The Same Unneurealism Exists on the Left - Chapter 25, webpage 2, continued...

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Chapter 2
Delegitimizing Dissent

In the illiberal attack on free speech, victory is silence. Any person who dissents from the illiberal left's settled dogma (their neuroreality) is viewed as an enemy to be delegitimized, demonized, and dismissed. Once political and ideological opponents are viewed through the lens of a "take no prisoners" mentality then no type of character assassination is off limits.

Former CNN host and NBC Weekend Today co-anchor Campbell Brown experienced this firsthand. An accomplished journalist for two decades, Brown won widespread acclaim and an Emmy as part of a team covering Hurricane Katrina. After leaving journalism, she became an education reform advocate, founding the nonprofit Partnership for Educational Justice in 2014 to challenge teacher tenure rules that protect underperforming educators.

Teachers unions and their illiberal left allies quickly deemed Brown public enemy number one. Rather than debating Brown and challenging her arguments, the illiberal left began a delegitimization campaign. Brown was no longer an accomplished woman, nor was her desire to improve the

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education system sincere. No, she was a nefarious right-wing bimbo under the control of conservative men lurking in the background. It started in 2012, when Brown wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal criticizing teachers unions for protecting teachers guilty of sexual misconduct from getting fired. In a Twitter exchange, Brown asked president of the American Federation of Teachers Randi Weingarten about the issue. Weingarten responded and ultimately accused Brown of having a secret agenda."Campbell did not want to be balanced. She's married to Romney advisor Dan Senor," Weingarten tweeted.  In other words, Brown was a mindless parrot who adopted her Republican husband's political views. As Campbell responded, "Wow, no sexism here. Sad."

The teachers union-affiliated Alliance for Quality Education set up a website (RealCampbellBrown.com) depicting Brown as a stringed puppet holding a GOP sign and wearing a "1%" button. The tagline below her image read, "Right wing. Elitist. Wrong about Public Schools." The website also claimed she was a registered Republican.

Brown told me she has donated to five political campaigns, all Democrat. She explained that she was a political independent throughout her journalistic career. To vote in the New York City primary, she registered as a Democrat, then later as a Republican to vote in a different primary. In their attempt to portray Brown’s organization as a front for the Republican Party, the illiberal left ignored not only her publicly accessible donations to Democratic campaigns, but also that Brown had recruited notable Democrats, including former Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and former Obama campaign spokesperson Ben LaBolt, to work for her organization. Then there was the inconvenient fact that the organization's chairman was David Boies, who represented Al Gore in Bush v. Gore.

Diane Ravitch, an education historian and professor at New York University, invoked a favorite delegitimization tactic by chauvinistically dismissing Brown for her beauty and portrayed her as an empty-headed interloper into the education debate. "[Brown] is a good media figure because of her looks, but she doesn’t seem to know or understand anything

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about teaching and why tenure matters," Ravitch told the Washington Post. "I know it sounds sexist to say that she is pretty, but that makes her telegenic, even if what she has to say is total nonsense." Never mind that Boies, Gibbs, and LaBolt all believed that same "nonsense."

The voices portraying a professional woman as a bimbo and appendage of her husband belong to liberals who are supposed to be advocates for human dignity, respecters of women, and protectors of free speech. They chose to drag an accomplished journalist and earnest advocate through the mud. Infuriated by her audacity to question policy darlings like teacher tenure, they used sexist and dishonest labels to try to shut her up.

Opponents of Brown's new endeavor saw her as the "new Michelle Rhee," the former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor whose dedication to reforming failing schools led her to support vouchers and other reform efforts opposed by teachers unions. "As a lifelong Democrat I was adamantly against vouchers," Rhee explained in a Daily Beast piece called "My Break with the Democrats." When the Washington Post asked about her position on renewing a D.C. voucher program, she knew that "as a good Democrat," she was supposed to say "no." Instead, she decided to talk directly to parents in an effort to make a fully informed decision. "After my listening tour of families, and hearing so many parents plead for an immediate solution to their desire for a quality education, I came out in favor of the voucher program," she said. "People went nuts. Democrats chastised me for going against the party, but the most vocal detractors were my biggest supporters." It’s normal for political parties to close ranks when one of their members deviates from a key policy position. This doesn't make it right, but it's not unique to liberals or Democrats. What sets the illiberal left apart are their campaigns to delegitimize people who deviate on even one issue by openly engaging in racist and sexist attacks, all the while presenting themselves as the protectors and representatives of all women and non-white people.

