Confronting "Hate Speech" with Free Speech
Jonathan Rauch, Brookings Institute senior fellow and author of The Constitution of Knowledge, is a liberal who’s concerned about free speech. In this excerpt from our recent conversation, he discusses the history of canceling of gay people in America and argues that fighting harmful ideas with evidence and winning arguments is the way to bring about change.
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I have to say that it seems that Glenn, usually reliant on data and evidence (n > 30 samples) is very reliant on anecdotes about his son here. I'm a Catholic. What our catechism is accused of saying here, it says. I stand by it and by the Church. That doesn't mean that I'm going to accost anyone, or that anyone is going to kill themselves now that the CCC says what it says, or that Catholics believing what we believe is really even wrong. It can be thought wrong here in a secular context, but that's not the end of the argument. I like the pluralistic argument put forth by Mr. Rausch, and I think many, many of us religious traditionalists were ready to make this accommodation in the culture with our LGBT fellow citizens until Big Business and Government got involved and started to make LGBT matters a moral litmus test for the people of this country. We have to dissent and disagree vehemently with each other, and that has to be OK, or this whole thing, this whole enterprise is over. Glenn Loury should take a moment and understand Christian and Catholic anthropology before simply falling back on anecdote and emotion.
His so-called "argument" is as old as classical liberalism, which is better represented by today's right than the left. He is only restating what we already knew 300 years ago.
But Marxists don't care. The whole point of left wing totalitarianism is restriction of individual liberty, including speech, all under the banner of the common good.