Progressives Are No Longer Defenders of Free Expression
By: Victor Davis Hansen
The secular progressive left have become the messengers of hate and intolerance and the face of opposition to the free expression ideas and of tolerance for the presence or mention of any diversity of ideas.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Source: AP Photo/Orlin Wagner
A half-century ago, progressives used to push limitless free expression, blasting conservatives for their allegedly blinkered traditionalism. They boasted of obliterating once-normal boundaries in art, music, and literature to allow nudity, profanity, sexuality, and anti-American boilerplate.
Now?
The left is Victorian -- increasingly puritanical, regressive, and hypersensitive. Even totalitarian censorship and book-burning have weirdly become part of their by-any-means-necessary methods.
University of California, Berkeley, professor Grace Lavery was so outraged by author Abigail Shrier's latest book, "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters," that she went beyond the usual calls to ban the book. Lavery advocated burning Shrier's book.
"I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier's book and burn it on a pyre," Lavery tweeted last month.
Did the self-appointed liberal watchdog the American Civil Liberties Union step in to defend free expression?
No. One ACLU official poured gas on the book-burning fire.
"Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on," tweeted Chase Strangio, the ACLU's deputy director for transgender justice.
Note all of these melodramatic humanitarian verbs such as "steal," "burn" and "die."
Staffers at the Canadian branch of Penguin Random House recently confronted management over the company's publication of libertarian Jordan Peterson's new book "Beyond Order," a sequel to his earlier best-seller "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos."
What were their objections to the book? Peterson, who has criticized the notion of white privilege and contends that masculinity is under attack, was accused of "white supremacy," "hate speech" and "transphobia." These are simply our generation's synonyms for their predecessors' bogeyman labels "heretic," "witch" and "communist."
Amazon, Facebook, Google and Twitter are more refined in suppressing books, films, communications and ideas they don't like -- and don't want others to like either.
Author Alex Berenson self-published a series of pamphlets on Amazon that offer a dissenting view about the efficacy of forced coronavirus lockdowns. Suddenly, Amazon blocked his most recent installment -- at least until public pressure forced the multibillion-dollar company to relent.
Amazon did something similar to Hoover Institution senior fellow Shelby Steele, declining to stream his documentary "What Killed Michael Brown?" about the fatal 2014 shooting of Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri, and race relations in America. Once again, public outrage forced the company to back down from what appears to be a systematic and ideologically driven effort to stop the dissemination of books and films that don't advance the progressive/regressive cause.
Note the pattern here. Publishers and platforms are not arguing that these books and films are mediocre. After all, they had initially agreed to publish or disseminate all of them.
Their subsequent flips and flops arise from fundamentalist progressive pressure of the sort used by social media to de-platform and cancel unwelcome politics and ideology.
So the First Amendment of the once freest nation in the world is comatose. This time its enemies are not hooded Klansmen seeking to intimidate African Americans or right-wing conspiracy theorists rooting out supposed communists.
No, the culprits are progressives and leftist elites in publishing, the media, Silicon Valley, academia, entertainment, and government. They so lack confidence in the logic and persuasiveness of their own arguments that in fear they increasingly try to ban whatever bothers them.
The classic "To Kill a Mockingbird" and other books about racial issues were banned from the curriculum in the Burbank (California) Unified School District last month.
The left did not just oppose the nomination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh; it sought to destroy his career and reputation through smears.
Professors at Stanford University hounded Hoover Institution fellow and public health expert Dr. Scott Atlas. His apparent crime was advising President Trump that lockdowns and quarantines might ultimately cause more damage than COVID-19 itself. Atlas resigned from his role as Trump's coronavirus adviser earlier this week.
Efforts to censor, cancel, discredit, or destroy the work of anyone with contrasting viewpoints are canonized by the wealthy, powerful left-wing elites and their institutions.
In Orwellian fashion, they have redefined being illiberal and vindictive as being woke, enlightened, and progressive -- and for the public good rather than their own interests.
