This recent article, “Stop Being Shocked”, raises a number of issues worth carefully considering. Bari Weiss, its author, was until recently on the editorial staff of the New York Times (her resignation letter is worth reading, too). She writes from a relatively liberal, Jewish perspective, and her article is a bit of an exhortation to American Jews to stop being shocked that they’re being excluded from what she calls the “new progressive coalition”. However, it touches on ideas far broader than the Jewish community – ideas about the foundations of our country and society. I want to quote some key highlights here, and link to a variety of related sources. I regret that I don’t have time and space to do a deep dive into all the issues, but hopefully this will suffice.

First, let’s look at “Stop Being Shocked”

In any case, Weiss’s basic thesis is that the America we believed in was founded on broadly liberal principles, but this America is rapidly vanishing. She writes:

To understand the enormity of the change we are now living through, take a moment to understand America as the overwhelming majority of its Jews believed it was—and perhaps as we always assumed it would be.

It was liberal.

Not liberal in the narrow, partisan sense, but liberal in the most capacious and distinctly American sense of that word: the belief that everyone is equal because everyone is created in the image of God. The belief in the sacredness of the individual over the group or the tribe. The belief that the rule of law—and equality under that law—is the foundation of a free society. The belief that due process and the presumption of innocence are good and that mob violence is bad. The belief that pluralism is a source of our strength; that tolerance is a reason for pride; and that liberty of thought, faith, and speech are the bedrocks of democracy.

The liberal worldview was one that recognized that there were things—indeed, the most important things—in life that were located outside of the realm of politics: friendships, art, music, family, love. This was a world in which Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg could be close friends. Because, as Scalia once said, some things are more important than votes.

Crucially, this liberalism relied on the view that the Enlightenment tools of reason and the scientific method might have been designed by dead white guys, but they belonged to everyone, and they were the best tools for human progress that have ever been devised.

That’s the America I grew up believing in and being proud to be part of, too – one where I was supposed to understand (and be able to argue for) both sides of every issue before really taking up a firm position on one side or the other, and one where I knew there were well-meaning, respectable people on both sides of all the major issues. Weiss notes that these ideas were baked into every aspect of society, and seemed so fundamental to everything we did that we almost didn’t notice them.

Weiss goes on to argue that liberalism in this sense is in the process of being torn down:

No one has yet decided on the name for the force that has come to unseat liberalism. Some say it’s “Social Justice.” The author Rod Dreher has called it “therapeutic totalitarianism.” The writer Wesley Yang refers to it as “the successor ideology”—as in, the successor to liberalism.

At some point, it will have a formal name, one that properly describes its mixture of postmodernism, postcolonialism, identity politics, neo-Marxism, critical race theory, intersectionality, and the therapeutic mentality. Until then, it is up to each of us to see it plainly. We need to look past the hashtags and slogans and the jargon to assess it honestly—and then to explain it to others.

The new creed’s premise goes something like this: We are in a war in which the forces of justice and progress are arrayed against the forces of backwardness and oppression. And in a war, the normal rules of the game—due process; political compromise; the presumption of innocence; free speech; even reason itself—must be suspended. Indeed, those rules themselves were corrupt to begin with—designed, as they were, by dead white males in order to uphold their own power.

In this view, some outcomes are so wrong that the process or system which created them must be inherently unfair. Weiss notes:

In fact, any feature of human existence that creates disparity of outcomes must be eradicated: The nuclear family, politeness, even rationality itself can be defined as inherently racist or evidence of white supremacy, as a Smithsonian institution suggested this summer.

Thus both BLM (the organization) and the Smithsonian exhibit referenced believe that the idea of the nuclear family is racist. And universities do away with standardized tests, etc. And in, say, the criminal justice system, it’s no longer enough to have a fair trial – we want to see the desired outcomes. These ideas are becoming pervasive.

The whole article is worth reading. It is a bit oriented towards the Jewish community – but many of the ideas are far broader.

The incident at the Times gives us a broader view

Weiss resigned from the New York Times as she details in this letter because of its insistence on adherence to what she calls a new orthodoxy, a new consensus – “…that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.” At the Times, she argues, challenging the readers with new ideas began to be seen as a problem, and those who headed that direction faced criticism and harassment:

What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selectivity. If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets.

