On the Need to Suppress Freedom of Speech in the Interest of “Moral Progress”

In my last post I noted that, objectively speaking, there can be no such thing as “moral progress,” and that pursuing such a nonexistent thing as a goal is potentially dangerous.  The reasons for this have to do with the way some of our innate behavioral traits manifest themselves in environments unlike the ones in which they evolved.  As I pointed out in the post,

It is certainly possible to identify aspects of the expression of moral emotions that all human populations have in common, but particular aspects of those emotions can vary significantly between individuals, and between populations.  It follows that we will never agree on what our “goals as a society” should be.  Some subset of the individuals in a society may agree on the goals of “moral progress,” but what of those who don’t?  Inevitably, they will be the evil ones, the “deplorables,” the outgroup whose opinions can be ignored because they are “morally bad.”

This dual nature of human morality based on our universal and powerful tendency to perceive others in terms of  ingroups and outgroups is reason enough in itself to reject the notion of “moral progress.”  We have tried to outlaw various manifestations of the behavior by giving them bad names, such as racism, sexism, xenophobia, bigotry, and so on.  The result of such attempts has invariably been the creation of yet more outgroups.  The hatred doesn’t disappear.  Instead, it simply pops up again, even more virulent than before, but directed at some alternative outgroup that hasn’t yet been declared off limits.

A good illustration of how this works in practice just turned up in the Washington Post in an article entitled, “When free speech becomes a political weapon.”  The author, Jennifer Delton, expresses concern about the threat of freedom of speech to “moral progress.”  According to Delton, when freedom of speech is accorded to “evil” people, it is transmuted into “freedom of speech.”  By this she means that it becomes a “political weapon,” which is then used by the “evil” people to impede “moral progress.”

As is often the case, Delton defines her ingroup in terms of ideology.  “Good” people are those whose ingroup is defined by the same ideological shibboleths as hers, and “evil” people are those belonging to outgroups whose members challenge those shibboleths.  More precisely, “Good” people are those whose beliefs are in harmony with “the internationalist, secular, cosmopolitan, multicultural liberalism that marks the thinking of educated elites of both parties.”  She cites Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal as an example of the practical application of these ideals.

In common with most humans, Delton perceives her “Good” as an objective thing.  In other words, she considers “internationalist, secular, cosmopolitan, multicultural liberalism” to be “good in itself,” regardless of whether it is thought to be good or not.  Obviously, it never occurs to her to explore the evolutionary reasons for this common illusion.  Digging down through layers of cultural and environmental impedimenta to discover the innate predisposition(s) that are the “root cause” of her perception of “the Good” is certainly a project that would never occur to her.  Still less would it occur to her to consider the question, interesting from a biological, if not a moral point of view, of whether her response to the emotions in question enhance or reduce the odds that the responsible genes that she happens to carry will survive and reproduce.  Instead, she merely cites the authority of the “educated elites of both parties,” and leaves it at that.

Since the only “truly good” things are the “Goods” that define her ideology, it follows that any other supposed rights or principles are not good in themselves, and can be dispensed with to the extent that they threaten those things that are.  Freedom of speech belongs in this category.  As Delton puts it, referring to the New Deal,

Liberals would be chumps to let a principled commitment to “freedom of speech” undercut the pragmatic goal of political survival, which was the only way to ensure progress in civil rights and social welfare.

In this case, Delton is referring to the decision by an earlier generation of “Good” liberals to end their support of freedom of speech for Communists.  This was to be done, not because the Communists had murdered millions of people, and enslaved millions more, or because they sought to use freedom of speech to destroy the system that defended that freedom.  Indeed, Delton doesn’t perceive Communists as an outgroup at all.  Instead, Communists were to be deprived of freedom of speech because they were being used as tools by those who were “really evil.”  In Delton’s words,

Their presence in liberal organizations made liberals vulnerable to Republican and conservative attacks.  So those liberals interested in political success (and in preserving the New Deal) drove them out of politics.

