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Progressives Are No Longer Defenders of Free Expression
Townhall.com ^ | November 3, 2020 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 12/03/2020 5:18:21 AM PST by Kaslin

A half-century ago, progressives used to push limitless free expression, blasting conservatives for their allegedly blinkered traditionalism. They boasted of obliterating once-normal boundaries in art, music, and literature to allow nudity, profanity, sexuality, and anti-American boilerplate.

Now?

The left is Victorian -- increasingly puritanical, regressive, and hypersensitive. Even totalitarian censorship and book-burning have weirdly become part of their by-any-means-necessary methods.

University of California, Berkeley, professor Grace Lavery was so outraged by author Abigail Shrier's latest book, "Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters," that she went beyond the usual calls to ban the book. Lavery advocated burning Shrier's book.

"I DO encourage followers to steal Abigail Shrier's book and burn it on a pyre," Lavery tweeted last month.

Did the self-appointed liberal watchdog the American Civil Liberties Union step in to defend free expression?

No. One ACLU official poured gas on the book-burning fire.

"Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on," tweeted Chase Strangio, the ACLU's deputy director for transgender justice.

Note all of these melodramatic humanitarian verbs such as "steal," "burn" and "die."

Staffers at the Canadian branch of Penguin Random House recently confronted management over the company's publication of libertarian Jordan Peterson's new book "Beyond Order," a sequel to his earlier best-seller "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos."

(Excerpt) Read more at townhall.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: censorship; coronavirus; deplatforming; freespeech; hatespeech; progressives

1 posted on 12/03/2020 5:18:21 AM PST by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

They never were to begin with.


2 posted on 12/03/2020 5:20:19 AM PST by wastedyears (The left would kill every single one of us and our families if they knew they could get away with it)
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To: Kaslin
The Left was all for freedom of speech as long as they controlled 99% of the Media.

Now that Conservatives have a small amount of media,free speech is a threat.

3 posted on 12/03/2020 5:23:09 AM PST by marktwain (President Trump and his supporters are the Resistance. His opponents are the Reactionaries. )
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To: marktwain

They were also for freedom of speech if it could be interpreted in anti-American/anti-Western Civilization ways, such as burning the American flag, anti-Christian Art (Piss Christ, anyone?), unlimited pornography, etc. They are against free speech when it comes to actual free speech.


4 posted on 12/03/2020 5:30:46 AM PST by Sans-Culotte (11/3-11/4/2020 - The USA became a banana republic.)
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To: wastedyears

You’re correct. This is an annoying false premise.


5 posted on 12/03/2020 5:33:40 AM PST by Varda
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To: Kaslin
The "left" - aka modern day socialists - are 100% behind freedom of expression...as long as the ideas and ideals expressed agree 100% with their agenda. If not, then the totalitarian fascist comes out. (scratch a modern leftist and just under the thin surface veneer you'll find a raging fascist)

They've so convinced themselves that they are right, they know what's best, and that their views should be shared by everyone ("oh wouldn't it be wonderful!" {gag}) that they will support extreme measures to make everyone "see the light." That's the fascist in them.

A lot of them are so ignorant and self-unaware that they don't even realize it. I could almost pity them. However, most of them know their world view is full of contradictions, double standards, and authoritarian behavior. They don't care. They're so convinced they're right they've talked themselves into the ends justifies any means. This makes them extremely dangerous. They actually think they're the good guys, they're doing the right thing. People can justify all kinds of horrors when they go down that path.

6 posted on 12/03/2020 5:34:48 AM PST by ThunderSleeps
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To: Kaslin

Love VDH, but that title needs a big Captain Obvious standing beside it.


7 posted on 12/03/2020 5:40:03 AM PST by Sicon ("All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." - G. Orwell)
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To: Kaslin

Democrats are champions of suppression of expression..


8 posted on 12/03/2020 6:17:44 AM PST by silent majority rising
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To: wastedyears

> They never were to begin with.

EXACTLY what I was gonna say!


9 posted on 12/03/2020 6:59:19 AM PST by Westbrook
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To: Kaslin

No kidding.


10 posted on 12/03/2020 7:22:14 AM PST by sauropod (Let them eat kale. I will not comply. Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis.)
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