If cancelled . .

Kay Coles James thinks for herself. She also speaks up for herself. And she doesn't allow herself to be ramrodded by critics who want to shut her up. Over four decades of lived experience as a black woman and a public figure, she's learned some strategies she'd like to pass on.

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Here's a short summary of her advice to you and me. 

1) Ignore cancel culture. 2) Make sure you have your facts straight, and tell the truth. 3) When you're wrong, admit it. 4) Don't be cruel, don't cancel others. 5) Your words should line up with your life. Don't be a hypocrite.  6) Speak carefully, not recklessly. 

"[S]peak up for what you know is right. You will inspire others to follow your lead, and when more people speak up, we’ll reach enough critical mass to eventually cancel “cancel culture.”

from Washington Times

Dad vs CRT 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Andrew Gutmann, the dad in yesterday's post, wrote a clarifying update to his story. He does stand against the racism his daughter's school seems to support, but his primary concern is not race but rather the school's unwillingness to debate and interact about their "antiracism" policies.

Unwillingness to debate? That should ring a bell. It's the refusal to engage, to listen to each other where there's disagreement. It says to the whistle blower, "We're right, you're wrong, case closed." It's cancel culture. 

In the time since his letter became public, he's heard from several thousand people who sound desperate and powerless. Devastated parents see their young kids come home from school loaded with guilt for the color of their skin, sometimes turning against their families. Grieving teachers are forced to teach divisive, racist doctrines that demonize their own students.

from The Hill

(cont'd tomorrow, another Dad taking a stand for his babies)

Foe to friend 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Atheist (Boghossian) and Christian (Miller) are now friends, fighting on the same side. They have travelled together and spoken together on the same platform. What do they have in common? They both believe in freedom of speech and objective truth. Passionately.

Miller, like me and most believers, has always defended the rights of people who disagree with us to speak what they believe. It was no great leap for him to fight cancel culture on college campuses. But it probably was a leap for Boghossian because his own preferred politics on the left tends to silence dissenting opinions.

As a Portland professor, Boghossian invited a speaker to campus in 2017 to talk about possible biological gender differences. "Social justice advocates" on campus responded with tying his name to the Nazi swastika, with threats, and with a bag of feces. He says they silence and punish diverse views, becoming "what they claim to hate - thugs and bullies."

He (like Robert George) believes that speaking what you believe to be true in spite of danger . . is a moral duty. It's being suppressed where he worked, at Portland State University. So,  putting his money where his mouth is, he resigned. 

From his resignation letter: "Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university’s truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Teacher vs CRT 3

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

You undoubtedly noticed that the situation in Grace Church School of New York violates the first amendment of the U.S. constitution. The right to speak freely, within limits of civility, is an American freedom that should be (and used to be) encouraged in every American school. 

The Head of School admits to Rossi that he has grave doubts about what's going on, that the school is "demonizing white people for being born" in this "anti-racism" ideology of theirs: 

So is he, like the teachers and students at his school, forced to accept concepts that he doesn't believe? Who has the authority to change this if it's not the Head of School? Doesn't he have a moral responsibility to do what is right?

He has let his fear of cancel culture silence him, just like they're doing to students. That's not a moral position. On the contrary - it's a moral virtue to speak and fight for what you believe to be true even if it's going to cost you.

Awokening 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Woke values just don't sync with most Americans. We don't want to cancel everybody who disagrees with us and don't want to be cancelled if we're pretty sure men can't get pregnant.

Babylon Bee manages to help us laugh about it just a little👇 

from Babylon Bee

Free speech 4

All choices are trade-offs. All values are trade-offs. One option is chosen, the other options are not chosen. Every option has a set of advantages and disadvantages. You pick a set when you make a choice or prefer one value over another.

To value free speech over restricted or coerced speech was the choice of America's founders, and that choice was affirmed by generations of Americans . . until today. Now, some choose to ban what you or I want to say if they don't approve of it.

Colleges and universities used to pride themselves on valuing open discussion regardless of who might disagree. Now administration or student groups routinely cancel speakers, or use intimidation to silence the person whose opinion they don't like.

Their choice to restrict speech gives them the comfort of not having to defend their opinion against the analysis of a critic. But there's also a problem: maybe they have missed something. Maybe they don't possess all truth. Maybe they're wrong sometimes.

(cont'd tomorrow)

Why free speech

Since supposed "experts" sometimes lose their ability to think for us (the professor in yesterday's post), we need to think through the issue for ourselves.

The most powerful case for free speech? No person or group is always right, or should force all of us to believe what they believe. Nobody is perfect. Here's a re-post from 2020:

FREE SPEECH 4

To value free speech over restricted or coerced speech was the choice of America's founders, and that choice was affirmed by generations of Americans . . until today. Now, some choose to ban what you or I want to say if they don't approve of it.