She also writes of those at the Times who supported her perspective – but only in private:

Too wise to post on Slack, they write to me privately about the “new McCarthyism” that has taken root at the paper of record.

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

Part of her article refers to the specific incident of the Tom Cotton editorial the New York Times published – a somewhat provocative editorial from a Senator from the South who argued that the National Guard ought to be used to help suppress violent protests in response to the George Floyd killing. Many would disagree with his points, but the Times originally published it because they felt it presented a view worth considering, though it disagreed with the view. This article from Al Mohler provides a thoughtful analysis including quotes from Bennet, at the Times, who explained why they decided to run the article.

In any case, the article created enough outrage that it ultimately resulted in the Times concluding it was a mistake to run the article, and several people being fired. Mohler quotes Weiss in explaining what happened:

The civil war inside The New York Times between the (mostly young) wokes the (mostly 40+) liberals is the same one raging inside other publications and companies across the country. The dynamic is always the same. The Old Guard lives by a set of principles we can broadly call civil libertarianism. They assumed they shared that worldview with the young people they hired who called themselves liberals and progressives. But it was an incorrect assumption. The New Guard has a different worldview… They call it ‘safetyism,’ in which the right of people to feel emotionally and psychologically safe trumps what were previously considered core liberal values like free speech.

Mohler writes:

After explaining the internal dynamics of The New York Times, [Weiss] continued, “I’ve been mocked by many people over the past few years for writing about the campus culture wars. They told me it was a sideshow. But this was always why it mattered: The people who graduated from those campuses would rise to power inside key institutions and transform them. I’m in no way surprised by what has now exploded into public view. In a way, it’s oddly comforting: I feel less alone and less crazy trying to explain the dynamic to people. What I am shocked by is the speed. I thought it would take a few years, not a few weeks.”

This incident at the Times, then, marks a battle within the liberal ranks at the Times about the nature of liberalism, or about what constitute the core liberal principles.

Mohler’s article, worth reading in full, goes on to trace how these developments proceed from the philosophy of John Stuart Mill – the idea that morality ought to be based on the harm principle:

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community against his will is to prevent harm to others.

We see this reflected in much of our culture’s approach to morality today – the idea that whatever consenting adults agree to ought to be allowed, etc. Demonstrating harm to another is what ought to drive morality, we learn. This is against the Biblical view of government, and Biblical morality, but that’s for another post.

Mohler goes on to observe:

This principle of harm is what the young generation at The New York Times used as the foundation of their protest to Senator Cotton’s article. They argued that the publication of his op-ed endangered employees of The New York Times, particularly African-American employees.

The argument, then, was not that the article was not worth considering – but that it could potentially cause considerable harm. And because it could cause such harm, it shouldn’t be published.

Mohler goes on to quote Times publisher Sulzberger who wrote this:

It is clear many believe this piece fell outside of the realm of acceptability, representing dangerous commentary in an explosive moment that should not have found a home in The Times, even as a counterpoint to our own institutional view. I believe in the principle of openness to a range of opinions, even those we may disagree with, and this piece was published in that spirit. But it’s essential that we listen to and reflect on the concerns we’re hearing, as we would with any piece that is the subject of significant criticism. I will do so with an open mind.

In other words, Sulzberger concluded the ideas in this article simply were too dangerous, in terms of the potential harm they might cause, to be published – despite the fact that they came from a US Senator. And perhaps the fact they offended so many also contributed.

Mohler notes that this same principle gets applied much more broadly:

Failure to validate an individual’s perceived identity, so the argument goes, is unsafe speech that will cause harm. If you will not meet the demand to accept and celebrate, for example, the transgender identity of a certain person, you will be labeled a threat—you will have no place to freely speak because your speech is now hate speech and harmful.

These views, obviously, have implications for the Christian faith. Mohler writes:

This argument has already arisen and is being levied against evangelical Christianity: Christian missions, evangelism, and the core doctrinal commitments of the Christian faith are viewed as harmful and therefore dangerous. To espouse a traditional biblical understanding of gender and sexuality is to hold harmful, divisive, and retrograde positions that must not only be condemned but silenced.

