This piece by Stanley Kurtz at National Review is a commentary on the very rapid growth of the belief, and subsequent practice, of left-wing journalists that views which they despise should not be heard. It's worth reading in its entirety, but here's how Kurtz ends it:
Classical liberalism arose to prevent murderous civil strife between those who could not agree on ultimate things—and who questioned each other’s good faith as a consequence. Throw aside the marketplace of ideas, throw aside even the aspiration to neutral reporting, and throw aside, on this account, the basic rights of those with whom we disagree, and we are back in the soup, back to the wars, back to the days before liberty and civil peace, the crowning achievements of our history, the history we’ve stopped celebrating—or even remembering. Is that what we want? Because that is where we are headed.
Back in 2015 or maybe early 2016, when I was younger and more innocent, I had a couple of conversations with left-of-center friends in which I asserted that the country was in a sort of cold civil war. They were dismissive. Looking back at those exchanges now, I think those people were entirely confident that Trump would lose and that the "arc of history" would continue to move in its mysteriously ordained progressive direction. I don't know if they would still scoff at the civil war notion; we don't talk anymore.
By the way, in case it isn't clear: I have not changed the views that I've expressed often here, that I favor the classical liberal ideal over most of the remotely possible alternatives. I have not boarded the Catholic Integralist train. I want to save the American system, not replace it, though saving it is certainly not a hope-filled project now. If you are interested, this post from fourteen years ago, "The Liberal Conservative," still stands. Some of it is dated now but the principles haven't changed.
I want very much to preserve liberal institutions, chiefly republican government and the republican concepts of citizenship, ordered liberty, and religious toleration as we have known them for much of the past couple of hundred years; in short, I want to conserve the genuine achievements of liberalism.
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In other news: I'm sure you're aware of the group in Seattle which has declared a piece of the city to be the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone," and not a part of the United States. So I think this tweet is very funny:
Compañerxs!
It’s been reported to us that pigs just took the barricades at the autonomous zone. People need barricade materials ASAP to keep the zone safe. #seattleprotests #SeattleAutonomousZone
— Rosa Negra Seattle | Black Rose Seattle (@BRRNSeattle) June 9, 2020
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