Good news from an unexpected source

The death of John McCain once again focuses the attention of those who notice such things on the fact that despite the increasingly ugly, intolerant, and extreme atmosphere on the Trumpist right, there has always been a resistance movement among conservatives fighting for the democratic values which used to be our common property as Americans. The McCains, the Mitt Romneys, the Ben Sasses, the Evan McMullins, the Mindy Finns, and both the elder and younger Bushes are examples of conservatives who have refused to sell out to Know-Nothingism and to betray their principles despite the heavy pressure from their fellow conservatives to do so.

More and more, respected conservatives- even those who hitherto have opposed the Trumpist perversion of the movement- are falling in line. "Sad," as the president might tweet.

But there is a remnant. I am not alone in leaving the Republican party, which Trumpism seems to have transformed into something Reagan or certainly Lincoln would not recognize. Our numbers are not large; five percent of registered Republicans would probably be a wildly optimistic estimate, and it seems that as time goes on more and more traditional conservatives- Christian or not- are burning incense to the Orange Emperor.

I know a lot of Democrats and progressives who are similarly resisting the parallel movement against our traditional American principles on the Left. I would argue that the radicalization of the Democratic party has been going on longer and until Trump had gone much further than the drift of the Republicans into Nativism and the cruder forms of populism. Mitt Romney and John McCain and Bob Dole and the Bushes fit far better into the ideological mold of Reagan and Ford and Nixon and Ike than George McGovern, Michael Dukakis, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton do into the mold of Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy, Adlai Stevenson, and Harry Truman- or even, in my opinion, FDR. Bill Clinton and at least the earlier edition of Jimmy Carter might have fit the traditional mold; the ongoing trend toward decentralization of power and devolution of responsibilities from the Federal government to the states actually began under Carter, not Reagan. But extremism and a lack of ideological diversity, contrary to the Democratic rhetoric, was until Trump far more characteristic of the Democrats than of the Republicans. Until recently, the GOP had a far bigger tent, despite all the Democrats have had to say in recent years about diversity. When it comes to ideology, the Democrats haven't been all that diverse for a very long time.

After the McGovern debacle, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority was formed to move the party back to the center, and the Democratic Leadership Conference had a similar purpose and harbored relatively moderate Democrats like Bill Clinton. John Kerry and John Edwards were members of the New Democrat Coalition. Such centrist groups exercised significant influence in the party until Barack Obama took office; now, the centrist faction of the Democratic party has largely gone underground, and the party itself is anything but ideologically diverse. According to Gallup, in 2000 only 29% of registered Democrats considered themselves liberals; by 2015, Gallup put the figure at 45%. Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a matter of Federal law as by definition between a man and a woman; by 2015, a Public Religion Research Institute poll found that 82% of Democrats believed that people should be compelled to provide services to gays and lesbians even in cases where doing so would violate their religious beliefs. A Pew Research poll in 2016 showed that 82% of Democrats supported same-sex marriage,

Despite an ongoing effort by the media to portray Barack Obama as a moderate (an effort in which President Obama himself joined), there can be little doubt that the party lurched violently to the left during the Obama administration. Not only did overt activism among moderates disappear, but the long-standing sanctions against Cuba were rescinded and diplomatic relations re-established with what John Kennedy called "that imprisoned island." The party's positions on gay marriage, marijuana legalization, and other social issues not only changed, but an atmosphere developed which was and remains extremely intolerant of opposing viewpoints. As society became more secularized, the typical Democratic view on what is usually misrepresented in Democratic circles as "the separation between church and state," actually a separation between religion and state, ignoring the historical role of religious belief in the Abolitionist movement, the Civil Rights movement, the anti-war movement of the 'Sixties, the movement to abolish child labor, and virtually every other movement of social reform in American history and distorting the constitutional requirement of governmental neutrality in matters of religious belief into the granting of a privileged position to non-theistic viewpoints.

In this age in which despite the tendency on the left to cherry-pick data and to make false and intellectually dishonest distinctions in an attempt to deny this (if biased and implausible definitions are used it is possible to find a majority of any group taking any position on literally anything in almost any set of data), studies which simply describe opinions rather than characterizing them according to the bias of those responsible for writing about them show that even as college students themselves perceive the situation, free speech on campus is in considerable peril.*

The ACLU used to be a strong and ideologically impartial advocate for the Bill of Rights. But just as the Gallup poll cited above shows that on one hand college students favor free speech while on the other they are inclined to make exceptions for speech which hampers "diversity," a value which a majority consider more important than free speech, the modern ACLU seems to believe that certain rights specifically guaranteed by the First Amendment are less important than others which are not. The ACLU has been quite active in opposing laws allowing bakers, florists, and others whose religious convictions tell them that catering to a gay wedding would be a sin for them.

So much for "Congress shall make no law regarding an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

For that reason, this month's edition of the progressive The Atlantic magazine- which features a number of encouraging issues on the subject- is especially heartening in that it contains this video in which Nadine Strossen, a former ACLU president, argues that even "hate speech" is constitutionally protected and shouldn't be censored even on social media.



The same problem which exists with the selective criteria used by some of the articles on college attitudes toward free speech mentioned above exists in defining terms like "hate speech:" whoever is using the term at the moment gets to define it. Once we start down the road toward creating a "thought police" with the authority to shut down forms of speech it considers unacceptable, no speech is safe. Especially in the age of Donald Trump, the president who sees nothing wrong with threatening a free press with changes to the law permitting lawsuits for "intentionally false" reporting (who decides what is true and what is false, or what is or is not "intentional?"), characterizing a free press in general as "enemies of the people," and in general following the customary authoritarian playbook in ceasing to discredit or suppress any source of information he or his allies doesn't control, recognizing exceptions to the right to freely express one's opinions is a risky business. With all due respect to our friends in Canada, the UK, and most of Europe, criminalizing or even civilly punishing "hate speech" establishes a dangerous precedent which requires only a change in governments to suddenly imperil one's own freedom of expression, if one's opponents are so inclined.

The rise of intersectionality and political correctness and the view that while freedom of speech is important there are circumstances in which it can and ought to be suppressed is an alarming development. Even more alarming is the tendency on the part of both the Trumpist right and the progressive left to see attempts to curb free speech along with all the other totalitarian tendencies both extremes often seem to promote as primarily a problem on the other side.

The general principle of American law is sound: where speech causes specific and demonstrable harm to someone (not merely hurt feelings, but actual harm), and where the speaker had sufficient reason to believe that there was a likelihood that such  would or even probably would result from what he or she said,  let that person be held legally accountable for the harm- but never for the speech itself. I commend that principle to the citizens and governments of our fellow democracies as both more reasonable and far safer for the values we in the West claim to hold in common.

And to American conservatives and progressives alike, who are quick to see the excesses and failings of the other side but tend not to notice the very same failings in their own behavior and that of their allies, I suggest that we all start calling out the very people we agree with on the things we find objectionable in those with whom we disagree. Arguments which are bigoted, false, libelous, or simply unfair rarely advance any cause because they can be easily discredited. In the long run, it would serve both sides better in the long run for their adherents to be especially conscientious about discouraging that sort of thing when used to advance arguments they otherwise agree with.

A free society will be civil only to the extent that both sides are willing to acknowledge in themselves the failings they so readily see in the other side and hold themselves to the same standard. Disapprobation is a deterrent which is compatible with freedom; thought control or even limits on free speech just aren't.