The Silencing Read online

  Dissent from liberal orthodoxy is cast as racism, misogyny, bigotry, phobia, and, as we’ve seen, even violence. If you criticize the lack of due process for male college students accused of rape, you are a “rape apologist.” End of conversation. After all, who wants to listen to a rape lover? People who are anti–abortion rights don’t care about the unborn; they are misogynists who want to control women. Those who oppose same-sex marriage don’t have rational, traditional views about marriage that deserve respect or debate; they are bigots and homophobes. When conservatives opposed the Affordable Care Act’s “contraception mandate” it wasn’t due to a differing philosophy about the role of government. No, they were waging a “War on Women.”

  With no sense of irony or shame, the illiberal left will engage in racist, sexist, misogynist, and homophobic attacks of their own in an effort to delegitimize people who dissent from the “already decided” worldview. Non-white conservatives are called sellouts and race traitors. Conservative women are treated as dim-witted, self-loathing puppets of the patriarchy, or nefarious gender traitors. Men who express the wrong political or ideological view are demonized as hostile interlopers into the public debate. The illiberal left sees its bullying and squelching of free speech as a righteous act.

  This illiberal effort relies on an arsenal of delegitimizing terms. The mushrooming silencing lexicon now includes the terms “mansplaining,” “whitesplaining,” and “microaggression.” The 99.9 percent of humanity that identifies with the gender identity, male or female, assigned at birth are derided as “cisgendered.” These various terms are meant to silence any person who labors under the defect of “privilege,” a moving target that seems to apply to whomever the illiberal left is up to demonizing that day. While the favored targets have been mostly conservatives and orthodox Christians, the illiberal left has been branching out. Just ask Bill Maher, who flipped in an instant from liberal darling to hate-filled bigot when he expressed a fraction of the disdain for Islam that he’s routinely demonstrated toward Christianity.

  On campuses there are speech codes, so-called “free speech zones,” and a host of “anti-discrimination” policies that discriminate against people who dissent from lefty groupthink. Christian and conservative groups have been denied official university status by student government organizations for holding views not in line with liberal dogma. The illiberal left’s attempts to control the public debate are frequently buttressed by a parade of childish grievances. They portray life’s vagaries as violations of their basic human rights and demand the world stop traumatizing them with facts and ideological views that challenge their belief system. They insist colleges provide “trigger warnings” on syllabi to prevent them from stumbling upon a piece of literature that might deal with controversial or difficult issues that could upset them. Frequently, the illiberal left will invoke the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), a devastating and serious illness, to characterize reading or hearing something they find upsetting or offensive. They’ve described such disparate experiences as reading The Great Gatsby, seeing a statue of an underwear-clad man, or passing an anti-abortion demonstration as potentially lethal to their psychological well-being.

  The illiberal left yearns for a world sanitized of information that offends them. So why not just tune out the views they don’t like? They can’t. They are authoritarians at heart; they know what Americans should think and what information they should consume. So they launch petitions to have particular views censored from newspapers.9 They try to get columnists fired for expressing the wrong views.10 The illiberal left has maniacally maneuvered to delegitimize the Fox News Channel, unable to abide the existence of one news network critical of the president. High-ranking White House officials were the face of this effort, telling anyone who would listen that Fox News was “not really a news station” and not “legitimate.”11 These top government officials were joined in their illiberal campaign by the progressive nonprofit Media Matters for America (MMFA), which enjoys the support of some of the Democratic Party’s top donors.12 At one point, Media Matters’ CEO David Brock told Politico that the organization’s ninety-person staff and $10 million annual budget was dedicated to the purpose of waging “guerrilla warfare and sabotage”13 against Fox News. A leaked MMFA memo for liberal donors detailed a strategy to destroy Fox that included plans to assemble opposition research on Fox News employees.14

  In 2014, the outside world got a peek at the illiberal left’s staging area—academia—with a spate of high-profile 2014 commencement speech cancelations and forced withdrawals. These were spurred by the protests of lefty students and professors outraged that someone who held views with which they disagreed, such as support for the Iraq War or capitalism, would be allowed to deliver a commencement address. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), college campuses are becoming ever more intolerant of opposing views. FIRE found that during the twenty-two years between 1987 and through 2008, 138 protests of planned campus speeches led to 62 incidents of an invited guest not speaking. Yet in just six years—2009 through 2014—151 protests have caused the cancelation of 62 speeches on campuses across the country. Since 2000, conservative speakers were targeted with nearly twice the frequency as liberal speakers (141 vs. 73 attempts respectively).15

  “The fact that conservatives are the focus of so many dis-invitation efforts is made far more striking by the fact that—especially when it comes to commencement addresses—conservatives are far less likely to be invited to deliver speeches in the first place,”16 wrote FIRE President Greg Lukianoff, himself a liberal, in his book Freedom from Speech. When the mob is unsuccessful in pressuring campus administrators into canceling a speech, or shaming the speaker into withdrawing, then they utilize the “heckler’s veto” to harass and intimidate, sometimes to the point that those in attendance can’t hear the speaker.

  The illiberal left’s silencing campaign smacks of “repressive tolerance,” philosopher Herbert Marcuse’s theory that curbing freedom of expression in pursuit of left-wing ideological goals is both necessary and defensible. Marcuse wrote, “Suppression of . . . regressive [policies] . . . is a prerequisite for the strengthening of the progressive ones.” If this sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve heard one of the illiberals casting a sexist, dehumanizing attack against a conservative woman as a defense of “women’s rights.” Their misogyny and authoritarianism is all for the greater good.

  The illiberal left knows that delegitimization works. It’s their strongest weapon in a country with unparalleled free speech protections. If you can’t suppress views you don’t like with repressive laws, then delegitimize the people expressing them. Even advocates of “hate speech” laws, such as New York University law professor Jeremy Waldron have admitted it’s unlikely that such legislation “will ever pass constitutional muster in America.” That’s true today, but whether it will hold true in the future depends on what conception of the First Amendment liberal jurists—who are being influenced by the illiberal left’s contempt of free speech—bring to the bench.

  In the meantime, delegitimization through demonizing and intimidation remains the illiberal left’s most effective tactic. In a burst of refreshing honesty, Mary Frances Berry, an African American and former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under President Bill Clinton, wrote in a Politico online discussion: “Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats.” Berry, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, added, “There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.”17

  The illiberal left’s campaign of conformity is distinct and notably different from the routine politicking in which both parties engage.
This is not about political parties enforcing ideological or partisan purity within their own ranks of elected officials, as detrimental to society as that may be. It’s not about harsh criticism, or a plea for civility. Searing critiques can and should be a part of a robust public debate, and no person engaging in that debate should be off limits from such accountability. But what the illiberal left does cannot reasonably be called debate. Ad hominem character assassinations are not arguments. Nor are they reflective of a liberal impulse.

  This is not to suggest that conservatives don’t ever engage in such behaviors. Of course they do. Though if you are a liberal and “conservatives do it too” is your best defense for left-wing intolerance and hostility to free speech, then it might be time for some soul-searching. There is also a serious quantitative difference between left and right attempts to silence people. Conservatives simply do not control the primary institutions where free speech is most under assault: the media and academia. That’s not to say they never have or never will again, something that liberals might want to consider.

  The people who are prosecuting many of these delegitimization campaigns are not fringe characters. They include Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, senior White House aides, administrators and professors of major public and private universities, and the president of the United States. Major media figures and major liberal activist groups consistently carry water for the illiberal left. These are all people who call themselves liberal, and who claim to believe in tolerance, while behaving in the most illiberal manner imaginable.

  Toleration and free expression have been central to modern liberalism, stemming from a proud tradition tracing its roots to the writings of Thomas Jefferson and John Stuart Mill. While watching the illiberal left in action, it’s easy to forget that it was the political left that championed free speech in America. During the Vietnam War era, the targeting of left-wing anti-war activists at the University of California-Berkeley for their dissent launched what came to be known as the “Free Speech Movement.” As Reason magazine’s Matt Welch wrote, “Back then the people using the conspiratorial slur ‘outside agitators’ to denigrate campus activists were . . . conservative politicians disgusted to see antiwar sentiment at publicly funded universities. In 1965, Bay Area Assemblyman Don Mulford . . . introduced anti-outsider legislation to (in his words) ‘remove from the campus the professional agitators, the beatniks, the mentally ill, the untouchables, the unwashed.’ The bill sailed into law.” Today, the “outside agitators” are Americans who stray on even one issue that the illiberal left has deemed settled.

  Amidst the hysteria following Bill Maher’s debate on Islam with Ben Affleck, a group of UC Berkeley students sought to revoke the HBO host’s invitation to offer a commencement address that fell on the fiftieth anniversary of the “Free Speech Movement,” because they disapproved of his views on Islam. They failed in the effort because, as Bill Maher told his Real Time audience, “The university has come down on my side, saying what I hoped they would say all along, which is that we’re liberals, we’re supposed to like free speech!”18

  In an interview with CNN’s Sally Kohn for Vanity Fair, Maher said his message to the protesting students was, “You know, I’m a liberal. My message is: be a liberal. Find out what liberalism means and join up. Liberalism certainly should not mean squelching free speech . . . And I would just say to all liberals: we should own the First Amendment the way the right-wingers own the Second.”19

  When one thinks of suppressing speech and engaging in ideological witch hunts, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy is the name that comes to mind. McCarthy’s ruthless campaign to root out those he believed to be disloyal to the United States spawned the term “McCarthyism” to refer to the practice of making false accusations against political or ideological enemies in an effort to delegitimize and silence them. In addition to his anti-Communist crusades, McCarthy worked to expel from government positions people whom he accused, or threatened to publicly accuse, of homosexuality. How ironic that today there is a left-wing crusade to expel from positions of authority anyone who opposes same-sex marriage. The McCarthyite impulse has come full circle.

  In March 2014, pioneering Internet company Mozilla announced the appointment of co-founder Brendan Eich as CEO.20 That same day, a Twitter mob exploded with criticism of Eich.21 Gay rights supporters were angry about a six-year-old donation of $1,000 to the “Yes on 8” campaign, which sought to ban same-sex marriage in California in 2008.22 It’s okay to be angry about Eich’s donation. Screaming for Eich’s head on a pike for his failure to conform to Mozilla’s majority view on same-sex marriage is not. Liberals are supposed to believe in protecting minority views, even when they disapprove of those views.

  Instead an online mob of presumably “liberal” people tweeted about Eich’s donation,23 many calling him a bigot and homophobe for supporting Prop 8. Remember, this proposition passed the same year Senator Barack Obama sat in Rick Warren’s church to explain his religious based opposition to same-sex marriage. Eich took the time to address the criticisms. On his blog he wrote, “I am committed to ensuring that Mozilla is, and will remain, a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion.”24 Such assurances proved inadequate, however. Almost seventy thousand people signed a petition organized at CredoAction, a progressive social change organization, telling Eich to renounce his beliefs or resign as Mozilla’s CEO. They accused him of “advocat[ing] for inequality and hate” and ordered Mozilla to fire him if he refused to resign.25

  Finally, just over a week after his appointment, Mozilla announced that Eich would be stepping down as CEO. “While painful,” wrote Executive Chairwoman Mitchell Baker, “the events of the last week show exactly why we need the Web. So all of us can engage freely in the tough conversations we need to make the world better.”26

  It’s not necessary to support Eich’s donation to recognize something deeply disturbing occurred here. Pushing someone out of his job for dissenting on an issue that has nothing to do with the mission of the company and then portraying the purge as a “free” conversation that boosted humanity is creepily Orwellian. The writer Andrew Sullivan—who is gay and was one of the earliest public advocates of same-sex marriage27—wrote at the time of Eich’s ouster, “When people’s lives and careers are subject to litmus tests, and fired if they do not publicly renounce what may well be their sincere conviction, we have crossed a line. This is McCarthyism applied by civil actors. This is the definition of intolerance.”28

  Sullivan correctly acknowledged that Mozilla had not violated any laws in punishing Eich for his opposition to same-sex marriage and that they had the right to take the actions they did. But that didn’t make what they did consistent with the liberal values Mozilla claimed to embrace. In discussion of the controversy on ABC’s This Week, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile concurred with Sullivan, saying, “We have to be very careful that we are not practicing a new McCarthyism.” Yet, this is exactly what the illiberal left is regularly doing right under everyone’s noses. They don’t have the force of the government behind them (though some would like it in the form of “hate speech” laws), but they don’t need it. Because of the outsized influence this crowd enjoys in today’s culture—along with the ubiquity and reach of social media—reputations and livelihoods can be destroyed with the push of a button.

  KILLING THE HABITS OF THE HEART

  Because many of the silencing tactics employed by the illiberal left do not involve the government—though some do, particularly at public universities—the illiberal left will often claim they are not infringing on anybody’s right to free speech. This willfully misses the point.

  Freedom requires more than the “structures” of freedom such as a liberal Constitution and a just legal system. It requires the “spirit” of freedom, which is passed from generation to generation.29 This insight, which comes from the eighteenth century philos
opher Montesquieu, was famously applied to the United States by Alexis de Tocqueville in his book Democracy in America, in which he observed that America owes its freedom not so much to the law as to the “habits of the heart”30 of freedom-loving American citizens.

  The illiberal left is eradicating these “habits of the heart” so Americans won’t even remember what it was like to be able to speak freely without fear of retaliation from a silencing mob or a few disgruntled lefties. “Mankind ought to have a rational assurance that all objections have been satisfactorily answered; and how are they to be answered if that which requires to be answered is not spoken?” asked British philosopher John Stuart Mill in On Liberty. “Or how can the answer be known to be satisfactory, if the objectors have no opportunity of showing that it is unsatisfactory?”

  The more success the illiberal left has in terrorizing people who express dissenting views, the fewer objections there will be. Most people understandably just want to do their jobs and support their families. Given the choice between being shunned by their peers or losing their job for a personal view, they will almost always choose silence over confrontation. Because of this, society should always err on the side of respecting people’s right to determine their own beliefs and express them without fear of official or unofficial retribution. Debate and persuasion should be the reflexive response to disagreement and even harmful propositions, not an authoritarian impulse to silence. It should be so not only because it is just, but because no society can flourish without the clash of ideas.