The delegitimization campaign against Rhee seemed to be the blue-print of what would later happen to Brown. Richard Whitmire, the

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author of a book about Rhee's reform efforts in the nation's capital, characterized reactions to Rhee as "virulent" and "extreme," with a marked tendency to personal attacks such as "Rhee's a terrible mother!" Whitmire noted in his Education Week piece "What Is Behind the Discrediting of Michelle Rhee?" that her "critics come from left-wing, not right-wing, politics." He also explained "this core group of critics - well represented in any online discussion of Rhee and usually writing under disguised identities - seems to have limited interest in debating the school reform decisions Rhee made. Rather, their goal is 'proving' Rhee is a flat-out fraud." In other words, the illiberal left chooses to make dehumanizing attacks on Rhee, such as blasting her as an Asian bitch," as Florida teacher Ceresta Smith did at a 2013 Occupy DOE 2.0 protest. This is easier than engaging in a rigorous debate about the best way forward for education.

Another Rhee critic insinuated the avowed Democrat was a conservative and called her an "education Ann Coulter." In an article for Salon.com nearly two years later, the same man called Brown a "Rhee-placement" in a piece called "Education 'reform's' new Ann Coulter: A reeling Michelle Rhee passes the lead to Campbell Brown."  Like Brown, Rhee had her own union-funded attack site - RheeFirst.com.

The sexist and racist character assassinations of Campbell Brown and Michelle Rhee demonstrate the great lengths the illiberal left will go to label and demonize opponents and avoid contending against alternative ideas in the public square. It doesn’t matter if the label has any connection to reality. It only matters that it sticks. Since they can’t win the argument on the merits, the illiberal left instead attacks the people who make the arguments, trying to cast doubt on their abilities, their intentions, even their value as a person.

TACTIC #1: DEHUMANIZING

ln Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, social philosopher and psychologist David Livingstone Smith explores

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the enduring practice of dehumanizing individuals we don't like or with whom we disagree. He shows how ancient cultures and modern societies operate similarly in that groups that seek to maintain or expand their power base will often systematically question and attack the very core of their enemies' human identities. Is this what Homo sapiens did when they left Africa 70,000 years ago and conquered he world?

New York University law professor Jeremy Waldron has even high-lighted the harm of dehumanization as a justification to ban certain kinds of speech. In an article for the New York Times, Waldron argued that hate speech harms the dignity of those at whom it is directed. He defines dignity as "a person's basic social status, his or her being treated as an ordinary member of society in good standing, his or her being included in the ordinary business of society. A person's dignity is damaged, then, when he or she is publicly defamed or dehumanized, or when he or she is perceived as belonging to a group, all of whose members are defamed or dehumanized."

Waldron is right about the harm of dehumanizing, but wrong about the solution. Laws that limit what a person can say, even when what they say is depraved, are illiberal and authoritarian. But if someone like Waldron, a liberal, believes that dehumanizing attacks are terrible enough to justify creating a legal cause of action for the targets of such language, then perhaps people who call themselves liberal should stop using dehumanizing smears to delegitimize their opponents. Ah, Waldron doublethink.

If Waldron's theory was put into practice, we'd be slapping the cuffs on a who's who of the illiberal elite. When they aren’t besmirching dissenters from their worldview as racist, sexist, and misogynist, the illiberal left are hurling racist, sexist, and misogynist attacks against those they wish to delegitimize in the public square. It's a sad irony that those who claim to stand against racism or sexism turn into unrepentant bigots if it will help delegitimize their ideological or political opponents. A doublethink neuroreality. In the illiberal silencing campaign, liberal principles are perpetual casualties.

