Bari Weiss Discusses the Importance of Publicly Airing Disagreements

On FB I have repeatedly posted on the need for free and robust speech. Often, someone will post a comment that I must be a conservative, that conservatives are full of shit, that only true ideas must be heard, that censorship is OK for the bad guys and "You seem to have fallen off the rails." I try to respond to these comments, but it takes a lot of patience and some days my patience runs low. Bari Weiss definitely gets it. I support her writings at Substack and recommend that you check our her articles. Here's an excerpt from her most recent article, "The Books Are Already Burning: The question is only: How long will decent people stand by quietly and watch it happen?"

You do not need to agree with [Abigail] Shrier about whether or not children should be able to medically transition genders without their parents’ permission (she is opposed), or for that matter with Weinstein and Heying’s bullishness about ivermectin (I had never heard of of the drug before they put it on my radar). That’s not the point. The point is that the questions they ask are not just legitimate, they are of critical importance. Meantime, some of the most powerful forces in our culture are conspiring to silence them.

That is precisely the reason it is so important to stand up and say: no. To say: progress comes only when we have the freedom to disagree. To say: It is outrageous that tech platforms are censoring such debates and that some journalists are cheering them on. To say, in public: enough. In my case, that means making sure to publish those voices who have been shut out of so many other channels that ought to be open to them.

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Greg Lukianoff Discusses an “Eternally Radical Idea”

People utter the phrase "free speech" all the time, but it is a rare bird who appreciates how rare and precious this idea is, historically speaking. Here's an excerpt from an article by Greg Lukianoff:

What do you call an idea that has a clear track record of promoting innovation, human flourishing, prosperity, and progress, but is nonetheless rejected by every generation?

I would call that idea radical. And because it’s always so staunchly opposed, I would call that idea “eternally radical.”

So what is the Eternally Radical Idea? It is freedom of speech.

The unfettered right to state your opinion is extremely rare in human history. Your right to promote reform, contradict prevailing orthodoxies, or engage in artistic and personal expression is even rarer.

Indeed, human beings are natural born censors with a strong drive toward community conformity. Throughout the millennia, how have we typically handled dissenters? Often it’s ostracization or banishment. At other times, it’s arrest, torture, beheadings, burning at the stake, crucifixion, or drinking hemlock.

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Sam Harris on Today’s Social Justice Politics

Sam Harris:

I tend to describe what we're witnessing under the guise of social justice politics as a kind of moral panic. And this is not to say that racism and sexism and transphobia aren't problems anywhere. I think they clearly are, but they're not problems everywhere. And they're being treated as such by a large group of activists and cult leaders, frankly, people like Ibram X. Kendi, who are pushing a politics on the rest of the country that resembles nothing so much as mental illness. And because they enjoy an asymmetrical advantage with respect to social stigma, because being accused of racism in particular is so destructive to a person's reputation.

These activists are successfully silencing and cowing most good people. And the people who do have the courage to call bullshit on all this dishonesty and bullying can be made to seem like they're joining the ranks of bad people who are really racist and sexist and transphobic. So now we have the spectacle of some of the least racist people and institutions on Earth issuing abject apologies, the kinds of apologies that would seem appropriate in an exit interview from the Ku Klux Klan, just rending themselves over their past sins. I've remained convinced that this fever will break at some point and that same people will step forward and acknowledge that while there's still a lot of work to do to address specific inequalities in our society, we have made tremendous progress. I mean, there is in fact less racism and sexism and transphobia at this moment in America, in particular in our institutions, than there has ever been anywhere on earth, and not to acknowledge that is becoming increasingly perverse.

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