One American Man’s Thoughts on Britain’s "Day For Freedom" - by Jamie Horan

We are excited to welcome guest blogger Jamie Horan! He is insightful, smart, and will give you something to think about. Jamie is an American and a Philadelphia native. He's married with four kids, owns his own business, and finds time to think and write about the important stuff. He started writing as a youth when spending days ditching school and hanging out at the public library. Apparently, it worked for him - he has a fine mind and a gift with a pen. 

Recently, advocates for freedom of expression/speech in the UK, against the government's increasingly censoring "hate speech" laws - a completely subjective phrase - held a rally in London. Although liberal progressive news media called it "dangerous" (The Guardian was most ridiculously alarmist - Heaven knows, when those who don't toe the company line get uppity, world chaos might ensue!) and estimated the crowd from 2,000 to 4,000, many who actually attended put estimates at 10,000 to 60,000.  Speakers were an international assembly of the cream of the anti-globalist crop: Tommy Robinson, Milo Yiannopolis, Lauren Southern, Anne Marie Waters, Raheem Kassam. Although one progressive liberal article cynically pointed out that the speakers, while decrying censorship, stood and said whatever they wanted to - it ignored (or was too ignorant to know) that several of these people have been arrested for just that: speaking. What follows is Jamie Horan's account, and some astute thoughts. - LC

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May 6^th was a hot day in London.  Though I wasn’t there personally, I could see it on the faces of throngs of British Citizens gathering for what they called “A Day For Freedom.” A festive event in many respects, but with an object no less important than the reclamation of the dignity of free expression earned for them by their forebears, and taken from them slowly but ceaselessly over their lifetimes.

"Freedom of Speech" has only one meaning. In the United States it is codified in writing as the first item in the Bill of Rights. Our constitution would not have been ratified without it. Its main operating principle is that our government shall make no law which respects or restricts the following four things: 

• Religion
• Speech
• The Press  
• Peaceable Assembly by people to redress grievances with their government. 

Although she enjoys no such codification**, Great Britain provided the basis and the inspiration for each of these four items. I won’t bore you here with my thoughts on how it did so, but suffice it to say that without Great Britain, we wouldn’t have this language in our founding document.

For some years now, I and I’m sure many like me in the states, have watched the happenings in Europe, and particularly in England, with increasing alarm: the demographic slide into malaise; the lame-brained reactionary social policies foisted upon people by those in power (in many cases unelected);  the dangerously under-thought importation of the labor Europeans and Englanders alike failed to produce at home. We watched as the governments of these nations moved in directions opposite their polity and watched with particular disbelief as the polities bought the big lie, that economic security is more important than individual liberty. As it happens, that’s not  just wrong, but demonstrably and completely wrong. 

But then, in June of 2016, Great Britain gave us hope when she voted to leave the EU. It appeared that

once again, the She was rising to save Europe by example and not rhetoric. Millions of Americans were ecstatic at this outcome. Predictably though, the backlash began before the vote was counted, as those who bought the lie, and those in power who perpetrated the lie, sought by many means to soften or even erase the decision compelling them to throw off the lie. They haven’t finished.

Many very bright and thoughtful people continue to resist this effort by the political elite to mislead the people, and have made their positions known over the years. They did so on major news networks and television shows, in debate halls and on social media, and all too often in direct opposition to mobs of indoctrinated pseudo-intellectual, virtue-signaling imbeciles, themselves holding advanced degrees in stupidity of one type or another. As an outsider I watched these bright people eviscerate these infants on countless occasions, but knew and still know, that change happens on the ground and by the people who live there. You see, a listing ship is never righted by men in conning towers alone, but always it is righted by those on and under her decks. I waited, I watched, I wrote what I could, noticing here and there ground-level groups organizing around one type of flawed approach or another, but who always aimed toward the same objective: the refusal to cede ground on the basic human dignity enshrined in and carried forward by the freedom of expression.

Then it happened. Some young guy from Luton Town, later to be named as Tommy Robinson, decided to take the fight directly where the fight needed to be: not in the clouds where the educated debate the lofty ideals of democracy, tolerance and free speech, but in alleys and on the streets of his little town where the fight for his family’s future was much more visceral.  He was fighting the real fight - the fight to resist the tacit imposition of blasphemy law, a draconian system of control long thought to be dead in the West, and which had risen from the bowels of the massive importation of a poisonous ideology by the above-mentioned infants. I watched as he was castigated and marginalized as a far-right racist extremist, imprisoned, beaten, battered, conned and indulged - but unsurprisingly, not silenced. He’s not glib, or posh, or privileged. He’s just a young man who won’t abide the encroachment on the rights of his children in order to appease a coddled and abhorrently violent subculture in his town.