The controversy at The New York Times is a picture of a larger societal campaign against classical liberalism and the commitment to free speech and the free expression of ideas.

Mohler wraps up by noting that it’s one thing for him to point this out, as a Christian, but it’s quite another for Bari Weiss – who is by no conservative – to be highlighting the same things.

Lest you think this is just Mohler’s perspective, here’s another article dealing with the same issues; it also highlights the Harper’s Magazine article signed by many authors (including JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and others) arguing for a return to the free exchange of ideas and a rejection of the cancel culture. In that open letter, the authors note:

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.

The Supreme Court and religious liberty

In another interesting article, Mohler touched on a case the Supreme Court declined to take which raises some of the same issues. Particularly, Justices Alito and Thomas noted that the 2015 Obergefell decision – which legalized same-sex marriage – set up a tension between religious liberty and sexual liberty/anti-discrimination:

The Court, as the justices contended, chose to endorse, “a novel Constitutional right,” over the religious liberty interests explicitly enumerated in the First Amendment. The 2015 decision created a problem only the Court can resolve: “Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ruinous consequences for religious liberty.”

How is this connected? We’re already arriving in a world where some ideas – including ideas like a traditional view of marriage – are seen as too harmful for religious liberty to provide an exception (e.g. for a Christian baker who won’t make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple) and potentially too harmful to be stated, or even thought. Indeed, I’ve been told that holding to a traditional view of marriage is the moral equivalent of racism – even if one doesn’t act on that view in any way. Even to think traditional marriage is the only true marriage, I’m told, is the equivalent of a hate crime.

The idea that some beliefs might be too harmful came up in the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, where she was questioned at length about her beliefs, involvement with Catholic organizations, etc. Ben Sasse gave a great speech about the distinction between civics and politics, and the idea of religious liberty. He emphasized the intent of the founders to have no religious tests for public office – Religious liberty is “the fundamental American belief”, he said; these are basic pre-governmental rights that we all agree on before we get to the political issues. Sasse said, “we don’t have religious tests. This committee isn’t in the business of deciding whether the dogma lives too loudly in someone,” or which religious beliefs are good, bad, or weird. The Constitution entitles us to our religious beliefs, and some of them are far more strange than some Catholic moms giving one another advice about parenting. This idea, he emphasizes, is an American idea, not a Republican or a Democrat idea, and it’s fundamental to the American enterprise.

Now, I realize some people object to the timing of the Barrett appointment, and that’s not my point here; my point is this: Sasse is absolutely right. The first amendment protects our right to our beliefs, and these beliefs should not be held as tests. That’s against our fundamental, founding principles.

Sasse’s speech is worth listening to.

Russ Douthat touches on some of these same ideas in the New York Times, noting that at present, there’s this view that old rights – like the right to freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc., – must give way to the new, such as the right to not be discriminated against, whenever the two come into conflict. To some extent, that comes out of the Obergefell decision mentioned above. Douthat notes that debate itself can be problematic, in this view:

And the [LGBTQ] movement’s vanguard increasingly rejects debate entirely, expanding its definition of a “transphobe” to encompass anyone with doubts about the widespread use of puberty blockers or the movement’s ideologically freighted view of sex and gender.

So what?

Well, I think we need to recognize that our culture seems headed away from our “American” ideas of free speech and freedom of religion. We’re becoming more interested in preventing the potential of certain kinds of harm or offense, and ensuring there is no discrimination against certain groups (not all groups, just certain groups), than we are in adhering to these fundamental founding principles. As Sasse notes, many of these principles are “8th grade civics” and are supposed to be something we all agree to – but perhaps this is no longer the case.

That brings me back to the question I asked in the title, “Are some ideas too dangerous to discuss?” which I haven’t directly answered, but hopefully my answer is clear by now. Most ideas, even those which are unpopular or which might offend some, benefit from discussion and debate. A letter quoted above said

The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation.

We benefit far more by open discussion and debate than by restricting the exchange of ideas. Our society was founded on these ideas, and I believe they are critical to its continued health.