The “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” Cancels Its Own Message

A typical 'liberal' attitude. Free speech for me, but not for thee until thou agreest with me!

From Everyday For Life Canada

This week an open Letter, signed by 153 journalists, writers and authors, was released calling for the free exchange of ideas and debate, not the firing of writers and the capitulation to the cancel culture. They write, “The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.” The message is published in the Letters section of October edition of Harper's magazine. The statement tries to respond to cancel culture with the recent resignation of Bari Weiss, an opinion editor of the New York Times. Weiss accuses the Times of creating a toxic censorious working environment that made it impossible for her to do her job. We will respond to the Letter's flaw but first the Letter:

A Letter on Justice and Open Debate

July 7, 2020

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

The Letter makes some much needed points in addressing polarized and biased speech. However, in making the case for open and free debate it cancels its message when it states: "The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides." What just happened to the free exchange of ides?

How is Donald Trump a "threat to democracy"? Because he's a "conservative" and not a liberal, a Republican not a Democrat? Why is a different point of view "its own brand of dogma or coercion"? The demagogues can be found just as readily on the left. And we can presently witness the exploitation, violence, deaths and the intolerance to other views on too many American streets. If the 153 writers who signed the Letter want to protect freedom of speech, they must do it for everyone, both on the left and the right, for liberals, independents and conservatives. The real threat to open debate and justice is the cancel culture and censorship. It's the dictatorship of thought. Trump didn't create the discriminatory and unfair working climate that made Wiess resign. Trump isn't pushing just one side of the story to defund the police. Trump isn't arguing that only Black Lives Matter. Facts have no political affiliation. Nobody has a monopoly on the truth.