A generation of fascists?
Liberals sure have changed.
Back in the '70's, Wright Junior College in Chicago sponsored a lecture by a well-known scientist who had said something controversial about race and intelligence. As I recall, it was essentially that while both whites and African-Americans could be seen at all locations on the bell curve of IQ, there was a higher proportion of whites at the high end and a higher proportion of African-Americans at the low end. It should be noted that he did not claim that therefore blacks were less intelligent than whites. In fact, those who argued that IQ tests were culturally biased in such a way that white students would do better on them than black students who were just as smart cited precisely the same data. My memory is that the lecturer took no position on the reason for the disparity. He seemed to me to be an incredibly naive academic who failed to foresee how volatile the data he had simply described would inevitably be. He just thought that it was interesting and that the reasons for it ought to be examined.
This was a teachable moment for everybody. This was a chance to explore the impact not of race on intelligence, but of racism on the means by which we measure it. But no light was shed on the subject that day. Only heat was generated.
Perhaps Wright was asking for trouble merely by inviting him to speak. What happened that day was predictable. But back then, academics were not afraid of ideas. They espoused the enlightenment notion that if all ideas are free to compete equally, good ideas will triumph over bad ones, rationality will triumph over irrationality, and truth will triumph over falsehood. The best guarantor of justice and equality and truth was not the suppression of bad ideas, but their exposure as a result of contrasting them with good ones. Freedom of expression was seen as the enemy, not of truth, but of lies, and not of justice, but precisely of injustice. It was understood to be evidence of one's confidence in a validity of an idea that one was willing to expose it to contradiction and debate in the serene assurance that in an honest fight it would emerge triumphant.
The corollary of that idea was the obvious fact (however forgotten by today's campus leftists) that nobody is so objective that he or she can be trusted as a censor of ideas. To believe that any idea is so dangerous that it needs to be suppressed is to accept the inevitable use of that principle by whoever happens to be in power to suppress dissent. After all, we all believe that our own ideas are, by definition, good, and therefore their opposite, by definition, bad. Which ideas are "dangerous" and which are not is an inherently subjective judgment. It was taken as an axiom in academia that if the most vile and reprehensible idea cannot be freely expressed- and subjected to exposure for what it is by rebuttal- freedom of speech is finally impossible. And so is academic freedom. Better that ugly ideas be forced to fairly compete with benign ones and lies with truth than that a situation be created in which inevitably ugly ideas would in principle be able to suppress benign ones and lies to suppress the truth.
In other words, liberals back then were actually liberal. Of course, there were radicals who believed even then that people they disagreed with simply had no right to speak, and who took it upon themselves to deny such people the exercise of that right. But liberals (as "progressives" called themselves before they became somehow embarrassed by the term) emphatically disagreed. Embracing the truly liberal ideal of free speech and the free interchange of ideas, and armed with the conviction that nobody should be afraid of an idea as long as that idea could be freely debated and its merits, or lack thereof, revealed in the process, the "respectable" left enthusiastically embraced the sentiment attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." If anybody advocated censorship, it was the less savory corners of the Right!
The ACLU was once very big on freedom of expression, not blushing to defend Nazis and Klansmen and all sorts of vile critters if their right to free speech were in jeopardy, no matter how odious what they had to say. And so it was when the Weathermen or some such group showed up at Wright that day to silence the invited speaker, the liberals (of which I was one back then) strenuously objected. I remember chuckling at the irony of the president of the Student Government standing there, shouting into the chaos, "Let him speak and then tell him he's an asshole!" Of course, I agreed with him. But sphincter or not, the man was denied the right to speak that day.
Today, truly liberal liberals (excuse me, progressives) seem to be a dying breed. Today, it's an article of faith on most of the left end of the political spectrum that the First Amendment does not protect "hate speech." It's been largely left to the right to uphold the banner of the former liberal orthodoxy, the notion that if the most disgusting and odious of speech is not protected, no speech is finally safe because any speech is going to be regarded as disgusting and odious by somebody.
Institutions of higher learning have changed, too. It used to be regarded as a given that colleges and universities existed to foster the free interchange of ideas. There, the assumption was that if reason and unreason are both allowed their voice, unreason will always be shown for what it is and reason will always triumph.
No longer. Today. political correctness holds sway, and most college and university campuses have become the polar opposite of what they once were. Instead of being citadels of free and courageous pursuit of truth wherever it led, they have become indoctrination centers for left-wing ideologies whose adherents are as convinced as any medieval inquisitor that error has no rights. Speakers espousing unpopular causes are shouted down and may even be subjected to violence. The chilling effect that results has inhibited institutions from inviting conservative speakers or others representing viewpoints unpopular on campus. At a time in which academic success all too often means kowtowing to the politics of professors, no matter how extreme or even bizarre, colleges and universities have become echo chambers in which unorthodox opinions are barely tolerated and cannot be freely expressed without risking drastic consequences. The very institutions which once stood for free inquiry and the life of the mind have become places where many even regard the act of daring to publicly express an opinion that runs counter to the party line as a provocative act!