If freedom of speech could be legitimately denied to Communists because they were a mere annoyance, it must be doubly legitimate to deny it to conservatives, who are “truly evil.”  However, Delton isn’t brazen enough, or at least not brazen enough yet, to say, “I think freedom of speech should be denied to conservatives,” which is what she actually means.  Instead, she falls back on the distinction between freedom of speech and “freedom of speech.”  Of course, that begs the question, “What’s the difference?”  According to Delton,

Philosopher Sidney Hook hinged his argument about speech on the distinction between the free flow of ideas, which the First Amendment protected, and actions, which it did not.  He said liberals had no problem with Communists’ ideas, which they were free to expound upon and disseminate.  The problem lay in their organized actions, which involved, “all sorts of stratagems, maneuvers, and illegal methods, evasions and subterfuges” developed by Lenin to subvert democracy.”

There’s no need to wade through swamps of philosophical mumbo-jumbo in a vain attempt to understand the obscure chain of events by which the “free flow of ideas” is transmogrified into “all sorts of stratagems, maneuvers, and illegal methods, evasions, and subterfuges.”  That Gordian knot is easily cut if you simply assume that the former applies to speech by those who belong to Ms. Delton’s ingroup, and the latter to speech by those who do not.  So it is that any attempt by “evil” people, that is, those who don’t quite see eye to eye with Ms. Delton touching on the universal benefits of “internationalist, secular, cosmopolitan, multicultural liberalism,” to assert and defend their freedom of speech becomes a “right to create political spectacle and instigate violence.”  Apparently more or less the same logic is used to defend the assertion that attractive women who don’t wear a burka “create a public spectacle and instigate rape.”

Ms. Delton makes sure that her readers realize that anyone who disagrees with her opinion is evil.  Having compared them to Communists, she doubles down by claiming that they are Nazis on top of that:

It was one thing to defend the American Nazi Party’s right to march in Skokie, Ill. in 1977, when the liberal establishment and mainstream media were still intact and the American Nazi Party was a marginal fringe group.  The group was offensive, but neither its actions nor its ideas posed a threat to the political or social order, which was stable.  The situation is different today, with an erratic President Trump in the White House, elites in disarray and white nationalism on the rise.

I note in passing the degree of panic such hyperbole reveals on the left of the political spectrum in response to the recent election.  After dragging in the Communists and the di rigueur Nazis, Delton throws in some pejoratives to insure that even the most obtuse won’t fail to grasp that “conservatives = evil!”

Quoting Voltaire is not going to preserve anyone’s liberties – least of all those populations most vulnerable to vicious racist, misogynist and anti-Semitic attacks.

Note that racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism are merely different forms of outgroup identification that have been deemed by common agreement to be evil.  However, they are all symptoms of the same phenomenon; blind hatred of outgroups in the context of an environment radically different from the one in which that innately motivated behavior evolved.  Ms. Delton is no less a bigot merely because her hatred is directed at an outgroup based on ideology rather than race, sex, or religion, and one that doesn’t yet happen to be among those that are considered “off limits.”  Of course, there is an alternative explanation.  The people she hates may really be trying their very best to do things that they consciously believe are evil.  They may really be mortified if they pass the day without committing three or four bad deeds.  I wouldn’t put it past Ms. Delton to believe as much.  However, I have my doubts.

The point here isn’t that Mr. Delton is a bad person.  The identification of something she happens to want with “objective good” is a delusion common to almost every other human being on the planet.  I merely point out that the delusion can be inconvenient if you happen to value your right to speak freely, and downright deadly if you happen to be a Jew or a “bourgeois” in the wrong place at the wrong time.  It follows that it would behoove us to at least be aware of the danger.

I note in passing that the most extreme forms of the delusion are currently found among individuals who are on the left of the ideological spectrum.  That has not always been the case, and is, of course, no basis for concluding that leftists are “really evil.”  However, we can consider why this is the case.  I think part of the reason is that leftists like Ms. Delton imagined that they were safely in control of the tools needed to shape popular opinion, including the academy, the media, and the entertainment industry.  The results of the election were a terrible shock to many of them.  Ever since they have been frantically trying to think up ways to nullify those results and reassert their status and power.  Part of that project includes plugging the leaks that allowed thought crime to poison the minds of impressionable “deplorables” to begin with.  That entails denying access to a public forum to anyone who disagrees with “good” ideology, if necessary with the aid of modern day “antifa” storm troopers.