Colleges and universities used to pride themselves on valuing open discussion regardless of who might disagree. Now administration or student groups routinely cancel speakers, or use intimidation to silence the person whose opinion they don't like.

Their choice to restrict speech means they don't have to defend their opinion against the analysis of a critic. 

But there's a problem: maybe they've missed something. Maybe they don't possess all truth. Maybe they're wrong sometimes.

Library's tree

According to a Massachusetts public library, someone or some people were uncomfortable with the library's traditional Christmas tree. So the library chose to cancel it this year.

What about people uncomfortable with the lack of the tree? Don't they count? I wonder if the obvious question was asked: what makes you uncomfortable with a Christmas tree?

Un-woke people like myself are uncomfortable about dissenting against decisions like this one. You can be cancelled at your job or in your club or neighborhood when you stand up for what you really think. 

But the community didn't back down in this case and the tree went up. A local woman says, "[T]his Christmas tree has brought out just a beautiful unity of different voices, people that I think come from different political ideologies, different ethnicities, different religions. But they all got behind this, and it’s a beautiful thing." 

from Washington Examiner

Cancelled

This week's posts centered on Dr. Robert George urging us to stand up to "cancel culture" in spite of the possible punishment we may have to endure. The price can be high. If a man loses his job, for example, his family will also pay a price.

Watch this man, if you have the time, as he tells his story to Eric Metaxas. He was a professor of journalism, "stoned and bloodied" by an online mob.

Masks and NYT

Governmental orders to wear masks did not impede the spread of the covid pandemic. Mask mandates didn't achieve their purpose according to the New York Times. Unnecessarily isolating and hiding people from each other was an unintended consequence.

Finally mainstream media is publishing a correction. In this case, government policy did not "follow the science."

The science was published way early in the pandemic by 239 scientists. Why did the World Health Organization (WHO) not follow it? 

"Follow the science!" is the demand you sometimes hear from experts, who may not always be right. Questions and civil debate are never out of order! Cancel culture wants to shout down all challenges - Twitter and Youtube are just two examples. But we need free speech, to make sure that truth is not suppressed.

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Free speech 5

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Restricting speech is a path to coercion. It's shortsighted. At some point you will strongly disagree with some point of political correctness and the force of restricted speech will come down on your own point of view. 

As a professor at Cornell University says, "There is no alternative to free speech, because every controversial topic has a substantial group of people who view it as hate speech."

Free speech respects the dignity of other people, and your own. Free speech enables us to pursue the truth. Those are advantages. The disadvantage is that voices we don't like will also be heard. But free speech is worth it.

Evolutionary biologist and militant atheist Richard Dawkins speaks and writes books to convince the world that all life on earth resulted from random chance and natural selection. Philosopher Paul Nelson believes that all life shows evidence of intelligent design. Their opinions are far apart.

Normally welcome on any college campus, Dawkins was disinvited from speaking at Trinity College, Dublin, because of politically incorrect comments he recently made. Was Nelson happy to hear of the cancellation? No. He signed a petition to uphold the original invitation, though he objects to Dawkins' message.

Nelson says, "I think Dawkins is wrong about a great many things, but cancel culture destroys truth-seeking." Like me, Paul Nelson believes speech must be free. It's worth it.

Speak up 3

Follow-up to these posts

"Speak up!" is urged by a number of people I've written about on this blog. Speak up when you want to dissent, to tell the truth, instead of taking the easy way out. Speak up, even when you know certain people won't like it and may try to make you suffer for it. (But use the good advice of Kay Coles James when you do it.)

You probably have a "community" of like-minded people--call them your "tribe"--who agree with you on important things. What you might be surprised about is that a lot of Americans outside of your tribe agree with you on the importance of speaking what you believe. (A point that I've heard Vivek Ramaswamy make more than once.)

For example, a gay man writing for FAIR objects strongly to the assumption that he's defined by a mythical "LGBTQ community": "it reinforces an us vs. them mentality, and . . fuels division at a time when Americans desperately need to come together. . . and is frequently conjured as a cudgel wielded by the left to blame and shame." He doesn't like cancel culture, either. 

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Don't just assume that other people are woke or leftist. Sometimes Americans of other tribes believe, as you do, in telling the truth and speaking up. 

from Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism

Europe burns 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Another immigrant to Ireland (since 2013) added fuel to the fire when he killed a young teacher jogging after work. A "Slovakian national" was found guilty of the murder last September. 

