I agree so strongly with your final sentence I don't need to haggle over the rest. :)

He probably thinks "irrelevant" means "wrong."

I think this is unfair because you lump sexuality in here, and Jesse makes no claim that sexuality is voluntary. And I think he'd agree with you about human rights violations. He's going for Maher's aggressive atheist with humorous exaggeration technique. I doubt he thinks anyone, including Muslims, should be killed…

Kind of a condescending remark—the criticsm of others comes from people "easily distressed" while yours is the "mystification" of someone who can "handle it."

You're kinda saying any criticism of modern liberalism is a right-wing plot. No. There is a group-think mentality modern (maybe "young"?) liberals fall into a lot (that doesn't mean modern liberals own the copyright on group-think). Glad you and others (like me) don't fall into that trap. Unfortunately, a whole lot…

More silliness.

It's the hunger for numbers the media went after that wound up making Trump a "credible" candidate and ultimately President. You'd think they'd have learned…But they seem to be Slim Pickens happily riding the bomb.

Uh…the reference was to Maher, not to Milos, but in any event, it was claiming that white men are annoying if they utilize this behavior, but men of color and all women are not. That's straight up bigoted.

"These days, of course, a white man (particularly one as unapologetically smug as Maher) bragging about being “politically incorrect” just seems insufferable." If you replaced "white" with any other race, this would be condemned as bigotry. Whether it is actually bigotry or not, it is very silly, and makes it…

I never asserted that the meaning of 1984 was "surveillance is bad." I said it was one of the themes in the book, and therefore proper to identify such behavior as Orwellian. I think you will find many scholars—people who have demonstrably read 1984—identifying this as an Orwellian notion. Again, I think your…

Of course you assume I must have a grievance. Nope. Liberal to the point of being a socialist. Gay, too, if that matters. My point is, there is not much tolerance in what remains of the "mainstream" media for an alternative position—and even less in comments sections like these. The idea that you think you can state ob…

Any number of things. Look at speech codes on campuses. Look at the way reading lists for schools are now composed. Look at the basic argument that anyone advocating a fiscal conservative policy is either heartless or stupid—which will get a lot of traction in the media. It's almost impossible for anyone to make such…

I can't take too seriously what you're "sure" of, considering some of the statements you've made so far. But let's grant he was a hypocrite. The clear implication in 1984 is that it is wrong to deprive people of their right to privacy and ability communicate unobserved by the government. To pretend this is not a key…

Well, the ACLU doesn't jail people for speech offenses, and neither do conservatives. But clearly, there are major penalties in society for not towing the line on "approved" positions.

Staw man. No one was ever "stopped" from joining or speaking well of the communist party, either, but there were severe repercussions in doing so. And today there are strong repercussions as well.

You, uh, don't think Heathers was making a political point? Guess you're analytical skills are even more amusing.

But modern liberals often are the real fascists. That's not a conservative talking point. It's an example of basic hypocrisy that many people on both sides of the national ideologies fall for. It's silly to pretend otherwise. We shut down speech not "approved" by whatever group is in power. Conservatives do it when…

You aren't wrong, in that, like the subverters of teen power in Heathers, the liberal establishment defeated the conservative establishment (culturally, if not politically) only to become the thing it defeated.

Huh?

Trump's quote is so different from Obama's prosecution of whitleblowers, and Snowden's in ability to live in any country with extradition treaties with America? Forget the surface. Look at the substance.