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Sunday, June 7, 2015

The Self-Inflicted Death of Liberalism

The Silencing – How The Left is Killing Free Speech – Kirsten Powers (Regnery)

It used to be that liberals were open to new ideas and would engage in rigorous debate to support their point of view. Not so much anymore. Kirsten Powers, a self described liberal who lays claim to being raised in a liberal household full of that rigorous debate, is columnist for USA Today and The Daily Beast as well as a Fox News contributor, who in her new book makes a solid case that it is the left who are on a mission to kill free speech.

In The Silencing – How The Left is Killing Free Speech, Powers sets the nail in the heart of what she renames the illiberal left and proceeds to drive it home again and again; making her case almost to the point of redundancy. The reaction that she has received from her fellow liberals reiterates her points; rather than trying to engage Powers in a debate the left resorts to name calling.


While the left loves to wrap themselves in the banner of being the smartest people in the room, clearly smarter than the backwards, science hating conservatives; Powers clearly outlines that the left has become as she puts it, “isolated from the marketplace of ideas.” Rather than trying to engage those with differing points of view, the left has been reduced to tactics that involve an almost non-stop creation of “phobias” which created the illusion that those who disagree with the liberal viewpoint are somehow mentally challenged. Thus we get things like homophobe or Islamophobe; which really are nothing but name calling and intimidation.

Rather than challenging conservatives, the left resorts to trying to remove those who dissent from the playing field. How many times have you heard the left call for the firing or removal of those they disagree with? Powers cites nearly countless examples. The problem for the left is this has amounted to a weakening of their ability to make their case and as a result their point of view is dying a slow, painful death of a thousand self-inflicted wounds.

I have engaged numerous, supposedly highly educated college professors, and been able to swat aside their arguments like child’s play; only to be attacked and called names for pointing out their flawed thinking. Because I have a different perspective on things does not make me a denier, a phobic, or a fill in the blank - ____ist of some variety and it’s not my goal to have you removed from the debate, but to make the case why my viewpoint is the correct one; something Powers clearly makes the case that liberals are no longer interested in.