8 Comments
Mar 28, 2022·edited Mar 28, 2022

When I started to read this essay I was prepared to dismiss it as another over-the-top attack on the left in the name of fairness and balance, alleging moral equivalency where there was none. So I applaud the author, who convinced me that she is right. Suppressing works and authors before they even make it into print is at least as egregious as after-the-fact censorship. Paraphrasing *trump, "there are some very bad people on both sides."

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For a deeper dive, listen to the podcast episode of Blocked and Reported (journalists Katie Herzog and Jesse Signal) with Ms Rosenfield as a guest. It helps to know you're not alone in thinking the world has gone mad.

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A vibe shift is one thing, infrastructure that will support it is another. The Woken have a strangle-hold on the Big Five publishers, major media and universities. We need large-scale alternatives to these institutions. We need an intellectual revival based on Enlightenment ideals -- updated for the 21st century -- and moneyed, connected groups to nurture it and fight the fanatics of both left and right.

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Well said. I recently read a book by about a Mexican woman who crossed the US border illegally to escape a ruthless drug dealer. The book has been panned by critics because it was written by a person of White European heritage instead of a true Mexican immigrant. This is akin to saying an actor can't play a murderer because they've never killed anyone.

People write stories, plays and movies to entertain and sometimes enlighten us. To restrict what is published or produced because it is not about the "right" things or written by the "right" people is just absurd.

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“tow the line” → “toe the line”

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I am glad to read an article pointing out the censorship coming from the left. However, I'm not sure I share the hope of rebellion the writer gives at the conclusion of the article. It is easy to rebel against conservatism, but how does one rebel against liberalism?

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Liberalism in this context is not what we traditionally think of. I'm not sure what we call it, maybe Left Extremism, but we should definitely rebel against it, by not accepting these norms, any more than we would accept extreme right norms

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It would have been good to mention more than one book (Mailer) that prove the author's contention

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