"Americans Are Getting Too Comfortable With Thought Control"
The next step after "You can't say that!" is "You can't think that."
This push toward silencing increasingly is the slippery slope on college campuses and in society at large. We need to shine a light on it and recognize it for how dangerous it is to free thought, free speech, and even continuing as a free society. And we need to stop just shrugging our shoulders and do something -- even if it just involves giving money to free speech defenders like theFIRE.org.
It also helps to understand the difference between authoritarians and totalitarians, which Tom Nichols explains in The Federalist:
Simply put, authoritarians merely want obedience, while totalitarians, whose rule is rooted in an ideology, want obedience and conversion. Authoritarians are a dime a dozen; totalitarians are rare. The authoritarians are the guys in charge who want to stay in charge, and don't much care about you, or what you're doing, so long as you stay out of their way....Totalitarians are a different breed. These are the people who have a plan, who think they see the future more clearly than you or who are convinced they grasp reality in a way that you do not. They don't serve themselves--or, they don't serve themselves exclusively--they serve History, or The People, or The Idea, or some other ideological totem that justifies their actions.
They want obedience, of course. But even more, they want their rule, and their belief system, to be accepted and self-sustaining. And the only way to achieve that is to create a new society of people who share those beliefs, even if it means bludgeoning every last citizen into enlightenment.
A recent example of this?
Quartz.com journalist Meredith Bennett-Smith, who disagrees with writer Cathy Young about sexual conduct codes on U.S. campuses, and thus wants the Washington Post never again to publish the "horrendous rape apologist" Young in its pages.
We need to start calling out and shaming those who attack free speech. They may be attacking it in an individual but we need to understand the attack on individual speech for what it is -- or can ultimately be -- an attack on all of ours.
I recently disagreed with a piece Cathy Young wrote, but here's the thing: I don't have to like everything a person says or does to respect them overall. This is adult thinking -- that you understand that people are complicated and you accept that you aren't always going to agree with them unless you and they are a couple of inflatable Judys.
(In case you're wondering, that describes exactly none of my friends and really nobody I know.)
I disagree with Nichols on one thing: considering the size of the human population that exists today, totalitarians are no longer rare. There are millions of them. And I'll repeat the hypothesis that I've written here before, that the amount of trouble caused by narcissists and sociopaths is proportional not to their percentage of the population, but to their absolute number. As the population grows, the problem gets worse.
Shaming them will not work because know no guilt. They are so convinced of their god-ness that they will admit no possibility of having done anything wrong. It either goes in one ear and out the other, or it goes into the revenge-to-be-taken-in-the-future file.
There are only two things that work. One is to restrain them in some fashion; the other is to get so far away from them that they cannot reach you. The first is problematic because no culture existing today has the moral percepts to do so in a rational and justifiable fashion. (The narcissists and sociopaths work diligently to prevent same from being developed, and to crush it wherever it appears. All that is necessary is for good people to have doubt. Cluster B's never suffer from doubt.) The other strategy -- get far away -- is what our forefathers did when they sailed to America. Today, the only way to get far enough away is to go into space, but as yet we lack the means for a sufficient number of people to do that.
Cousin Dave at July 8, 2015 7:17 AM
per CD above I don't think we have another 100 years left in our society.
We are too much like those that lived in the cities during the 1700's that gave up their guns to the British because 1) they asked/insisted and 2) the guns were not needed for protection because the British were there.
The settlers in areas that grew outward along the rivers kept their guns even though the British asked/insisted because 1) they were used to being more independent (no one around their homes to help) and 2) the guns were needed for putting meat on the table and for protection (humans were part of the food chain).
Until we can be back up our right to not be told we can not say/do/desire with punitive measures that are w/in the law we are screwed just men on college campuses are.
As long as someone saying "check" your privilege can actually stop my discussion I am screwed and must submit or leave.
Bob in Texas at July 8, 2015 9:15 AM
As long as someone saying "check" your privilege can actually stop my discussion I am screwed and must submit or leave.
How can someone saying "Check your privilege" stop a discussion you're having?
I'm genuinely curious.
If someone said that to me, I'd probably reply "You need to check your privilege-checking" or some such.
Kevin at July 8, 2015 9:56 AM
"Check your privilege" is a way of saying "You started out the race with far more assets than I did, so you have to shut up."
Kevin, I like your response.
Amy Alkon at July 8, 2015 11:07 AM
"I checked my privilege at the induction center. You weren't there." Works every time.
MarkD at July 8, 2015 11:27 AM
I don't require people to agree with me....just admit that I am right. :)
"Check my Privilege? OK...looks like it is about a quart low."*
"Oh my privilege is not nearly as big as yours."
* borrowed from late grandfather who often saying things were a quart low when asked to check them. E.g. at Thanksgiving, "Can you check on the Turkey?" "Looks about a quart low."
The Former Banker at July 8, 2015 7:11 PM
Privilege.
Mine's great. Thanks for asking. Yours?
Richard Aubrey at July 9, 2015 11:46 AM
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