"Men have natural abilities and disposition towards leadership. To deny this, to mandate equality of results, to push women into masculine roles, to domesticate and feminize men, only results in misery for both men and women. Universal suffrage elections are virtually always a bad idea."
Ad hominem doesn't render an argument invalid, it just speaks to the credibility of the author. So on that note, where are the merits?
If you're talking merits/credibility, I feel like his opinions on the other things just aren't relevant here. Is the standard that every time someone shares an opinion their entire history is judged?
To some degree (I won't say 'entire'), this is the very definition of "credibility."
We might have an obligation to read charitably, but we shouldn't be obsequious towards ideas (or people) that are ontologically broken or fly in the face of basic humanism. This author falls firmly into that category, and a quick survey of their work will confirm that for you.
The point, at least in this case, is that the author is counting on being treated as a serious thinker at the table of ideas. He is relying on our good faith to promote ideas that are fundamentally incompatible with the existence of exactly the kind of dialogue he's being given on this site. Do not think, should he win, that he will afford you the same charity.
Criticizing someone who uses dialogue in bad faith is an exercise in futility. It's better to recognize their actions before hand and label them as such -- a sophist, or a pseudophilosopher, or whatever. That won't stop them from speaking (nor should we want it to), but it gives us the power to redirect dialogue towards more serious participants.
Edit: I realize that I didn't make this clear: criticizing the easier thing is not sophistry. At the worst, it's poor argumentation. Sophistry involves using rhetoric to hide intellectual bankruptcy and bad faith.
I do not do this out of hand, or on a whim. I've read this person's writings before, and have made a genuine attempt to read him charitably.
> its always about silencing or shunning people, never about engaging them.
Shunning, maybe. I don't think it's inappropriate to stop a conversation that you know is going to be used as a weapon against you later by someone with truly onerous views. I don't have an obligation to engage with people whose only interest in engagement is to use it a token of their ideological legitimacy. Silencing, never.
We don't debate round-earth denialists, since we know that their only motive in debate is to maximize their audience and legitimacy. It doesn't matter whether they're actually talking about their ungrounded views in a particular instance, because all that matters is that they gain legitimacy to be spent later.
You're the one who keeps bringing up feminism and social justice, not me. Have you considered that you're trying to imply an ulterior motive that doesn't exist? Every movement has its fair share of people just like Devin Helton.
In regards to the article, I think the general direction of his ideas that we should send fewer people to college is wrong. One of many reasons for thinking that is that a lot more jobs will be eliminated by automation and the only way for people to have a chance at a great, productive life with enough money to live on and do the things he describes (live in a safe place, things to do, access to doctors, and most importantly craft beer), will be to have education that allows one to do creative work that is harder to replace with automation. People will have to study things that align with that creative work, and possibly reeducate themselves as they go along in life (like most programmers are constantly doing). Many of those fields he listed that people could do without extra education are likely to be automated away (financial adviser, executive, or a marketing manager).
But there is a historic millieu that one has to use to judge that person's views and ideas within, and that does allow me to consider the views of people from antiquity. But that notion also applies to judging the ideas of people writing in the world that I live in. Today, it's just clear that women should have civil rights and be equal partners in society with men. It's silly to state otherwise, and so when someone who is a contemporary states otherwise, it does call into question their views.
Actually I'm interested in learning more about the world and educating my self and not just being stuck on one view of what is right and wrong.
I will disagree with one thing your wrote, about ideas coming and and out of fashion over time - certainly that happens but the idea of civil rights for all individuals must be a universal thing. I think that's very different than views about religion or proper foods to eat or ideas about what are good jobs for men or women.
> Universal suffrage elections are virtually always a bad idea. The process simply polarizes the population, and causes everyone to believe in myths and propganda. There is no way that the results of an election can be channeled into the subtleties needed to make good government and good policy.
It looks like this guy discusses the matter at greater length here, if anybody is curious: