"A growing number of Americans are beginning to sense an insidious
strain of self-censorship in themselves, either explicitly or
subconsciously. You find yourself keeping your mouth shut about
controversial issues like gay marriage or so-called women’s issues
because you’d rather not suffer the social costs of being cast as the
enemy by the increasingly aggressive thought police. They have enforcers
everywhere—at the office, at dinner parties, and all over the media.
This silencing impulse isn’t born out of normal or healthy
self-reflection and restraint; it arises out of fear. Nor is it part of a
free society’s natural process of discarding truly pernicious ideas
after open discussion, making marginalization the rightful cost of
losing to better arguments. Instead, outrage mongers turn this process
on its head, disqualifying ideas
without debate instead of after debate.
The fear to speak is cultivated by people who actively work to raise
the social cost of engaging publicly on any number of issues. We call
them the Outrage Circus. They are highly ideological, often deeply
partisan, and relentless in their vigilance, ever on alert to name and
shame violators of their approved order. Once you’ve violated one of
their capricious and fluid “rules”—even unwittingly—malice is
attributed, and restitution is demanded. Nothing short of full,
professed repentance shall suffice."
Reprinted from End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts
Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free 9and Fun)
by Mary Katharine Ham and Guy Benson. Copyright © 2015 by Mary Katharine
Ham and Guy Benson. Published by Crown Publishers, a division of
Penguin Random House LLC.
