The UK Daily Mail and Fox News Just Picked Up My Article On Censorship
The UK Daily Mail and Fox News Just Picked Up My Article On Censorship
We will not be silenced.
First, I’d like to offer my profuse apologies for being so quiet the past few weeks. I was recently a panelist and presenter at FreedomFest in Memphis, and I’ve spent most of the past month preparing for it. It was truly an inspiring event. I met Tulsi Gabbard and Michael Shellenberger, had dinner with Jennifer Sey and Bret Weinstein, and listened to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Matt Taibbi give powerful speeches on censorship. My presentation, The Illusion of Division, received a standing ovation! (I’ll post the link when it’s available on YouTube).
In the meantime, I wanted to share some exciting news I woke up to this morning. Fox published my article (as an Op-Ed) about the impact of transgender inclusion on the rights of women and lesbians, and The Daily Mail picked it up a few hours later.
This issue is quickly going mainstream, and I think it’s only a matter of time before sensible, level-headed Americans become aware of the insanity that has been quietly brewing under the radar. Thanks to all of you for your continued support as we stand up for what’s right and make our voices heard!
Bought and read your book recently. Really enjoyed your perspective and thank you for having the courage to speak out when there is so much personal risk. I have historically voted for democrats, live in a liberal area and most of my friends are liberal. Unfortunately the WP is our hometown paper and most of my friends believe everything they read (I used to myself). It’s hard to have conversations about cultural or political issues without sounding a little crazy in these groups. Especially when all the major institutions seem to be on board with the insanity of our current state. I recently decided that I would try the approach of not talking about politics at all with friends, like back to n the 70’s when it was considered impolite. I’ll just stay educated and vote for who I vote for. But then I see women like you, Bari Weiss, etc and think I should do more. It’s hard (and scary) to rock the boat!!
Congrats! This exposure is a huge win. One thing not many people discuss is how many Americans have been virtually unaware of what is going on in this ideological witchhunt. I know that I've had to educate many of my liberal friends and even then, it takes some of them a while to wake up to how pernicious and blatantly unfair this whole thing is.
It's a war of language and labels conducted by adults who act like immature 7th graders but who are highly skilled in language arts and rhetoric, well organized and so convicted of their own rightness that they have become zealots. We all know that successive waves of zealots (and wars) destroyed the Library of Alexandria over several centuries. Precious archives of human knowledge lost forever. Not to mention the viciousness of religious wars in Europe which led to the formation of the United States itself. Zealotry has power and can be incredibly destructive.
But, as you suggest, if we calmly and unequivocally state our truth over and over again, it will erode the vengeful spirit that lies behind this rigid ideology. I have encountered increasing numbers of gays and lesbians in particular who are turning away from this extreme ideology. And there are many others.
Sadly, we recently lost a liberal who dedicated his life to practicing the tenets of liberal philosophy: to to encourage and lift up the disadvantaged and work for equal opportunity for all. Richard Bilkszto founded the Toronto chapter of FAIR and was an icon in the education system. He was bullied to death by a rapacious DEI (or should I say DIE) group backed by a weak school board and administration. Here was an iconic liberal - not the enemy by any stretch - who was working toward the goals of justice and equality and pro-humanism - and he was punished and hounded to death simply for having the courage to disagree with the extreme views of these grifters.
They don't care what color or creed anyone is. A few months ago, Tabia Lee, a diversity consultant, was let go by De Anza college in Cupertino for not preaching an extreme version of DEI. She was too "humanist" and wouldn't subscribe to dehumanizing white people. So, they fired her. And she is black. They don't care. They will have their revenge or die trying, even if they take out some of their own.
That said, a civilized society can't support this type of puritanical/witch hunt behavior without some kind of reckoning. I think the only reason that it's lasted so long is they have played a very clever long-game of institutional capture (ref. Paolo Freire) and they haven't made the mistake of leveraging deadly force or political coup, something that would wake people up very quickly. But, pushing heretics to suicide is ok. Destroying people's lives and careers is ok. Fragmenting and sometimes destroying families is okay. Terrorizing and publicly shaming people is ok. Tossing out basic rules of fairness and civility is ok. Introducing the concept of shaming people for the color of their skin into therapy is ok (yes, I'm looking at you APA - how many people will you drive to suicide with this tactic, eh?).
It's a pernicious, underhanded game catalyzed by a seriously toxic set of academic theories masquerading as a quasi-religious quest for justice and spread by a class of human for whom posturing and it's resultant gatekeeping is more important than breathing (the chattering classes/PMC).
Human beings are now and always will be more than our power relations and structures. There is more that motivates most of us than power. Using this lense to describe the world is like experiencing only the tail of the elephant and declaring it the whole. The whole ideology is a giant synecdoche and a solipsism, a chimera. Luckily, the objective world will be their Achilles heel. No matter how they might try, they can't erase reality. They can't change the fundamental nature of the physical universe. They can't make 2 + 2 = 5. No one is going to buy this long term.
It's like that scene in a Wrinkle in Time where the children are on the mountain with Mrs. Whatsit in her Pegasus form, and they watch a blazing star obliterate the black thing that blocks light. She explains to them that this was a star that sacrificed itself to fight the black thing. And that our history was replete with such opposition - Jesus, Rembrandt, Buddha, Bach - luminaries of heart and imagination. Richard Bilkszto was one such courageous human and there have been many others who have sacrificed everything to make a statement against this vengeful creed. Keep the faith and keep pouring that faith into the world. Pro-humanism, love, fair play - they will win - in spite of everything.