It is very unlikely that my little blog will convince enough people that “moral progress” is an illusion to matter.  It is much too delicious for human beings to believe in their own moral righteousness, and on the Left that sentiment has now become, for all practical purposes, an indispensable fetish, comparable to a form of religious fanaticism.  At best, I can point out the danger of the all but universal faith in “moral progress,” and advise my readers that, if they value freedom of speech, it is likely they will have to fight for it.

The “Islamophobia” of Richard Dawkins; Have We Reached Peak Insanity Yet?

KPFA radio in Berkeley recently invited Richard Dawkins to discuss his latest book, Science in the Soul:  Collected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist.”  Now, however, he has been disinvited.  The reason given by the sponsors, along with an abject apology that is now a familiar feature of such self-humiliation rituals, was as follows:

We had booked this event based entirely on his excellent new book on science, when we didn’t know he had offended and hurt in his tweets and other comments on Islam, so many people. KPFA does not endorse hurtful speech. While KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech, we do not support abusive speech. We apologize for not having had broader knowledge of Dawkins views much earlier. We also apologize to all those inconvenienced by this cancellation.

Really?  KPFA emphatically supports serious free speech?  Right!  The kind of free speech a Communist apparatchik in eastern Europe would have joyfully embraced in the 1950’s.  Whether you like Richard Dawkins or not, there is no denying that the author of books such as The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker and The God Delusion is one of foremost scientific writers and thinkers of our time.  Denial of a public forum to someone like him is a particularly egregious form of censorship, and the very opposite of “support for serious free speech.”  The idea that KPFA has a problem with hurtful and offensive speech is beyond ludicrous.  As I write this, the lead story on their website includes the following:

Trump is Appallingly Ignorant on Healthcare; Puts Greed Above Human Lives; David Cay Johnston: GOP Budget Redistributes Money to the Rich; Helps Make U.S. a Police State; Rights Advocates: Trump’s Commission on Election Integrity Set Up as a Pretext for Voter Suppression; Trump and the Russian Money Trail: Trump’s Ties to Oligarchs Go Back Decades; Married to the Mob: Investigative Journalist Craig Unger on What Trump Owes the Russian Mafia.

Nothing Dawkins has ever written about Islam even comes close to being as “hurtful” and “offensive” as the above.  Obviously KPFA has no problem whatsoever with hurtful and offensive language per se.  They do have a problem with any criticism, no matter how mild, and how truthful, of any of the identity groups that are deemed “good,” and are therefore protected by the regressive Left ingroup.

If the whole “Islamophobia” charade hasn’t reached peak insanity, it must be approaching it very quickly.  Recently a flash mob of Moslems rioted and sexually assaulted several women at a fair in the German City of Schorndorf.  I could find not a single headline or byline in the German legacy media the day after the event that identified the attackers as other than “youth.”  The US media were similarly coy about identifying the Minnesota policeman who shot and killed an Australian woman who was unarmed, dressed in pajamas, and merely trying to report a sexual assault, as a Somali Moslem.  One could cite countless other examples of the legacy media “protecting” the rest of us from the truth in this way.  Any criticism of Islam, no matter how mild, is deemed “Islamophobia.”

The weird nexus between the regressive Left and Islam is remarkable in its own right.  Many of the former tend to be fascinated by radical mass movements that peddle promises of a paradise to come.  Communism was a natural fit, but its formerly powerful appeal has been drowned in oceans of blood.  Now, at least for the time being, the only game in town for those whose tastes run to rabid fanaticism on behalf of messianic worldviews is radical Islam.  Hence this odd couple’s incongruous love affair.

Is there really even such a thing as completely irrational and unjustified “Islamophobia,” or is there really some reasonable basis for being wary of Moslems and their ongoing penetration of western societies?  After all, freedom of religion is considered a fundamental principle in most western democracies.  One of the best known statements thereof is the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, which was drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1777 and became state law in 1786.  The text included the following:

Be it enacted by General Assembly that no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.

