"Censorship"

 

As for this essay, its importance cannot be overstated. Without the preservation of our past – both good and bad – and without the free-flowing of ideas we will cease to be that “city on the hill.” 

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

https://swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Censorship”

July 21, 2023

 

“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has

only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it

becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.”

                                                                Harry S, Truman (1884-1972)

                                                                Special Message to Congress on the Internal Security of the United States

                                                                August 8, 1950

 

When President Truman spoke to Congress in August 1950, the United States was in the early stages of what became known as the Red Scare. A year earlier (August 29, 1949), the Soviets had tested their first atomic bomb. On February 2, 1950 Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist working at Los Alamos, was arrested for passing atomic secrets to the Soviets. Speaking in Wheeling, West Virginia, later that month, Senator Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) accused some in the U.S. government of harboring Communist-sympathizers.. 

 

Do political leaders in Washington today have that same courage as did President Truman, and in his belief in the rights of citizens to offer opposing opinions? Do school boards and do teachers’ unions? Do colleges and universities? Does the media? Does Disney? Do large banks and big tech? The shutting down of opinions that are at odds with conventional thinking, whether about climate, the origins of COVID, affirmative action, the biology of the sexes, the rights of school parents – they all suggest the answer is no.

 

Much of this objection to free speech is happening in schools and universities. In February of this year, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression) found university faculty support for “investigating faculty for controversial expression and applying social and professional pressure to get professors to take mandatory training they oppose.” The consequence is a “chilling effect which disproportionately strikes political minorities: principally, but not exclusively, faculty with more moderate or conservative viewpoints.”  Leftists were censured in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s; today it is the Right. 

 

Polls suggest this is a concern for the majority of Americans and has been for several years. Six years ago the Cato Institute, in a poll of 2,300 U. S. adults, found “that 71% of Americans believe that political correctness has silenced important discussions our society needs to have…58% of Americans believe the political climate prevents them from sharing their own political beliefs.” The poll showed that Republicans and Independents were particularly affected. Five years later, on March 18, 2022, the editorial board of The New York Times wrote of similar concerns: “For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.” They went on to note that surveys from the Pew Research Center and Knight Foundation revealed a crisis of confidence in one of America’s most basic values – freedom of speech and expression.

 

Free speech has become politicized, with both sides blaming the other. The Left accuses the Right of hate speech and banning books, while the Right blames the Left for removing hateful language from books and the cancellation of ideas. In most cases, the Right does not want to ban books, but to move them to more age-appropriate areas, while accusations of hate speech are vague, as they can include anything at odds with conventional thought. Symptomatic of this debate is a local public library, which in a small town also serves as the schools’ library. A controversy arose over the inclusion of two books in the “Tween/Teen room:” You Know, Sex: Bodies, Gender, Puberty, and Other Things by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth and Let’s Talk About It: The Teen’s Guide to Sex, Relationships, and Being a Human by Erika Moen and Matthew Nolan. The books, which speak to masturbation, anal sex, and other such pleasures, may not meet Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography, but neither do they meet traditional standards of good taste. However, as I do not believe in censorship, the library was right to make the books available. I only hope that parents, teachers, and the library staff promote, as well, such classics as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, Lord of the Flies by William Golding, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien, and many others by authors whose stories are not only well written but through which readers can witness how we, as a people, have evolved over the years to meet new social standards. Even so, at least two of those books have either been banned or had their language altered by Leftists, thereby masking how values have changed over the decades.

 

Freedom of speech is fundamental to who we are, which includes the right to protest what we do not like. But it does not give universities the right to cancel what they term “hate speech.” It does not give public schools the right to ignore parents. It does not give big tech the right to censor what conservatives write or say. It does not mean one has the right to use violence or intimidation. It means listening, respectfully, to those with whom we disagree. Diversity is also a matter of ideas, philosophies, and values.

 

Censorship has no place in the U.S. The Constitution’s First Amendment reads: “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.” These words have stood the test of time; they have been a magnet for millions of immigrants, and they should not be forgotten by those fortunate to be born here. President Truman understood them. But do today’s political leaders? Do today’s cultural, media, and educational leaders?

"Political Mislabels"

Sydney M. Williams

swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Political Mislabels”

October 9, 2017

“Hypocrisy, false labels, can create slogans, but no poems;

propaganda, but not life: there are no roots, there are no realities to nurture creative work.”

                                                                                                Pablo Antonio Cuadra (1912-2002)

Nicaraguan poet, essayist and critic

The Left hijacked the label “Liberal.” Yet they favor an empowered government and diminished rights for individuals. Is it liberal to hamper free speech on the nation’s campuses, for fear that alternative speech may offer preferred venues, or lest conservative speech may offend sensitive ears? Are liberals progressive, when they put the wishes of union bosses ahead of workers who would rather not pay dues that fund policies and politicians with which and with whom they disagree? Is it liberal to protect entrenched, unionized businesses against “disruptive” technologies such as Uber, in London and New York City?

