Sunday, November 22, 2015
Millennials are the Most Willing to Use Government Censorship in a Good Cause. This is Still Wrong, But Teachable.
It is alarming that 40% of Millennials would be willing to have government prevent people from saying things that are offensive to minority groups.
Still, I see this as a vice of their virtues. They are trying to overcome America's long history of racism. The tool they have chosen - government censorship - is a cure worse than the disease, but they are trying to cure a disease. Millennials are young, and famously less informed about history, including the historical use of government suppression of free speech to oppress minority groups.
I think most Millennials are not far from supporting other, less oppressive means of helping denigrated minorities. The traditional mechanism for opposing outright racists - public shaming - is effective and not as dangerous as government suppression.
For most people, though, the problem is not so much outright racism as it is insensitivity to unexamined denigration. The cure for insensitivity is gentle consciousness raising. And that applies to educating Millennials who are insensitive to the dangers of government censorship.
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It is truly remarkable that those who profess to value their own right to free speech are so willing to control that of others. There used to be--maybe there still is--a program in which academics, civic leaders and leaders in business and industry were invited to spend a week in Washington, DC where they received briefings from State, Treasury and Defense, as well as from the White House. The end of the experience was a "war game" in which participants were assigned roles as President, Secretary of State, Defense and Treasury, and National Security Advisor, and high-ranking subordinate roles in the departments. It never ceased to amaze me that when academics were put in the role of President and Secretary of Defense, the likelihood that the advice of the Joint Chiefs would be ignored and the situation would go nuclear increased tremendously.
Thus, when you write "Millennials are young, and famously less informed about history, including the historical use of government suppression of free speech to oppress minority groups," I would suggest that youth has less to do with it than the liberal mind-set of superiority.
I'm against public shaming, as well. I would want to convince an outright racist that their way of thinking is wrong, and I can think of no better way of doing that than friendly (but stern) disagreement. I don't think people who ostracize and humiliate them would change their mind. Public shaming might deter others from the attitude, but also I consider it a dangerous and potentially toxic practice because it can get too vicious.
"I would suggest that youth has less to do with it than the liberal mind-set of superiority."
Many of the people against government censorship are liberal themselves (like myself), just as many who support it are. I would suggest not dragging this issue down into "Us vs Them" territory by bringing anti-liberal sentiment into the discussion. I know from experience about how that only drives away the people you should want to convince.
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