives NOT to care about whether your actions bring about the ideals you want to advertise. I'm really afraid this means there has been a phase change in politics where voters are no longer a net force for moving the country in the right direction. Even a relatively tiny shift in individual voter incentives could turn a system that slowly converged on ok policy into one which spiraled into ever increasing extremism.
For all that I'm a pretty strong supporter of Israel (but **not** bibi), I think it's wonderful that American college students are so invested in the welfare of people very unlike them on the other side of the world. But, unfortunately, the absolute last thing you should do to get welcomed as part of the tribe (and maybe get a date [1]) is to actually be concerned about whether you are helping the cause. Imagine raising the possibility that we should shut up because Israel gets more violent when it feels more isolated or asking if encouraging Palestinians to stay is akin to telling a battered woman not to let her abuser make her leave joint property.
And this is just a good example. It's always happened but because we now care more about online posting and take fewer cues from elites on broadcast media it's way more pervasive. Even when people might individually be skeptical about the value of, say, rent control they know that supporting it clearly conveys team membership while someone advocating market rate buildy might really be a conservative with an excuse.
Ofc I'm guilty too. Its a hard problem but we better pay attention because we aren't guaranteed democracy won't itself become the problem if we don't pay enough attention to our norms and values.
---
1: I still can't help but admire the guy I saw who decided occupying the trees Berkeley wanted to cut down across the street from campus wasn't helping him meet enough girls so he left his friends in those trees and started occupying a scrawny tree in the center of campus. It had absolutely no relationship to any protest but damn did lots of girls stop by to flirt.
The College Pulse survey irritates me. It only lets you choose liberal or conservative? How about libertarians? There isn't even a category for independent! This just encourages polarization.
Agreed, and both words "liberal" and "conservative" mean so many different things, that I'm not sure they're useful labels for anything. Does the question actually represent what people believe at all? I think it's more a question of which word they like better than it is a survey of beliefs or identity.
Exactly. The left/right division comes from the French Revolution. That division hardly applies today. Even the terms "liberal" and "conservative" have changed their meaning over time.
A line from Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast lingers in my mind. It went something like: "Over the course of the french revolution, some people went from leftist radicals, to moderate centrists, to conservative reactionaries, without ever once changing their underlying beliefs."
Granted, sometimes people do change their beliefs, but the whole idea of a line graph, is that you're measuring the same variable over time. If instead, you're measuring vague social identities based on relative and changing circumstances, across time and in radically different political contexts, then the comparison starts to become strained at best.
In the context when they started that poll, it probably made some sense, even though it was always a bit of a false binary. That question doesn't make near as much sense now. Nothing about Mr. Trump's politics is "conservative" by any reasonable definition I can think of, and I cannot for the life of me see how you get from the original definition of "liberal" to a description of the current Democratic party. Yet, that's how the terms are flippantly used.
Bah, I'll stop rambling. We agree that it's in error. I hope you have a great day.
Nate's bit about student opinions on homophobia in Palestine I think is a pretty bad misrepresentation. I'm a trans woman, it's likely I could be killed if I entered Palestine in a time WITHOUT war. But human rights aren't a give and take. I don't care how deeply delusional and dangerous someone on the other side of the globe thinks I am, they deserve a right to life and not to witness their homes destroyed and children slaughtered, like everyone else. Any excuse given to try and make me unsympathetic to tens of thousands of dead women, children and civilians, is disgusting and immoral.
Today in the US, there are people fighting to eliminate LGBT right, interfere with women's healthcare, and persecute nonreligious and religious minorities. If they get what they want (and they have made good headway in recent years), then life will become extremely dangerous and harrowing for me personally and for most people I know. These are VERY dangerous people, and I am doing everything I can to push back against their policies.
But that doesn't mean I want to see them *killed* — Jesus Christ! Of course I would be horrified and speak out if their hospitals were being bombed and their children killed! What kind of monster would you have to be to see a thing like that and say, "Well, they don't like people like me, so who cares"?
I guess I'm suspicious of a lot of financial decisions made by elites. I don't think the protesters are either entirely right or entirely wrong.
However, would making a few changes to their financial portfolio actually negatively affect the interests of the college? Why?
Shouldn't people be suspicious of financial investments generally?
There are a lot of terrible things in the world that are funded by investors. I don't know the specifics of these companies or investments, but I don't think it's absurd to draw a line from the actions of the people you're investing money in back to you.
Do you?
Does bowing to pressure from protesters make a college look weak, or responsive?
I don't know, but finances are a morally murky business. Many people and institutions dabble in them, and very few accept responsibility for the consequences of their choices through that medium.
The demands of the protesters regarding investment transparency were not actually that extraordinary. It is interesting that the colleges were so unwilling to capitulate on a relatively minor point. It makes me wonder what else they're using those multi-billion dollar endowments to fund.
If the only thing one cares about is 'looking strong', then one is most certainly an idiot.
Perhaps it may occur to you that looking strong, but stupid, would be particularly damaging to the reputation of a place that calls itself an institution of higher learning.
Are full of passionate intensity." --"The Second Coming", WB Yeats
There's nothing new under the sun. You can probably tell someone's politics by asking which group lacks conviction and which one is full of passionate intensity.
Your footnote 1 repeats the hypocritical old "What's The Matter With Kansas" argument. Factually, people voting based on interests/values they hold which do not happen to be economic is neither new or novel.
