That’s the basic takeaway from a recent piece, “The Harper’s ‘Letter,’ cancel culture and the summer that drove a lot of smart people mad”, by Sarah Ellison and Elahe Izadi that appeared in the Washington Post yesterday.
Ellison and Izadi naturally corralled a variety of talking heads, including, rather curiously, aging paleo-lib Robert Reich,1 who said the “timing was bad” for a letter espousing such an uninhibited endorsement of intellectual freedom for people we disagree with. Reich praised what he called “an incipient movement of people of color, teaching the rest of America about systemic racism, and women courageously opposing systemic harassment,” a movement which, apparently, should not be subject to criticism. For this reason, Reich told the Post reporters, he declined to sign the letter, thinking that it would “run the risk of suggesting, even indirectly, that they [the people of color and the #MeToo movement) are wrong-headed or overly sensitive,” even if, I guess, some of them are wrong-headed or overly sensitive. For, to my mind, the purpose of saying that you feel unsafe is often to make someone else feel unsafe, to expose them to public ridicule, and to get them fired.
Afterwords
I’ve contributed a number of quips and quibbles regarding the sad lack of respect shown for the First Amendment in the highest circles these days. On the right, of course, the problem these days is not speech but silence.
1. Bob is 74, one year behind me.