These attacks are fueled by the determinist assumption that certain groups of people, because of their race or sex, must support liberal policies

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and vote for Democrats. If the heretics deviate from the paternalistic preordained script, they are treated as self-loathing sub-humans. The illiberal left denies women and non-white members of society the right to choose which political party or ideological positions they may support. That's only for white men (who, if they're not Democrats, are presumed to be racist and sexist anyway). The rest of America is expected to line up behind Iiberals and the Democratic Party and if they don't, the delegitimization commences.

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TACTIC #2: DEMONIZING

Demonizing is another favored tactic by the illiberal left to delegitimize opponents.  They simultaneously make racist and misogynist attacks against opponents and accuses opponents of being racists, bigots, misogynists, rape apologists, traitors, and homophobes. As we saw with Campbell Brown and Michelle Rhee, for any Democrat, liberal, or ideological agnostic who questions the sanctioned illiberal line, there's another tactic: accusing dissenters of being closet conservatives.  

The purpose of demonizing opponents is to make them radioactive to the broader culture. The illiberal left uses character assassination to ensure their opponents won’t be treated as sincere or thoughtful contributors to the national conversation. The illiberal left doesn’t desire debate, it wants a monologue on one side and silence on the other.

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DISSENT IS MISOGYNIST

What used to be mere policy disagreements between Republicans and Democrats on abortion, equal pay, the minimum wage, and government funding of contraception are now described as being part of a "War on Women." According to the illiberal left, nobody opposes abortion out of a concern for the unborn. As the National Organization for Women and NARAL Pro Choice regularly tell us, "pro-life" Republicans are "right-wing extremists" and "anti-women." And if the "pro-life" Republicans are men, obviously their convictions stem from their desire to control women or a deep-seated misogyny. But think about that for a minute. If you think an unborn child has a right to life, that's hardly an "extreme" position or a misogynistic one. That's a difference of opinion on a very serious subject that deserves respect.

But that's rarely how it's treated by the illiberal left. House minority leader Nancy Pelosi intoned about the "War on Women" at a 2011 feminist event alleging that, "abortion is one issue [in the war] but contraception and family planning and birth control are opposed by [Republicans] too."  Never mind that opposing family planning or trying to keep women from buying birth control is not an agenda item for the GOP. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has an entire webpage devoted to the "War

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on Women," defined as "the legislative and rhetorical attacks on women and women's rights taking place across the nation." it's more than a little odd that an organization founded to protect free speech would characterize people expressing disagreement about abortion as "rhetorical attacks on women," that deserve to be demonized under the "War on Women" banner.

But the "War on Women" isn’t just about abortion. It's a catchall tactic to portray everything conservatives do as akin to misogyny. Feminist writer Amanda Marcotte wrote in the American Prospect that watching the hit television show Mad Men felt "familiar" because Republicans are still trying to promote the sexist values of the 1960s.  Salon.com editor Joan Walsh warned in 2013 of the "GOP's economic war on women" pointing to GOP positions on food stamps, the minimum wage, and mandatory paid sick leave and family leave. Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz borrowed the terminology of domestic abuse to attack Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin. "Republican Tea Party extremists like Scott Walker ... are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back," she said. Wasserman Schultz also claimed "Walker has given women the back of his hand. I know that is stark. . . . But that is reality."  Disagreeing with Democrats is drastically different from hitting a woman or dragging one by her ponytail, even metaphorically. In the illiberal left paradigm, disagreement is violence. In this upside down world, a conservative Republican who is married and has five daughters, like former Virginia attorney general and gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, can be dismissed by the likes of Al Sharpton as an "anti-woman crusader" and by a writer at the Daily Kos as "notoriously anti-woman."  Really? The 54 percent of white women who voted for Cuccinelli in his 2013 race against Terry McAuliffe for Virginia governor apparently didn't get that memo.