We on the left have become fond of calling it a "delusion" when people place values that we do not hold ahead of their own economic interests. Then we ostentatiously applaud people choosing to place economic benefit behind values we do approve of (e.g. become an artist, teach in public schools, work in the nonprofit sector, etc.), or vote based on values we hold (e.g. abortion and reproductive rights).
This helps a lot of voters conclude that we are smug hypocrites. "Values voting for me but not for thee" is not a winning cultural or political message, and has been helping us punch below our weight in US elections for a good while now.
You miss the embarrassing factor that despite hostilities beginning in October, the campus occupations didn't kick off until April when the weather got nice. The students have a choice between sitting in classrooms/libraries studying all day, or having fun camping outside! Of course they're out having fun in the sun.
If they truly had deep seated political beliefs surely they would have had those same beliefs back when it was cold and miserable outside.
To be fair, those seven Central World Kitchen aid workers were killed on April 1st. As cynical as it makes me feel to point this out, a lot of people didn't care about the conflict until these charity workers were killed. I think I saw more news coverage of these 7 deaths than about all the 30,000+ deaths combined.
Well put. I have a very smart friend with a pretty conservative and patriotic bent. He was rather incensed with all the extra-legal statute topping a few years ago. (This was when the toppling generally focused on confederate statues). I asked him how he squared how much attention he was giving to this, which shaded into defacto defense of the statutes, with his patriotism, given the statutes were at least in part celebrating treasonous folk who killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
He couldn’t. After more conversation he came to agree that he could both despise the kind of people who extra-legally tear down statutes and not care that much if the statues are torn down—and, in fact, it is bad if his reactionary dislike of a group of people leads him to a reactionary defense of another group he dislikes too.
This story is not an optimistic one. Again, the friend is generally speaking very smart and self aware, and despite this it takes a lot of work to shift him out of reactive negative polarization even in circumstances where his principles should inoculate him against it. For the majority of people there is little hope.
The key is having this kind of discourse with trusted friends along a broad cross section of the political spectrum, which ultimately results in probably the best consensus despite our reactive tendencies that are based on our pre conceived political notions.
I think this was much more common pre -social media and pre- modern tribalism, but I fear it's been lost in this new era. Echo chambers and self selection of ideology are so easy to find now, it's very easy to exile those who don't toe the party line. Hence why people may have to ignore even more of the questionable positions in order to fit in
Yeah. It’s really not a viable way forward. I think I am even less optimistic than you. Lack of relationships across the political spectrum are a factor, but I think an even bigger factor is positional sorting.
The grab bag of positions the various parties and sub parties hold are partially ideological and partially the result of coalitional bargains. So partisans don’t only come across as tribal but doing free pr (or propaganda) on behalf of a series of positions that don’t have obvious ideological coherence. That reads as not very genuine, and people who don’t share your affiliation will trust the argument you make less. So even if you have friends from across the aisle, you are less likely to persuade them.
There college deferments in effect until 1971, after the war was already wildly unpopular throughout US society. So it's incorrect to say that the draft was driving student protests in the 60's, when they had no chance of getting drafted while in school. I have to say we see the limits of Nate's knowledge and worldview with his narrow reading of these protests. Objective observers have called this a genocide and a deliberate attempt to starve the population of Gaza; it is happening with the aid and diplomatic cover of the US government. We, as Americans, are responsible.
It is you who seem to have a limited world (and historical) view:
Hamas started this by specifically targeting & killing Israeli CIVILIANS.
Any civilians Israel has killed have been ‘collateral’ not specifically targeted.
In war civilans ALWAYS get killed - lots of them:
We actually need to look no farther back than WW II to learn that in War, you do what you have to do:
Operation Gomorrah, a joint incendiary attack by the US and British air forces in July 1943 created one of the largest man-made firestorms in history killing an estimated 37,000 people in Hamburg and wounding an additional 180,000 more. That was followed two years later in February 1945, with the joint US-British fire-bombing of Dresden, a largely civilian target in order to ‘break the will of the German people - resulting in similar casualty figures.
In the Pacific, the US fire-bombed no fewer than 67 Japanese cities, resulting in total civilian casualties many times greater than both atomic bombings COMBINED. In fact, at least one Japanese city was fire-bombed AFTER the SECOND atomic-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
You also have to consider that NO ONE will accept Palestinian refugees - not even the Muslim states that PRETEND to support them. Perhaps its because:
Initially Palestinians were accepted by Jordan, where they then tried to assassinate the King and take over the country, following which they teamed up with Syria and triggered a full-scale war.
Jordan finally ejected them into Syria, where they then caused the Syrians problems who then forced out into Lebanon.
In Lebanon, they helped trigger a civil war that has utterly destroyed the country.
In Egypt, they fomented terror attacks. Egyptian barriers against Palestinian immigration look like the Berlin Wall.
Nate also completely ignores college protests against South African apartheid, an issue similar to Palestine in that it had no direct effect on American students.
Not one objective observer has done so. The UN commission that was challenged by South Africa to do so specifically rejected the charge. Try again you. Anti-Semite symp ...
I want to point out that much of this question about "which team are you on?" is specific to the US - which is split into TWO poles - liberal/conservative, left-wing/right-wing, Democrats/Republicans.
I have commented here before, I live in India, and in our country there are many more "poles". When Americans face such systems, they do not "see" this multi-polar society, but only see two poles.