John Villasenor of The Brookings Institution has published the results of a study on campus attitudes toward free speech and the First Amendment. To say that the results are disturbing would be to put it mildly.
Villasenor summarizes the study's findings this way:
A surprising percentage of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike think that it's acceptable to shut down speech expressing viewpoints with which one disagrees. This includes doing so violently.
Again, a shockingly large percentage (a plurality of both Democrats and, sadly, Independents) seem unaware that most "hate speech" is protected by the First Amendment, and believe that ti should be silenced.
62% of Democrats, as well as 39% of Republicans and 45% of Independents, believe that silencing a speaker by shouting him or her down is acceptable. A shocking percentage of each demographic believes that it is acceptable to do so through violence.
Oddly, large majorities of all three groups incorrectly believe that there is a legal requirement that colleges and institutions which provide a forum for one viewpoint also provide equal time for the opposite viewpoint.
Similarly, a disturbing percentage of all three groups- and a majority of Democrats- believe that creating "a positive learning environment for all students by prohibiting certain speech or expression of viewpoints that are offensive or biased against certain groups of people" is more important than having "an open learning environment where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints, even if it means allowing speech that is offensive or biased against certain groups of people."
So much for intellectual freedom. So much for the life of the mind.
Never before in human history has so much information been so readily available. Yet never before in recent history have so many of us been so ignorant about everything from history to current events to religion. And never before in history have we had so many illiterate college students.
That fact may not be entirely unrelated to the results of this study.
One thing is certain: something has to change. Unless teachers at all levels do a better job of acquainting students with the most basic values of our society, including tolerance and the value of intellectual as well as racial and ethnic diversity, we cannot survive as a free people.
Yet the irony is that we find ourselves divided between a group of authoritarians who believe that it's acceptable for Donald Trump to offer to pay the legal expenses of supporters who beat up demonstrators at his campaign rallies and authoritarians who believe that it's acceptable to use violence in order to silence minority political views on campus. And it's a greater irony still that neither side seems to see the irony.
Back in the '70's, Wright Junior College in Chicago sponsored a lecture by a well-known scientist who had said something controversial about race and intelligence. As I recall, it was essentially that while both whites and African-Americans could be seen at all locations on the bell curve of IQ, there was a higher proportion of whites at the high end and a higher proportion of African-Americans at the low end. It should be noted that he did not claim that therefore blacks were less intelligent than whites. In fact, those who argued that IQ tests were culturally biased in such a way that white students would do better on them than black students who were just as smart cited precisely the same data. My memory is that the lecturer took no position on the reason for the disparity. He seemed to me to be an incredibly naive academic who failed to foresee how volatile the data he had simply described would inevitably be. He just thought that it was interesting and that the reasons for it ought to be examined.
This was a teachable moment for everybody. This was a chance to explore the impact not of race on intelligence, but of racism on the means by which we measure it. But no light was shed on the subject that day. Only heat was generated.
Perhaps Wright was asking for trouble merely by inviting him to speak. What happened that day was predictable. But back then, academics were not afraid of ideas. They espoused the enlightenment notion that if all ideas are free to compete equally, good ideas will triumph over bad ones, rationality will triumph over irrationality, and truth will triumph over falsehood. The best guarantor of justice and equality and truth was not the suppression of bad ideas, but their exposure as a result of contrasting them with good ones. Freedom of expression was seen as the enemy, not of truth, but of lies, and not of justice, but precisely of injustice. It was understood to be evidence of one's confidence in a validity of an idea that one was willing to expose it to contradiction and debate in the serene assurance that in an honest fight it would emerge triumphant.
The corollary of that idea was the obvious fact (however forgotten by today's campus leftists) that nobody is so objective that he or she can be trusted as a censor of ideas. To believe that any idea is so dangerous that it needs to be suppressed is to accept the inevitable use of that principle by whoever happens to be in power to suppress dissent. After all, we all believe that our own ideas are, by definition, good, and therefore their opposite, by definition, bad. Which ideas are "dangerous" and which are not is an inherently subjective judgment. It was taken as an axiom in academia that if the most vile and reprehensible idea cannot be freely expressed- and subjected to exposure for what it is by rebuttal- freedom of speech is finally impossible. And so is academic freedom. Better that ugly ideas be forced to fairly compete with benign ones and lies with truth than that a situation be created in which inevitably ugly ideas would in principle be able to suppress benign ones and lies to suppress the truth.
