We are witnessing storm troopers in cyber-space “pulling the plug” on those whose voices they refuse to tolerate. Two personal experiences of such censorship—both of which relate to The Imaginative Conservative itself—will suffice to illustrate the trend… The interference of Google and Facebook in the recent Irish referendum on abortion raises serious concerns about the [...]
By state law, the state of California is now forcing pregnancy-support centers, whose sole purpose for existence is to offer alternatives to abortion, to “conspicuously” notify pregnant women of where they can receive abortions. The centers have objected that the law violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment by compelling them to engage [...]
The “separation of church and state” was intended in part to prevent the sorts of religious conflicts that had racked Europe in previous centuries. Nevertheless, it was only a matter of time before the ambiguity of this figure of speech would be exploited. During her confirmation hearing last September, Notre Dame law professor, Amy Coney Barrett, [...]
To recover our social traditions and the cultural knowledge undergirding them will be the job of generations. But we should work to reduce the harm visited on our society by universities increasingly dedicated to identity politics and to indoctrinating students into that politics… The problem with reforms is that they almost always are thinly-veiled programs [...]
Alexis de Tocqueville believed that Americans had cause to fear in their leaders, not “tyrants, but rather tutors.” Democratic individualism would cause men to pursue vulgar pleasures and material well-being. Such men would surrender their self-government and even their self-will, and society would eventually devolve into mere savagery. What should a democratic people fear in [...]
Freedom of speech and press is the lifeblood of a free society. And the abuse of free speech, however outrageous, is the price we must pay for this freedom... Recently, I was asked by a federal judge to appear on a panel of three at an Inns of Court in Houston on the topic, “Free [...]
II The related problems of “the public orthodoxy” and “the open society” were major concerns of Willmoore Kendall throughout his professional career. In his reappraisal of John Locke in 1941, Kendall’s Locke emerged as an exponent of the public orthodoxy as expressed through the majority. As Kendall sees it, in Lockean thought, “In consenting to be a member [...]
You are aware, are you not, that there was this chap called Oliver Cromwell who came after Shakespeare and brought democracy to England, including—ultimately—free speech. Anybody wishing to understand the nonsense that prevails in the present need only consider the nonsense that many people believe about the past. Indeed it would not be an exaggeration [...]
Something important and fundamental has been lost in conflicting responses to the terrorist attack on the offices of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. The official western response has been absolute identification with the magazine (“I am Charlie Hebdo”), while all too many Islamic groups have even openly refused to condemn this act of radical Islamic [...]
“I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it.” Yeah, right. There was a time when this saying, often attributed to the French philosophe Voltaire, was taken as a kind of American credo. Free and open debate, most of us thought, was essential [...]
As a woman, I constantly need to be rescued. I can’t say no. I do what I want, and if I can’t, someone better give me the means to do it anyways. I am completely free and liberated! Wait, what? I know what you’re thinking: since when did liberation mean total dependence on the government? [...]