In India, for example, many of the states have what are known as regional parties, apart from the major parties (more than two) at the central (federal) level.
These regional parties have their own interests, which are different from the "national" parties. State politics often is a bare-knuckles fight for power, and power alone.
Similarly, in India, the courts, bureaucrats all form their own power centers.
And most of these poles are corrupt in either ideology or abuse of power. This means that a common man's interests often diverge a LOT from whatever the politician is shooting for.
Similarly it is very difficult to classify Indian parties as Left or Right (even though you would not know that if you read the NY Times or WaPost). The communist parties in my state (yes, there are multiple communist parties in India), for example, are pretty ethnofascist, at the SAME TIME championing labor.
The main conflict in India is not between left-wing and right-wing, but the political class, whatever wing they are, and the common people.
But the US-style polarization is seeping into the country; and I think globally, this American polarization is becoming the biggest export from the US.
What is the point of this? This whole article is just mocking young people for political involvement and god forbid, having a genuine opinion before the age of 25.
First of all, the survey data you reference is useless. Of course young people who are asked which issues are the most important "to you" are going to answer inflation, healthcare, housing, etc and put Israel/Palestine further down the list because those are the issues they face on a day to day basis. Bringing out the "elite colleges are really, really liberal" chart was a waste of everyone's time too. I beg of you to present a legitimate argument that isn't just calling everyone stupid.
Your theory of politics as self interest or identity is such black and white thinking you'd think you were the idiot college kid in question. I do not identify as anything politically and I have no self interest in Gaza, but I can look at the issue and decide for myself based on my fundamental ideas of right and wrong. I discuss with "my bubble" and we do get into "the details," because young people are (shocker) capable of critical thinking and civil disagreement. Is that so crazy that someone who isn't a "public intellectual" can actually debate an issue "more seriously" despite being in my early 20s?
This quote you pulled from "Queers for Palestine" in which only 7 words are off the mark is a key example of the issue here. You are doing cartwheels to avoid analyzing the real demands and intentions these students have. Most encampments have localized issues at the forefront in addition to Gaza. The idea that protests swelling in attendance after the police involvement delegitimizes the meaning behind them is so naive (yes, Nate Silver, you are being naive). You keep pretending that having at length discussion with those around you and critical thought is mutually exclusive from participation in these protests. People are not putting their lives on hold and risking arrest/suspension because they're bandwagoning. Some people genuinely care about shit that has nothing to do with them because they are empathetic and have a moral code. We're not all statisticians doing cost-benefit analysis on every decision.
I just can't believe you spent time writing this. Next time you should save yourself the trouble and just post "college kids = stupid." If you're not going to say anything substantial anyway, might as well make it succinct.
Given barely a rounding error of the students even know which river and which sea they're chanting about, it strikes me as fair to think their opinions are not remotely genuine. They don't have a moral code; they have a fantastic intuition of what tragedy will get them lots of attention and time to party.
"Bad things happened, we get to party!" is endemic among college students. Back when campuses rioted over bin Laden getting killed, that sure was a genuine and moral outcry, too?
this really just goes to show the basic logic limitations of many people interpreting this. "they don't have a moral code" who is they? the organizers? everyone who camped? everyone who spent the night? everyone who stopped in for a couple minutes? everyone who liked something online? the thing about protests is that they are actually a very diverse crowd of people from all different ways of life and political philosophies, but the protest is defined by the fact that despite these differences there is a single thing all agree on. Just cause people are sympathetic towards the protestors doesn't mean that the organizers are suddenly the "popular kids" lol. I can guarantee you despite my sympathy for the protest that the 'social' side of this protest is not a driving factor. It's not like all the biggest frats got together and said "come slide down for the dopest darty of ur life at the uni lawn!" no. That never happened. Once again just insulting the intelligence of the protestors, citation? just vibes.
My apologies for not having a citation to prove that the protests are at best a waste of time, do you have any citation proving that they're effective at anything else?
Tell you what- if any of the campus protests achieve anything more than cancelling graduations and stealing books from Portland Library, I'll consider them to be more than vibes-based stooges themselves. Fair?
Good rule of thumb: Trust the predictions of Nate’s data models that incorporate all meaningful data, but take his own self-serving generalized takes that spur from a few cherry-picked polls which a very large grain of salt.
"Members of historically disadvantaged groups have an interest in laws that protect their rights" as well as laws that guarantee them a share of the spoils, like university admissions, medical internships, jobs and promotions, preferential access to government programs, regardless of individual achievement or merit.
still not sure what a "group right" is, since we're a nation of individual rights. If you decide to join the LGB club tomorrow, which rights will you then be denied that you previously had? No one ever addresses that question.
Fascinating question!
Best answer is in R.A.B. Butler's classic "The Roots of National Socialism", where he traced the origins of Nazi ideology to the 18th century Prussian Johan Herder, who developed the idea of "group rights" as separate from "individual rights" and from the "rights of kings".
These were the ideas that there was an entity, the group, whose rights were higher than those of individuals and to which individuals had to subordinate.
One can see how that mentality could eventually evolve into Nazism, where the rights of one group overpower any individual right as well as the rights of anyone not belonging to the group.
Butler finds that Germany separated from the West when individual rights, enshrined in England's Glorious Revolution and France's Rights of Man became dominant there while Germany kept the notion that individual rights ranked below the rights of the nation.
