Free speech, and so free thought, is under threat in America today.
We are not committed to it.
Free speech means nothing if it does not apply to people and ideas that upset us.
The doctrine of free speech is something like this: The people we most need to hear from are the people we least want to hear from.
But these days we are defining free speech and thought down and defining disagreement up.
Most political and cultural disagreement is now considered to be upsetting and divisive, rather than interesting and constructive. We Americans are no longer much interested in exploring each other’s minds and backgrounds. We are far more interested in defending our pet assumptions and prejudices.
Differing views therefore often create the feeling of being discomforted, even unsafe.
National Review writer Kevin D. Williamson was hired by The Atlantic magazine some months ago, presumably in the interest of intellectual diversity. When it became clear that, in his new home, he would continue to be himself and take positions quite at odds with most of The Atlantic family, and in his own voice, the office outrage was palpable and the Twitter mob descended. He had to be unhired within days of his hiring.
Andrew Sullivan left New York magazine saying: “A critical mass of the staff and management at New York Magazine and Vox Media no longer want to associate with me.” He said fellow staffers believed his columns were “physically harming” them. His sin? Though a classical liberal on many issues and generally Democratic in his politics, he dubs himself a conservative, and is conservative on such matters as immigration, religion and gender.
So, disagreement equals discomfort, which requires separation.
But discomforting disagreements may also be cast as “hate speech,” and therefore verbal assault: Suppose a person walks into a gathering of the self-anointed virtuous, maybe even an “inclusive” church, and mentions that he is a member of the NRA, protests at an abortion clinic each Saturday and voted for Donald Trump. He might be viewed as more than discomforting. He might be viewed as disturbing and perhaps threatening. He might well be asked to leave.
How about a Biden supporter at a “praise” church? Or a person in a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt in a rural Ohio or Pennsylvania greasy spoon? How would they be welcomed?
This sort of sensitivity — elevating disagreement to threat — was almost unheard of 50 years ago, when the country was more easygoing and people had a sense of proportion and humor about politics.
A friend of mine recently saw what he thought had been an up-’til-then pleasant date end abruptly. “You are too conservative for me,” the woman said. She left a small tip and exited, stage left.
Are relationships to be subjected to political litmus tests now? So much for Tracy and Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib” in which Tracy’s penultimate line is “vive la difference.” So much for James Carville and Mary Matalin, in real life. And so much for two equally great Americans and jurists, Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose affection for each other, opera and travel transcended their disagreements about everything else.
I want to live in an America in which affection transcends politics.
If one is more than the sum of his words and thoughts, and assumes this is true of others, he can love a man, as my Dad did his brother and his brother loved him, and think his politics daft.
But many, maybe most, of my fellow Americans currently disagree.
I have “blue” friends who not only will not contemplate living in a red state but will not vacation in one. I have “red” friends who say California and New York are Gomorrah and ought to secede from the union. They will not willingly travel to either.
A hard-core Trumper, maybe even a soft-core one, will tell you that that no mercy will be shown Joe Biden: He’s senile. He’s a dupe of the left. He gets no honeymoon, no chance, no assumption of goodwill from us. He’s not my president. “We will mess him up at every turn and create social as well as political havoc.”
By the way, that’s speech. It may be mean, stupid, unpatriotic and irresponsible. But it is protected.
Which brings me to point No. 2: There really is a slippery slope to canceled speech and canceled history.
If Winston Churchill, both Roosevelts and Thomas Jefferson, along with Dr. Seuss are canceled, no one is safe.
No one will ever be pure enough.
Pick a good guy, pick a hero — John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington — they all, all, had fatal flaws.
Human beings err. Great men and women have blind spots, fallow times, dark times.
What the cancel culture cannot see is that eventually, everyone gets gone. For if flaws in the good guys mean they must be erased, those of us who are more flawed and less gifted will surely not be spared.
And there will be someone who says “free speech for me but not thee — definitely not thee,” for each and every one of us.
There is a moral ground for free speech and we must till and tend it: It is the assumption of goodwill, comity, listening and a sense of fair play — four sides of humility.
For empiricists and historians, the necessity of a humble and open mind is the fickle nature of all times, trends and passing wisdom.
For the classical liberal, it is the marketplace of ideas: There are no ultimate truths so we must keep seeking, debating, learning and refining.
For the classical conservative, there are ultimate truths, like God, decency, loyalty, bravery and tradition. But these can only be revealed and defended in the arena — in the contest of words, ideas and leadership.
But left and right today are united in their illiberality, their intolerance and their arrogance. Both sides wish to live in echo chambers, be only with people like themselves, have their own facts and, indeed, their own journalism and history, which affirm their tribal oaths.
How do we till the ground for free speech?
Let the other guy speak. Assume he loves the country, too. Respect the things that he knows that you may not. Listen awhile. Let affection trump opinion.
Keith C. Burris is editor, vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers. Email: kburris@post-gazette.com.