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Quote of the Day: Popular Speech
“Politically popular speech has always been protected; even the Jews were free to say,’Heil Hitler!'”* – Isaac Asimov
Dr. A may have been a crazy lefty, but he was dead right on this one. It is always easy to say what is politically popular. America’s Founding Fathers also understood this, which was why they added the First Amendment to the Constitution. To protect unpopular political speech. Or unpopular speech in general.
For a while, protection of unpopular speech was as American as apple pie. The famous quote often attributed to Voltaire, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” was actually written by an American in 1906, historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall, labeled as a “Voltairean principle.” I doubt Voltaire would actually have espoused that view (for numerous reasons, including the French tendency towards extremism). I don’t doubt that it was a principle believed by many, if not most 20th-century Americans. It is (or was) an American principle.
Today, that belief is under siege. We imported the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory from Germany around World War II. (Thanks to Hitler chasing them out of Germany.) It has since infected American academia to the point where it, along with Marxism, are the dominant philosophies. (Come to think, Marxism and Progressivism also both came from Germany. I am seeing a trend here.) For them, anything that deviates from the narrative is heresy and must be crushed.
So, now we have our educational system and the tech barons running Facebook, Twitter, and Google policing our speech. (In large part because what they are selling in the marketplace of ideas are shoddy goods that cannot be sold when alternatives are present.) Now we have the Justice Department making common cause with them, calling those who disagree with the dialectic “domestic terrorists.”
We have to fight back and challenge this view. If we do not the inevitable end will be serfdom. That is why voices like David Chappelle’s are so valuable. He is taking the fight to the enemy. Victory will require a hard fight. But if we win we have to do something that is harder still – protect politically unpopular speech once we do win. Because that is the American way.
No one ever said it was going to be easy. Freedom isn’t free. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — including being vigilant to prevent becoming tyrants ourselves.
* For the slow – or modern progressives (but I repeat myself) – Asimov’s unspoken finish to the sentence was “in Nazi Germany.” The Woke folk probably never read about Nazi Germany and likely believe a Nazi is someone who disagrees with them – including religious Jews. They probably will never catch the internal contradiction because the historically ignorant don’t know about the Holocaust. The also can never be convinced Nazis were socialists. National socialists.
Published in General
Interesting characterizing Asimov as a crazy lefty. My own recollection of his writings is that he was exploring the tension between individual and societal good. But he certainly supported freedom of individuals as the font of creativity and genius.
He called himself a liberal, and his fans and fellow writers largely called him a liberal, but there are good reasons for thinking he was actually a leftist.
He was a big believer in the masses being guided – for their own good, of course – by an elite who would lead them in the One Right Way. That was the underlying theme behind his Foundation series. It was nudge writ large. I’m sorry, that’s crazy. Everyone has their own goals and dreams and forcing people to what you believe is best for them is the road to tyranny. Moreover he was convinced the smartest person in the room always had the best answer. Arrogant and wrong. But he was a genius and that is a blind spot many geniuses have.
Does anyone else remember the exchange between Asimov and Larry Niven on what they dubbed “the Marching Moron problem?” I think that this appeared in an issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine sometime in the early 80s – some time after Skylab reentered the atmosphere anyway. Dr. A was in favor of government “helping” the goals of the Zero Population Growth evangelists, whereas Niven’s solution was definitely more capitalistic.
That’s was a major problem with Woodrow Wilson, the progressives, and the New Dealers. I continue to hear it today, though not in those exact words.
In case you missed it, this advice from Abigail Shrier to Princeton students also addresses the need speak the truth no matter the cost.
Yep. He (Asimov) may have had the world’s most outsized ego; excepting Obama, of course.
And the accompanying insecurity. He was a proud member of Mensa. In my experience with Mensa members, it is an organization with members whose intelligence was only exceeded by their insecurity.
How about “only exceeded by their lack of wisdom”?
Well . . . yes.
And their need to compare scores.
Asimov concealed the Communist ideology of friends and associates, describing them in his autobiographies only as “anti-fascist”–a common rhetorical dodge of actual Communists. (That should sound familiar to anyone who has been paying attention to the recent and continuing mob violence of Antifa thugs.) Specifically, in his teens and twenties Asimov was heavily involved with the Futurians, a group of New York science fiction fans, some of whom went on to become authors and editors. They were very far-left-wing–so much so, that some were actual members of the Communist Party. They felt that science fiction should first and foremost serve the political goals of the left . (Literary and scientific and storytelling values should take second place.) In the years leading up to WWII they unsuccessfully fought with other fans to impose those demands on the science fiction community at large. A charming bunch of totalitarians.
Asimov also strongly criticized George Orwell for paying too much attention to the evils of Communism and too little to fascism. (This in a review of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm.) Asimov completely ignored Orwell’s many writings about fascism, misrepresenting Orwell as being unconcerned with fascism and merely indulging a personal obsession with Stalinism stemming from his horrifying experiences in the Spanish Civil War. (Orwell’s interests can be verified in the four volume Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters.) Furthermore, Animal Farm was published in 1945 and Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949, at which time fascist Germany and Italy had been defeated but Communism was a continuing and grave menace. What was Asimov thinking?
That’s simple. He was thinking he was the smartest man in the room and that lesser intelligences didn’t matter.
For a while in the years before WWII there was a love-fest between American Progressives and European fascists: The Americans praised Mussolini and Mussolini returned the favor.
He was a technocrat for sure.
Note this assertion that Asimov makes:
So even in the 1980’s Asimov believed in the zero-sum theory of economic progress. Imbecilic! But perhaps it helps explain his fondness for technocratic socialism.
Niven has always been on the right in all his writing that I can see. Mostly, it seems, because he could rationally see that none of the solutions of the left, worked.
The comments have been an education on Asimov, and I thank you.
Supporting that observation: His portrayal of the United Nations in his Known Space stories has grown darker over time.
So has the United Nations. He’s just keeping up.
I don’t think Niven was a raving loony right-winger. Like Jerry Pournelle. Or me.
Heh. Indeed.
A loony who wanted everyone to be free and prosperous, who worked for better education for all, rich and poor, well, that’s my kind of loony. He is missed.
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Yeah, progressive philosophy was not strictly an import. Ideas that American progressives came up with were also spread in Germany.
Indeed. See, for example, the 19th century novel Looking Backward: very popular at the time and thoroughly fascistic. Still gets occasional praise even today from Marxists.
Probably why the Democrats own the ends of the education distribution, at least from exit poll data ten to fifteen years ago. People with no high-school diploma and those with PhDs were more likely to vote for Democrats. I’m assuming those with PhDs think they know best and want to lord over those who are “too stupid to make the right choice”. One party is more for telling you how to live your life and that’s where they gravitate.
I’ve never read anything by Asimov, but Fantastic Voyage is on my TBR, so this is good background for me to have – thanks, y’all!