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The woman's fiance said it sickens him that “someone can come to this country, be fully supported in terms of social housing, social welfare, and free medical care for over 10 years…never hold down a legitimate job, and never once contribute to society” before committing “such a horrendous evil act of incomprehensible violence”.

For this he was called "far-right." But he is not a lunatic for questioning immigration policy.

In a tolerant and democratic society, citizens would be listened to and answered when they object. What their leaders would not do in a respectful, democratic society is what they did do: insult them, shut them down, call them names, cancel or silence them, and ignore their concerns.

from "Ireland's pro-immigration elites are driving the country to the brink."

(cont'd tomorrow)

Free speech 6

Follow-up to these posts

A candidate now running for the office of President of the United States is actually the nephew of a former U.S. president. He would like to remind us of his familial connection to the former president by tweeting this photo of himself as a child with his famous uncle:

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Back in the days when his uncle was the president (1961-1963), there was no serious challenge to the rights protected by the first amendment to the Constitution. The right to speak freely of what you believe to be true was considered foundational to America - by just about everyone. Regrettably, that's no longer obvious to many of our people. They like freedom of speech for themselves, but cancel people they don't agree with.

That former president, however, did believe in free speech: "We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

Surgeon story

"I find it really interesting that the people that are the most passionate about America are immigrants. It's like the people who live here are so ungrateful . . ." 

Why are Americans ungrateful? Dr. Sheila Nazarian thinks it's because they don't know the alternative. 

She does know, by her own and her family's experience.

After coming to America as a child, and with difficulty, she now describes herself as a mom of three, an entrepreneur, a plastic surgeon, a philanthropist - and most recently an activist. 

As she puts it, "I will not be able to sleep at night if I don't say anything." Though afraid of cancel culture, she thought "who am I if I can't speak to my core values? . . I'm not going to let what happened in Iran happen in the United States."

Cancelled 2

Amanda Ensing, so inspired by beauty, started building her make-up platform early and earned the sponsorship of companies like Sephora.

Daughter of an immigrant from Puerto Rico, Amanda calls herself pro-family, pro-God, pro-freedom. When she started expressing her views on social media, she discovered the "thought police." She tried hard to avoid offending anyone but found herself a target of cancel culture.

Eventually she decided to "grow a spine" and "be unapologetically myself." She believes that "speaking up" was the best decision she ever made and recommends it: "You speaking up will be the most liberating thing you will ever do."

Xu on CRT

Kenny Xu is another person of color who takes a stand against the racism of CRT and its attendant cancel culture, as Africa Brooke did (yesterday's post). Undeterred by fear of cancellation for his non-PC opinion, he claims that system-wide racial discrimination in America is in the past. 

As evidence, he cites the example of Vietnamese immigrants coming to the U.S. without even the ability to speak English. In one generation they were able to succeed to the point that their children achieved college degrees at a higher rate than even white Americans.

“Asian Americans showed that critical race theory cannot be true.” 

He published his book this month:

from Human Events

(cont'd tomorrow)

Foe to friend 4

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Atheist (Boghossian) and Christian (Miller) are now friends, fighting on the same side. They have travelled together and spoken together on the same platform. What do they have in common? They both believe in freedom of speech and objective truth. Passionately.

Miller, like me and most believers, has always defended the rights of people who disagree with us to speak what they believe. It was no great leap for him to fight cancel culture on college campuses. But it probably was a leap for Boghossian because his own preferred politics on the left tends to silence dissenting opinions.

As a Portland professor, Boghossian invited a speaker to campus in 2017 to talk about possible biological gender differences. "Social justice advocates" on campus retaliated by tying his name to the Nazi swastika, by making threats and leaving a bag of feces. He says they silence and punish diverse views, becoming "what they claim to hate - thugs and bullies."

Like Robert George, Peter believes that speaking what you believe to be true in spite of danger . . is a moral duty. It's being suppressed where he worked, at Portland State University. So,  putting his money where his mouth is, he resigned. 

From his resignation letter: "Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university’s truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions. This has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly."

Must hide 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

Some call him "Robbie" George. His advice to his twitter followers who know they will be "cancelled" if they advocate for their convictions (yesterday's post) . . will not be followed by all or even most of them. They will pay a price for it if they do open up, and they have much to lose.

Cancel culture bullies intimidate and injure rather than civilly engage with people of a different opinion. But George tells us to stand up to it anyway.

We've all heard the threat, "you're on the wrong side of history, history will judge you," but George says that's an empty threat. Speaking as a Christian, he says History will not judge you but God will.

"[God] will want to know from each of us whether we sought the truth with a pure and sincere heart, whether we sought to live by the truth authentically and with integrity, and whether we stood up for the truth, speaking it out loud and in public, bearing the costs  . . ."