On May 6^th, I saw this young man put together a gathering of what I could see as about 60,000 people. These people would remain standing for hours in the heat right in front of Whitehall, the seat of British government. There were numerous speakers who’ve gained fame in social media circles, and whom I’ve enjoyed for years, but my favorite was the first guy. His name, as I recall was “Inman.”  He wasn’t posh or privileged or glib, either.  He was the guy who fights the battles; the guy who rights the ship. He’s the guy the elected lean to when they’ve got themselves into something they’re not equipped to handle, and wouldn’t know where to start. Further, he’s the guy who knows there is no such thing as “pooled sovereignty.”  He knows that just as a nation, an individual is either sovereign or he is not. He‘s an Englishman, and like Tommy Robinson, a classic bull dog in every respect. 

Standing before him in the crowd were so many like him. They were of all stripes, men and women, old and young, gay and straight, etc. who considered this event important enough to attend in person. What they seemed to me to have in common was the need to physically demonstrate that they’ve just had it -  that they’re done being told by their elected officials, their media, their police, and so on, that their priorities are unimportant; that they and their progeny are no longer needed for the future of Britain, you know the one that they and their forebears built. They’ve had it with this new, less free Britain where their concerns are subordinate to the priorities of a significant, but simple-minded minority who have never built or had to defend anything at all. Had I been able, I would have stood there with them with an American Flag in one hand and a Union Jack in the other.

I tweeted recently that “there are none more dangerous than a free people compelled to silence.” I am bewildered that after alarming events - for many, in living memory - the political class in Britain and elsewhere seem not to know this. The trend in British Government has been toward this incremental silencing, electronic surveillance and other Orwellian methods of censorship for so long now, these simpmletons convinced themselves that it’s all okay. In fact, it’s not. No trade of liberty for security ever does what it is intended to do - namely, protect citizens - and always does what it was not intended to do - harm citizens.

It is astonishing to me that the mere mention of a critical thought of one protected group or another (of which are so many now) can land a British citizen in court or even prison. Worse still is the tendency toward hate crime law, a thought to me as an American so abominable as to be akin to national suicide. So damning a trend has this become that now London is arguably not British. This is not for its cosmopolitan composition, but for the failure of its leadership locally, and its parliament nationally, to stop their casual and incremental abandonment of the rights, will and traditions of British citizens. What this group did on Sunday and will undoubtedly continue to do, was to let their elected officials know that they’re just there to hold a place for them; they are there to move the ball for them - make what is already there better for them, and to my mind they did that. One after another, the Youtube stars and the bulldogs alike let the tepid houses of Parliament and the prime minister know that their Britain still is Great Britain, and they’re not going to see it taken from them. 

For Tommy, I recommend he take the next rally to Buckingham. It is, after all, Her Majesty’s government. For the elected, I recommend what they themselves like to call Active Listening, because although this group numbered in the thousands, they exist in the millions, - and frankly, the elected are running out of time.

**  Although Great Britain previously held law that protected the right to speak out against specific things like religions, this coding was abrogated by its adoption in 1998 of the European Convention's Article 10 into the domestic Human Rights Act, which contains numerous exceptions to free expression - many inherently vulnerable to a changing subjective interpretation. As of 2017, two major news outlets in the UK said that an average of nine persons per day were being arrested for violations of the law through online speech, and that of these five on average were convicted. Big Brother has at last come to Great Britain. 

Tommy Robinson's books can be found at Amazon. 

An Open Love Letter to Men by Lichen Craig

Dear Men,

Recently, a female acquaintance commented that I seem to bowl better in my Thursday night mixed league than in my other three women-only leagues. I told her that year to year, I have the highest average (not to mention the most fun) when I bowl with men. She seemed perplexed, perhaps naturally, so I hastily blurted, "Well, I just enjoy the company of men more, present company accepted, of course!"

Truth is, I bowl better with you guys. I like the no-nonsense approach you have. I like the way you incessantly analyze the ball trajectory against where you stand against the current oil pattern. I like how you exercise your minds until the world makes sense. I like how you keep the cattiness down and gossip to a minimum - it might interest you, but not for two hours like it does the women.  I like the way, when I throw a gutter ball, you look me in the eye and say, "What the hell was that?"  Without smiling. I don't want to be coddled; I want to be expected to get my shit together by the next turn.

