Harper’s And Backlash —

How The Left is Just As Complicit As The Right

So, a few words about the controversial Harper’s editorial/open letter. It was signed by 158 writers, authors, scholars and others to highlight the dangerous, disingenuousness of trade-offs and the threat we are currently facing.

“Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy.”

All true, but the piece goes on to say “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted…censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.”

“The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily…