Just stop it

( )

The article ends with this note by Julia Ioffe:

We live in a time where our dialogue and our politics and our news have been Twitter-ized. We have forgotten what it means to disagree with each other without annihilating each other. We have forgotten what it means to cut people slack, and to forgive their mistakes. I have felt this many times on my own skin, have watched people get furious at me for a comment and then refused to listen to the apology or the explanation. Twitter's wrath is devastating. It is cruel. It is disproportionate.

Leave the Twitter mob. Think for yourself. Listen for yourself. Turn of your political bloodlust. Learn how to disagree as a civilized adult. Stop bullying people.

Just stop it.

Photo by Shripal Daphtary on Unsplash

The Mere Act of Conceding Limits

( )

So why don’t people who want to shift the equilibrium away from political correctness try to broaden their coalition by simultaneously agreeing to ban “hate speech”? In this case, as in others, the “equilibrium majority” is reluctant to make concessions to the “limit majority” because they are concerned about slippery slopes. A refusal to concede limits can be necessary if one means to defend the merits of an absolutist position (like “torture should always be illegal”) or when one believes that an absolutist position allows bad behavior, but that anything short of it guarantees a slide to an inferior outcome, like lots of speech being suppressed.
 
But there are lots of other issues where equilibrium majorities seem foolish if they decline to grow their numbers at the expense of limit majorities, whether by focusing their efforts narrowly or reassuring persuadable voters by granting some limits.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.