The Silencing
PRAISE FOR
THE SILENCING
“A searing and courageous indictment of the growing intolerance of the American left—written with passion and eloquence by one of the nation’s most principled and fair-minded liberals. An important book on a subject many are simply too afraid to touch.”
—Charles Krauthammer, Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Things That Matter
“A damning critique of the scandal of America’s deepening liberal illiberalism. The Silencing reminds me of the courage of Edward R. Murrow’s stand against the smearing and bullying of McCarthyism. All true lovers of American freedom, whether conservative or liberal, will welcome this exposé and its clear call for a return to genuine liberalism.”
—Os Guinness, author of The Global Public Square
“Kirsten Powers convincingly calls out her fellow liberals for being astonishingly illiberal. A great read.”
—Brit Hume, Fox News senior political analyst
“Kirsten Powers explodes and skewers ‘The Silencing’—the demonizing and repression of different views, especially conservative views. Here is a liberal calling out other supposedly liberal people who claim to believe in free speech but tell all who disagree with them to shut up. Hallelujah—you are lucky to have this book in your hands!”
—Juan Williams, Fox News political analyst and New York Times bestselling author of Muzzled
“I salute my friend Kirsten Powers for boldly and eloquently breaking the spiral of silence on silencing. That someone who identifies as a liberal is courageously drawing attention to the ugly new intolerance among us will give Americans of every political stripe hope and joy for our common future.”
—Eric Metaxas, New York Times bestselling author of Miracles and Bonhoeffer
“Tolerance and free expression are founding values of our republic and yet they’re under attack from the extreme wings of the American political spectrum. Shining a harsh light on the ‘illiberal left,’ Kirsten Powers exposes a grim campaign to silence speech. This is an important book.”
—Ron Fournier, senior political columnist and editorial director of National Journal
“In this examination of the multiplying attacks on freedom of speech, Kirsten Powers casts a cool eye on the damages done to politics, academia, and civic discourse by the aggressive assertion of a perverse new entitlement. It is the postulated right to pass through life without being disturbed, annoyed, offended, or discomposed by the expression of anyone else’s thoughts.”
—George F. Will, Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times bestseller A Nice Little Place on the North Side
THE SILENCING
Copyright © 2015 by Kirsten Powers
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, website, or broadcast.
Regnery® is a registered trademark of Salem Communications Holding Corporation
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Powers, Kirsten.
The silencing : how the left is killing free speech / Kirsten Powers.
pages cm
ISBN 978-1-62157-391-3
1.Liberalism--United States. 2.Right and left (Political science)--United States. 3.Freedom of speech--United States.I. Title.
JC574.2.U6P68 2015
323.44’30973--dc23
2015011565
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To my father
CONTENTS
Introduction
ONERepressive Tolerance
TWODelegitimizing Dissent
THREEIlliberal Intolerance and Intimidation
FOURIntolerance 101: Shutting Down Debate
FIVEIntolerance 201: Free Speech for Me but Not for Thee
SIXThe War on Fox News
SEVENMuddy Media Waters
EIGHTIlliberal Feminist Thought Police
NINEFeminists against Facts, Fairness, and the Rule of Law
Epilogue
Notes
Index
INTRODUCTION
I grew up during the 1970s with a feminist mother who was trailblazing her way across Alaska as one of the country’s few female archaeologists. She and my father, also an archaeologist, had set out for the “Last Frontier” on an adventure after earning their Ph.D.s at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Although they divorced a few years later, my parents continued as colleagues at the University of Alaska-Fairbanks for three decades.
The campus was a haven to the few liberals in Fairbanks, an otherwise overwhelmingly conservative town located in the center of the state. It was at my hippy day care center Enep’ut (the Yup’ik Eskimo word for “our house”) that I sat in front of a fuzzy black and white television to cheer with dozens of toddlers as Richard Nixon resigned. That triumph of right over wrong was my first taste of politics—and I was hooked. Mine was one of a few little hands that went up in favor of Jimmy Carter in 1976 when my teacher asked which nominee we supported for president—a trend that continued through every presidential campaign until I graduated from high school. It’s unlikely many of my friends’ mothers were sobbing the night Carter lost to Ronald Reagan, as was mine.
My political education occurred at the dinner table. Whether at my mother or father’s house, the topic invariably would be politics. It was there I was also taught how to defend my views. We viewed this as a necessary survival skill, as our family was surrounded by people who believed liberalism was the root of all evil. At my tiny Jesuit high school, I would debate my conservative classmates on issue after issue, whether it was feminism or caring for the poor. My friends’ parents were uniformly small-government conservatives, and their children followed suit. Ronald Reagan, their patron saint, was president. He could do no wrong.