Long-winded comment, no doubt, but I find Butler's ideas are the best way to understand where DEI and affirmative action are taking the US. An American example is when black intellectuals like Thomas Sowell or Glenn Loury are attacked as "race traitors" for criticizing affirmative action; their right to free speech is considered less important than their obligation to protect entitlements for their group.
[Butler's book is the most frequently cited reference in Hayek's "Road to Serfdom". It seems out of print now but if you come across a used copy, grab it with both hands and never let go. I did but now stand corrected as you can download it at
https://archive.org/details/2015.190558.-the-roots-of-national-socialism-1783-1933 ]
"An American example is when black intellectuals like Thomas Sowell or Glenn Loury are attacked as "race traitors" for criticizing affirmative action; their right to free speech is considered less important than their obligation to protect entitlements for their group."
Exercising your own right to free speech in order to criticize a second person's speech does not affect that second person's right to free speech.
"Exercising your own right to free speech in order to criticize a second person's speech does not affect that second person's right to free speech"
Misses the point: criticizing someone's free speech only because it might offend the group they belong to places the individual's right to free speech below the group's rights.
It's a blindingly obvious that being criticized doesn't abolish one's right to free speech. But it will if they continue to claim that you can't be allowed to speak if it violates a group's rights. That's what those critics of Thomas Sowell are saying, although not the First Amendment.
"criticizing someone's free speech only because it might offend the group they belong to places the individual's right to free speech below the group's rights"
What does assuming this is the reasoning without evidence do?
"What does assuming this is the reasoning without evidence do?"
The evidence is that the attacks explicitly said they should not speak when it harms their group's privileges.
I noticed this too. "Protecting rights" has become quite the euphemism.
Interesting article, but I think that there is another explanation for how people formulate their political beliefs:
1) Voters choose between ideologies based on their underlying psychological temperament (i.e. they use the non-rational part of their brain).
2) That temperament is largely determined by genetics, but parenting, culture, and life experiences also play a role.
3) A person’s chosen ideology must also be plausible to the rational part of their brain, their culture and social network.
4) That ideology must also project an image that a person wants to project to others.
I go into more detail in my article:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/where-does-ideology-come-from
Most people do not choose ideology at all, if anything they choose party. Ideologies and policy views are volatile with the exception of race and abortion which are somewhat more stable. Kinder and Kalmoe make this case quite convincingly in "neither liberal nor conservative". Ideology is basically a non-factor for 80% of people, so Nate's theory seems to hold more water.
Feel free to substitute the word "party identification" for the word "ideology" in my first comment. I think that it is the same basic process.
That makes more sense. Ideology is a set of principles that are consistently applied to policy. I don't think that's what most people do. Party alignment is more temperamental and cultural.
Parties change all the time too.
People have interests. They need to be part of coalitions to express those interests. Sometimes they adopt stances they don't believe in because it's part of being in the coalition. That's how you get people who care about abortion supporting affirmative action (and vice versa) even if they aren't really on board with the less salient issue that brought them into the coalition.
Nate, we've already seen plenty of op-eds demonizing the students protesting for the basic human rights of 2 million individuals being killed based on their ethnicity (wonder if there's a shorter term for that?). We don't need another. Stick to data and numbers.
Lol ...
The only people killed for their ethnicity were the Israelis on Oct 7: Hamas killed or kidnapped every single Jewish person they could get their hands on that day. Gaza's population is 2.3m, up from 350,000 when Israel took control in 1967: doesn't sound like killing 2m for ethnicity.
Neither does an Israeli hospital giving a Gaza woman the same state of the art pacemaker that Israel's PM got a few months before
https://www.timesofisrael.com/in-israeli-first-gazan-girl-receives-new-kind-of-pacemaker-in-innovative-procedure/
In WW2 the Anglo -American Strategic Bomber Offensive killed 600,000 civilians in Nazi Germany. Small price to pay to get rid of that evil.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Hamburg_in_World_War_II
Thank goodness the vile rhetoric and actions of the Hamas flunkies are guaranteeing there will be no Falastin, only Halastin.
This is an article about public opinion polling, not about which side of the war is more just.
What if I told you their ethnicity had nothing to do with it, but rather their political choices.
Are you saying that Israel is killing Palestinians because of their politics? Do they have them fill out a questionnaire before they decide which ones to kill and which ones to spare?
What you are suggesting is way more Nazi-like than the reality. The reality is that the killing is indisciminate because Israel is more interested in hunting down Hamas than sparing innocent bystanders — which is still absolutely horrible, don't get me wrong: it certainly leads to a lot more killing of children, who have not made any political choices and whose only crime is being born in Palestine.
They elected Hamas. They support Hamas.
Did Hamas ask the kids at the music festival if they voted for Bibi?
Whataboutism at its finest. Well done. Is Israel killing Hamas, or are they collectively punishing over 2 million people because of their ethnicity? Give me a number of how many innocent people you're OK with killing.
Are you saying that Gaza is the least diverse place on earth? For shame! Diversity is strength!
Israel, unfortunately, has to kill civilians because Hamas deliberately hides behind them. Could Israel do more to avoid civilian deaths? Absolutely. But Israel wasn't reducing Gaza to rubble before 10/7, and they aren't the ones who placed rocket launchers in hospitals, mosques, and schools.
