I knew something was up. The stats on visitors to my webpages had gone up considerably in recent days. Usually the visitors to my personal webpage are very multinational. Now they were almost all from local IP addresses. That got my attention. And these visitors were all looking at only a few of my pages that held content which could be considered controversial. I might be dumb, but I\u2019m not stupid. I was waiting for the shoe to drop. The next day it did. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ironically, as I process these facts I read the following this morning in the NY Times<\/a> about what adults supposedly don\u2019t understand about the lives of today\u2019s teenagers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhat quickly became clear in our latest Times Opinion focus group, and what may have accounted for some tentativeness, is that several of the teenagers felt worried about being \u2018judged\u2019 about what they said. No matter if the answer was their opinion \u2014 some were worried about saying the \u2018wrong\u2019 thing. \u2018If you\u2019re not super educated on a topic, it\u2019s scary to put your opinion out there, because you don\u2019t want to be wrong,\u2019 Charlotte said at another point in the focus group.\u201d<\/p>\nBy Patrick Healy and Lulu Garcia-Navarro 12 Teenagers on What Adults Don\u2019t Get About Their Lives<\/em><\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This weasley spirit of self-conscious fear of saying the wrong thing which all too often leads to self-censorship is a blight on the land, in my opinion. It is a cowardly stance which cramps the intellect and gets in the way of genuine learning. But it is understandable. I see students in class hesitant to make an argument, for fear of censure. They are afraid. I see adults all too ready to find fault in others. They are angry. The fear is real: the language police are watching. One wrong step, and there could be denunciation and negative consequences for your reputation. Emotions run high.<\/p>\n\n\n It is pathetic to watch these overwrought scolds, usually online via social media, get into a proper fit of pique. You would think these people have something better and more productive to do. But no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We Americans are supposed to be a free people. We are guaranteed under the law the right to free speech, and yet so many of us live in fear of our speech. Fear of what others might say if we say what we really think and feel. Fear of the condemnation of others. Fear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I recently watched the fabulous 2006 movie \u201cDas Leben der Anderen\u201d directed by Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck. It tells the story of an East German writer just before the fall of the Berlin Wall living in fear of the secret police \u2013 \u201cthe Stasi\u201d \u2013 who had the power to ruin him and anyone else in that country. The East Germans were looking over their shoulder in fear of what others might think \u2013 fear, fear, fear. You can see this writer craving a place where he can practice his craft without the fear of being investigated and ruined. His discipline of writing needs \u2013 demands \u2013 intellectual freedom. He doesn\u2019t have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Of course, the people in East Germany were living under a communist dictatorship. They did not have the legal rights we supposedly have in the United States: the ability to speak one\u2019s mind, the freedom to write without fear \u2013 the precious open space to create bravely and incisively. We have the 1st Amendment to protect us here in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or do we?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Increasingly anyone who wants to speak on a complicated, controversial topic has to watch their back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And younger Americans, who are the most plugged into the social media world of \u201ccanceled\u201d and \u201ccancellers,\u201d are the most sensitive to this form of language policing and social shaming \u2013 and are also the most eager to blame and shame.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So the intellectual landscape in the United States begins to look like a battlefield of explosive \u201cculture war\u201d topics where instead of allowing differing opinions and free exchange of ideas, one encounters \u201cculture warriors\u201d who divide the country into \u201callies\u201d and \u201cenemies\u201d \u2013 you are with us, or you are against us. They won\u2019t agree to disagree and go their own way. To be in the middle is most likely to get pushed around by both Left and Right. Look at this cartoon \u2013 <\/p>\n\n\n This is the polarized political world we live in: them versus us, with a precarious, shrinking political middle. Both the Left and the Right want to drive the other side into the wilderness and remove them from the dialectic. It is politics as a form of combat. It is about power and control. There are real penalties for making perceived linguistic missteps and being on the wrong team. In short, it is this: If you are not with us, you are against us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And so are we surprised when nobody says what they really think and feel? Where people live in fear of saying the wrong thing? And so thought becomes stale and cramped? Angry and intolerant?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Enough already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I refuse to live this way.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The writer in the movie lives in fear of what the Stasi will say about his books, and how he chooses to live. They can give almost his whole life a \u201cthumb\u2019s up\u201d or a \u201cthumb\u2019s down.\u201d He lives in communist East Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And we give this power to social media trolls and the like here in the United States?<\/p>\n\n\n\n My fellow Americans, take a good look at the people who make up these Internet mobs. Do they look like the types who would take way more pleasure in tearing down the lives and ideas of others than in developing any worthy ideas of their own? Is there a militant intolerance to their thinking? Do they have the air of the fanatic about them? Are they not zealots? Ideologues?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beware, beware. Because they are reading your blog. They are paying close attention to what you say in your college class or at the writers\u2019 conference. They might be recording it secretly with their iPhone. They pour over the posts from years ago in your social media accounts. They are looking for cues. They are drawing lines about what is acceptable in America and not, and they are flexing to exert cultural power to punish those who do not tow that line. They are looking for ammunition to shoot you with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not what America should be about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Some might say that the 1st Amendment only covers government suppression of speech, and that anyone else can decry the ideas of someone else and call for them to be shunned from the public space and\/or fired from their job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n True enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyone can call for someone to be fired for their words and ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But others have the right to ignore such a call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Americans have a right to their opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or do they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a free country?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or is it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Look at the below video from Yale Law School where two weeks ago a coterie of our contemporary young Red Guards<\/a> sought to turn an academic conference on free speech into a \u201cstruggle session\u201d Chairman Mao would approve of \u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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