If you strip away the appeals to emotion, their point seems flimsier in isolation: "Non-European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within European and American philosophy, raise or frame problems not addressed in the American and European tradition, or emphasize and discuss more deeply philosophical problems that are marginalized in Anglo-European philosophy."
This is on the surface, reasonable. But why don't we try reversing the names, which should be allowed under their pretense of fairness and equality, like so: "European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within Non-European philosophy, raise or frame problems not addressed in the Non-European traditions, or emphasize and discuss more deeply philosophical problems that are marginalized in Non-European philosophy."
Now it sounds at best sloppy (Which non-European traditions?), and at worst chauvinistic against the background noise that makes up the bulk of what really drives their point, which is the "apologize for imperialism" theme. So at one level below the surface, they are suggesting we abandon evaluating ideas based on their relevance to us as westerners, and subordinate that principle to saying sorry for imperialism. At two levels below, they are just talking their own book, as white male professors of Chinese philosophy.
Have you just discovered that when you permute the words in a sentence, you can radically change it's meaning?
The point of the article is the primacy of Western philosophical traditions in their departments. The context of the discussion in reality is what makes it relevant. Your permutation is incongruous with the context they're making their argument in.
Part of Stallman's motivation for starting the free software movement was that your computer is an extension of your mind, and ubiquitous computer surveillance is basically the same as Orwell's thought police. The chilling effect is real, as demonstrated by a recent study that showed a drop off in terrorism related searches after the Snowden leaks. I freely research terrorism though, because I'm not "the type of person who would do something". So I basically rely on racial, ethnic, and economic discrimination to feel secure about what I search online. I just don't understand how James Comey and the FBI think that they can make us all safer by turning into criminals themselves.
Must have war to bring peace, etc. I even hear this from anarcho-capitalist who blame the government for everything, in effect to get rid of inherently coercive government violent revolution is probably necessary.
What I think is naive is the idea that the only bad kind of coercion is from governments, as if there's no such thing as economic coercion, or psychological coercion. And further is naive that it is possible to totally get rid of it.
I don't think PG is making an empirical argument, it's based on intuition and then tries to just offer a few instances that are at least nominally consistent with the idea. Nate Silver recently said about Trump, "voters are much more tribal than I thought", and if you assume most voters don't know anything about candidates other than "it's a guy on the TV", they wouldn't respond to whether this guy was a yes man for Johnson or whatever, they just respond to who they like the most on an emotional level, and that's going to be whoever is the most charismatic during their campaign.
This is on the surface, reasonable. But why don't we try reversing the names, which should be allowed under their pretense of fairness and equality, like so: "European philosophical traditions offer distinctive solutions to problems discussed within Non-European philosophy, raise or frame problems not addressed in the Non-European traditions, or emphasize and discuss more deeply philosophical problems that are marginalized in Non-European philosophy."
Now it sounds at best sloppy (Which non-European traditions?), and at worst chauvinistic against the background noise that makes up the bulk of what really drives their point, which is the "apologize for imperialism" theme. So at one level below the surface, they are suggesting we abandon evaluating ideas based on their relevance to us as westerners, and subordinate that principle to saying sorry for imperialism. At two levels below, they are just talking their own book, as white male professors of Chinese philosophy.