The world does make better sense around you men. When it's ugly, you know exactly why. Sometimes, you're the cause of the ugliness, but if you don't own up, you do manage to make each other pay in the end. I like the way you confront each other. Women smile to your face while plotting your future pain just because they don't like the color you wore yesterday. But a man? He'll make you miserable right on the spot, without apology (at least not immediately - that would be pointless), and he'll have a damn good reason to do it. A reason that is, well, reasonable.

Men are rarely intellectually lazy. They can't afford to be, because they have to earn a complete living. The least educated knows his way around an engine, crop fertilizers, a meth lab. Men take real joy out of verbal sparring - some annoyingly have never learned to combine that urge with self-control. But all that jousting forces them to use their brains, constantly. They don't give each other an inch, or a break. Just a good hard contest.

Men value things like integrity and honor and courage. Check out some novels written by women - they also present some higher ideas - often love, sacrifice - but it will be those written by men which contain sweeping and profound truths about the human condition.  Men ponder these things - with regularity. Men tend to contemplate and comprehend patterns of the universe, realities of war, subtleties of affection, hope, loss . . .

Men spend a lot of effort and time shielding their loved ones from difficulty. I see this a lot - and it often goes unnoticed. Their female companions take it for granted. Women whose fathers, boyfriends, brothers, husbands all protected them, rarely note the ways in which they are shielded from too much hardship. Those of us who have had little such care or protection in our own lives, though, notice it all the time, everywhere, with so many men.

Women often have some shield to hide behind, some safety net to catch them. Most men don't. So you have to be brave - there isn't another choice. And you are brave, so often, and often in quiet ways. Every once in a while, one of you will do something spectacularly and idiotically cowardly - being men, you always go big - but when that happens, your fellow men call you out on it loudly. You don't get to pretend it didn't matter. It will always matter if you behave as a coward, when you're a man. For that reason, you must be terrified when fear comes. Women fear other things, men fear themselves most. That's what I would guess.

Men don't pussyfoot around. They insult you, they tell you off, they acquire disgusting habits. With men, you get exactly what you see in front of you. There isn't a lot of secrecy, manipulation, backbiting. It's all laid out on the table. When I was 30 years old, I informed a doctor that I liked to be given the respect of being told the truth up front. So he looked me in the face and told me, two days before emergency surgery, that I would be wise to "put your affairs in order this weekend", because my life as I knew it might be over. Or simply over, actually.  I trusted him from that moment. Here was a person who put sentiment aside and prepared me for reality to hit. My mom on the other hand told me, "I know everything will be all right, honey."  I wanted to scream, "NO YOU DON'T."  I did not trust her advice, believe me. Even today, when a female friend coos, "It'll be all right."  I feel little but rising disgust at her disingenuousness - but I know that's a learned trait in females.

I like the way you smell. I love your cologne, and your skin. I love the stubble on your chin. I love the ease with which you swing an ax - and the joy you have in doing it.  I love the way you set a fencepost straight and then pound it in. I love the way you hold fast to the rope and squint up at the rearing horse above you, knowing your brain will keep you from being trampled. I love the way you love that suicide bike you refuse to sell. I like the way you snap the briefcase closed and swing it off the desk. I love the way you smile at your daughter across the table. I love the way you throw a baseball. I love the way you smooth your hair back and turn your face up into the shower after an exhausting day. I love the way you plan surprises, and how you worry about whether your wife, or kids, or grandkids will have to pay too much tax on your holdings when you die before them.

Oh, I know some of you cheat, many lie, too many of you walk around thinking your dick is bigger than it actually is - both figuratively and literally. I know some of you are inexplicably and unforgivably selfish to the core. I married one of those once, and that difficult twenty years was enough to last a lifetime - believe me. But I know I might have been very lucky had I chosen a different one of you.

In today's world, too many of you are being maligned. You're blamed for that which isn't your doing. You're shamed for carrying testosterone. Your natural instincts are treated as threats to be suppressed. Today we refuse to acknowledge that your hunger for progress built empires, your beautiful curiosity and need to conquer brought technological innovation, your soaring spirits brought the biggest piece of the world's great literature, art and music; your tendency to protect what you love fought and won wars for peace we take for granted now. How many of you willingly ran toward a sword, a spear, a fire, a gun, a bomb, for something you understood was far greater than your one life?

Yes, over a beer, or a bowling alley, I do love your company. I love the candor, the stumbling lack of finesse, the mental gymnastics, the uniquely male insight on the world, the instinct to protect. I know that so many of you are bombarded daily with reminders that you as a gender have somehow failed your species. I'm here to tell you that's hooey.

