undermining rights works both ways. This is going to happen: sooner or later, some CEO or sports team owner or similar is going to get ousted because he or she supports a woman’s right to an abortion, or the cause of Palestinian statehood, or opposes the death penalty. It’s inevitable. I can easily see someone suggesting that, say, Israel is an apartheid state, and watching as the media whips itself into a frenzy. And when that happens, the notion that there is no such thing as a violation of free speech that isn’t the government literally sending men with guns to arrest you will be just as powerful, and powerfully destructive, as it is now. So what will these people say? I don’t have the slightest idea how they will be able to defend the right of people to hold controversial, left-wing political ideas when they have come up with a thousand arguments for why the right to free expression doesn’t apply in any actual existing case. How will Isquith write a piece defending a CEO’s right to oppose Israeli apartheid? A sports owner’s right to do the same? I can’t see how he could– unless it really is just all about teams, and not about principle at all.
Read the whole thing. The piece came up in comments on this post.
Perhaps it is the case that generically certain forms of speech are being declared “unacceptable” by mobs, either on the right or the left. That is what concerns DeBoer.
Another possibility, raised in the comments on my earlier post, is that the progressive “elect” is confident of its moral superiority and its dominance of the media. Hence, it does not have any worries about becoming a victim of speech suppression by the mob.
Going back to Joseph Bottum’s thesis, I think it is a fair worry that politics has become infused with religious meaning. His thesis is that progressives, as the heirs to mainline Protestantism, hold the upper hand in this religious contest. So even if I am correct, and there is an element of religiosity in all political outlooks, the religion that most threatens to become the established church in this country is progressivism.
I hope that America’s historical resistance to an established church asserts itself in this case. That is, I hope that the backlash against the religious conformity of the progressive movement will prove ultimately to be more powerful than the movement itself.
As a reader of both you and deBoer, I am glad you came across his piece. I doubt you two will agree on much, but you are both two writers whose approach–to attempt to charitably read one’s opponents while not trying to hide deep disagreement–I enjoy. Freddie has had some great exchanges with Michael Brendan Dougherty, someone whose views trend conservative/traditional. Maybe the three of you could form a three axes club!
The thing about Sterling is almost everyone with an opinion is wrong. We have no idea what he meant let alone if he acted on anything. I’ll lay odds that 50/50 he just didn’t want his best gal bringing Ray J to the box.
Even if there is an element of religiosity in all political outlooks (BTW, is libertarianism exempt from this?), the threat of coercion comes from the dominant group, which may be reasonably confident of retaining that position for the foreseeable future and therefore does not worry about retribution from those it persecutes. This is the position the Left is in today. The conservative/classical liberal “religion,” if that’s what it is, is treated, as a practical matter, as a “tolerated” dissenting sect, like Catholics in late 18th Century Britain. Speaking from a right-of-center perspective on hot button issues is a good way to get yourself fired in the corporate and professional world.
DeBoer’s suggestion that anybody might pay a price for calling Israel an apartheid state is just ludicrous. Given that older Jewish voters still like to think of themselves as supporters of Israel, mainstream Democratic politicians still have to pay lip service (and, in the case of Obama and Kerry, that’s obviously all it is) to friendship with Israel. Hence Kerry’s phony apology for having let his real views (and those of his boss) slip out.
Right. It will have to be an oppressed group. Rednecks are fair game for example because they are still white.
I second the idea for a three-axis blog, with Kling and two other reasonable, charitable people.
The real turning point will come when a large portion of the PC police realize that supporting Israel will soon turn them into the next Paula Deen.
The analogy to religion muddies the discussion by referencing causal chains that are ambiguously applicable. Many progressives (or whatever -ives) are simply certain in what they believe to be right, based upon their preferences. You may as well decry the religiousness of someone who prefers hamburgers.