The Silencing (3 page)

“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,”
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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.”
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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!”
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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.”
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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.
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That same day, a Twitter mob exploded with criticism of Eich.
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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.
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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,
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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.”
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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.
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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.”
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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 marriage
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—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.”
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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.
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This insight, which comes from the eighteenth century philosopher 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”
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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.

Harvard psychology professor and bestselling author Steven Pinker invoked the critical role free speech plays in a democratic system in a 2014 speech. We acquire knowledge through a “process that Karl Popper called conjecture and refutation,” said Pinker. “We come up with ideas about the nature of reality, and test them against that reality, allowing the world to falsify the mistaken ones. The ‘conjecture’ part of this formula, of course, presupposes the exercise of free speech. We offer conjectures without any prior assurance they are correct. It is only by bruiting ideas and seeing which ones withstand attempts to refute them that we acquire knowledge.”

The illiberal left seeks to short-circuit this process. They don’t want to defend their views, nor do they want to allow forums for other people to present views that are at odds with the conclusions they have drawn on an array of issues. Sometimes, the mere suggestion of holding a debate is cast as an offense.
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