The Silenced Majority

  • This wasn’t some­thing I meant to write about, but it’s Greg’s fault for send­ing me this great arti­cle from Peggy Noo­nan. The topic is a grow­ing inabil­ity by some — I might almost say “by the usual sus­pects” to live with the idea of free speech:

    On Oct. 2, on Katie Couric’s “CBS Evening News,” in the seg­ment called “Free Speech,” the father of a boy killed at Columbine shared his views on the deeper causes of the recent shoot­ings in Amish coun­try. Brian Rohrbough said vio­lence entered our schools when we threw God out of them. “This coun­try is in a moral freefall. For over two gen­er­a­tions the pub­lic school sys­tem has taught in a moral vac­uum.… We teach there are no moral absolutes, no right or wrong, and I assure you the mur­der of inno­cent chil­dren is always wrong, includ­ing abor­tion. Abor­tion has dimin­ished the value of chil­dren.” This was not exactly the usual mush.

    Mr. Rohrbough was quickly informed he was not part of the legit­i­mate debate, either. Howard Kurtz in the Wash­ing­ton Post: “The deci­sion … to air his views prompted a storm of crit­i­cism, some of it within the ranks of CBS News.” A blog critic: Grief makes peo­ple say “stu­pid” things, but “what made them put this man on tele­vi­sion?” Good ques­tion. How did they neglect to silence him?


    When did it become impos­si­ble for these folks to con­sider that other points of view besides their own might have merit? In the last 20 years, we’ve had the free speech mantra drilled into us: It doesn’t mat­ter if Larry Flynt is a pornog­ra­pher and creep, he’s enti­tled to free speech. It doesn’t mat­ter if the KKK are big­ots, they’re enti­tled to free speech. It doesn’t mat­ter if pro­test­ers are obscene, dis­rup­tive, dis­repect­ful and ill-informed, they’re enti­tled to free speech.

    And if that is cor­rect in its the­ory, why is it so hard to con­sider opin­ions like Mr. Rohrbough’s as wor­thy of the same con­sid­er­a­tion, espe­cially on a pro­gram seg­ment called Free Speech.

    This could all just be more bloggy cav­illing, but I hope not. I’m not grip­ing because it’s unfair, though it is. One point of view is being poorly rep­re­sented on the main­stream venues of news and enter­tain­ment. (The alter­na­tive media — talk radio, Fox News, the right blo­gos­phere — cer­tainly give less plat­form space to lib­eral views, but those who aren’t lis­ten­ers or view­ers might be sur­prised how much less cen­sor­ship occurs. And in spite of the huge pop­u­lar­ity of those venues, in the pub­lic debate, alt-media are always regarded as posers and rene­gades beneath contempt.)

    But more than whether or not it’s unfair, I’m con­cerned about the direc­tion this has taken in the last few years. It’s alarm­ing to look at where we are. Out­lets of con­ser­v­a­tive opin­ion sprung up in the 80′s in response to the some­what mono­lithic lib­eral epis­to­mol­ogy that was in force. The response to that nat­ural vent­ing has been a slow increase of blood pres­sure, vol­ume and the ambi­ent level of self-righteousness from the left. There has been a steady increase in the num­ber of peo­ple on the left who seem not only intol­er­ant, but proud of their intol­er­ance and more will­ing to embrace intol­er­ance. More tellingly, they’re less will­ing to accept the stric­tures of democ­racy when lib­er­al­ism is on the line.

    Stu­dents, stars, media movers, aca­d­e­mics: They are always say­ing they want debate, but they don’t. They want their vision imposed. They want to win. And if the win doesn’t come quickly, they’ll rush the stage, curse you out, attempt to intimidate.

    And they don’t always rec­og­nize them­selves to be bul­ly­ing. So full of their right­eous­ness are they that they have lost the abil­ity to judge them­selves and their manner.

    And all this con­tin­ues to come more from the left than the right in America.

    Which is, at least in terms of tim­ing, strange. The left in Amer­ica — Democ­rats, lib­er­als, Bush haters, skep­tics of many sorts — seems to be poised for a sig­nif­i­cant elec­toral vic­tory. Do they under­stand that if it comes it will be not because of Colum­bia, Streisand, O’Donnell, et al., but in spite of them?

    The lib­eral excesses of the 70′s got push­back from con­ser­v­a­tives in the 80′s, and the advent of new tech­nolo­gies has opened up a won­der­ful era for hear­ing both sides of a story. I can still remem­ber the expres­sion “Silent Major­ity” — a way to describe the many, many cen­trist and right-leaning peo­ple who used to go unheard. It may seem to those who sim­ply want every­one to shut up that with Rush Lim­baugh on the air and Fox News cap­tur­ing a lion’s share of the view­er­ship, con­ser­v­a­tives today are any­thing but silent. But I sup­pose that’s my point. In response to the explo­sion of oppor­tu­nity for con­ser­v­a­tives to actu­ally be heard, Screechy Lib­er­als* seem more than ever to sim­ply regard free speech as a lux­ury we can no longer afford. It used to be fash­ion­able to “dia­logue”; now it’s more fash­ion­able to silence the oppo­si­tion.
    *****

    * Foot­note: “Screechy Lib­er­als” (SL) is a term I’m using to try to get at the heart of the issue with­out offend­ing oth­ers need­lessly. Not all lib­er­als are SLs. They only rep­re­sent a frac­tion of the lib­eral spec­trum that can’t speak in a nor­mal tone. If you are just some­one who likes to con­sider all points of view, or is sym­pa­thetic to clas­sic lib­er­al­ism, please don’t think that I mean you. If you have even read this far, I can assure you you’re not an SL. Their pan­creas would have exploded and they’d have the dic­tio­nary out to see if there’s an adjec­tive that com­bines the f-word with ‘unfit to live.’

    Other dis­claimers: Yes, I know that con­ser­v­a­tives can be intol­er­ant as well, but I don’t see the pat­tern form­ing amongst lead­ing con­ser­v­a­tive voices to let debate give way to cen­sor­ship. There are a few bone­heads like Ann Coul­ter and Michael Sav­age, but for all the strokes they induce on the left, they don’t actu­ally have a large or grow­ing con­ser­v­a­tive fan­base. And their pal­try num­ber doesn’t stack up to those on the left like Michael Moore, Noam Chom­sky, Howard Dean, Ward Churchill, Char­lie Rangel, Jimmy Carter (sorry to include an ex-prez in the stack, but he’s lost his mind recently), Alec Bald­win, Cindy Shee­han, etc. etc. etc.

    So no, I don’t think that right and left are the same thing. Not try­ing to silence dis­sent myself … just say­ing that we can pick up the con­ver­sa­tion from there. ;-)


    Related posts:

    1. Alito and pandering
    2. Bush nom­i­nated … who now?
    3. Heck­uva speech going on
    4. A touch of Miers zeitgeist
    5. On silence (again)

    October 13th, 2006 | Grace | No Comments |

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