So the children elected Hamas? Did everyone in Gaza vote for Hamas, let me see those ballots from what surely must be a functioning Democracy if what you saw is true.
What about in the West Bank where settlers are invading and massacring entire towns with the support of the Israeli government and IDF? Did those towns in the West Bank also elect Hamas?
Didn’t Hamas kill and kidnap children on October 7? Sometimes bad things happen to innocent people. Surely you don’t care about those kids, too.
If I get mad at you and punch a random bystander, I am a bad person. If you take your revenge by punching a different random bystander, guess what — you are ALSO a bad person.
It is never OK to kill children. Saying, "But my enemy killed children first!" does not mean that even more children need to die now. WTF.
I care for them just as much. But killing more innocent people isn't a solution. An eye for 30,000 eyes and the world goes blind.
So if you just make shit up, you think then it's true?
Children did not elect Hamas.
Furthermore, Hamas is a terrorist dictatorship. The last election was 18 years ago, and Hamas did not even get the majority of the vote (just 44%) but they seized power anyway and put an end to democracy.
If you think Hamas rules with the electoral consent of the people, you have a MUCH more positive opinion of Hamas than anyone I know of.
3/4 of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza support the Oct 7 atrocities, as evidenced by the AWAD survey group based in Ramallah:
https://www.jns.org/three-in-four-palestinians-support-hamass-massacre/
Evidently you don't know any Palestinian pollsters.
You can't trust approval polls conducted in nations ruled by dictators. Polls also claim that 4 out of 5 Russians approve of Russia's leadership, that 9 out of 10 Chinese approve of China's leadership, and that 10 out of 10 North Koreans approve of North Korea's Leadership:
Russian poll: https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-rating-russia/
Chinese poll: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116013/china-trust-in-government-2020/
North Korean poll: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-26483940
Compare that to the approval ratings we see in functional democracies, where approval tends to hover around 40-50%, despite these nations having far more competent and benevolent leadership. To be honest, if I hear that any country has approval ratings higher than around 55%, I start to wonder about the right to free speech there.
And maybe having a dad who is willing to use you as a human shield ...
If a criminal takes a hostage, do you think it should be police policy to shoot the hostage?
If a murderer kills someone, then takes a hostage, should the police just let the murderer go? Also important to note that Israel's collateral deaths are fewer than what the Iraqi-led Arab coalition inflicted on civilians during its campaign against ISIL a few years ago ... when so-called "warriors" use women and children as shields, my morality is clear where the responsibility lies. Yours seem confused ....
"If a murderer kills someone, then takes a hostage, should the police just let the murderer go? "
They should prioritize the hostage's life over punishing the murderer. This is pretty basic.
The vast majority of sane people are in favor of seeking a resolution that does not require killing the hostage OR letting the criminal go, even though that takes more time and effort. It's not OK to just kill the hostage and say, "Well, our only other choice was to let the criminal go!"
>Also important to note that Israel's collateral deaths are fewer than what the Iraqi-led Arab coalition...
I'm not sure why this is supposed to matter? Lots of people kill people all the time, but it's still wrong to kill. Why base your morality on the actions of evil people? That just makes you evil, too.
If the neighbor you hate turns out to be a serial killer with five bodies in his basement, you don't get to say, "Well, fuck that guy then, I should be able to kill just ONE person. That's a lot less than HE killed!"
The political choices of 14,000 children?
Almost like the 800,000 protestors arrested by the NYPD last night at Hamilton Hospital at Columbia
Are you disputing the number of children killed by Israel in their series of collective punishment attacks? I hope not, because only a disgusting human being would suggest that.
I am. There is more than enough statistical evidence to explain that the reports from the “Gaza Health Ministry” are made up of whole cloth.
Gross.
lol - so if we dare question Hamas' BS casualty numbers (which are never opened up to outside journalists or other observers for confirmation), then we're "disgusting human beings" in your view? Well, I guess that's still a step up from the Jews, who you clearly do not think are even human beings.
Israel is the one keeping journalists out, not Palestinians.
I think both sides have partly succeeded in making elections an existential question which has roots in policy, but is really cultural. So my friends on the right are convinced that liberals want a socialist/communist system with no guns, open borders and teachers that turn their kids gay or trans. My liberal friends are convinced that conservatives want a theocracy with only white straight men in charge, no regulations and no taxes. Oh and guns anywhere for anyone. So both sides view every election now as a threat to "My America."
The liberal vision of conservatives is a lot closer to what conservatives believe in reality than the conservative vision of liberals. I think that speaks a decent bit to how liberals are noticeably more in touch with reality compared to the other side.
Indeed. It's striking nowadays how many social conservatives are willing to say out loud that they want outcomes which not long ago had to be if anything "the quiet part". I'm old enough to still be startled by it, whereas my 31-year old offspring has no direct experience of a non-authoritarian conservative movement. To him my description of it is as current as how rotary telephones worked.
lol ...
Really? Pregnant men?
No.
Interesting bc as a conservative I thought the opposite. It must simply be that we believe the caricatures of our opponents but not the ones they make of us.
But isn't "no human is illegal" a call for open borders? That's a standard left-wing talking point.
Isn’t the “American Dream” a standard talking point for conservatives? It seems odd that your type loves to hype up America as such a great place to live and then act surprised when millions flock here from countries ravaged by wars America funded.