You're wonderful and glorious and beautiful to look at. You're strong. You're good for the world. And ultimately - no matter what you're made to feel - you are necessary. What you were on the day you were born, and what you have grown into, will always be exactly what you are supposed to be. In this woman's book, that's pretty damn good.

Regulating the New Media Monsters by Lichen Craig

As Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, finished up his testimony on Capitol Hill today, he was repeatedly asked to comment on the idea of government-led regulation. The concept of regulation of large social media platforms, and regulation in general for the internet, raises red flags for many a libertarian thinker. But a few facts might help the alarm bell stop ringing - at least for now.

Facebook, and its comrades Google (which owns YouTube), and Twitter, were originally formed in an age when the internet was just starting to be used for news dissemination. That was a few decades back. Now, these platforms have grown to serve as a daily home for public discourse; they have become the public square of the colonial era - here, everyone gets a voice, no matter how misinformed. This was the climate in which ideas like the vote for the common man, and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution - which protected the free speech of citizens - were born. In that sense, they serve an exciting new purpose.

However, as this phenomenon of social platforms has grown, the inherent evils they present are increasingly visible and increasingly disruptive. That's why today we find ourselves listening to the likes of Zuckerberg - a man-child who knows software and understands little about much else, if one judges by his testimony - try to explain away the lack of responsibility displayed by his company policy.

Libertarians and advocates of free speech should understand that the idea of government regulation in media conversation is not new. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced in 1949 a policy that required broadcasters to 1) devote some airtime to discussing issues of public importance, and 2) discuss both sides of the issue equally, or in a manner that was deemed "honest, equitable and balanced". This was known as the Fairness Doctrine. It was akin to an earlier rule imposed on broadcast radio in the 1920's known as the "Equal Time Rule" - which required that if a candidate or the candidate's advertisers received air time, the opposing candidate would be offered equal time and at a fair advertising price.

It is because of this tradition of the Fairness Doctrine ideology that cable news talk shows, radio, and major broadcasters today try to present pundits discussing both sides of the argument - or at least they did until Obama's election, when this commitment to fairness seemed to disappear. In 1987 the Doctrine was abolished when then-president Reagan vetoed a bill that would have turned the rule into law. This opposition was then a Republican-backed commitment to freedom of speech. The reasoning was that 1) the Fairness Doctrine allowed government interference in communications to an unacceptable degree - interfering with the spirit of the First Amendment, and 2) it took away from broadcasters their right to self-determination that they enjoyed through running their own programs in the way they saw fit. In 1987 it was clear-cut - the conservatives opposed the Doctrine as excessive regulation by a big government entity (the FCC) and the liberal Democrats wanted the Doctrine because it would force broadcasters to give equal time to the liberal viewpoint.

In the 1990's, these battle lines held, because the growth of talk radio came with various conservative personalities who wielded the power to mold public discourse, which the Democrats in Congress saw as a threat.  Republicans held firm that the Doctrine would be unnecessary regulation on the free discourse of ideas, from big government.

But then came the internet. And everything shifted.

Then, the growth of "chat rooms" on political sites, and social media platforms and giants like AOL and

Google, started to affect public discourse in unexpected ways. When Obama came to power, he opposed the Fairness Doctrine or anything resembling it; his administration stated officially that they believed in the wide dissemination of as many viewpoints as possible on the internet, and that reimposing the Doctrine would amount to excessive government regulation. This was a somewhat contradictory position, given that in the past the Democrats embraced regulation. But the internet was a new animal, and by the early 2000's when Obama came to power, the internet - populated mostly by younger generations - was becoming a hotbed of liberal thought. Obama and the liberals had a vested interest, politically, in protecting it.

But here we are in 2018, and now, beginning with last year's Congressional hearings with social platform companies and today's testimony from Zuckerberg, legislators on both sides are openly advocating for greater regulation for the internet. Ironically, the bipartisan spirit is not born of a commitment to equal, balanced discourse, but of a desire to stop the overstep of large entities to collect and sell private data on users. The bipartisan concern has forced, in effect, a larger conversation on the need for regulation.

That conversation is in its infancy. In coming months, there will be posturing along political party lines. Conservative legislators will be all over the place - now, their commitment to limiting the reach of big government will have to be balanced by their concern over the censorship of conservative speech to an enormous degree by social media companies. It is a demonstrable fact that Facebook and Twitter, and Google's baby YouTube, have blatantly and unapologetically been squelching the posts of conservatives to a much heavier degree than those of liberals. This is a matter of increasingly wide concern, both in the public and in Congress.

Indeed, the ability of these large companies, founded by a demographic that favors a liberal viewpoint, and physically located in liberal-heavy cities, to drive public information to a far Left view, is alarming to many moderates and conservatives. If we want our social discourse to be fair, accurate and balanced, things have to be regulated - perhaps as they were by the Equal Time Rule and the Fairness Doctrine in the early 20th century.

We have come to a point where the information released by our mass media - from major TV networks to cable news channels to radio and podcasts - is so unbalanced as to render it mostly propaganda. Studies show that many people get the majority, if not all, of their news from the likes of Facebook and Twitter - where all news is soaked in bias, and usually a liberal bias (this is also widely demonstrated by studies, which suggest that up to 90% of coverage of the current president is "negative", or even inaccurate).

If we, as a people, are to be committed to fairness, we must insist upon a fair balance of information in the public. We must insist upon some degree of honesty. We are at a tipping point, where the average person cannot find accurate information upon which to base his or her opinion, upon which he or she bases a vote. And that is terribly dangerous in a "free" society that is fast becoming not so free.

During the coming months, we will see ideas about regulation of large social media companies discussed by the government. This is on its face a chilling idea: the danger becomes that the government becomes invested, itself, in pushing a certain viewpoint. The balance of two dangers: a media that presents one point of view, and a government that silences one point of view - will always be present.

But we have got to find a way to do it - to allow some regulation of internet discussion. Because we are indeed living in a new world - where communication technology changes at lightening speed, and thus far, knows no limits. Human beings being the political animals and the liars that they are, it could all go terribly, terribly wrong.

Protecting the Vile by Lichen Craig

(First published after corresponding news stories were circulating, June 6, 2017.)

Reporter Katie McHugh has a big problem. It isn't, as she might imagine, that her voice has been silenced.

McHugh was fired - according to her - by conservative online news-site Breitbart, when in the aftermath of tragic terror attacks in London she posted to Twitter what some consider "racist" remarks. As usual, the liberal Left screams "racist" when anything inflammatory is posted toward the Muslim community - "Muslim" not being a "race", notwithstanding.

This tweet started it all:

McHugh objects that she was simply stating the truth (as she sees it). Funny thing is, on its surface, if one considers it from a purely logical point of view, it is true. But unfortunately McHugh inores the obvious fact that, in a culture that has assimilated Muslims for centuries - and only recently has a radical jihadist issue terrorized the nation - you can't demand that all Muslims be eliminated from the population. I have to believe she understood her own irony, and was using the hyperbole to make a more forceful point.

But McHugh is an employee of a major news outlet that has a reputation to protect. Breitbart is not a government-funded organization. She doesn't work for a publicly-owned entity. This is where McHugh's immaturity catches up with her: her employer has every right to set standards for their employees, and particularly for those who are most visible to the public and working for a communications outlet. I would argue that although she might consider her Twitter account private, she is a voluntary public personality, and as such represents her employer and should consider their image as well as her own when tweeting.

Strangely, McHugh is as much a product of her age group as are the millennials who pontificate screaming into the faces of their educational and intellectual superiors, on college campuses. This sense of intellectual arrogance that young adults possess is alarming - not only because it is so distasteful to the rest of us, but because it is so counterproductive to successful navigation into and through adulthood. Believing that your own beliefs are infallible and unchangeable, is perhaps common to every young generation. But the current one seems particularly arrogant and definitely far more militantly vocal about it, and far less able to measure their own words.

I wonder what the dynamics are. Does the advent of social media and the opportunity to get up on one's soapbox and scream at strangers, with no real correction or accountability or consequence, help to form minds that never question themselves? Is it that we have raised a few generations of kids now that were only hesitantly told "No!" or only occasionally corrected, or maybe never told to be silent in the presence of adults or others who knew more than they did? Is it that their high school teachers and college professors model behavior that is intolerant of other points of view?  Is it a mix of all these things?

The notion of humility as a virtue, in the traditional understanding of that word, is something that needs to be revived. How many modern parents would even know what that word means? How many young adults do?  At its most basic, Humility is an ability to see your own abilities and worth beside those of other people, and accept those things others do better than you do, as well as your strengths. It is a realistic sense of yourself, including your intellectual capacity and your possible lack of insight or life experience. It may be argued that true humility better enables a person to appreciate others, and also to appreciate his or her own unique contribution.

