The Kinder and Gentler Censorship

The Left steers onto the Fahrenheit 451 Boulevard

When I was a youngster in the mid-1970s, developing my political perspective, I was attracted to liberalism for several reasons. The civil libertarians who were plentiful on the Left then inspired me. I loved the idea of defending someone you disagreed with. It was basically an offshoot of the Golden Rule; do onto others.

The Golden Rule is something very few humans have ever been able to follow. But civil libertarianism was once popular enough that a powerful organization was devoted to practicing it; the American Civil Liberties Union. After decades of being demonized by conservatives, the ACLU has gravitated away from civil liberties, and into the world of identity politics. Instead of defending free speech, they search for signs of “racism” or “White Supremacy,” like the rest of today’s establishment Left.

In the past, it was always the Left, led by their civil libertarians, who sought to stop censorship, when the Right went after authors like Henry Miller, or D.H. Lawrence, or comedians like Lenny Bruce. It was the Right who wanted to censor rock lyrics. George Carlin’s famous skit about the Seven Words you can’t say, was directed at conservatives. Liberals of the time laughed in appreciation. Books like Fahrenheit 451 were part of high school curriculums; the lesson being censorship is wrong.

The vast majority of prominent “liberals” today sound far different than Thomas Jefferson, or Charles Dickens, or John F. Kennedy. They are preoccupied with taking away rights, not fighting for them. Chris Cuomo, a typical mainstream media reporter, ranted a few years ago about how the First Amendment “doesn’t protect hate speech.” He then angrily urged his impressionable audience to “read the Constitution!” Chris, I’ve read the Constitution. The word “hate” doesn’t appear anywhere. And this guy is not only an alleged journalist, but a lawyer.

Julian Assange remains in danger of being imprisoned forever, because he leaked information that was damaging to our corrupt officials. Most professional reporters probably think he should be locked away. Polls have shown the public is mostly against him. Whistleblowers have never been popular. Censorship is more popular now than ever.

Mark Twain, one of the more radical leftists of his era, once said, “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak just because a baby can’t chew it.” Twain’s works continue to be vilified by a social justice warrior-dominated Left that is incapable of understanding them. The recent censorship of some of Dr. Seuss’s books demonstrated the shocking ignorance of the modern witch hunters. Dr. Seuss was a radical who was smeared as a communist by right-wingers. But now he’s labeled a “racist.” If Dr. Seuss is a racist, then what is a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan?

The trouble really began here when people accepted the Orwellian term “hate speech.” Hate is a human emotion, and in the eye of the beholder. You can’t legislate an emotion, any more than the Right, fifty years ago, could legislate morality. In 1964, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart commented, in an obscenity case, that while he couldn’t define it, “I know it when I see it.” In present-day identity politics, the new bluenoses on the Left know “hate” when they see it. That’s a dangerous concept; you can’t base laws upon emotion, instead of reason.

Because the social justice warriors are now in charge of everything in government and private industry, they are the ones demanding that certain books be banned, or that people be fired, due to their odious “cancel culture.” The religious Right are paragons of tolerance in comparison to these authoritarian virtue signalers. Their “fact checkers” on social media have succeeded in cutting the heart out of alternative media online. Many popular You Tube channels have been banished down the memory hole, explicitly because of their “offensive” content. It was once southern preachers “offended” by the likes of the Beatles. Now, it’s anti-White Whites who are “offended” by an undefinable “White Supremacy” and “White Privilege.”

USA Today ran a recent story that decried the fact Amazon is apparently recommending some books that it classifies as “conspiracy theories” or “extreme.” Again, those terms can’t be defined objectively. Trying to classify something as “extreme” thought is like defining what is an acceptable level of spice in a dish or strings in a musical arrangement. It’s ironic that the same virtue signalers who lobby incessantly for “diversity” are so opposed to a diversity of opinions.

Back during the commie witch hunts of the 1950s, one of the “pinko” front groups was called the First Amendment Committee. The extreme Right of that era obviously thought the First Amendment was “subversive.” The “Woke” Left not only uses the same term- “subversives”- to condemn their political opponents, they too undoubtedly consider the First Amendment to be a dangerous thing. Benjamin Franklin said there can be “no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.”

We’ve gone from banning too graphic comic books in the 1950s, and rock and roll- the “Devil’s Music,” in the 1960s, to banning anything and everything today, which happens to offend any virtue signaler. Don’t like what someone tweeted? Complain loudly enough, and they’ll be fired by their employer. For expressing their right to free speech on their own time. And no one will point out how antithetical to our entire foundation of liberty such tyranny is.

If those with power start simply banning and censoring what they don’t like, our claims about freedom and liberty become as meaningless as the old chestnut, “Do as I say, not as I do.” The Bill of Rights is the bedrock of our republic. Remember, “sticks and stones,” and all that. Support freedom of speech, especially if you disagree with what’s being said. That was the essence behind everything the Founders fought for. We either all have civil liberties, or none of us do.