What deeply terrifies me is that, politics as fitting in creates very strong incentives NOT to care about whether your actions bring about the ideals you want to advertise. I'm really afraid this means there has been a phase change in politics where voters are no longer a net force for moving the country in the right direction. Even a relatively tiny shift in individual voter incentives could turn a system that slowly converged on ok policy into one which spiraled into ever increasing extremism.
For all that I'm a pretty strong supporter of Israel (but **not** bibi), I think it's wonderful that American college students are so invested in the welfare of people very unlike them on the other side of the world. But, unfortunately, the absolute last thing you should do to get welcomed as part of the tribe (and maybe get a date [1]) is to actually be concerned about whether you are helping the cause. Imagine raising the possibility that we should shut up because Israel gets more violent when it feels more isolated or asking if encouraging Palestinians to stay is akin to telling a battered woman not to let her abuser make her leave joint property.
And this is just a good example. It's always happened but because we now care more about online posting and take fewer cues from elites on broadcast media it's way more pervasive. Even when people might individually be skeptical about the value of, say, rent control they know that supporting it clearly conveys team membership while someone advocating market rate buildy might really be a conservative with an excuse.
Ofc I'm guilty too. Its a hard problem but we better pay attention because we aren't guaranteed democracy won't itself become the problem if we don't pay enough attention to our norms and values.
---
1: I still can't help but admire the guy I saw who decided occupying the trees Berkeley wanted to cut down across the street from campus wasn't helping him meet enough girls so he left his friends in those trees and started occupying a scrawny tree in the center of campus. It had absolutely no relationship to any protest but damn did lots of girls stop by to flirt.
Peter, your footnote contains more truth than just about all of the talking heads combined.
> looking for daily affirmation that they’re on the virtuous side and the other team are the bad guys.
Speak for yourself, I'm satisfied if its once every two days.
The College Pulse survey irritates me. It only lets you choose liberal or conservative? How about libertarians? There isn't even a category for independent! This just encourages polarization.
Agreed, and both words "liberal" and "conservative" mean so many different things, that I'm not sure they're useful labels for anything. Does the question actually represent what people believe at all? I think it's more a question of which word they like better than it is a survey of beliefs or identity.
Exactly. The left/right division comes from the French Revolution. That division hardly applies today. Even the terms "liberal" and "conservative" have changed their meaning over time.
A line from Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast lingers in my mind. It went something like: "Over the course of the french revolution, some people went from leftist radicals, to moderate centrists, to conservative reactionaries, without ever once changing their underlying beliefs."
Granted, sometimes people do change their beliefs, but the whole idea of a line graph, is that you're measuring the same variable over time. If instead, you're measuring vague social identities based on relative and changing circumstances, across time and in radically different political contexts, then the comparison starts to become strained at best.
In the context when they started that poll, it probably made some sense, even though it was always a bit of a false binary. That question doesn't make near as much sense now. Nothing about Mr. Trump's politics is "conservative" by any reasonable definition I can think of, and I cannot for the life of me see how you get from the original definition of "liberal" to a description of the current Democratic party. Yet, that's how the terms are flippantly used.
Bah, I'll stop rambling. We agree that it's in error. I hope you have a great day.
Nate's bit about student opinions on homophobia in Palestine I think is a pretty bad misrepresentation. I'm a trans woman, it's likely I could be killed if I entered Palestine in a time WITHOUT war. But human rights aren't a give and take. I don't care how deeply delusional and dangerous someone on the other side of the globe thinks I am, they deserve a right to life and not to witness their homes destroyed and children slaughtered, like everyone else. Any excuse given to try and make me unsympathetic to tens of thousands of dead women, children and civilians, is disgusting and immoral.
Today in the US, there are people fighting to eliminate LGBT right, interfere with women's healthcare, and persecute nonreligious and religious minorities. If they get what they want (and they have made good headway in recent years), then life will become extremely dangerous and harrowing for me personally and for most people I know. These are VERY dangerous people, and I am doing everything I can to push back against their policies.
But that doesn't mean I want to see them *killed* — Jesus Christ! Of course I would be horrified and speak out if their hospitals were being bombed and their children killed! What kind of monster would you have to be to see a thing like that and say, "Well, they don't like people like me, so who cares"?
The banality of evil. Most shills for evil just want to be a part of something they think is “cool”. It’s pathetic.
Wanting your university to stop profiting off of the death of women and children is "evil" ? Yikes...
So divesting from paragliding companies? And who makes suicide vests these days.. and I guess all those tunnels excavated themselves…
I guess I'm suspicious of a lot of financial decisions made by elites. I don't think the protesters are either entirely right or entirely wrong.
However, would making a few changes to their financial portfolio actually negatively affect the interests of the college? Why?
Shouldn't people be suspicious of financial investments generally?
There are a lot of terrible things in the world that are funded by investors. I don't know the specifics of these companies or investments, but I don't think it's absurd to draw a line from the actions of the people you're investing money in back to you.
Do you?
Does bowing to pressure from protesters make a college look weak, or responsive?
I don't know, but finances are a morally murky business. Many people and institutions dabble in them, and very few accept responsibility for the consequences of their choices through that medium.
The demands of the protesters regarding investment transparency were not actually that extraordinary. It is interesting that the colleges were so unwilling to capitulate on a relatively minor point. It makes me wonder what else they're using those multi-billion dollar endowments to fund.