However, according to another clause in the law,

That it is time enough for the rightful purposes of civil government, for its officers to interfere when principles break out into overt acts against peace and good order.

Well, principles have broken out into overt acts against peace and good order on numerous occasions, most notably on September 11, 2001.  The usual rationalization of this fact is that Islam is a “religion of peace,” and the persons committing these acts simply don’t understand their own religion.  This is a dubious assertion in view of the fact that the “persons committing these acts” have often been schooled in Islamic madrassas, and have been steeped in the religion their whole lives, whereas the peddlers of the “religion of peace” nostrum have seldom even read the Quran.

The idea that Islam is a “religion of peace” is absurd on the face of it.  The populations of Egypt and the rest of North Africa as well as much of the Middle East, including Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and Israel were formerly predominantly Christian, Jewish, and/or Zoroastrian.  They did not become Moslem by peaceful penetration, but by the most extensive and successful campaign of military aggression and colonialism the world has ever seen.  At one time Spain and much of southeastern Europe as well as Sicily, Crete, Cyprus and many other large and small Mediterranean islands also fell victim to Moslem aggression, but managed to expel their conquerors, sometimes with and sometimes without outside help.

As for the Quran itself, it hardly supports the notion that Islam is a “religion of peace.”  One can certainly cherry pick verses that seem to suggest that Moslems and infidels can live at peace with one another.  However, these periods of peace are, at best, only breathing spells in a campaign of violence that must continue until the whole world is Moslem.  Peace is certainly not an option if Moslems have the upper hand.  For example, from verse 38 of Sura 57,

Be not fainthearted then; and invite not the infidels to peace when ye have the upper hand:  for God is with you, and will not defraud you of the recompense of your works.

and verse 4 of the same Sura,

When ye encounter the infidels, strike off their heads till ye have made a great slaughter among them, and of the rest make fast the fetters.

From Sura 9, verse 124,

Believers!  wage war against such of the infidels as are your neighbors, and let them find you rigorous:  and know that God is with those who fear him.

and finally, from Sura 8, verse 40,

Fight against them till strife be at an end, and the religion be all of it God’s.

Homosexuals are condemned to hellfire in several places.  See, for example, Sura 27, Verses 55-60.  The Quran condones slavery, and particularly the sexual slavery of women.  See for example, Sura 23, Verse 6, which praises those,

who restrain their appetites, save with their wives, or the slaves whom their right hands possess.

and, from Sura 4, Verse 28,

Forbidden to you also are married women, except those who are in your hands as slaves; This is the law of God for you.

Western feminists are strangely silent about the plight of their sisters in Moslem countries in spite of such passages such as the following from Sura 4 (Women), Verse 38,

Men are superior to women on account of the qualities with which God hath gifted the one above the other.

And, according to Sura 4, Verse 12,

God commandeth you to give the male the portion of two females.

Christians, or at any rate those who associate the word “begotten” with Christ and those who believe in the Trinity are considered so evil that they will burn in hell forever.  For example, from Sura 10, verses 69-71,

They say, “God hath begotten children.”  No! by His glory!  He is the self-sufficient.  All that is in the heavens and all that is in the earth is His!  Have ye warranty for that assertion?  What! speak ye of God that which ye know not?  Say:  “Verily, they who devise this lie concerning God shall fare ill.”  A portion have they in this world!  Then to Us they return!  Then make We them to taste the vehement torment, for they were unbelievers.

As for the Trinity, from Sura 9, Verse 6,

Attack those who join gods with God in all, as they attack you in all:  and know that God is with those who fear Him.

and from Sura 5, Verse 77,

They surely are infidels who say, “God is the third of three:”  for there is no God but one God:  and if they refrain not from what they say, a grievous chastisement shall light on such of them as are infidels.

Moslems are explicitly forbidden from taking Jews or Christians as friends, hardly a promising recommendation for a thriving, multicultural society.  For example, from Sura 5, Verse 56,

O believers!  take not the Jews or Christians as friends.  They are but one another’s friends.  If any one of you taketh them for his friends, he surely is one of them!  God will not guide the evil doers.

and, from Sura 4, Verse 91,

They desire that ye should be infidels as they are infidels, and that ye should be alike.  Take therefore none of them for friends.

