By now it should be perfectly clear how the secular left operates: they have very little intelligent arguments of their own, so they resort to other means to win the public debate on hot potato issues. And the main means they use is bullying, intimidation, shouting, name-calling, mud-slinging, and simply preventing the other side from getting a hearing.
Since our mainstream media is predominated by secular lefties, this is exactly how the media works as well. It is almost impossible nowadays for a contrary opinion to be heard in the MSM, whether on the issue of homosexuality, or abortion, or climate change. There is the party line, and that is adhered to and defended at all costs. No countervailing points of view will be heard.
And of course there is only the slightest pretence of balance offered when another side is allowed in. As the Q&A program the other night once again demonstrated so clearly, one token conservative and/or Christian will be invited to take on 4, 5, 6 or more secular lefties.
Thus Fred Nile single-handedly had to take on the entire hostile panel, the hostile “moderator,” and the hostile audience as well. This is what “our” ABC considers to be a fair and even-handed debate. So petrified are they of actually allowing another point of view on, that they simply don’t for the most part. I discuss this appalling show here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/06/18/we-pay-for-this-abc-bias-and-bigotry/
It is exactly as conservative pundit William F. Buckley said years ago: “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” Such is the frightening world of the modern West: there is no longer difference of opinion, just one point of view that cannot be challenged.
I have learned all this the hard way in three decades of debating secular lefties and dealing with the MSM. It gets worse each passing year. In the early days I could actually get entire articles published in the MSM on homosexuality and other issues. It is now almost impossible to do that, and even mere letters are almost never published anymore.
Simply block out the opposing point of view and keep ramming the PC line down the throats of everyone – that is now how the battle for ideas takes place in the West. Let me offer just one recent example of this. Over a month ago the publisher of a debate book on homosexual marriage I co-authored with Rodney Croome (Pantera Press, 2010), emailed me to say they are contacting heaps of media outlets to offer interviews and debates with us.
OK, and the results? Up until now I have not done one media interview on this. I have seen Croome often on TV and elsewhere, so he is getting a dream run by the media, but I am being completely shut out of the debate. One ABC radio station for example did contact me and had a debate all planned for a certain day and time.
When the appointed time came and nothing happened, I emailed them with my phone number again, in case they had misplaced it. They emailed me back, saying that there was a reschedule, that they would call me after the show, and do it tomorrow. Um, they never called me back, and the debate never happened.
At best, this was an utter lack of professionalism and common courtesy on their part – at worst, they deliberately lied to me and simply gave me the ol’ heave ho. How do we account for this? I think what I just said above explains it pretty well. And chances are the other side told the ABC that I am a hate-filled bigot, and I should not be allowed on.
This is now the normal course of events: censor the other side, or demonise the other side. Shout them down and seek to shut them up. This is debate, secular left style. Happens all the time, where there is any public debate. Just look at the Internet, or Facebook, or Twitter, and so on.
What we are seeing occurring right before our very eyes is the death of freedom of speech, freedom of thought, and freedom of religion. And we are also witnessing the end of democracy. Each new day our liberties are being curtailed, our ability to freely express our opinions are being whittled away, and the jackboot of political correctness is laying heavier over the land.
And of course it is not just me who has experienced all this with monotonous regularity. Any person from a Christian or conservative stance who seeks to engage in the public arena knows full well that this is the way the game is being played.
Indeed, two new books have just been written on this which make this case with plenty of documentation and examples – as if we need any more proof of this. But these volumes are well worth consulting nonetheless. The first volume is End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun) by Mary Katharine Ham and Guy Benson (Crown Forum, 2015).
The book is described this way, in part:
The political correctness born on college campuses has mutated into a new hypersensitivity. It’s weaponized in Washington, D.C. by a network of well-trained operatives, media, and politicians, and proliferated throughout the country. The new Puritans of the Left are quick to ban comedians and commencement speakers alike for the sin of disagreeing with them. They demand “safe spaces” while making dissent increasingly dangerous for Americans.
Ham and Benson demonstrate just how dangerous the outrage industry – a coalition of mostly liberal blowhards and busybodies—is to America. The media frenzy they create is designed to disqualify opposing viewpoints on everything from health care to education by labeling them racist, sexist, and evil. They punish speech that makes them uncomfortable, demanding boycotts, censures, and people’s jobs. They seek to win political and cultural debates by preventing them from happening.
The second volume is The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech by Kirsten Powers (Regnery, 2015). The interesting thing about this volume is the fact that the author happens to be a liberal. But even as a non-conservative, she sees the very real threats to freedom coming from the liberals.
Eric Metaxas recently wrote about her and the book and is worth quoting here:
The illiberal left wants journalists fired for not holding the “correct” positions on hot-button social issues. They complain of feeling unsafe and uncomfortable in class if their professors teach the wrong authors or use the wrong phrases. They charge all same-sex marriage opponents with bigotry and try to shut down their businesses. They claim that pro-life women aren’t really “women” at all, and can’t be trusted to vote the right way on “women’s issues” or anything else.
In short, the illiberal left’s answer to everything that doesn’t fit their narrow worldview is “Shut up.” Demonization and dehumanization are their tools, and they wield them every chance they get.
As Kirsten herself told me when I interviewed her on “The Eric Metaxas Show,” she started to notice this pattern while doing research for her columns at USA Today. She’s come under attack herself, just for working at Fox News, even though she continues to represent a liberal point of view there. (“Guilt by association” is another favorite technique with the illiberal left.)
But as Kirsten told me, this isn’t about her. She’s more concerned about what’s happening on a national level, to all the people who don’t have access to the outlets that she has and are easy to silence before they ever even get a chance to speak. It’s on their behalf that she’s speaking out.
As Kirsten writes, “Debate and persuasion should be the default response when someone encounters a person who does not share their view, not demands that the other person change their position or be pushed to the margins of polite society.”
Amen. I’m deeply grateful for her honesty and integrity in standing up to those on her own side and insisting on fair treatment of those they disagree with.
Both books are well worth getting if you are not yet convinced about the totalitarian nature of the secular left. They are not about freedom, democracy, tolerance, diversity and open debate. They are about only one thing: forcing their worldview onto everyone else, and seeking to silence anyone who dares to speak or think differently.
http://www.breakpoint.org/bpcommentaries/entry/13/27638
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