Bowing to idiots makes one look weak.
If the only thing one cares about is 'looking strong', then one is most certainly an idiot.
Perhaps it may occur to you that looking strong, but stupid, would be particularly damaging to the reputation of a place that calls itself an institution of higher learning.
If you think that a place that approved Mx. Slutsky's dissertation topic as a place of "higher" learning...
I mis-typed. Bowing to idiots makes one actually weak.
"Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity." --"The Second Coming", WB Yeats
There's nothing new under the sun. You can probably tell someone's politics by asking which group lacks conviction and which one is full of passionate intensity.
Your footnote 1 repeats the hypocritical old "What's The Matter With Kansas" argument. Factually, people voting based on interests/values they hold which do not happen to be economic is neither new or novel.
We on the left have become fond of calling it a "delusion" when people place values that we do not hold ahead of their own economic interests. Then we ostentatiously applaud people choosing to place economic benefit behind values we do approve of (e.g. become an artist, teach in public schools, work in the nonprofit sector, etc.), or vote based on values we hold (e.g. abortion and reproductive rights).
This helps a lot of voters conclude that we are smug hypocrites. "Values voting for me but not for thee" is not a winning cultural or political message, and has been helping us punch below our weight in US elections for a good while now.
You miss the embarrassing factor that despite hostilities beginning in October, the campus occupations didn't kick off until April when the weather got nice. The students have a choice between sitting in classrooms/libraries studying all day, or having fun camping outside! Of course they're out having fun in the sun.
If they truly had deep seated political beliefs surely they would have had those same beliefs back when it was cold and miserable outside.
To be fair, those seven Central World Kitchen aid workers were killed on April 1st. As cynical as it makes me feel to point this out, a lot of people didn't care about the conflict until these charity workers were killed. I think I saw more news coverage of these 7 deaths than about all the 30,000+ deaths combined.
Well put. I have a very smart friend with a pretty conservative and patriotic bent. He was rather incensed with all the extra-legal statute topping a few years ago. (This was when the toppling generally focused on confederate statues). I asked him how he squared how much attention he was giving to this, which shaded into defacto defense of the statutes, with his patriotism, given the statutes were at least in part celebrating treasonous folk who killed hundreds of thousands of Americans.
He couldn’t. After more conversation he came to agree that he could both despise the kind of people who extra-legally tear down statutes and not care that much if the statues are torn down—and, in fact, it is bad if his reactionary dislike of a group of people leads him to a reactionary defense of another group he dislikes too.
This story is not an optimistic one. Again, the friend is generally speaking very smart and self aware, and despite this it takes a lot of work to shift him out of reactive negative polarization even in circumstances where his principles should inoculate him against it. For the majority of people there is little hope.
The key is having this kind of discourse with trusted friends along a broad cross section of the political spectrum, which ultimately results in probably the best consensus despite our reactive tendencies that are based on our pre conceived political notions.
I think this was much more common pre -social media and pre- modern tribalism, but I fear it's been lost in this new era. Echo chambers and self selection of ideology are so easy to find now, it's very easy to exile those who don't toe the party line. Hence why people may have to ignore even more of the questionable positions in order to fit in
Yeah. It’s really not a viable way forward. I think I am even less optimistic than you. Lack of relationships across the political spectrum are a factor, but I think an even bigger factor is positional sorting.
The grab bag of positions the various parties and sub parties hold are partially ideological and partially the result of coalitional bargains. So partisans don’t only come across as tribal but doing free pr (or propaganda) on behalf of a series of positions that don’t have obvious ideological coherence. That reads as not very genuine, and people who don’t share your affiliation will trust the argument you make less. So even if you have friends from across the aisle, you are less likely to persuade them.
There college deferments in effect until 1971, after the war was already wildly unpopular throughout US society. So it's incorrect to say that the draft was driving student protests in the 60's, when they had no chance of getting drafted while in school. I have to say we see the limits of Nate's knowledge and worldview with his narrow reading of these protests. Objective observers have called this a genocide and a deliberate attempt to starve the population of Gaza; it is happening with the aid and diplomatic cover of the US government. We, as Americans, are responsible.
It is you who seem to have a limited world (and historical) view:
Hamas started this by specifically targeting & killing Israeli CIVILIANS.
Any civilians Israel has killed have been ‘collateral’ not specifically targeted.
In war civilans ALWAYS get killed - lots of them:
We actually need to look no farther back than WW II to learn that in War, you do what you have to do:
Operation Gomorrah, a joint incendiary attack by the US and British air forces in July 1943 created one of the largest man-made firestorms in history killing an estimated 37,000 people in Hamburg and wounding an additional 180,000 more. That was followed two years later in February 1945, with the joint US-British fire-bombing of Dresden, a largely civilian target in order to ‘break the will of the German people - resulting in similar casualty figures.
In the Pacific, the US fire-bombed no fewer than 67 Japanese cities, resulting in total civilian casualties many times greater than both atomic bombings COMBINED. In fact, at least one Japanese city was fire-bombed AFTER the SECOND atomic-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki.
You also have to consider that NO ONE will accept Palestinian refugees - not even the Muslim states that PRETEND to support them. Perhaps its because:
Initially Palestinians were accepted by Jordan, where they then tried to assassinate the King and take over the country, following which they teamed up with Syria and triggered a full-scale war.