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Chapter 3
Illiberal Intolerance and Intimidation

The relentless stereotyping and demonizing of people who oppose same-sex marriage has paid enormous dividends for the illiberal left. Their views have seeped into the culture to the point that many people think that denying same-sex marriage opponents the right to speak about their views is acceptable. ln 2014, an instructor in a philosophy class at Marquette University, a Catholic school, let it be known that opposition to same-sex marriage was unworthy of discussion. In a conversation recorded by a student following the class, instructor Cheryl Abbate explained "there are some opinions that are not appropriate, that are harmful" and compared questioning same-sex marriage to sexism and racism. Abbate went on to say that no one should express views that might be "offensive" to any gay student. Abbate told the student, who opposed same-sex marriage, "You don’t have a right in this class. .. to make homophobic comments" and said
the student could drop the class. The student complained, but the university took no action against the instructor.

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Marquette political science associate professor John McAdams wrote a blog post criticizing Abbate for refusing to allow criticism of same-sex marriage in class discussions and quoted the conversation Abbate had with the student.  He then found himself the object of illiberal scrutiny. Inside Higher Ed's Colleen Flaherty wrote that University of South Carolina associate professor Justin Weinberg argued that McAdams had made Abbate the "target of a political attack," likely stemming from "sexism."  Louisiana State University French studies professor John Protevi posted an open letter of support of Abbate on his blog blasting McAdams's "one-sided public attack." Abbate characterized McAdams's post as "cyberbullying and harassment" and noted, "It is astounding to me that the university has not created some sort of policy that would prohibit this behavior which undoubtedly leads to a toxic environment for both students and faculty." Are these alternate neurorealities?

Just to be clear here: the illiberal left considers the victim in this story to be the professor who preemptively silenced a student and compared his views to racism and sexism. Disagreement expressed by McAdams, in an academic environment where rigorous debate should be encouraged, was cast as a bullying attack. Rather than his motivation being reasonably interpreted as wanting to expose illiberal silencing on a campus, McAdams was accused of being motivated by sexism. This is all standard fare for the illiberal left. Why make a substantive argument when it's just as easy to smear dissenters as sexist bullies?

While the university brushed off the student's complaints of being silenced, the administration became vigorously engaged when the illiberal left complained about McAdams's post. Incredibly, the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences sent McAdams a letter informing him he was "relieved of all teaching duties and all other faculty activities, including, but not limited to, advising, committee work, faculty meetings and any activity that would involve your interaction with Marquette students, faculty and staff." He was ordered to stay off campus while he was being

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investigated for an unnamed transgression. Enclosed was a copy of Marquette's harassment policy, which appears to be modeled on Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. According to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), screenshots of a faculty training session on the policy include "a slide about hypothetical peers Becky and Maria, who 'have been talking about their opposition to same-sex marriage.' Hans overhears the conversations, is offended, and reports the two for harassment. Hans’ action is condoned." It's hard to imagine a more intellectually chilling policy than one that turns students and faculty into informants and punishes them for discussing issues in a manner not sanctioned by university authorities. Sounds like Big Brother.

When a reporter inquired about the investigation against McAdams, a Marquette spokesperson straight out of Orwell's 1984 asserted that McAdams had violated the university's "Guiding Values to which all faculty and staff are required to adhere, and in which the dignity and worth of each member of our community is respected, especially students." Clearly Marquette's "Guiding Values" don’t apply to students who oppose same-sex marriage. Marquette was also violating its expressed commitment to free speech in its official handbook, which states, "It is clearly inevitable, and indeed essential, that the spirit of inquiry and challenge that the university seeks to encourage will produce many conflicts of ideas, opinions and proposals for action."

Due process was also out the window. McAdams was not informed of his offense, nor was he given an opportunity to defend himself. This treatment blatantly violates another one of Marquette's show documents, the faculty handbook, which states  that the university protects professors' "full and free enjoyment of legitimate personal or academic freedoms of thought, doctrine, discourse, association, advocacy, or action." Apparently, Marquette's professed commitments to their students and professors are trumped by their enigmatic and creepy "Guiding Values." One might also note the irony of an orthodox Catholic position on marriage being ruled as outside the bounds of legitimate discussion at a Catholic university at the hands of the illiberal left who dominate or run so many college and university campuses.

The Same Unneurealism Exists on the Left - Chapter 25, continued...