Intellectual feebleness at James Madison university


The Viginia university claims to be a research university. The sort of thinking needed for that doesn't always show in their student newspaper. I give a few excerpts below from one article asserting that hate speech causes hate crime.  

The proof of that?  Two people who assaulted an immigrant claimed to be inspired by the words of Donald Trump.

BUT what about the (say) 100 million other people who heard Trump and did not assault anybody?  Doesn't that prove that Trump's speech is wonderfully safe and that hate speech does not cause  hate crime?  If hate speech does not lead to hate crime in 100 million cases, what more evidence do we need to conclude that hate speech does not cause hate crimes?

We do have to look at ALL the evidence, of course.  Not that any Leftist ever does.  Reality is so far inconsistent with  Leftist beliefs that they would become conservatives if they let themselves consider all the evidence.

And what evidence do we have that the men would have behaved differently if they had not heard Trump?  There is none.  It is just a claim.

And how can we base any generalization on one instance?  It's because we can't that we have statistics. If lots of people had gone out and bashed illegals after hearing The Donald the writer  might have a case.  But as it is, one swallow doesn't make a summer.

The writer below, Kevan Hulligan, does go on to scratch through history to find other attacks that have been associated with hate speech but he finds about three in total over a long span of years -- which is, I think, excellent proof that hate speech does NOT cause hate crimes -- the exact opposite of what he asserts.

The kid who wrote the guff below really is a poor thing: A very dim bulb.  And his expensive education has done nothing to remedy that, which is sad


It’s hard to deny that some of the worst aspects of American culture are embodied by Donald Trump, the current front-runner in the Republican primary. His abrasiveness, continuous grandstanding, willingness to insult and denigrate instead of argue and his use of racist rhetoric do enough to show why such a man shouldn’t have a front desk job at the Library of Congress, let alone the Oval Office.

Now the racism that took center stage with his immigration comments earlier this year has resulted in someone being assaulted.

On Aug. 19, two brothers from Boston viciously attacked a 58-year-old homeless Latino man while walking home from a baseball game. They beat him repeatedly with a metal pole and punched him after urinating on him. Their said inspiration for this attack? Donald Trump’s racist comments on immigration.

This entire episode proves what many have been saying for years now: hate speech inevitably leads to people taking that speech and turning it into violent hate crimes.

SOURCE

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).