Labels can be misleading. Democrats are better than Republicans in framing arguments with grandiloquent words and phrases. They create slogans and acronyms that can be contrary to the policies they represent. Those on the Right are less nuanced – less imaginative. The word “conservative,” for example, conjures images of old white men in club chairs, drinking brandy and soda. Yet, most Republicans live in “Red” states, less affluent than states that house Democrats. They do not look backward to privilege, wealth and biases against race, gender, creed and sexual orientation. Their wants are simple. They cherish the dignity of a good-paying job. They want the opportunity a good education provides. They want to conserve a culture that encourage faithfulness, thrift, hard work, respectfulness, responsibility and accountability. They believe in JFKs assertion: “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what can you do for your country.”

Today, liberals want to protect people against speech they deem harmful. When I was a child and teased at school, I would come home in tears. My mother would repeat an adage whose roots go back to an 1862 publication of the African Methodist Episcopal Church: “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” Such stoicism is no longer deemed appropriate. Words can be hurtful, Leftists claim, so “safe places” must be available. Limits on speech are, thus, permitted.

Consider “net neutrality.” How could any free-market pundit be against a label that suggests openness and unfettered access? But net neutrality is a directive issued by the Obama Administration that turns the internet into a regulated utility. It was marketed as a defense against big internet service providers (ISPs), cable and telecom companies. Proponents of Net Neutrality claim they have too much power – to speed up or slow down internet access. Liberals want them regulated, like public utilities. What proponents do not say is that ISPs, like Comcast and AT&T, owe their bigness to regulation. Better service and lower prices do not come from the beneficence of government, but from competition. As well, net neutrality says nothing about far bigger internet players, like Amazon, Facebook and Google, who monopolize content. With billions of subscribers, our values today are more influenced by Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg than all the churches, synagogues and mosques in the country.

Think of “sanctuary cities.” They were once havens to shelter the innocent, but have become asylums to protect criminal aliens. Sanctuary cities claim to be humanitarian, yet they destabilize civil society by ignoring the rule of law; for example, federal detention orders from ICE (Immigration and Custom Enforcement). We saw this in 2015 when Mexican-illegal Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez, who had been deported five times for seven felony convictions and who found in San Francisco a sanctuary, shot and killed Kate Steinle. Last fall, in Twin Falls, Idaho a city that declared itself as “welcoming”, three young Muslim migrants raped and then urinated in the mouth of a five-year-old girl. Wendy Olson, an Obama-appointed U.S, Attorney, threatened to prosecute any who spoke out about the crime in ways she considered “false” or “inflammatory.” Yet, words could not have exceeded the brutality of what those thugs did. Prosecutors are supposed to enforce laws, not create them. There was nothing “humanitarian” or “welcoming” about either incident. Civil society depends on obeisance to laws. In a democracy, no one, no town, no city, stands above the law.

The Left has used their mastery of labels and slogans to become gatekeepers of our culture – the arts, media, education, science and bureaucracies within government. With insurance rates rising and deductibles increasing, are health insurance and good health care “affordable,” as in the Affordable Care Act? In our universities, the Left avoids dissent by keeping out those with contrary opinions.

But, with an arrogance that comes with dominance, the Left has become blind to societal changes – that millions of Americans have been left behind – seduced by their own words of moral certitude.  Donald Trump, to their surprise, won the 2016 election, and, in his disregard for normal civility, became a threat to the edifice they have erected. He doesn’t bow to their elitist gods. Their “castle in the sky,” which houses self-claimed omniscient bureaucrats, risks oblivion. If collapses, the labels that deceived leaders as well as their audience will have played a role.

Where do we go from here? We need unifying leaders. Like the media, the extremes of both parties have increased, while their centers have shrunk. Centrists who stay recognize and appreciate the balance between the three arms of government – that the executive does not legislate or judge; that the legislature does not judge or execute, and that the judiciary does not legislate or execute. They recognize that the founders bequeathed such a government, because they understood the fallibility of men and women. Republicans, better than Democrats, understand that our government was designed to be slow and inefficient – that speed and efficiency were reserved for the private sector, not for a lumbering, monopolistic government.

At bottom, politics is about power. Except for antipodes on the political spectrum, it is not ends that separate Democrats from Republicans, but the means of achieving the three goals to which free people aspire – freedom, peace and prosperity. That is not to suggest there is no difference between the parties: Democrats believe government is a force for good, and that a powerful executive is critical to a well-functioning society. They believe that equitable treatment includes outcomes that are fair. In arguing that government is the best arbiter between conflicting forces, they put less faith than do Republicans in the market place of ideas. Republicans are skeptical of big government. They believe in the will of the individual – that she (he) is society’s most critical component. They believe we should be accountable and responsible for our actions, that success and failure are natural results. They emphasize equality of opportunity, and they understand outcomes will vary, depending on ability, aspiration and effort.

Power and money come with political office, so campaigns can be vicious. Total government spending, including federal, state and local, amounts to about one third of GDP, or more than six trillion dollars. That buys a lot of influence. Labels are a means of achieving power. But, they can be misleading. Not all poisons bear a Skull and Crossbones. Not all elixirs are non-toxic. Voters need to understand policy differences between candidates. As Sy Syms’ ad read, “An educated consumer is our best customer,” so an educated electorate is democracy’s best defense against political extremists. When it comes to political labels, caveat emptor are words to the wise.