After the virtue-signaling opening paragraph, there's nothing I disagree with in the @Harpers "Letter on Justice and Open Debate." It's good to see so many prominent liberal intellectuals standing up for free speech: harpers.org/a-letter-on-ju… 1/13
So well done to @thomaschattwill for putting it together. The hostile reaction to it on the intolerant left has revealed just how necessary it was: nytimes.com/2020/07/07/art… 2/13
But as I looked down the list of signatories, I found myself wondering where all these people were when it was conservative intellectuals who were getting "canceled." Because this problem pre-dates 2020, let's face it. 3/13
Where were they in 2014, for example, when @BrandeisU decided publicly and with a mixture of cowardice and rudeness to cancel their invitation to @Ayaan? nytimes.com/2014/04/09/us/… and wsj.com/articles/ayaan… 4/13
Or how about in 2017, when @charlesmurray's lecture at @Middlebury was violently disrupted? theatlantic.com/politics/archi… 6/13
"Liberals must defend the right of conservative students to invite speakers of their choice, even if they find their views abhorrent," wrote @PeterBeinart in @TheAtlantic. But how many of the @Harpers letter signatories actually did that? 7/13
It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that this letter was written only because in 2020 the cancel culture finally came for some of the signatories (or their friends), who up until this point had nearly always tacitly sided with the illiberal left against conservatives. 8/13
The difference is that people like @Ayaan and @charlesmurray are true believers in free speech, in the sense attributed to Voltaire: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (the wording was actually Evelyn Beatrice Hall's). 9/13
Alas, that wasn't the position taken by Ian Buruma in 2006-7, when @Ayaan was being threatened with death for speaking her mind about the religion into which she was born. 10/13
Buruma: "Voltaire had flung his insults at the Catholic Church, while Ayaan risked offending only a minority that was already feeling vulnerable in the heart of Europe.” nytimes.com/2006/09/10/boo… She was "naive" to idealize the West's free societies: nytimes.com/2007/03/04/boo… 11/13
By contrast, @Ayaan is willing to step up for people who are not her friends and whose political views she mostly doesn't share, e.g. @jk_rowling today: washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/j-k-ro… 12/13
(Hell, I'll even stick up for @mattyglesias, who is always worth reading, even when wrong, and even when obnoxious, and even though he has directed more than a little of his snark at me over the years.) 13/13
