So while the government will not imprison you for publishing, you had better not be a member of a profession and certainly not the academic profession if you intend to engage in speech that is not sanctioned by the arbiters of political correctness. Free speech, it seems, is a luxury to be enjoyed only by the blue collar and the welfare classes. We know that some professors and journalists favor incarcerating people who disagree with the concept of man-caused climate change. Any academic can tell you how well he will be respected if he argues against race-based affirmative action. Nowhere are the parameters of speech more narrow than in academia.
The desire to repress offensive ideas is common to humans, and this desire has been projected by governments of varying ideological persuasions throughout human history. However, today, it is many on the left who are most troubled by differences of opinion. Maybe they are even more troubled by their own internal contradictions. While Western leftists state their support for free speech and women’s rights, at the same time they warn against criticizing the culture of other people. This split ideological personality syndrome results in looking the other way at Muslim-only zones in European cities, the spreading of sharia law courts in European nations, a reluctance to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of domestic violence when the perpetrators are Muslims, and a self-censoring and shaming of others in matters of speech. As to the claim that the authorities are loath to investigate and prosecute domestic abuse when it perpetrated by Islamists, we want you to imagine that the Ku Klux Klan were doing to young women in Western nations today what Islamists are doing to their female children in Western countries. We ask, would it be tolerated for even one season? Do you think that in the United States that some of our federal and state courts might ignore some of the basics of due process to put an end to such abuses? For the record, we do not favor the trampling of procedural rights. We imagine only that the courts might carve out some new legal exceptions favorable to the prosecution in the effort to end the suffering of young women, or that courts might give great credence to the facts as presented by the prosecution in an effort to alleviate the suffering of the oppressed.
While the challenges faced by this journal in publishing are minor compared to the violations of freedom and decency that are catalogued above, even the advertising of this publication was met with private attempts to discourage dissent. Several of the on-line notices soliciting writers to submit work for this issue were flagged and taken down. Why did this happen? The answer is obvious to those who have followed the discordant nature of politically correct thinking. Criticizing even the most virulently barbaric version of Islam may make some Muslims uncomfortable. We know that Islamism, the philosophy that the tenets of Islam should be enforced by the sword, is not embraced by all Muslims. However, it is precisely this philosophy that is the root of most terror in the world today. As Islam is a minority religion in most western countries, Western leftists believe that the ideas and feelings of Muslims must be given special protection. If in the process that special protection results in a the unwillingness to critique the failings of a culture, or to pressure critics into silence, then that is the price that must be paid. All minorities have suffered a special harm, and, therefore, must be protected from the views of the majority. This is true even when the majoritarian view is one such as the idea that women are equal to men, and must be given the same respect as men in the courts, and in society.
In response to critiques of Islamism, some leftists duck the issue, and point to past
violations perpetrated by Christianity. While Christendom has perpetrated its share of war
crimes, one must go back several centuries to locate these deeds. More vaguely, leftists remind
us that no culture is perfect. To this we say: show us one other culture today that is as barbaric
today as the culture of Islamism. Even the views of the parishioners of the Westboro Baptist
Church, who attended military funerals to announce that U.S. service persons were dying
because of the American embrace of homosexuality, were merely offensive to most people.
None of the Westboro parishioners flew planes into skyscrapers or murdered artists.