Jordan finally ejected them into Syria, where they then caused the Syrians problems who then forced out into Lebanon.
In Lebanon, they helped trigger a civil war that has utterly destroyed the country.
In Egypt, they fomented terror attacks. Egyptian barriers against Palestinian immigration look like the Berlin Wall.
Don't like my comparison? OK, here's different one:
1. The Palestinians would like to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, but CAN'T.
2. Israel CAN wipe the Palestinians off the face of the earth, but DOESN'T.
Nate also completely ignores college protests against South African apartheid, an issue similar to Palestine in that it had no direct effect on American students.
Hey, remember when we freed Tibet in the 1990s thanks to the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere? That was amazing.
Not one objective observer has done so. The UN commission that was challenged by South Africa to do so specifically rejected the charge. Try again you. Anti-Semite symp ...
I want to point out that much of this question about "which team are you on?" is specific to the US - which is split into TWO poles - liberal/conservative, left-wing/right-wing, Democrats/Republicans.
I have commented here before, I live in India, and in our country there are many more "poles". When Americans face such systems, they do not "see" this multi-polar society, but only see two poles.
In India, for example, many of the states have what are known as regional parties, apart from the major parties (more than two) at the central (federal) level.
These regional parties have their own interests, which are different from the "national" parties. State politics often is a bare-knuckles fight for power, and power alone.
Similarly, in India, the courts, bureaucrats all form their own power centers.
And most of these poles are corrupt in either ideology or abuse of power. This means that a common man's interests often diverge a LOT from whatever the politician is shooting for.
Similarly it is very difficult to classify Indian parties as Left or Right (even though you would not know that if you read the NY Times or WaPost). The communist parties in my state (yes, there are multiple communist parties in India), for example, are pretty ethnofascist, at the SAME TIME championing labor.
The main conflict in India is not between left-wing and right-wing, but the political class, whatever wing they are, and the common people.
But the US-style polarization is seeping into the country; and I think globally, this American polarization is becoming the biggest export from the US.
Thanks for the post
What is the point of this? This whole article is just mocking young people for political involvement and god forbid, having a genuine opinion before the age of 25.
First of all, the survey data you reference is useless. Of course young people who are asked which issues are the most important "to you" are going to answer inflation, healthcare, housing, etc and put Israel/Palestine further down the list because those are the issues they face on a day to day basis. Bringing out the "elite colleges are really, really liberal" chart was a waste of everyone's time too. I beg of you to present a legitimate argument that isn't just calling everyone stupid.
Your theory of politics as self interest or identity is such black and white thinking you'd think you were the idiot college kid in question. I do not identify as anything politically and I have no self interest in Gaza, but I can look at the issue and decide for myself based on my fundamental ideas of right and wrong. I discuss with "my bubble" and we do get into "the details," because young people are (shocker) capable of critical thinking and civil disagreement. Is that so crazy that someone who isn't a "public intellectual" can actually debate an issue "more seriously" despite being in my early 20s?
This quote you pulled from "Queers for Palestine" in which only 7 words are off the mark is a key example of the issue here. You are doing cartwheels to avoid analyzing the real demands and intentions these students have. Most encampments have localized issues at the forefront in addition to Gaza. The idea that protests swelling in attendance after the police involvement delegitimizes the meaning behind them is so naive (yes, Nate Silver, you are being naive). You keep pretending that having at length discussion with those around you and critical thought is mutually exclusive from participation in these protests. People are not putting their lives on hold and risking arrest/suspension because they're bandwagoning. Some people genuinely care about shit that has nothing to do with them because they are empathetic and have a moral code. We're not all statisticians doing cost-benefit analysis on every decision.
I just can't believe you spent time writing this. Next time you should save yourself the trouble and just post "college kids = stupid." If you're not going to say anything substantial anyway, might as well make it succinct.
Given barely a rounding error of the students even know which river and which sea they're chanting about, it strikes me as fair to think their opinions are not remotely genuine. They don't have a moral code; they have a fantastic intuition of what tragedy will get them lots of attention and time to party.
"Bad things happened, we get to party!" is endemic among college students. Back when campuses rioted over bin Laden getting killed, that sure was a genuine and moral outcry, too?
this really just goes to show the basic logic limitations of many people interpreting this. "they don't have a moral code" who is they? the organizers? everyone who camped? everyone who spent the night? everyone who stopped in for a couple minutes? everyone who liked something online? the thing about protests is that they are actually a very diverse crowd of people from all different ways of life and political philosophies, but the protest is defined by the fact that despite these differences there is a single thing all agree on. Just cause people are sympathetic towards the protestors doesn't mean that the organizers are suddenly the "popular kids" lol. I can guarantee you despite my sympathy for the protest that the 'social' side of this protest is not a driving factor. It's not like all the biggest frats got together and said "come slide down for the dopest darty of ur life at the uni lawn!" no. That never happened. Once again just insulting the intelligence of the protestors, citation? just vibes.
My apologies for not having a citation to prove that the protests are at best a waste of time, do you have any citation proving that they're effective at anything else?
Tell you what- if any of the campus protests achieve anything more than cancelling graduations and stealing books from Portland Library, I'll consider them to be more than vibes-based stooges themselves. Fair?
Good rule of thumb: Trust the predictions of Nate’s data models that incorporate all meaningful data, but take his own self-serving generalized takes that spur from a few cherry-picked polls which a very large grain of salt.