Preface:
Before I begin, let me say something that I’ve said before and I will say again. There is no such thing as “free speech”. Like a lot of terms that are commonly over-used and even reified by people on all sides of the political aisle, “free speech” is no more a thing than the “free market” or a “free lunch”. Free Speech has always been and will always be limited. Every society has standards and every society enforces those standards. The question is not whether there are limits on speech but what speech is limited.
And this is good. I don’t want everyone to be able to say everything they want to. First, because people are sinners, and many of the things that flit through people’s heads are either destructive or vulgar – I don’t want to hear them. The classic example is yelling “fire” in a crowded building. But also shouting “rape” at a judicial confirmation hearing – there’s an old, archaic word for this…it’s “slander”. And we used to prosecute people for this. But that’s another story altogether. But those are destructive kinds of speech with a demonstrable damage – the loss of life, health, income, or social standing…harm that can be proven. But I also included vulgar speech. Should people be allowed to scream obscenities at small children? No? I agree…then why can people put vile profanities on their bumper stickers? Or t-shirts? This is obviously an argument from the greater to the lesser, but it’s an argument we need to have because, again, there is no such thing as free speech. The question is what speech is permitted and which is restricted. Second, not only do we have to question whether destructive or vulgar speech should be permitted, but every society in history has had blasphemy laws. There are certain things that cannot be spoken against, contradicted, or mocked. Now, we don’t always call them blasphemy laws – but that’s what they are. And throughout history we can point to these laws, and some of them you might agree with and some you might disagree with. That’s not the point. The point is that every society has unbreakable verbal taboos. Contemporary America is no different. Blasphemy laws are good when they protect God from being blasphemed, but when they become a shield for lies and idols, then, no, they aren’t good but evil.
OK. So, to sum up – there is no such thing as free speech. It’s like the “ideal wall” that exists only in High School physics problems when you’re trying to work out conservation of energy, and the wall is completely undamaged and unchanged and the car or the ball or the whatever receives all the deformation. No such wall exists, but for purposes of pedagogy, we use this ideal wall. In the same way, we thoughtlessly throw around a term like “free speech” and only the rubes or the impassioned believe that it’s a real thing. It’s an ideal that we only ever approximate – and you wouldn’t like it in real life anyways.
Ink by The Barrel:
There’s a famous piece of advice (with a lot of apocryphal provenances) that goes something like this: “don’t get in a publishing war with someone who buys ink by the barrel.” The point, of course, being that people who control the flow of information have a way of shaping public opinion in very destructive, and prejudicial ways. The “great” newspapermen of yore were masters of manipulation. They had the biggest microphone, as it were, and so they published what they wanted and hoped to make everyone else believe what was, in the minds of the newspapermen, best.
Right now, newspapers don’t have anything like serious and significant circulation. The internet changed everything. Talk radio, podcasting, blogging (by the way, what kind of weirdo loser blogs?!), and other forms of alternative media – including print – have challenged the hegemony of the antique media – the New York Timeses and the 3-letter Radio and TV stations. And this was problematic for the antique media because they aren’t designed to weather the storms of competition. To them, the slings and arrows of opposing viewpoints being adjudicated in the marketplace of ideas is the doing of outrageous Fortune – the skank. And so the new media not only challenged their bottom dollar, but it hindered their progress in getting us all to be Progressives.
And this, of course, is demonstrated by the increasingly histrionic and alarmist tone taken by the antique media. No longer is it the stuffy talking heads speaking with profundity and certitude. Those days are gone. Sure, they still wear suits, but it’s just for show, because they’re a bunch of hysterical hacks, getting teary-eyed and shaking their fists at that strange species called “conservative”. The very fact that the tactics have changed from calm, collected, patronization to angry, gaslighting is evidence that the new media was, in fact, having a major impact on the antique media. They couldn’t debate the issues convincingly, and they could no longer convincingly pretend that there were no other viewpoints. Now that there are voices on the right with wide followings, and people doing actual journalism, the antique media have resorted to ad hominem attacks that grow ever more drastic and vitriolic because they viewership and readership and listenership is so incredibly polarized that there’s no need to pretend. Moreover, conservatives, and fundamentalist Christian conservatives, especially, have to be treated and talked about like fairy tale villains complete with cautionary-tale-morals worthy of a 1970s slasher film: ensuring that no one will ever listen to the voice of a Conservative Christian who believes that men are men and women are women and men shouldn’t marry men, nor women women, and that systemic racism has to be proved with evidence. I mean, Rush Limbaugh or Ben Shapiro…they’re bad enough…but if you were to ever listen to Doug Wilson or another of those weirdo racist, [insert-victim du jour]-phobic, not-even-really-Christian Christians, Oh my Science! there’d be no coming back from that brink.
Well, for a while it didn’t matter. Conservative Christians could put their material out on the interwebs and so much the worse for the Progressive Agenda. But now censorship is coming in a big way. Unless things change, you’ll probably not be able to hear Ben Shapiro or Rush Limbaugh. And Doug Wilson, forget about it – he’s gonna be cancelled as soon as they can bully or blackmail whoever provides him webservice. Eventually they’ll get to the nobodies like me.
And then what?
We give up?
