In totalitarian states, you keep your private sentiments and beliefs about the world’s realities to yourself; the penalty is harsh for expressing opinions that conflict with the official line. Example:
Khruschev was busy denouncing Stalin at a public meeting when a voice shouted out “If you feel this way now, why didn’t you say so then?” To which the Soviet leader thundered “Who said that?” There was a long and petrified silence which Kruschev finally broke. “Now you know why.”
Are things really so different here and now? In an essay at NRO titled The American Soviet, Victor Davis Hanson argues that they are not.
I’m sympathetic to Dr. Hanson’s point: these days there are certainly many things that we all know to be true, but mustn’t say in public. But in making the comparison that he does Hanson overstates, and weakens, his case.
The crucial difference is this: had Dr. Hanson made the same points in the old Soviet Union, he’d have been hauled off to Lubyanka. But unlike Soviet Russia (or even Europe and Canada, where a dark night is swiftly descending upon the right to express “offensive” thoughts), the tyranny that binds and gags us here in America is still self-imposed. Though it has certainly taken hold of a great many of our public and private institutions (just ask Lawrence Summers or James Watson or E.O. Wilson), we need only look at places like Syria or North Korea — or even Holland, England, and Denmark! — to realize how free we still are in America, where it’s far more difficult for our P.C. taboos to take on the force of law. We can still cast off our chains any time we make up our minds to do so.
Meanwhile, though, it isn’t as if our pathological inclination to deny awkward facts doesn’t have serious consequences: for more on that, see today’s post at Mangan’s.
5 Comments
I completely agree. The First Amendment is an awesome thing. (Spot quiz: there are five freedoms guaranteed by the First Amendment. Can you name all five?). Political correctness is the enemy of free thought. Galileo was politically incorrect.
While I don’t think that scientific inquiry should be impeded from going where it wants to go, my only question is whether the data are useful or actionable. Let’s suppose that it was proven that women are less capable than men in science and math. What do you do with that information?
What do you do with that information?
You begin to understand the true causes of “achievement gaps” that are falsely blamed on institutionalized sexism and racism. You stop throwing taxpayers’ money at “problems” that money won’t solve. You stop creating government agencies to eliminate “discrimination” that doesn’t exist. You stop burdening institutions with quotas that reflect unrealistic expectations. You stop lowering standards out of a sense of social guilt.
In short, you allow yourself the luxury of designing sane policies based on how the world really is, rather than how we wish it were.
Or you simply do what the leftists do, you vote for the less capable presidential candidate.
What government agencies eliminate discrimination that doesn’t exist?
TouchÁ©. Yes, obviously one can’t eliminate what doesn’t exist, which is rather the point.