https://amgreatness.com/2020/08/11/last-gasp-of-the-mensheviks/
Will the signers of the Harper’s letter realize that only an alliance with the Right can save liberal values?
Some note has been taken of a letter appearing in Harper’s titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate.” Signed by an impressive array of eminent left-leaning literary and academic figures, it challenges the intolerance of the new radical Left. While denouncing “right-wing demagogues” and, of course, Donald Trump, its main focus is to call out the broader “intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.”
The letter points generally to recent incidents where researchers and writers have lost positions and platforms for routine actions which aired even small deviations from the new orthodoxy of the radical Left. It concludes by refusing “any false choice between justice and freedom,” and calls for a culture that preserves “the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.”
The letter has not been well-received by the woke Left. Nonetheless, close on the heels of the Harper’s letter came a poll from the Cato Institute revealing that 62 percent of all American respondents say that the current political climate inhibits them from expressing their honest views.
Pertinent to the Harper’s Letter, 37 percent of those under 30 and 44 percent of those with postgraduate degrees feel that their careers could be harmed by expressing their sincere political beliefs. Even centrist liberals feel the increasing hostility to open expression, with 52 percent feeling the need to self-censor, an increase from 45 percent only a few years ago. Only those with strongly held liberal views showed a majority who did not feel inhibited.
This is not the first time that luminaries of the Left have found themselves outflanked by intolerant radicals even further to the Left. Examples from the last century suggest three possible approaches for dealing with this dilemma.