At my house, however, there was a very different storyline on the president. The Democratic roots in our family ran deep, as both my parents hailed from Irish Democratic stock. My father’s tribe was a mix of working class Catholics and Protestants. On my mother’s side was an army of Massachusetts-born Irish Catholic Democrats who idolized John F. Kennedy. The allegiance to the Democratic Party had been cemented generations before, when family members reached the shores of America. I was constantly reminded that the Democratic Party stood up for working people, for families like ours, and those that came later, and not just from Ireland.
Despite this background, I can’t remember anyone ever suggesting that conservative views were illegitimate and unworthy of debate. I first encountered that attitude when I moved to New York City much later, where bumping into a conservative was less likely than spotting a unicorn. That unfamiliarity ultimately bred contempt.
It was easy to stereotype conservatives because I no longer knew any beyond my childhood friends, whom I rarely saw. I had already been
happily ideologically cocooned for much of my twenties as I worked as a political appointee in the Clinton administration. This isolation grew when I moved to New York in my early thirties and became enmeshed in Democratic politics there, including working on Andrew Cuomo’s first race for governor and consulting for the New York State Democratic Committee, among other things. Even the few Republicans I knew were basically liberal.
Two experiences unexpectedly put me in a regular relationship with conservatives: working as a contributor at Fox News and a later in life conversion to Christianity. The more I got to know actual conservative and religious people, the harder it was to justify the stereotypes I had so carelessly embraced. In my early days at Fox, I can remember trying to convince a conservative there that George Bush’s nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court didn’t really count as a female appointment because she was conservative and an evangelical Christian. He was horrified. I was confused as to why he would be horrified.
I’m now embarrassed that I ever thought such a thing, let alone said it aloud. Such a prejudiced view was only able to take root because of the lack of ideological, political, and religious diversity in my world.
But I wasn’t alone in my prejudice.
A 2007 study of faculty on college campuses found that 53 percent of university professors had “cool” or negative feelings toward evangelicals.1 This raises serious questions about how Christian students can expect to be treated on secular campuses. Sadly, at the time this study was performed, I would have likely been among that 53 percent—even though I didn’t know a single evangelical.
Another study, released in 2012, found that 82 percent of liberal social psychologists surveyed said they would be at least a little prejudiced against a conservative applicant for a job in their department.2
Here’s the problem: disagreement is fine; discrimination is not. Liberals are supposed to believe in diversity, which should include diversity of thought and belief. Instead, an alarming level of intolerance emanates from the left side of the political spectrum toward people who express views that don’t hew to the “settled” liberal worldview. The passion for silencing isn’t reserved for conservatives or orthodox Christians. Moderate Democrats, independent minded liberals, and the ideologically agnostic become targets if they deviate on liberal sacred cow issues.
This intolerance is not a passive matter of opinion. It’s an aggressive, illiberal impulse to silence people. This conduct has become an existential threat to those who hold orthodox religious beliefs. But increasingly I hear from people across the political spectrum who are fearful not only of expressing their views, but also as to where all of this is heading. I’ve followed this trend closely as a columnist with growing concern. It’s become clear that the attempts—too often successful—to silence dissent from the liberal worldview aren’t isolated outbursts. They are part of a bigger story. This book is that story.
ONE
REPRESSIVE TOLERANCE
Who ever knew Truth put to the wors[e] in a free and open encounter?
—JOHN MILTON
In the fall of 2014, the historic all-women’s Smith College held an alumnae event to explore the place of free speech within the liberal arts tradition. Smith president Kathleen McCartney introduced a four-person panel that included three graduates of the prestigious university with the exhortation, “We want to have fearless encounter with new ideas. I think that’s what is truly at the heart of a liberal arts education.”
The panel was gamely titled, “Challenging the Ideological Echo Chamber: Free Speech, Civil Discourse and the Liberal Arts.”1 Wendy Kaminer, an alumna and liberal feminist First Amendment expert, dove right in to condemn the proliferation of campus speech codes that prohibit language that makes people uncomfortable. The former long time American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) board member raised the issue of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which some have argued should be banned from classrooms for its use of racial epithets. Panelist Jaime Estrada, a recent Smith grad working for the University of Pennsylvania Press, interjected, “But it has the n-word, and some people are sensitive to that.”
