E-Pluribus | Mar. 25, 2021
Here is a round up of the latest and best writing and musings on the rise of illiberalism in the public discourse:
Nick Gillespie: Government is Still the Biggest Threat to Free Speech
While not discounting the continuing trend of private sector assaults on free expression, Nick Gillespie at Reason reminds us that government (and opportunistic politicians of all stripes) remains the primary threat to First Amendment freedoms. The very nature of the private sector provides alternatives, but the government monopoly on legislative (and even bureaucratic) power makes its infringements all that much more serious.
At the national level, two congressional Democrats — Rep. Anna Eshoo (D–Calif.) and Rep. Jerry McNerney (D–Calif.) — have sent letters to the heads of Comcast, Verizon, Dish, and other cable and satellite companies demanding to know why such private services carry Fox News, Newsmax, and other supposed purveyors of “misinformation.” As Reason’s Robby Soave put it, the demand “was an act of intimidation.” It’s a rare week when high-wattage politicians such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) or Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) don’t threaten Big Tech with some sort of reprimand because they don’t like what’s popular on Facebook or Twitter.
The good news is that laws seeking to control individuals and platforms are blatantly unconstitutional because they compel the speech of private actors and because Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act allows broad discretion in running websites and platforms. When challenged in court, they’ll almost certainly be struck down.
The bad news is that the laws just keep coming, because politicians of all stripes want to control speech in a way that favors their agendas and they don’t care about whether a law respects the First Amendment.
Read more here.
ICYMI: Emily Yoffe: A Taxonomy of Fear
In July 2020, in the wake of the uproar at The New York Times over a Senator Tom Cotton op-ed (which led to James Bennet’s resignation as editorial page editor at the Times), Emily Yoffe examined the fear, or fears, both real and imagined, driving the illiberal impulses in so many institutions in our society.
At first, A. G. Sulzberger, the paper’s publisher, publicly expressed his support for the decision to run the op-ed. But that quickly changed after Black employees asserted not just that Cotton’s argument was morally repugnant, or that he failed to make it in a way that met the Times’ standards, but that the piece threatened their lives. “Running this puts Black @nytimes staff in danger,” many of them tweeted.
The language used by the Times staffers is indicative of a wider trend. In The Coddling of the American Mind, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt describe the recent emergence and rapid spread on college campuses of what they call “safetyism,” a view that “equates emotional discomfort with physical danger.” Safetyism, they write, teaches students “to see words as violence and interpret ideas and speakers as safe versus dangerous.”
Confronted with words, ideas, or decisions they dislike, a growing number of people are asserting that they are in danger of suffering psychological or even bodily harm. But when one party asserts that a debate threatens their very well-being, it is hard to deliberate on policy — or topics such as race and gender. The result is a narrowing of the space for public discussion and an inability to teach ever more ideas and books.
Read the whole piece here.
Allan Stratton: We Can Revisit (And Even Replace) the Classic Books We Teach Children — Without Cancelling Them
While author Allan Stratton rejects the outright “cancelling” of books, he takes a nuanced look at why some books may merit revising or updating to make them more accessible to a modern audience.
…Today, the progressive Left charges that [Dr. Seuss, Mark Twain, and Harper Lee’s] books promote racism by, variously, drawing racial stereotypes, putting the N-word in the mouths of characters, and promoting white-saviour narratives.
Meanwhile, conservatives now support the teaching of books they once condemned: Mockingbird for its rape and profanity, and Huck Finn for its vulgarity (as with Little Women author Louisa May Alcott’s famous denunciation: “If Mark Twain can’t think of something better to tell our pure-minded lads and lasses, he had best stop writing for them”). In keeping with the role reversal, conservatives who staunchly defend capitalism are up in arms over the business decision of a private corporation. The fight is fierce because the stakes feel personal on both sides. We think about culture as if it’s outside us. In fact, it’s the expression of our identity.
The irony is that Lee, Twain, and Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss) all shared a vision of an inclusive world where people are valued no matter their background. But they were writing that vision in different eras. Books are brain babies. No matter how universal their themes, they’re birthed from the imaginations of individuals who, like all of us, live in a specific time and place. The best of us try to think outside our world, but none of us can fully escape it.
[…]
The controversy over the Seuss books has locked its adversaries into the same zero-sum positions that define the debate over the study of Huck Finn and Mockingbird in middle-grade and high schools. That’s a shame because the actual issues are far more nuanced and centre on how the meaning of a book changes depending upon its readership and the context in which it is read.
[…]
Some argue that removing such books denies young people access to the classics. But these books are taking the place of countless other classics. And the main reason curricula has stayed the same in many school districts isn’t always because of high standards or an unassailable canon. It’s often because of budgets: It’s cheaper to replace a few damaged copies than buy a new class set.
Read the full piece here.
Around Twitter
South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and “conservative cancel culture”:
Yale professor says Alan Dershowitz got her fired:
A Glenn Greenwald thread on Alan Dershowitz and free speech:
