About 80% of Americans think “political correctness is a problem”; and even when you restrict to self-identified liberals, Democrats, or people of color, large majorities agree with the statement.
This is interesting to me because it’s surprising: I’d expect a sharper ideological divide on whether PC is a problem or not. I don’t think “PC is a problem” reliably means “I have a high tolerance for verbal conflict”; “PC is a problem” can be read as “people trying to enforce political correctness are picking fights for no good reason and escalating verbal conflict”.
Americans have become more tolerant of allowing people with controversial views to speak in public
This is an old-fashioned “Who should be allowed to speak in a town hall meeting in favour of outrageous opinion X?” sort of question. Frankly, this is a pattern-matched answer: “Yes, we believe in freedom of speech”. I’m not sure the answer would be the same if the question were “Social media is full of (highly persuasive) advocacy for outrageous opinion X—is this acceptable?”.
moderate liberals… against free speech
Hm. Why? Some explanations plucked out of thin air:
(a) To oppose free speech, you have to have enough people on “your side” that you might *succeed*, or that your training/experience has been in a situation where opposing free speech might succeed. (Large concentrations of moderate-left-liberals on a campus)
(b) Groups who have decided that “too much free speech is a problem” come from some particular community incompatible with being on the radical left. You’re not going to find many hard-left-wingers in the RAND corporation thinking about counterinsurgency strategy; a SJW memeplex sweeping across college freshmen is going to do better if the freshmen don’t have to already be Marxist believers to partake.
I think I’m suggesting that there might be *confounders* on the political-spectrum/free-speech-advocacy graph: “being a campus liberal causes free-speech-opposition and causes moderate-left beliefs” seems much more plausible to me than “there’s a spontaneous peak in censorship advocacy at this point in the political spectrum”.
The most passionate opponents of chaos are likely to be powerful, since change can only knock them off their pedestals
Opponents of chaos will be people with something to lose or something to protect. The ultra-rich 0.01% have the endurance to ride out most consequences this side of Armageddon, and the more excitable ones might see the chaos as an opportunity, or as a necessary evil.
This is interesting to me because it’s surprising: I’d expect a sharper ideological divide on whether PC is a problem or not. I don’t think “PC is a problem” reliably means “I have a high tolerance for verbal conflict”; “PC is a problem” can be read as “people trying to enforce political correctness are picking fights for no good reason and escalating verbal conflict”.
This is an old-fashioned “Who should be allowed to speak in a town hall meeting in favour of outrageous opinion X?” sort of question. Frankly, this is a pattern-matched answer: “Yes, we believe in freedom of speech”. I’m not sure the answer would be the same if the question were “Social media is full of (highly persuasive) advocacy for outrageous opinion X—is this acceptable?”.
Hm. Why? Some explanations plucked out of thin air:
(a) To oppose free speech, you have to have enough people on “your side” that you might *succeed*, or that your training/experience has been in a situation where opposing free speech might succeed. (Large concentrations of moderate-left-liberals on a campus)
(b) Groups who have decided that “too much free speech is a problem” come from some particular community incompatible with being on the radical left. You’re not going to find many hard-left-wingers in the RAND corporation thinking about counterinsurgency strategy; a SJW memeplex sweeping across college freshmen is going to do better if the freshmen don’t have to already be Marxist believers to partake.
I think I’m suggesting that there might be *confounders* on the political-spectrum/free-speech-advocacy graph: “being a campus liberal causes free-speech-opposition and causes moderate-left beliefs” seems much more plausible to me than “there’s a spontaneous peak in censorship advocacy at this point in the political spectrum”.
Opponents of chaos will be people with something to lose or something to protect. The ultra-rich 0.01% have the endurance to ride out most consequences this side of Armageddon, and the more excitable ones might see the chaos as an opportunity, or as a necessary evil.