The Corner

Re: Re-Education Camp

The point is basic courtesy, Mark. It’s that you could mount your opposing argument without insulting people. Sure, you have the right to insult people, but I can’t sympathize much with someone who exercises that right just to prove it exists, which seems to have been part of your rhetorical strategy. What I would like to de-normalize is boorishness, whatever its content. I would do that by criticizing your manners, not by “indefinitely suspend[ing]” you, which would not be my decision anyway. When people are indefinitely suspended from this or that for being boors, I find it “stifling and unhealthy,” as you may recall that I said. I’ll upgrade that to “creepy and repellent,” if it’ll calm you down. But it’s also part of the rough-and-tumble of free expression, which protects equally the right of people to be boors, and the right of people to call for suspensions, and the right of organizations to capitulate, and the right of you and me to criticize them for it, with or without courtesy.

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