Thread by @yhazony

People are asking me what I think of the Harper's letter.

1. I think anyone defending free speech and viewpoint diversity right now deserves support. So I support the general point of the thing.

Still, I have to say this statement is pretty messed up.

harpers.org/a-letter-on-ju…

2. The most obvious way it's messed up is that too many of the signatories (not all!) have themselves spent years systematically trying to stifle reasonable public debate--by delegitimizing conservative voices and creating a context in which it's too costly to engage with them.

3. I'm not talking about those signatories who have strongly disagreed with conservatives, nationalists, Christians, populists, and so on.

Vigorous disagreement is all fine and good and welcome.

4. I'm talking about those signatories, far too many, who've accused conservatives of being authoritarian and anti-democracy; who've compared us to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin; who've said we're theocrats, racists, sexists, and islamophobes, "enabling" and "collaborating."

5. The letter is messed up because too many of the signatories kept quiet or took part as conservatives were being delegitimized--but now that it's *liberals* whose standing is in danger, suddenly they've realized they care immensely about free speech and viewpoint diversity.

6. Okay, so that's human nature. People tend to defend their own in-group and their own interests. It's easier for a liberal to worry about whether we're all free to be liberals than to worry about whether we're free to be conservatives. I get it.

7. But now liberals are being persecuted and deplatformed. Now liberals are thinking about the mistakes they've made. And they *still* don't get how messed up it is to collect 153 signatures for free speech and viewpoint diversity but to exclude conservatives from it.

8. What's messed up is this: They still don't understand the most basic thing about democracy, which is that you need *two* legitimate parties for democracy to work, one liberal and one conservative.

9. This means that to have a democracy, liberals need to grant legitimacy to conservatives (even when they don't like them much) and conservatives need to grant legitimacy to liberals (even when they don't like them much). Nothing else is going to work.

10. Here's what is *not* going to work: Liberals trying to exclude conservatives from legitimate discourse (because conservatives are "the real threat"), while at the same time they're granting ever more influence to the very neo-Marxists who are working to bring them down.

11. It's not going to work because neo-Marxists aren't like conservatives: They don't believe in democracy. They don't believe in compromise. And they don't share power.

12. That's why it's so messed up to read a letter on free speech and viewpoint diversity, and find that it has no fewer than three (!) different side-comments aimed at delegitimizing conservatives worked into it.

13. The reason for those asinine anti-conservative swipes is that many liberals still think they're going to get an alliance with the same neo-Marxists who are out to destroy them. And that the way to get there is by putting conservatives down.

14. Which leads to the last reason why this letter is so messed up: It's signatories don't seem to have a clue what time it is. They don't understand that the terrain has shifted beneath their feet.

15. The Left has just scored dozens of wins, including taking down James Bennet at the Times and taking out Woodrow Wilson at Princeton. There's blood in the water and no one on the Left is stupid enough to give in to these little liberal bribes now.

16. Liberals only have two choices: Either they'll submit to the neo-Marxists or they'll try to put together a pro-democracy alliance with conservatives.

There aren't any other choices.

17. And to be clear, I don't mean an alliance with the NeverTrumpers that liberal outfits keep on their platforms so they can pretend to be dialoguing with the "other." Most of them aren't conservatives and they certainly don't bring the conservative public with them.

18. I'm talking about a rebuilding a stable public sphere constructed around two legitimate political parties, one liberal and one consisting of actual conservatives--meaning people that a broad conservative public would recognize as their own.

19. Maybe liberals just aren't smart enough to see that this is what they've got to do. Maybe they aren't gutsy enough to do it. Maybe most liberal intellectuals are just going to keep hoping for love from the neo-Marxists until it's all over.

Could be.

20. But for now, two cheers for the Harper's letter supporting free speech and viewpoint diversity.

Anyone defending free speech and viewpoint diversity at this time deserves support. So I support the general point of the thing.

Even if it is pretty messed up.