Free speech belongs to all speakers

Let’s cancel “cancel culture,” the idea that discussion that offends should not be allowed if offended parties must be exposed to it.

Cancel culture cancels free speech, the freedom on which all other freedoms is based.

Let’s say Tucker Carlson and U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth can call each other traitors.

Let’s say Congressional representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Devin Nunes can voice whatever unreasonable, fleeting half-thoughts support their blind-sided biases.

Let’s say pop musician Kanye West can run for president based on whims that enter and leave his mind on an hourly basis, even though he is no Condoleezza Rice, another musical genius whose orderly intelligence generously overlapped into diplomacy.

Let’s say I can agree or disagree with all of them on whatever grounds I choose.

Let’s say you can agree or disagree with me, or ignore me as you choose, too.

Granted, public debate lately has been frightful to behold, but even uglier is the prospect of living without public debate, no matter how nasty it gets.

I am very glad to report that 153 luminaries from literature, journalism and academia agree with me.

They signed a letter that will appear in the October Harper’s Magazine urging an end to attempts to censor free expression, whether from far-right Trumpists, far-left campus Marxists, or anyone in between.

I was surprised to see on that list Noam Chomsky, who I always thought was in the intolerant leftist camp; and at least one hard-right-leaning neo-conservative, Francis Fukuyama.

Other signers include J.K. Rowling, who is under fire for failing to recognize new attitudes on gender and sexuality, and a yes, a musician, trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, director of the Jazz at Lincoln Center program.

The letter was set into motion by Thomas Chatterton Williams, an African American writer who calls himself a liberal but is a “fierce critic” of identity politics, according to a New York Times critique of the letter.

Calls for censorious thinking are coming from both left and right, the letter says, leading to “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.”

Examples, according to the letter:

“Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study.”

This intolerance, the letter says, is harmful because “the restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably … makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.”

In response, the writers say, “We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters.”

The consequences, especially for those who make their living in journalism, literature and acadamia, are dire as public discourse is weakened.

Speaking for themselves mostly, but also for the rest of us, the signers conclude, “If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.”

Steve Hansen writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

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