In other words, liberals back then were actually liberal. Of course, there were radicals who believed even then that people they disagreed with simply had no right to speak, and who took it upon themselves to deny such people the exercise of that right. But liberals (as "progressives" called themselves before they became somehow embarrassed by the term) emphatically disagreed. Embracing the truly liberal ideal of free speech and the free interchange of ideas, and armed with the conviction that nobody should be afraid of an idea as long as that idea could be freely debated and its merits, or lack thereof, revealed in the process, the "respectable" left enthusiastically embraced the sentiment attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." If anybody advocated censorship, it was the less savory corners of the Right!
The ACLU was once very big on freedom of expression, not blushing to defend Nazis and Klansmen and all sorts of vile critters if their right to free speech were in jeopardy, no matter how odious what they had to say. And so it was when the Weathermen or some such group showed up at Wright that day to silence the invited speaker, the liberals (of which I was one back then) strenuously objected. I remember chuckling at the irony of the president of the Student Government standing there, shouting into the chaos, "Let him speak and then tell him he's an asshole!" Of course, I agreed with him. But sphincter or not, the man was denied the right to speak that day.
Today, truly liberal liberals (excuse me, progressives) seem to be a dying breed. Today, it's an article of faith on most of the left end of the political spectrum that the First Amendment does not protect "hate speech." It's been largely left to the right to uphold the banner of the former liberal orthodoxy, the notion that if the most disgusting and odious of speech is not protected, no speech is finally safe because any speech is going to be regarded as disgusting and odious by somebody.
Institutions of higher learning have changed, too. It used to be regarded as a given that colleges and universities existed to foster the free interchange of ideas. There, the assumption was that if reason and unreason are both allowed their voice, unreason will always be shown for what it is and reason will always triumph.
No longer. Today. political correctness holds sway, and most college and university campuses have become the polar opposite of what they once were. Instead of being citadels of free and courageous pursuit of truth wherever it led, they have become indoctrination centers for left-wing ideologies whose adherents are as convinced as any medieval inquisitor that error has no rights. Speakers espousing unpopular causes are shouted down and may even be subjected to violence. The chilling effect that results has inhibited institutions from inviting conservative speakers or others representing viewpoints unpopular on campus. At a time in which academic success all too often means kowtowing to the politics of professors, no matter how extreme or even bizarre, colleges and universities have become echo chambers in which unorthodox opinions are barely tolerated and cannot be freely expressed without risking drastic consequences. The very institutions which once stood for free inquiry and the life of the mind have become places where many even regard the act of daring to publicly express an opinion that runs counter to the party line as a provocative act!
John Villasenor of The Brookings Institution has published the results of a study on campus attitudes toward free speech and the First Amendment. To say that the results are disturbing would be to put it mildly.
Villasenor summarizes the study's findings this way:
The survey results establish with data what has been clear anecdotally to anyone who has been observing campus dynamics in recent years: Freedom of expression is deeply imperiled on U.S. campuses. In fact, despite protestations to the contrary (often with statements like “we fully support the First Amendment, but…), freedom of expression is clearly not, in practice, available on many campuses, including many public campuses that have First Amendment obligations.
A surprising percentage of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents alike think that it's acceptable to shut down speech expressing viewpoints with which one disagrees. This includes doing so violently.
Again, a shockingly large percentage (a plurality of both Democrats and, sadly, Independents) seem unaware that most "hate speech" is protected by the First Amendment, and believe that ti should be silenced.
62% of Democrats, as well as 39% of Republicans and 45% of Independents, believe that silencing a speaker by shouting him or her down is acceptable. A shocking percentage of each demographic believes that it is acceptable to do so through violence.
Oddly, large majorities of all three groups incorrectly believe that there is a legal requirement that colleges and institutions which provide a forum for one viewpoint also provide equal time for the opposite viewpoint.
Similarly, a disturbing percentage of all three groups- and a majority of Democrats- believe that creating "a positive learning environment for all students by prohibiting certain speech or expression of viewpoints that are offensive or biased against certain groups of people" is more important than having "an open learning environment where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints, even if it means allowing speech that is offensive or biased against certain groups of people."
So much for intellectual freedom. So much for the life of the mind.
Never before in human history has so much information been so readily available. Yet never before in recent history have so many of us been so ignorant about everything from history to current events to religion. And never before in history have we had so many illiterate college students.
That fact may not be entirely unrelated to the results of this study.
One thing is certain: something has to change. Unless teachers at all levels do a better job of acquainting students with the most basic values of our society, including tolerance and the value of intellectual as well as racial and ethnic diversity, we cannot survive as a free people.
Yet the irony is that we find ourselves divided between a group of authoritarians who believe that it's acceptable for Donald Trump to offer to pay the legal expenses of supporters who beat up demonstrators at his campaign rallies and authoritarians who believe that it's acceptable to use violence in order to silence minority political views on campus. And it's a greater irony still that neither side seems to see the irony.
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