tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7712706263695364665.post6922696228665093988..comments2023-09-28T09:58:52.368+00:00Comments on Critical Faculty Dojo: Controversy over Oxford Union Free speech eventCFD Edhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14176957304124700156noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7712706263695364665.post-39346167373353473982007-11-28T08:23:00.000+00:002007-11-28T08:23:00.000+00:00David, Thanks. What I find particularly dispiritin...David, Thanks. What I find particularly dispiriting is the barren and misguided way these students misuse their energy. <BR/><BR/>Clearly they care and enough to make an effort. But they follow an authoritarian path with an element of violent coercion, attempting to suppress anything they disagree with - very like the National Socialism they claim to be so opposed to. <BR/><BR/>And these are supposedly the crème, potential future leaders…<BR/><BR/>It betrays an appalling mental laziness that can only be bothered to take the first step and just does not follow mental processes through. They have undermined the efforts of the Union and done a disservice to free speech. <BR/><BR/>Too many are only capable of shouting down those they disagree with these days and would suppress them completely, by any means, given the chance. <BR/><BR/>Legitimise this in one case and you have a precedent that may be applied in many others, eventually to oneself.<BR/><BR/>Martin Mcluskey, of the Oxford University Students' Union, appears to erroneously imagine that having Irving and Griffin on the platform at the Oxford Union in some way lent them legitimacy, or credibility, all by itself. <BR/><BR/>Betraying the complete derailment of his mental train he said: <BR/><BR/><I>"It is as if we are saying that we agree with what they are saying and that we think it is valid."</I> <BR/><BR/>He seems to completely fail to grasp the fact that (<I>if you don’t live on planet Mclusky</I>) it actually means you have the opportunity to very publicly say that infact you <I>don’t agree</I> and point out why you are right and they are completely wrong – Doh!<BR/><BR/>By all accounts Irving did not make a good showing in the debate, but the idiot protesters have effectively buried that with the negative publicity they have managed to generate, making Irving and Griffin look like the height of reasonableness by comparison. <BR/><BR/>I firmly believe that ideas and theories exposed to the clear light of day and subject to scrutiny, argument and review will either stand or fall on their own merit.CFD Edhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14176957304124700156noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7712706263695364665.post-59393336599961204212007-11-27T21:16:00.000+00:002007-11-27T21:16:00.000+00:00Well said Phil.It was not always thus. I was at u...Well said Phil.<BR/><BR/>It was not always thus. I was at university at the end of an earlier tradition when the greatest experts, on the surface at least, presented their ideas with humility and welcomed the intellectual adventure of a challenge to their thought to test its validity however eccentric this challenge might be.<BR/><BR/>Most of the authoritarian, violent students at Oxford, who behaved so disgracefully, would have had an inborn sympathy for the dissident in their childhood. They would have known who was the hero in the story of the lone voice, who cried out that the Emperor had no clothes.<BR/><BR/>Perhaps it is a tribute to our educational system or the media dominated world that such a large number the present student generation has been reduced to pre-packaged, conformist, destructive automatons, intellectually addled.David Yendleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09171810352548143316noreply@blogger.com