Silencing Americans is Unhealthy for Democracy
In 2017, angry liberal students at Middlebury College, Vermont prevented political scientist Charles Murray from speaking, forcing his talk off campus and later violently confronting him. Much more recently, employees at NBC and liberal-leaning MSNBC forced the network to retract the hiring of former Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. Such “cancel culture” behavior is not confined to liberals. At the University of Chicago, Daniel Schmidt, a sophomore with thousands of social media followers, posted criticism of a professor’s proposed course on ‘The Problem of Whiteness” and her email address. Her inbox was flooded with attacks and threats forcing temporary cancellation of the course. Harvard University is now ranked the worst college in the nation for free speech, in part because nine faculty faced calls to be punished or fired based on what they’d said or written.
Writing about the danger of silencing Americans seems strange when we’re constantly confronted by loud, angry voices. But preventing talk promotes neither conversation nor dialogue. It’s unhealthy for democracy. It signals we don’t trust Americans’ ability to critically evaluate what they read, hear and see.
Much of the work of silencing is driven by political extremists who polarize issues and demonize opponents. Through trolling, doxing and public shaming, the aim is to silence by fear and ranting, not to convince by reason. Sometimes this works, even getting people to self-silence. In a 2021 survey of students at 159 colleges, 80 percent said they sometimes censor their views rather than engage in confrontation or be ostracized by peers.
Silencing goes well beyond the campus. Iowa meteorologist Chris Cloninger was silenced when he resigned from Des Moines station KCCI after threats to him and his family because he mixed in facts about climate change with his TV forecasts. “What is your address,” one viewer wrote him. “We conservative Iowans would like to give you an Iowan welcome you will never forget.” The number of health care workers who’ve left their jobs due to harassment has increased as has the percentage of Americans who just seem resigned to such harassment as the new, if unwelcome, normal. School officials, election workers, vaccine scientists and journalists are among others who extreme Americans of all political persuasions seek to silence.
State governments also play the silencing game. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte signed into law a bill barring the state from calculating the climate impacts of major projects. The message to climate scientists: no need to hear your voices. Florida’s “Stop WOKE Act” aims to silence uncomfortable speech about slavery and America’s racial past that might make school students feel bad. School librarians are being silenced or just pull books off the shelves, without even being asked, due to fear of parents who seek to ban them. Even a single parent’s objection can result in banning a book, silencing its message and student conversation about the ideas in it. State laws on medical practices regarding abortion and gender affirming care make it harder for health care professionals to talk to their patients with facts and compassion.
In the private sector, threats against firms and their employees, by both liberals and conservatives, aim to silence corporate speech. Businesses employ Non-Disclosure Agreements not just to protect intellectual property but in settlements with mistreated employees and whistleblowers to keep them from sharing information about unethical or illegal business behavior. The takeover of many health care providers by private equity firms has increased pressure on some physicians to keep quiet, fearing a loss of privileges or their jobs if they disagree with or speak out about corporate policies. Even when corporations agree to class-action settlements for bad behavior, they often hide their misdeeds behind a wall of silence when the settlement doesn’t require admitting fault.
Congress contributes to silencing on issues as varied as immigration, climate warming, the debt and guns. It’s not their failure to talk about these issues – there is no lack of that – but their failure to engage in more than political posturing, even when large percentages of Americans agree on what to do. Polls, for example, show that at least two-thirds of Americans support universal background checks for gun purchases but that majority voice is effectively silenced in Congress. Some in Congress, concerned that online platforms are silencing views they like try to silence others by defunding programs to help the public spot disinformation. “In the name of protecting free speech, the scientific community is not allowed to speak,” said Dean Schillinger, a researcher who wants to help people spot disinformation on health topics.
Oddly, some of the loudest shouts that “they’re trying to censor me” come from those who want to censor others. If we can’t trust people to think for themselves, we need to dramatically reshape education to promote critical thinking. In the end, democracy cannot thrive when its citizens won’t face its problems with open minds. As writer James Baldwin put it: “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Photo Credit: ernie-a-stephens - unsplash.com
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