[sapphicsnail]

Civilization is violent. The Roman Empire maintained it's economy through slavery. The Catholic Church started the crusades. This is article is the usual dumb reductionist thinking that people have been spewing every year I've been alive.

> But I feel the deeper threat is internal. A generation of critical theory and identity politics has captured universities, media, and cultural institutions. The Western tradition is now taught as a system of oppression rather than the foundation of the very liberties that make the critique possible.

It always is this. The left is destroying Western Civilization. How can anyone believe this bullshit when it's 2026 and the Right is firing professors, silencing the press, and arresting people for publicly disagreeing with them. What world do you live in that you can honestly believe this.

[AnimalMuppet]

Two things can both be true. The left was also firing professors. They weren't arresting people for publicly disagreeing with them; they were just showing up as "black block"/antifa and trying to physically intimidate them.

Neither side are angels. Neither side really believe in your free speech if you disagree with them.

Now, if you want to argue that the right is currently the greater threat, then sure, I can probably agree with that. The two sides try to push the other around when in power, and play the victim when out of it, and the right is currently in power. And they're currently more aggressive than I ever saw the left be. Still, the left isn't really the side of free speech either.

[bryanlarsen]

> Neither side really believe in your free speech

Only one side claimed to be "free speech absolutists".

[boxed]

Cherry picking. The other side claimed to be the only ones to care about "black lives" while at the same time supporting burning down black owned businesses, and spreading covid during the worst of the pandemic, while being super angry about the people who didn't wear masks.

Don't fall into the trap of grouping into left/right. Individual behaviors must be judged separately: going into crowded spaces unmasked during the high of covid? Bad. Burning down a business? Bad. Getting someone fired for speech? Bad. Etc.

See how easy and clear that is? Nothing about left or right.

[coldtea]

Which makes them hypocrites.

But a hypocrite that pays lip service to free speech might be better than someone who openly doesn't care for it. At least the principle remains respected.

[AnimalMuppet]

Meh. The principle remains "respected" with lip service. That's not respecting the principle; that's respecting the principle's ability to persuade people to vote for you.

I mean, look, there are conservatives who actually do care about free speech for everyone, not just their allies. But the "conservatives" currently in power, who claimed to be "free speech absolutists", seem more interested in control of speech as a source of power, rather than in actual free speech for all.

[boxed]

> The left is destroying Western Civilization. How can anyone believe this bullshit when it's 2026 and the Right is firing professors, silencing the press, and arresting people for publicly disagreeing with them

The "left" also reduced Venezuela from the richest country on the continent to a brutal regime not long ago.

Seeing the world as "left" vs "right" is imo not helpful. It's too easy to fall into the trap of defending the "left" because you also identify with sane progressive taxes for example, and then identity confuses you and now you're trying to pretend that people getting physically assaulted on campus is ok because the left is mostly right about progressive taxes or whatever.

The crazy-left are evil because they are confused.

The crazy-right are evil because they are confused.

[coldtea]

>Civilization is violent. The Roman Empire maintained it's economy through slavery.

So? Slavery was the baseline back then. The question is whether the Roman Empire was more peaceful/less violent than the alternative, not whether they had slavery or some degree of violence.

>The Catholic Church started the crusades.

After centuries of arab expansion conquering over 6 centuries pre-existing Christian cities and populations in the wider middle east.