Humility is beneficial first to the one who cultivates it within himself. When internalized as a virtue, it encourages a person to stop and consider the limitations of her or his own opinion, before publicizing it and facing embarrassment. Or loss of the respect of others. Or firing.

McHugh has posted some good pieces at Breitbart, and she may even have some interesting ideas and valid points to make. But she lacks the humility to consider the limitations of her own voice and experience, and the humility that might have caused her to stop and measure her words more carefully, before she hanged herself with them.

At present, she is loudly protesting her firing quite publicly. I wonder if she has considered how unprofessional or fit for another news position that makes her appear? No one hires a troublemaker, after all.  With all the typical recklessness of today's millennial, she rages about, decrying her own victimhood without considering how doing so will harm her. Regardless of how she feels about it, or whether Breitbart was right or wrong - the truth is that Breitbart did what any private employer can. I hope that McHugh received some warning before this happened, or at least had been given in the past some idea of the expected employee conduct as regards social media and other public communications. But whether this happened or not, McHugh can't control what Breitbart has done, while she can control the conduct she chooses for herself from this point on.

McHugh's tweets lacked tastefulness. They were obviously intentionally provocative, and I think she meant them to be sardonic and even funny. They weren't. They fell flat because they danced too close to meanness and unfairness, and lacked tact, good taste, and common sense. They came from a young mind that hasn't yet learned the value of temperance, the benefit of humility. A statement being true isn't all that matters: the truth of it has to be weighed against the necessity and fairness of it and any fallout that may result from its being voiced.

From the looks of things so far, McHugh may be too much a product of her own generation to exercise much of those virtues - temperance, fairness and humility - in the near future. And in that, she has much in common with other millennials who lack that subtlety of understanding that leads to the kind of nuanced communication skills which would earn them the respect they so loudly - and too often undeservedly - demand.

The Inherent Unkindness of the Politically Correct

Ironically, the day before the Orlando massacre in 2017, I had an unpleasant Twitter exchange with someone I had previously enjoyed.  This East Coast university professor shared an interest with me, in medieval literature and history.  It isn't always easy to find kindred souls in that area (yeah, we're geeks), so I always appreciate fellow medieval fanatics.

 But on this day, he tweeted a tweet that I found so disturbing, I couldn't stay silent. It was a statement to the effect that people who didn't share his world view (liberal) and weren't PC, were somehow less intelligent (conservatives).  I replied something to the effect that his comment seemed elitist, and that it wasn't my experience that those who embraced PC ideology were always more intelligent than others. He shot back that they had a "kinder and more humane vision".

Oh. Not elitist at all.

I'm sure this man sees himself as intellectually superior to me and to most people around him. He is amused that I am not enlightened enough to appreciate his view. It will never occur to him that I have thoroughly considered his view - indeed years ago I may have even embraced it. At the time of the exchange, I dismissed him as rather limited in his viewpoint; I had to laugh to myself, considering the environment - liberal academia, increasingly intolerant of diversity in viewpoints. No wonder he's as blind as he is to common sense.  I still question his ability to think through layers, despite his Ph.D. level education. But all week I've been haunted by the exchange for another reason: this man is a prime example of one of the biggest myths about the PC culture and the biggest points of misunderstanding of the Left:  that a PC-driven set of values is "kinder".

Maybe it's because of what happened in Orlando. Maybe it's something that has nagged at the back of my brain for quite some time. But I've been chewing on this question all week: is it really kinder? Every cell in me screams, "No way!"  and I have been driven to define for myself specifically how it is unkind.

I agree with this misguided professor that the PC movement was born of the intention to make interactions between people kinder. Back in the 1980s, the term "politically correct" didn't make me cringe; it was an invitation to simply stop and think something through, consider if prejudice was present, if discrimination was present. It began as a nice idea.

But today, in 2016, it has mutated into a tool for intimidation, thought-shaming, censorship, and ultimately, an attempt to control. Read that list again: it has a lot in common with "socialist" (read: progessive) movements in history that ended up oppressing and eventually murdering their own people.

Besides its blatant ignorance of history - or its willful desire to selectively forget history - there are several things that frighten me about the PC culture in 2016. I mean, really frighten me.