The Palantir:
Well, sure, lots of people give up in totalitarian societies – that’s the only way they work – but some people won’t. Some people find ways to make their voices heard nomatter what. So, if Conservative Christians want to put our sermons or theology online and facebook won’t let us advertise it – then we send out email invites. If we lose webhosting then we buy newspaper space, or publish books. If publishers silence us, we self-publish. If the mail refuses to carry and deliver our stuff, then we hand deliver. If they arrest us, then we preach in prison, or whatever Gulag Archipelago will be created for the reeducation for wrongthinkers like us. If they cut out our tongues, then we learn sign language. If they cut off our fingers, we draw stick figures in the sand with our stumps. If they just put us in isolation, then we use the tap-code to communicate with people in other cells. If they kill us, then we praise God that we’ve been found worthy to suffer for the Name.
You say, “Oh Lukey poo, that can’t happen.” Can’t it? Why not. Nothing I’ve put on that list has not happened in the past. Remember that Moscow was a “city of churches” in the 19th Century – and in the 20th Christians were being tortured to death.
You think that we can’t come to that place not because you’re historically informed, but because you’re afraid. You’re terrified that there might be a cost – and a high cost – for refusing to deny the Lord. You’re terrified that the world might change so rapidly that you’ll have to choose between going to a real church and reading a real bible and going to prison or being censored or being refused a job or government aid.
Again, I’m not making thing like this up in my head. And the people who say, “It couldn’t happen here” are normally the most devastated of all when it finally does.
You say, “But Lukey, nobody cares what people believe – nobody wants to silence Christians, there’s nothing to be gained.” If you believe that then I’ve got some property in Arizona, you might be interested in – it’s real nice…right by the ocean. Yes. Yes, silencing Christians wholesale hasn’t happened yet. Mainly because the outrage mob has done a great job of making Christians silence the dissent on their own. Big Evangelicalism has done a great job of reminding us how being a good Christian is completely compatible with Wokeism…until that line wasn’t sufficient anymore and now it’s “actually Jesus was Woke…and if you aren’t you aren’t a Christian.” If you think I’m making this up, check out the national-level conversation happening in the [pick any major Evangelical…not to mention Protestant] denomination. But the thing is that people who hate God hate you too, and they want to silence you. There’s a whole series of reasons why (I’ve preached on those before) but suffice to say that while sin is simple, its pathology can be quite complex.
Or maybe you remonstrate, “Listen here, Lukey poo, nobody wants to hurt Christians, that can’t happen here, we have rights.” Uh huh. And babies have a right not to be murdered and mutilated inside their mothers. You really think that the people who support in utero AND ex utero infanticide could care in the slightest if they enact violence against hater-phobe-fundy-scum like you? Do you think the people who support baby murder really care about human flourishing? Again, if your answer is “yes” we REALLY need to talk about this investment opportunity I have.
And as we glimpse into the future, by looking in the past and in other places in the world right now, as we glimpse into the mind of Sauron, we are forced to reckon with the fact that while what I’m saying seems ridiculous and impossible, it’s neither impossible nor will it be ridiculous when it happens. Weimar Germany was the most well educated and culturally sophisticated nation on earth – until it wasn’t. Any time someone says that Christians could be censored, silenced, and imprisoned in America they run the risk of sounding alarmist. But the thing is that Chicken Little wouldn’t have become a trope if the sky had fallen in like…you know…every other country in the world. Christians are censored to some degree (or have been) in every place on earth – including America…read a book!...so while talking about Gulags and writing samizdats seems crazy, it’s not crazy it just isn’t happening here, now.
Barring a revival in this nation, we will see real censorship and persecution. To not see that would be to break and unbroken historical pattern – and I don’t like to bank on outliers. So, what do I recommend?
Buy all the books that are likely to be outlawed or unpublishable. Not e-versions, but actual physical books. Buy paper. Have a good printer. Be prepared to self-publish material that will help people walk in the truth of the scriptures.
Oh, and also, turn off the news. Start reading the Bible. Pray with your family. Go to Church. Memorize the Bible. Get to a church that actually preaches and teaches the Bible. And stop being afraid. If we suffer for doing good it’s treasure in heaven.
A Note on Logic:
To all the hackneyed pseudo-logicians out there who want to say I’m engaging in the “Slippery Slope” fallacy, let me be clear about a few things.
First, slippery slopes are a real phenomenon with predictable results.
Second, a person is not engaging in the slippery slope if they’re pointing out that trends can be extrapolated. Our culture is in a trend. If we extrapolate that trend, compare it to historical situations that are similar, and account for unique factors in the American Sitz im Leben, then we can approximate what kind of culture we’ll have – barring a critical change in the calculus or a factor that is unpredictable that throws off the model and invalidates it.
You may disagree and say my end-point is unrealistic, but that’s a historical-sociological argument, not a logico-philosophical one.
I’m happy to have that debate. Literally, I want to talk to people who disagree with me.
But a reminder of facts: Persecution is a real phenomenon. Blasphemy laws exist everywhere, including in the US (hate speech is the biggy, in this model, because it’s just flexible enough to fit every circumstance our present-day Robespierre’s can envision). Historically, and today, Christians are the most persecuted group worldwide. There is no metaphysically grounded ethical reason why the Progressive Left would be against imprisoning people for thoughtcrimes – See Canada for examples.
Third, it’s only the slippery slope FALLACY if it’s stated as an ipso facto certainty and in such a a way that the slippery slope is a sufficient condition for a certain fall.
Fourth, for the Christian who disagrees with my logic. Jesus promised persecution to all who seek to live for Him – why should present day America be the exception.