Let's face it, every one of us is a bigot, on some issue or other. Every one of us. I'm probably a bit anti-German, but come to think of it, I love Brahms and Schumann and Mozart and Bach, and still have a lot of affection for Marx, so maybe I'm growing out of it. I don't go much on the Japanese, but the war's been over for seventy years now and no Japanese has ever done anything wrong to me, so that's another habit past its use-by date.

Let's see; I don't mind Yanks, I like Canadians and Kiwis and their sense of humour; I admire the Kurds and Czechs and Poles; Of course, I love the Welsh like everybody does (or should: is that bigotry ?) and Vietnamese and Indonesians and I've fallen in love with every Tamil woman that I've ever met, as well as all those magnificent African women. God, the world is beautiful.

Hell, I don't even mind Victorians all that much, even if they can't drive properly and go on about Melbourne. My kids were born there, so I can't really complain. I love Brisbane and Perth; Sydney, not so much, even though I was born there; it's too bloody big and I always get lost. I don't think much of Alice Springs though. Not their fault. Darwin, of course, is fantastic.

So it's a great pity that there is not much for a bigot to get their teeth into these days :)

Religion ? A bit pointless, but if it's your thing ..... Islam however seems the most backward, ignorant, dangerous and pointless of them all. Put me down as a bigot then :)

And homophobia: I don't care much for or about homosexuals, as is my right, but put me down for that too.

Joe

I better issue a 'trigger warning' for what I'm about to say.

So, I couldn't give a crap about what others think in the greater scheme of things; if I'm going to bother even having an opinion on something and go to the trouble of sharing it, then it will be my own genuine opinion.
I've got no interest in joining some PC crowd just to pander to others for acknowledgement or to act 'holier than thou' so I can be a part of some group hive mind. Stuff that. The idea of it sickens me.

'Attack of the clones' - PC libtards who can't think for themselves and merely repeat others talking points like mindless demented jellyfish.
I'll even go one step further than Toni Lavis in defending my right to express myself freely also includes acting like a bigot.
Sometimes I will come across as a bigot and I reserve my right to do so if I've been roped into an argument with someone with a lower IQ who tries to challenge the reasons for my opinion.
I don't have to explain my reasons for everything like I'm speaking to a 5 year old.
Is it my fault there's a need to tiptoe around their 'feelings' because they were raised ill-prepared to deal with life?
I don't really care if people don't like my opinion or their feelings get hurt.
I don't intentionally wish to upset people, but I'm not here to look after peoples mental health.
Life's tough, suck it up.

I agree with the author on all points.

[cont]
I support free speech, but its more of an 'at your own risk' basis.
That means if you say something stupid, or unintelligent I have the right to call you stupid and unintelligent, and degrade and humiliate you.

(Trigger warnings alert - yes, run to your safe spaces generation snowflake's)

It has a purpose, being subject to said humiliation makes you learn and become smarter as one would reasonably hope to avoid future humiliation.

And its not a one-way street.
By my rules if I say something stupid or unintelligent I also must be prepared to 'take my medicine' and would be deserving of the same treatment.

If people are going to entertain stupid ideas that are removed from reality then arguing back and forth is simply an idiots game.
All you can hope to achieve is to prove yourself an idiot under those circumstances.

Best to call them out and humiliate them straight off than even bother playing their irrational game.
Because after all, the left progressive nutjobs will never let you win anyway, even if your argument is reasonable and based on facts.
Why bother playing if the game is rigged and you can't win?
They will talk over you and call you names to never let your opinion be heard, so why not just stoop to their level and get in first with the insults?

Having fun on the merry go round, morons?

Alan B.
I want to put your 'mangina apologist' ideology to the test.
Show me how I can hire a female at a lower hourly rate than a man and I'll hire her tomorrow. I'll be waiting...
Otherwise please stop being a shill for and helping to enable and empower retarted feminist SJW's, begging for attention is the lowest form of human behavior and what you're doing is only slightly above that.
The feminists don't respect you for it, they hate you so give it up.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/8386/feminist-journalist-all-men-are-rapists-and-should-amanda-prestigiacomo

Political correctness,

Illusion and delusion by the brainwashed, that they can control
the human race with niceties.

someone should have tried it on Genghis Khan or the Romans.
maybe it would have worked with the vikings.

The most encouraging aspect of involving oneself in informed debate is th certainty that on some young people at least, you are definitely having an effect.

I first became interested in debate sites after the Port Arthur massacre when I realised that gun owners were being very unfairly treated by the media in respect to who was primarily responsible for encouraging massacre like behaviour. I found I had a knack of expressing myself using the written word.

Twenty years of submitting to debate sites and I have definitely noted one important feature. You get a young trendy lefty who comes on the site with an attitude of total intellectual and moral superiority, who thinks that his opponents are all stupid. He or she then posts articles in which usually displays their woeful lack of understanding of the topic under discussion. It becomes obvious that they have never objectively thought about whatever topic they are espousing, and that they are simply parroting the slogans that their peer group have inculcated into them.

When confronted by opponents who know their stuff and who can easily refute their false assumptions, interesting things start to happen. Many of them become extremely angry and abusive. By effectively countering their arguments you are undermining their own self image of a young person who thinks that they area brilliant and superior. It can actually be quite funny to see them squirm and suddenly go from attacking to the defensive in order to keep some hold on their own positive self image.

But the ones who are really intelligent start to become more respectful of their right wing opponents when they begin to realise that right wingers are not stupid at all, and that their cherished left wing ideology most definitely does not hold all of the answers. The trick is to keep confronting them with their own ideologies historical air brushing, and it's contradictions and double standards, because it is by those means which left wing ideology keeps it's hold on the young and naive.

Hi Lego,

You nail it. Yes, I wish that OLO and the internet had been around when I was young and stupid. I squirmed a bit reading your post, since I had gone through the stages that you sketch, although back in those days, I probably simply withdrew from any discussion and kept my thoughts to myself. So I hope that sites like OLO act to speed up the evolution of the next generation from ignorance into the light.

As Brendan O'Neill notes in his article in today's Australian, encouraging people to express themselves any way they like, from the most ignorant to the most far-sighted, from the most relativist to the most racist, allows us not only to become aware of what opinions are out there, but whether or not they are supported by argument (or merely by assertion).

The world is incredibly complex and it seems to take a lifetime (at least for a slow learner like me) to gain a better understanding of it, a combination of constantly trying to learn, and bitter experience. PC and its corollary - the silencing of alternative views - may not kill off that learning and experience (we all keep on learning inside our own heads), but it certainly slows it down, and allows disastrous mistakes to linger, not to mention its dead hand on policy.

Good on you.

Joe