Let me guess... the "younger people" whose "insanity" you're referring to all happen to share a specific political and social alignment, which you yourself do not?

It used to be that the right to freedom of speech, something essential for liberty, was a baseline everyone could agree on.

A growing vocal minority has been "deconstructing" that to say that your freedom of speech should depend not on the fact that you are a human, but instead into which ideological, racial, biological, economic, or social groups you can put yourself.

When presented with the argument that this damages the protection of freedom of speech, and hence endangers basic liberty, the counterargument is either that a) you are identifying yourself as a member of an out-of-fashion group and therefore should be silenced, or b) that the whole concept of freedom of speech came from one of these out-of-fashion groups and is therefore inherently bad.

Neither one of these responses is reasonable. They're both ad hominem arguments, and usually arrive peppered with red herring arguments to bolster the "you are bad" perspective.

Western culture, which, to varying degrees, has protected freedom of speech as a core value, is one of the most tolerant cultures on the planet today. It is that same freedom of speech that has been a key enabler for this tolerance. It most certainly is not perfect, and can most certainly be improved, but not by removing the mechanism most responsible for improving it in these dimensions.

It often feels as though one is confronting a screaming person who is accusing one of stealing his or her glasses, while said screaming person is wearing those very same glasses during the outburst.

I can understand how that would feel like the screaming party is "insane".

Granted, that may not be at all what the other poster meant.

Absolutely, because critical theory is a phenomenon of the Left. The right has its wackos too, but both the sane Left and the sane Right are quick to distance themselves from them. Critical theory lunacy seems IMHO to get a pass from otherwise sane persons on the Left even if they don't embrace it themselves.

> I've never thought that a black or a Hispanic should be treated or thought of badly because of his or her race. Nor do I think that my thoughts and experiences should be discounted because I am a white male.

That's nice, but in what way is that not a non-sequitur.

Yeah, it is kind of a non-sequitur. On the other hand you have to admit that I was responding to a rather amorphous comment. My intent was to merely given an example of where I draw the line between sane and insane.

> I've never thought that a black or a Hispanic should be treated or thought of badly because of his or her race. Nor do I think that my thoughts and experiences should be discounted because I am a white male. Everyone should just be treated as an individual. Is that so controversial or retrograde?

I'm with you on this. I don't think it is controversial.

On the other hand, your sweeping comment on "young people" being "insane", seems to do a categorical kind of "discounting" based on their age (as opposed to race). As if they haven't "grown up enough" to shed bad ideas. Which is by definition an shifting of the goalpoasts because by the fact of life, the cohort of "younger people than you" will always keep growing in size and there's no mobility: there's nothing a younger person can do to be older than you. A fair comment to call "younger folks" "insane" then? I found it unfair, even if our political ideologies align.

This is an example of a lack of self-awareness that I meant to capture by saying "critical theory rotting out the internet". I'm not claiming you're a part of this group, by the way, for all I know you may change your mind or reinforce the deliberate nature of your comment. I appreciate you giving me a concrete example, though. From my point of view, people are too free to be critical of the ideas they want at any time, courtesy of the internet, without actually having an in-person, stimulating, and productive discussion with real human beings that share a different view, and therefore do not learn how to adapt themselves to new ideas, and therefore have a stunted/warped/non-existent way to introspect, and therefore are free to shout out products of criticality theory (which can be for any ideology, conservative or liberal[0]) without the feedback and nurturing of personal growth through genuine intellectual humility (it is performative intellectual humility[1]). So here I am, challenging you, hopefully in a positive way, as you've challenged me (perhaps less explicitly and more gracefully).

In my personal experience it happens in "all sides"'s internet communities based on politics or political philosophy. Which is expected since the largest participants are not there to have their minds changed, and this hard-headedness then becomes this mirror which is what people model themselves to become. And cannot recognize this cycle for what it is. Huge net negative all around.

[0] Note I don't use "criticality theory" as a politicized term like Jordan Peterson and other right-leaning folks like to use it, for reasons I don't care to discuss here.

[1] This blur between genuine and performative can get into some weird postmodern ideas, but again, even exploring ideas like that has become politicized by the Peterson camp, so I don't care to discuss here.

Well, I did say "a lot" of young people, not all. I have three adult children and I wouldn't say any of them are in the thrall of critical theory, despite having graduated from public universities in California.

By the way, what is an example of critical theory being used by partisans of the Right?

The "deep state" and "tech giant bias" ideological movements of the Right sit firmly within the broader definition of critical theory. Whenever the Right appeals to freedom from corruption or freedom of speech for those specific issues, they are appealing to the narrow definition of critical theory (emancipation/liberation from being subject to another's dominant position of certain liberties).

You obviously know the ins and outs of critical theory much better than I do. You've also cited two ideological movements of which I am completely unaware. Thanks for your time.