Commentary: Censorship Wounds Worse Than Words

By Peter Berkowitz
RealClear Politics

Excerpt: In the United States and Britain, ill-informed and poorly reasoned opinions about transgenderism, climate change, COVID-19, Islamic extremism, working-class political inclinations and voting patterns, race, sex, hate speech, and identity politics dominate progressive elites’ thinking and drive their policymaking. This alone would pose no special challenge to freedom and democracy.

The deeper concern is the determination on the part of journalists, professors and university administrators, K-12 educators, government bureaucrats, high-tech titans and social-media moguls, entertainment-industry movers and shakers, and corporate executives – a preponderance of what was once called “the establishment” – to silence dissent from progressive orthodoxy through law and popular opprobrium. That puts liberal democracy itself at risk, not least by prompting the right to injudiciously retaliate with bans of its own.