ike42 said:
Two, what's with the comment about leftism from Baldwin? As far as I can tell it's the right wing that's usually trying to clamp down on free speech. While I'm mostly moderate with views that swing towards both ends of the spectrum I have to take a little offense at that implication. The right wing is the one that's trying to systematically destroy the first amendment by making the claim that there should be no separation of church and state and burning books such as The Catcher in the Rye (seriously why was this piece of crap banned?). It just seems like a a misdirected swing at the left.
Welcome to shitstorm that is contemporary American politics. Baldwins comments, though erroneous (From here on, im just going to state all my opinions as facts for simplicity) are consistent with his Libertarianism. He counts as a conservative, like republicans, but many Libertarians seem to consider Republicans crap compared to Democrats slightly worse shit. Libertarians are split here: Most count themselves as republican because its either have influence over one of the major parties and try to change it from within, or be a tiny minority that manages to be completely inconsequential unless Ron Paul is presently talking.
Basically, you have Democrates, who are Socially permissive, economically restrictive. For personal choices, do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt anyone, stay out of peoples private affairs, and leave religion out of politics. Gay marriage is fine, Science should progress, abortion is between you and your doctor, and show no preference to any religion. If the government gets involved, its to prevent private individuals from restricting a persons social choice. Economically, your looking at a more Keynesian approach. Heavier taxes, more regulation focused on the common good, a directed approach.
Republicans are the opposite. They are more socially restrictive, and more economically permissive, Getting involved in private life, enforcing values, and not getting involved when a private individual tries to limit another persons freedom. This is the mainstream of Americas Conservatives, and the social restrictiveness has lead to the loudest and most pushy of Christians to side with the Conservatives. Economically, they believe that the, "Invisible hand" of the market will do all the regulation needed: Anything that is harmful to the common good will be squashed by people no longer buying there product. How does this stop pollution? Exploitation of limited resources? Focusing on one niche of the market to the detriment of people who arn't in that market? Other shady business dealings? The answer is Magic, and a pigheaded belief that no effort needs to be taken for the world to be fair. Because bad things only happen to bad people, and the wealthy always deserve their wealth.
Then there's Libertarians. Libertarians are plain old permissive to the extreme, with a twist: The government is always bad. No effort needs to be made to give people social freedom. Any attempt to protect the socially downtrodden is really just an attempt to restrict the private individuals doing the trodding. And to be fair, government can be pretty inefficient. So in Baldwins case, The professor should be able to post anything, of any nature, and if people don't let him, it is because of the government overreaching its boundaries. Since the Left is known for protecting the downtrodden, he blames the left for trying to protect the students, to their detriment. The logic is that The left think they are protecting people, Libertarians think that people should protect themselves, and the righteous will overcome unless the guv'ment meddles.
Also, he probably blames the left because blaming one of the 2 major parties is the current favorite pastime of Americans, the left compose more of the educated public, particularly in the present system of schools, and only the most extreme of Libertarians don't at least try to cozy up to republicans in hope of getting their voice heard.