• It seeks to censor the world of journalism. It seeks to control the free flow of ideas in the mainstream press. Those within that structure who disagree with any element of the PC world view are isolated, ridiculed, even bullied out of their jobs. At this point, we have journalists selectively editing anything from interview footage to statistics, in order to deceptively present them in such a way that the PC narrative is protected. The accompanying willingness to ignore simple - simple! - fact is astounding. Worse, the intellectual arrogance of a journalist who would manipulate factual information to fool his or her audience into adopting a particular view is ... well, immoral. 
• It seeks to censor the world of science. Working with the press, the PC culture has demonized and ostracized formerly-respected scientists by creating a mythology around "climate change". While fact is that many of these scientists tell us that although the climate is changing, a tiny fraction of the change is due to human influence, the PC culture continues the narrative that any scientist disagreeing with their view that climate change is an imminent disaster is a nutjob. This they perpetuate through the press. 
• It seeks to control the world of education. A serious study of the industry of textbook publishing in recent decades will make it obvious to a thinking person that some of our history is being rewritten and taught in such a way as to align with the current PC thought. Now it may be argued that as any society evolves, its textbook material also evolves. But the problem here is that it has evolved in a very specific direction, favoring very particular ideologies that may or may not be based upon the humane values of our traditional past. These would include such things as liberty, freedom of thought, freedom from an intrusive government, freedom of speech, responsibility toward one's fellow man, integrity of one's right to protect home and family. The PC culture seeks to alter actual history in such a way that it will align with the rest of the narrative. The facts be damned; so many are inconvenient. 
  
• It seeks to control the world of art. In an area of society where all viewpoints should be explored at the deepest and most creative level, we have thought control. In my view, this cheapens all of art. Consider the loudest and most arrogant of Hollywood voices - they seem to project an absolute zero tolerance for a conservative viewpoint. If you have read up on that issue, you know that many actors, writers, technicians, have reported being persecuted - from being harassed verbally, to being ostracized from social events, to being outright fired because of their views. Hollywood has sought to create an environment where one point of view rules. Consider the music industry. It's even worse. What do you think would happen to a conservative who, upon accepting some award at the Grammys, got up and expressed a view the room didn't share?  This used to happen, and be accepted. No more. Recently I watched episodes of Seinfeld and realized they wouldn't fly today. Not because they are not thought-provoking, but because the PC crowd running television media would be overly sensitive to them. It even seeks to squelch humor - except humor at the expense of the opposing view. 
• It seeks to define morality for all society. I don't deny that we, as the collective humanity, must define a common morality. Most of western society, at least, can agree that enslavement, punishment without trial, rape, child abuse causing injury, political imprisonment, racial bias, gender bias, are all wrong. But PC culture seeks to define minutia, for all of us. Although the United States was founded by a group of people seeking the freedom to practice Christianity as they chose without governmental interference, the PC culture has used the laws growing out of that centuries-old history to silence all non-secular expressions of religious faith. Or at least, two religious faiths that they don't like. Thus we have courts dealing with situations where a creche is removed from view, but another symbol is welcomed. Or where school children are taught the tenets of some religions, as part of a "cultural sensitivity experience", while other religions are ignored or even demonized.  Again, some views are oppressed in favor of those
  
  that fit the narrative. 
• It seeks to control the free flow of information, aside from media. Consider the environment that has grown in the state-funded universities of this country, where by definition all views should be welcome. We now have young people who insist they should be considered adults who need "safe places", and "time-outs" when they hear speech they don't agree with. We have students who see no moral problem with their behavior when they interrupt and stop a presentation by a conservative speaker. In their arrogance, they truly believe that they have a monopoly on intelligence, on Truth, and this justifies silencing opposing opinion.  Consider the behavior of the mobs of "protestors" - some there for hire and some too young to know better - who have recently perpetuated real violence at rallies for Donald Trump. These people have one aim: to prevent the free flow of ideas, by preventing others from hearing ideas that they don't agree with. Historically, they have this in common with rising fascist movements. But they are too young, uneducated, naive... and maybe too arrogant, to know history and understand the patterns.

I could go on. But my point is, when people are silenced, intimidated, bullied out of jobs... is it kind? When people are terrorized, pummeled with rocks, eggs, and even fists, at a rally, is it kind? When people are lied to about the value of their own heritage in favor of another group's, is it kind?  When people are shamed in 2016 for actions of their ancestors in 1800, or 1700, or 1600, is it kind?  When people's work and struggles are erased because of their skin color, and their right to reap benefits of their labor denied, is it kind? 

The current PC culture has come with a sense of entitlement and superiority that is alarming. Like the most dangerous and ultimately oppressive socio-political movements of the past, it justifies unethical behavior by virtue of a sense of moral/ethical/intellectual superiority; the immoral has become relative to how the behavior serves the goal. PC culture justifies shaming someone for their views as "stupid". It justifies ignoring factual information in order to convey what one considers a bigger message. It justifies robbing people of livelihoods, personal safety, the right to an idea. It justifies, even, taking a "protest" as far as violence. Because, you know, the Greater Good.  