Kaminer replied, “Well, let’s talk about the n-word. Let’s talk about the growing lexicon of words that can only be known by their initials. I mean, when I say, ‘n-word,’ or when Jaime says ‘n-word,’ what word do you all hear in your head?” Members of the audience replied by saying the full word. Kaminer said, “You all hear the word n--ger in your head? See, I said that, nothing horrible happened.” Estrada disagreed: “I mean, it depends on who you are in the audience, something horrible happened in their head.” The event continued seemingly without incident, and the panelists disagreed civilly, including Kaminer and Estrada.2
This is how the discussion was reported in the Mount Holyoke News: “Students, faculty and alumnae of Smith College were shocked this past week to find out that a Smith graduate made racist remarks when speaking at an alumnae panel in New York City on Sept. 22.”3 The Smith Sophian, the campus paper, ran a story headlined, “Backlash Follows Use of Racial Slur at NYC Panel.” The paper also published a transcript of the event, which, lest we forget, was comprised of alumnae and staff of Smith College, not members of the Ku Klux Klan, that blared at the top: “Trigger/Content Warnings: Racism/racial slurs, ableist slurs, antisemitic language, anti-Muslim/Islamophobic language, anti-immigrant language, sexist/misogynistic slurs, references to race-based violence, references to antisemitic violence.” It’s not clear why the warning was necessary, as the newspaper censored the transcript so that any word that could potentially offend the fair ladies of Smith was removed. At one point, the transcript reads, “Kathleen McCartney: . . . We’re just wild and [ableist slur], aren’t we?” Yes, the word “crazy” was censored.4
Smith students protested. Someone wrote “Impeach Kathy” on the sidewalk outside the Smith president’s home in chalk. Coeds donned black and observed a moment of silence on the campus lawn to take a stance against “racialized violence, criminalization of black bodies, failed institutional memory, microaggressions, and the vast and even unnamable issues that work against people of color every day.” One student compared Kaminer’s comments to a 2012 incident when a student of color received a hate note slipped under her door. Smith responded to the outcry over Kaminer’s attempt to explain how free speech works by holding a panel on anti-blackness.5 The Student Government Association put out a letter asserting that, “If Smith is unsafe for one student, it is unsafe for all students.”6
Jordan Houston, the Smith Sophian’s opinions editor, accused McCartney of blithely sitting on a panel that turned into an “explicit act of racial violence” and complained that Kaminer was allowed to speak “uncensored.” Houston quoted from a statement by the Social Justice & Equity Committee ’14–’15, saying McCartney’s behavior “implicitly suggested that hate speech is permissible at Smith” and she failed in her “responsibility to speak up when another white person says something racist.”7 Never mind that the New York City panel didn’t even occur at Smith—which is located in Massachusetts—nor was it geared to students. Most importantly: nothing racist was uttered.
Certainly people may disagree about whether Kaminer should have used such provocative language to make her point. But to portray her comments as “hate speech” or “racialized violence” or as having made even one person “unsafe” is not just absurd. It’s a chilling attempt to silence free speech. So much for the “fearless encounter with new ideas” McCartney advocated.
The repurposing of Kaminer’s comments into an act of violence should not be dismissed as a one-off incident from bizarro land. Casting disagreement as a physical attack or “hate speech,” or any host of socially taboo behaviors, has become a central tactic in an ever expanding campaign to silence speech. Kaminer’s real crime was to vigorously challenge the alarming trend toward censorship on campuses. Rather than arguing with her on the merits, her opponents set about the process of delegitimizing her by tarrin
g her as a racist.
Who were her opponents? Many think they were liberals. That’s partly right. The people who cast Kaminer as a modern-day Bull Connor were almost definitely ideologically liberal. But most likely the majority of the attendees and participants at the Smith alumnae event were liberal as well, the difference being that they were able to disagree without demonizing.
The people who smeared Kaminer as a racist and who routinely demonize those who express the “wrong” views, are what I call the “illiberal left.” They are most prevalent on college campuses and in the media—not insignificant perches from which to be quashing debate and dissent—but their tentacles are expanding into every sector of society. They consider themselves liberals, but act in direct contradiction to the fundamental liberal values of free speech, debate, and dissent. What distinguishes them from mainstream liberals and your average Democrat (who shares many of the illiberal left’s policy inclinations) is not so much what they believe, but how they believe it. Most people who reside on the left side of the political spectrum can tolerate difference of opinion without turning into authoritarian speech police. They can either engage or ignore people with whom they disagree. They are not moved to, for example, call for jail time for their ideological opponents as environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did for the Koch brothers. More on that later.
The illiberal left, on the other hand, believes that people who express ideological, philosophical, or political views that don’t line up with their preferences should be completely silenced. Instead of using persuasion and rhetoric to make a positive case for their causes and views, they work to delegitimize the person making the argument through character assassination, demonization, and dehumanizing tactics. These are the self-appointed overlords—activists, university administrators, journalists, and politicians—who have determined what views are acceptable to express. So, shut up—or else.
Left-leaning writer Fredrik deBoer has called it the “We Are All Already Decided” phenomenon. It “presumes that the offense is not just in thinking the wrong thing you think but in not realizing that We Are All Already Decided that the thing you think is deeply ridiculous,” he wrote in April 2014. “This is the form of argument . . . that takes as its presumption that all good and decent people are already agreed on the issue in question.”8 It goes without saying that “good and decent people” are politically and ideologically liberal. The illiberal left hunts down heretics, dissidents, and run-of-the mill dissenters to not only silence them, but make examples of them for the rest of society.