There are several other similar passages in the Quran.  Moslems, who are quick to claim freedom of religion for themselves, deny it to others, and particularly to those who may have been born to Moslem parents but reject Moslem teachings.  For example, from Sura 3, Verses 84-85,

As for those who become infidels, after having believed, and then increase their infidelity – their repentance shall never be accepted.  These! they are the erring ones.  As for those who are infidels, and die infidels, from no one of them shall as much gold as the earth could contain be accepted, though he should offer it in ransom.  These! a grievous punishment awaiteth them; and they shall have none to help them.

Early Moslem visitors to western countries were often nonplussed by the existence of parliaments and other secular legislative bodies.  After all, the law had been handed down by Muhammed in the form of Sharia.  Surveys consistently show that large percentages of Moslems still believe that Sharia should be the basis of all law.  In other words, Islam is not just another religion.  Its dogmas apply as much in the realm of politics as they do in theology.  As Milo Yiannopoulos wrote in his book, Dangerous,

Islam is not like other religions.  It’s more inherently prescriptive and it’s much more political.

He also notes the disconnect between the principles the Left is supposed to stand for and its support for Islam:

There is nothing else which better exposes the modern Left’s rank hypocrisy, their disregard for the facts, and their hatred for the West and all it stands for than their attitude to Islam.  Every noble principle the Left claims to uphold, from rights for women to gay liberation, even diversity itself, dies on the altar of its sycophantic defense of Islam.

I doubt that any sincere Moslem, at least to the extent that he is honest, could claim that any of the above is “hurtful,” or “offensive,” unless they are “hurt” and “offended” by facts.  It is simply a truthful accounting of relevant historical events and a summary of some of the things the Quran actually teaches.  The Left can dream as much as it wants about a future border-free paradise of perfect equality and human brotherhood.  That dream will be shattered by a much grimmer reality in any country where Moslems get the upper hand.

Leftist are masters at manipulating moral emotions to get what they want.  They claim that the rest of us are “immoral” for resisting the “paradise” they have in store for us.  That’s why, when it comes to morality, its always a good idea to go back to basics.  Always consider why the moral emotions exist to begin with.  They exist because they happened to enhance the odds that the genes responsible for their existence would survive and reproduce.  Those genes are the root cause for the existence of all human moralities, in all their gaudy variations.

Does tolerating the unlimited immigration of culturally and/or genetically alien hordes enhance or diminish the odds that those same genes will survive and reproduce in the existing population?  The answer is the latter – it will diminish the odds.  It will lead to all the social disorder potentially ending in civil war that history has taught us to expect when ingroups are brought in close proximity to their outgroups.  Beyond that, it will greatly increase the environmental damage the Left claims to be so concerned about, exacerbating it by further increasing what are clearly already excessive populations in terms of the health of the planet we all depend on for survival.  In fact, if one takes the facts of human nature into account, enabling such unlimited immigration is nothing short of suicidal.

Of course, there is nothing inherently “evil” about the Left’s version of morality.  In the end, it amounts to manipulating moral emotions to accomplish ends that are the exact opposite of the reasons those emotions exist to begin with.  I personally prefer to pursue goals that are in harmony with those reasons, if only for the sake of consistency.  Objectively speaking, that doesn’t make me morally better or morally worse than the most Islamophilic Leftist you can imagine.  However, it strikes me that any life form that pursues its own destruction is dysfunctional, and I find it unaesthetic to consider myself dysfunctional.  In short, I haven’t adopted the Left’s version of morality for the same reason that I don’t try to walk on my hands instead of my feet, or smell with my ears instead of my nose.

As for Dawkins, he’s said some “hurtful” and “offensive” things about all religions, not just Islam.  However, regardless of who they happen to “hurt,” or “offend,” those things may just happen to be true.  Whether in reading his books or listening to his talks, it would be useful to at least consider that possibility.