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by garrettgarcia
390 days ago
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> It is certainly intellectually dishonest to claim that the government funding anything you don't like is a violation of your "intellectual freedom". Agreed. I never claimed that of course, and neither did the authors. What they claimed is that government funding ALWAYS comes with strings attached, therefore the only way to have true intellectual freedom is to reject all funding. Moreover, the difference between government strings and private funding strings are that only government strings come under the threat of force. |
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I think it's a stretch for the article to say that because federal funding will have strings attached it should be rejected to attain "intellectual freedom". But private funding also comes with strings attached. So I guess you could be free to be unfunded if you don't want any strings.
The last part of the article reveals more about the political thinking behind it, when it says:
"When government coercively seizes your money and uses it to subsidize some research program or viewpoint for any reason, it is violating your intellectual freedom."
Whose money is being coercively seized here and whose intellectual freedom is being violated? It's not talking about the universities here.
It very much looks like a typical libertarian "all tax is theft" and "government shouldn't take my money to do things I don't like" argument. Not sure they are really concerned with freedom here, other than freedom from government.