How ironic that the kindred spirits of today's progressives are not Socrates, Galileo, and Harper Lee, but the Athenian mob, Joseph McCarthy, and the Taliban.
Past and present, all of these zealots and character assassins cloaked their intolerance in the pretense that they were advancing truth -- by destroying it.
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Of course many liberal leftists and progressives believe in free speech and freedom of expression. That is just as long as it mirrors exactly their own beliefs and ideas.
True.
Freedom of speech and freedom of expression doesn't mean one is free of ridicule after expressing themselves by those who think such speech or expression are vile.
I support the right of the KKK and white supremacists to voice their racist opinions, and I also have the right to call them disgusting worthless bigots for expressing those vile shit-filled racist opinions. You're allowed, as an American citizen, to express yourself, no matter how vile that expression is, you can claim white people are superior or black people are inferior or even that you believe there's nothing wrong with having sex with children, and it's everyone else's right to condemn such people for their beliefs and opinions and prosecute them if they dare to act on those sick beliefs.
Freedom of speech and freedom of expression are what protect my right to boycott a business who expresses or represents policies or opinions I disagree with. Conservatives whine about 'cancel culture' but that is itself a freedom of expression, to express ones dismay with people or businesses that they disagree with.
Just because some backward dumb shits who express their feelings towards some minority group and get boycotted or 'canceled' does not mean their freedom of speech or freedom of expression was violated, congress did not pass any law limiting their rights or their speech, they simply experienced the slamming backhand of public opinion and the freedom of expression from those who disagree with them. If they don't like it then too bad, so sad, but it has nothing to do with freedom of speech so they really should either get educated so they understand that or shut the fuck up if they don't want to get metaphorically slapped for their aberrant or idiotic opinions and beliefs. But it's their choice which is why none of their freedoms have been taken away by anyone which is why they're really just whining about the consequences when they exercise their freedom of speech and not actually any denial of their freedoms.
That is what most people don't understand.
Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences.
Based on mountains of evidence over the years, progressives in general really do want to censor and suppress views that differ from their orthodoxy
Well if there's so much evidence you should have no problem showing us how progressives have violated the first amendment. Here it is again to remind you what it says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Again, progressives calling those who express their vile racist opinions "bigots" or "racists" is not Congress making a law banning such speech, it's merely the consequence of expressing unpopular and hateful opinions or beliefs.
Religious conservatives have been doing the same with opinions and beliefs they disagree with since our nations founding. They censored interracial couples showing affection on TV and the big screen for decades and censored any gay or trans scenes from movies and television. But now telling them to go stuff their censorship they get all whiny and upset claiming reverse censorship.
You know virtually no one clicks on your instagram links, right? I've never once clicked on them and I'm not about to start now, perhaps you could try a coherent reply in your own words instead of tucking your tail and running away from the questions that are apparently too hard for you to address on your own.
As a matter of record, the one genuinely 'left' perspective, the World Socialist Web Site, has at times defended both the GOP and the Democratic Party when unjustly and/or incorrectly attacked by the other. It has done this while both parties have inaccurately attacked [or more often falsified] the socialist perspective of the Socialist Equality Party. Of course, you do qualify your remarks saying 'many' leftists and progressives. For myself, I suspect that your many [there's that word again] so-called 'liberal leftists and progressives' are every bit as reactionary as you -- preferring only that their reaction be diversified along gender/racial/sexual orientation lines.
You suspect incorrectly. That was deliberately worded that way so as not to tar all with the same brush as some here are more than willing to do. In the same way that not all Republicans and/or conservatives do not do that, neither do I believe that all liberal Democrats are guilty of such. There are people on this thread that know me and will back me up when I say that. I try to respect the views of all whether I agree with them or not. Have a good day.
Methinks that the only point on which we disagree in principle is that I contend that some of those designated 'progressive' are anything but that. As I said, they prefer that their reaction be diversified along gender/racial/etc. lines... Cheers!