Problem is, that greater good is coming at a higher and higher price to the integrity of this nation, as the PC culture grows more and more certain of its own superiority. And sadly, it comes at a higher and higher price to the individual.

So I'm just going to say it. I think this pattern of PC thought is the worst of the worst kind of just plain mean. It devalues Truth in favor of New Narrative. It devalues the right -the right! - of a human being to acquire real, factual information before making up his own mind. It distorts our world when it distorts science, education, journalism, arts, political discourse. It robs us and cheats us and binds us in ways we never agreed to. It presents a false picture to us, which is ultimately misleading. And it is deliberate in its deceit. Because it believes it knows what is best.

Call me old-fashioned, but I come from an era where lying and deceit no matter the reason were

immoral. I come from a time where people understood the meaning of the word "humility" (wonder how many 20-somethings can even define that?). I come from a time when, to assume one's own intellectual superiority was not only immoral, but to assume the right to rob others of their autonomy and liberty and rights by virtue of one's own intellectual superiority, would be unthinkable. 

It doesn't take much courage to stomp one's foot and shout over an opponent until they are silenced or slink away in defeat. It doesn't take any courage to shame someone into non-opposition, conveniently ignoring your own shortcomings. It takes no courage to join a group of like-minded bullies to shout another, minority, view into silence.  It takes zero courage and less character, to assume your own ideas and opinions are so perfect that they can never change or alter in keeping with new information. It takes nothing to assume you're superior to another human being because they don't share your narrow view of the world. 

It takes real work and time to seek out and research factual information. It takes real patience to listen to someone whose life experience has led them to have views different from yours. It takes intellectual courage to examine the ways in which information that makes you uncomfortable may have merit (that would go to allowing opposing speakers and opposing theories a platform at universities, wouldn't it?).

We are becoming a society of cowards due to a rising PC culture. It demands persecution of any voice it doesn't like. If it can't legally silence, it does it by intimidation and harassment. Again, this is the beginning of fascism - that word so many of our youth, with their PC-saturated minds and view of the world, throw around so easily to describe the opposing view, all the while never really understanding its history or meaning. This is the beginning of one loud societal group silencing another. 

The real irony of PC culture is that it becomes the very thing it seeks to stop. In striving to emphasize certain races, histories, art forms, groups, that it has deemed persecuted, it begins the same persecution of other groups. Thus, Christians are bad, conservatives are bad. Police, whites, are bad. Some people deserve persecution more than other people - and we have come full circle. We've simply swapped victims.

My hope is that the part of the American spirit that has defeated fascism again and again in this world, will rise in a common voice that will say, "Enough."  That, although the ideas that gave birth to political correctness may have been noble, it's gone too far. When it stepped into oppression territory it went too far. 

The PC culture doesn't value character. It doesn't value integrity. It doesn't value truth - not the real,

unpleasant, inconvenient truth that often accompanies fact. It doesn't value humility. It doesn't value real equality - you know, that old ideal where people would have the same rights regardless of their background or skin color or what their blinking ancestors did four hundred years ago. It doesn't value diversity of ideas, or ideology. It doesn't value diversity of heritage - not really, because it overvalues and re-invents the heritage of some and ignores and re-tells the heritage of others. The PC culture wars within itself because it never stops shrieking long enough to really hear and examine all points of view, and come to real compromise. Compromise does not fit the narrative. The patience required to accept that most social change requires time to happen humanely, is not part of the PC mindset. 

Sorry, Professor, but there is nothing kind about it.

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UPDATE:  The Benghazi hearing concluded on June 28 2017, and the following came to light: Obama's administration, after the Sec. of Defense ordered that our military needed to go in to Libya and rescue Americans who were under attack, fretted over what impression our military uniforms would make upon the Libyan terrorists. Because we didn't want to offend their sensibilities, our citizens suffered over 13 hours under severe attack, and our ambassador and three others met horrible deaths (which we now know for a fact Obama and Hillary lied about, Hillary even lying to the families of the victims - to save the election which for Obama's second term which was 59 days away).  One serviceman reported that he and comrades changed clothes four times (!) - in vain, as it turned out, because by the time the administration came to any conclusion about attire, it was too late to help, and none was ever sent.  This is a prime example of how political correctness is not kind, it is not sensible, it is not reasonable. It is selfish; it seeks to value one point of view over another, and it seeks to silence any opposition.  Political correctness out of control, in this case, killed four brave Americans.