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We conservatives have been laughing for years at the "snowflakes," at the universities with their "trigger words" and their "misgendering" and their "safe spaces," their counselors standing by to calm the frightened children when the wrong candidate wins an election. We laughed because it's ridiculous and pathetic to imagine these erstwhile institutions of enlightenment catering to such childish fragility.
In retrospect, it is clear that it was a mistake to laugh. This was all dreadfully serious, even if hard for serious people to take seriously. The "safe spaces" we all mocked were places to which one could retreat to avoid being harmed, to avoid being put in danger, by exposure to discomfiting ideas. That was the message and the kids took it to heart: our schools were teaching our kids that the expression of an idea is itself a dangerous thing. Last week was the tragic apotheosis of this mistaken instruction put into practice.
We won't fix this by telling our politicians to stop saying stupid things about "civil war" and "punching back twice as hard" and "the end of democracy." The more urgently we call for them to tone it down, the more we seem to reify the illiberal message that the expression of ideas is itself dangerous. And anyway, these people aren't bellwethers; they pander to the zeitgeist, and today's zeitgeist is a snowflake.
This isn't a job for our nation's ersatz leaders. Rather, it's our job as citizens blessed with the right to speak freely. We need to make a mockery of verbal timidity. We need to demonstrate that we don't subscribe to this unworthy notion that some ideas are too dangerous to say out loud, and that we similarly reject the corollary that any idea is too sacred to be openly challenged. We need to speak our minds as fearlessly as we're able. We need to reclaim the public space for the heretic and the heterodox and the crank. If we hold a view strongly, even an unpopular view, especially an unpopular view, we need to say it.
So go out and say it.
Say it for Charlie.
Discussion (34)
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I disagree just slightly, Hank. I agree with your call for us to be robust in our comments and speech and the rest of what you called for from us. But I think we should also demand robustly that our supposed leaders speak out, too. Cowering in their corners is no longer acceptable, and being the "nice guy" is ridiculous.
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This is why Trump is President.
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Ideas are dangerous things. So are dogs and cats. Doesn't meant we can't make friends with them.
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Susan, we don't disagree: I said we shouldn't call on our leaders to tone it down. We should certainly encourage them to speak up. I want everyone to speak more boldly. But we need to change the national mood where speech is concerned, and that's something I think must come from the bottom up: I want the snowflakes and their antifa goons to know that even those of us who don't have private security won't be cowed.
Not their expression, Arahant. Until they're put into action, ideas are no more dangerous than a dog's bark.
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One of the greatest enemies of freedom is "Public Education". If you look at the history of it, the intent was always totalitarian. Much of the structure was patterned on factories, with the intention of "manufacturing" a subservient class of proles, de-facto serfs, toiling for the benefit of an educated overclass. Think of the novel Brave New World as the template for this vision.
There was a brief period after WWII when it appeared that public schools could deliver an actual education for the benefit of a free people. This didn't last and it's time to see it as the enemy within it always was.
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