Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith, media & culture: 03/10/21

“If there be time to expose through discussion, the falsehoods and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.”

That’s the gist of the landmark Counterspeech Doctrine enunciated by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1927 in his concurring opinion on Whitney v. California. He wrote against curtailing free speech that disrupts government consensus and is deemed a theoretical threat to public order. For nearly a century his reasoning has served as a bulwark protecting free public discourse.

But, alas, we are living in a period when reasoning and debate would be relegated to the ash heap of history not just by the government but, more astonishingly, by the media. Other long-held ideas that are in danger of being canceled included “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” and “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” The latter because, at root, the woke/Marxist ideology behind all this is utterly merciless. Hence, the birth of Cancel Culture which we’re told either doesn’t exist or is okay because it’s the result of decisions made by private companies responding to consumers, aka online mobs stoked by globalist media corporations in alignment with one political party. The ridiculous thing is we’ve come to calling these online mobs snowflakes, as if they’re the victims of bullying rather than the perpetrators of it. In reality, the so-called “snowflakes” are illiberal totalitarians.

What gets me going about this subject is a report that the Intercollegiate Studies Institute – an organization where a good friend of mine works – allegedly had its planned conference for student journalists shutdown less than 72 hours before it was to begin last week in Alexandria, Virginia. The stated reason for the late shutdown was public health concerns but as ISI President John Burtka wrote in American Greatness the suspected real reason was the purported threat of gathering while conservative. He also discussed the situation on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight.

The good news is that ISI found another venue for its conference which it has deemed a big success. The troubling news is how often these sorts of issues are arising as the range of allowable opinion on everything from climate change, to abortion, to election security to Pepe Le Pew becomes narrower and narrower.

BTW, Intercollegiate Studies Institute is a non-profit educational organization that promotes conservative thought on college campus. If you can and care to support their efforts you can do so here.
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Miracle Man. At age 98, Laurence Jaffe has produced his first feature film.