Safe space or free speech?

[Admiral Yi]

This is the American Conservative's stereotype of intolerant left wing monsters.  This is the stereotype of places like Cal Berkeley.  I have a hard time believing this sort of thing is really universal across British Universities.  I do like how it is being blamed on the Middle Class.  Sometimes you get the impression that to the British every atrocity, left right and center, is in the hands of middling income earners.  'You are not in poverty nor are you amongst the elite?  MONSTER!!!'

My understanding is that in British English middle class means well off but not aristocratic.

[Valmy]

I am more supportive of the idea that idiots need to be allowed to speak their bad ideas as loudly as possible, as publicly as possible.  Bad ideas thrive much better in the shadows where they cannot be challenged or exposed for how stupid they are.

However, for this to work, you need to have a strong state, capable of enforcing citizens' rights. Without that, free speech can very quickly deteriorate into a mob rule, where those who have numbers and/or are loud enough can intimidate the rest, irrespective of laws.

Well I am talking about the context of the USA or the UK.  Like I always want the KKK and the Nazis to do their stupid marches.  I was glad the Lyndon Larouche nutcases were parading around Campus with their Obama = Hitler signs last year.  In Rwanda parading around shouting 'Death to Tutsis' might be more problematic.

[Valmy]

This is the American Conservative's stereotype of intolerant left wing monsters.  This is the stereotype of places like Cal Berkeley.  I have a hard time believing this sort of thing is really universal across British Universities.  I do like how it is being blamed on the Middle Class.  Sometimes you get the impression that to the British every atrocity, left right and center, is in the hands of middling income earners.  'You are not in poverty nor are you amongst the elite?  MONSTER!!!'

My understanding is that in British English middle class means well off but not aristocratic.

So Bill Gates and Warren Buffet = Middle Class?  Can any of the British posters confirm this?

[The Larch]

I think that for every UK class related argument we really need the input of a local, as it's such a touchy, idiosincratic and cornerstone element of their politics, which makes it quite difficult to understand to non Brits.

[mongers]

I think that for every UK class related argument we really need the input of a local, as it's such a touchy, idiosincratic and cornerstone element of their politics, which makes it quite difficult to understand to non Brits.

[grumbler]

I am more supportive of the idea that idiots need to be allowed to speak their bad ideas as loudly as possible, as publicly as possible.  Bad ideas thrive much better in the shadows where they cannot be challenged or exposed for how stupid they are.

However, for this to work, you need to have a strong state, capable of enforcing citizens' rights. Without that, free speech can very quickly deteriorate into a mob rule, where those who have numbers and/or are loud enough can intimidate the rest, irrespective of laws.

Actually, you generally need the opposite; where you have a strong government to enforce the mob rule, you don't have freedom of speech (see, say, Russia).  It is where the censors lack the power to control speech that you find free speech. 

[Malthus]

Molly Coddle, a sex worker and campaigner who supported the picket, suggests there is a sense of entitlement in the anger of Smurthwaite's supporters. "They want really controversial speakers to come to campuses, over the heads of students who are hurt by that or disagree with their politics," she says. "It's students who aren't allowed to hold alternate events, or picket, or protest, or ask their university to disinvite the speaker."

Molly Coddle? 

[Richard Hakluyt]

Her trade name I would guess 

[Valmy]

Molly Coddle? 

Lawyers have a way of wading through extraneous text to get to the most important points.

[derspiess]

However, for this to work, you need to have a strong state, capable of enforcing citizens' rights. Without that, free speech can very quickly deteriorate into a mob rule, where those who have numbers and/or are loud enough can intimidate the rest, irrespective of laws.

You make that sound like something difficult to pull off.  Pretty easy in the civilized Western World, actually.

[Sheilbh]

It is worth saying this isn't a conservative jeremiad. Dunt is the political editor of the Erotic Review and pretty lefty.

[Malthus]

Her trade name I would guess 

I'm finding it hard to believe, in context. "Mollycoddle", as you know, means basically "overprotective". An all too appropriate nick for someone supporting "safe spaces" over "free speech".

[Richard Hakluyt]

Hmm, well a "molly" is 18th century slang for a homosexual, also mollycoddling has associations with infantilising behaviour. I wouldn't be at all surprised if she provides "safe spaces" for many a tory MP during her business hours 

[Sheilbh]

There at least seems to be a weird fascination here with poverty. Like how the BBC was describing the Soho as a historically crime infested den of filth, and then progressed to crying over soon losing it to the rule of law.

My feelings on Soho are a bit like Schama's description of the opening ceremony:

It's a version of Happy Britannia which, of course, never existed. There was grunting poverty in the villages, just as not everyone sucked into the maw of the Industrial Revolution was doomed to perish of cholera or stump the hillside alleys with terminal rickets. But that (you want to remind the objecting pedants) wasn't the point. A lovely tradition of the social pageant cum Christian mystery play has existed since the English Middle Ages, and that's what Danny Boy made over for the modern digital moment. It's history as written by the Social Democrat Fabian Society on which we drank deep when I was at school in the '50s and '60s, authored by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, G.D.H. Cole, R.H. Tawney, and the socialist romantic E.P Thompson, a history at once fiery and brotherly, full of laments for the dispossessed and uprooted but clear-eyed about the inevitability of the industrial age and the shameless rapacity of its plutocracy. Hey, anyone want to argue with that?

I don't think Soho was ever crime-ridden but it was a den of filth: brothels and leather bars and sex shops and newsagents with magazines titled 'Spank!' in brown paper bags. Now a lot of it's all expensive cafes selling sourdough sandwiches for £6.50 and a cappuccino for £3 to pricks who work in PR. And there are fewer and fewer of the old Soho characters. The old legends like Geoffrey Bernard have gone, though The Coach and Horses is still there and still good with still unfriendly staff. Or Soho Pam:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soho_Pam
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/9819550/Pamela-Jennings.html
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2013/02/penniless-exiles-soho

Though there's still a couple like the drunk barman in Trisha's who gives them impression of having been, at some point, profoundly damaged and is as likely to insult as serve you. Or the incongruously austere and posh priest from St Patrick's who still wears full cassock and occasional clerical hat.

It's inevitable and it's 'progress', but it's still sad.

Edit: Of course I'm too young to know of Soho in its seediest days. But I'll still be able to reminisce that I went to Madame Jojo's and was propositioned there

I think that for every UK class related argument we really need the input of a local, as it's such a touchy, idiosincratic and cornerstone element of their politics, which makes it quite difficult to understand to non Brits.

It's complicated.

[Richard Hakluyt]

The British class system has got so confusing that even the British no longer understand it. I certainly have no idea which class I belong to.