Welcome to the 21st Century

It was bound to happen. Medium is a far-left-wing writers’ platform that boosts the ad hominem attacks of leftists picking at Republicans, libertarians, Christians or the Conservative Party in England. I’ve been writing articles from a libertarian angle on a conservative publication for about a year and this last week, they suspended my account for “hate speech” and “incorrect categorization” (whatever that is). I was explaining to someone who had made a comment about what they supposed libertarians believe. They were entirely incorrect and I POLITELY explained why their ad hominem attack was incorrect. I addressed their ideas, not their persons. And the “hate speech” was addressing a biological fact — that biological women can’t compete against biological men in sports.

The truth is now hate speech. Men and women are biologically different from one another and that includes height and strength differences that affect our ability to compete against one another and these biological imperatives hold say even when we wear each other’s clothes.

With Medium, when they deem truth to be “hate speech”, there’s no appeal. You’re banned and that’s that. Go away and shut up now! But hey, we’ll allow people who routinely post incorrect statements that libertarians want to eat their neighbors and evangelical Christians are trying to create a theocracy. As long as you comply and say black is white, you’re good. Otherwise, you need to be silenced.

In our “enlightened” erra, we can’t agree to disagree. Those with “wrong think” must be silenced. Why? Because the leftists suspect their ideas won’t stand up to an honest examination and like all cultists, they must protect their faith at all costs. Since the tenets of their faith can’t stand up to close scrutiny, they have to eliminate anyone who points out their faith is as shallow as a hubcap. So platforms that support this ideology must purge writers who don’t comply with the desired zeitgeist.

Our alternative is to create our own similar writing platforms. I started this blog to promote my books and to discuss topics that matter to me. I’m returning to writing about more than writing here. I’m looking into federated blogging. In time, I hope to join a network of like-minded conservative/libertarian writers.

They can ban me off their echo chamber platform, but they aren’t going to silence me. They might just make me more determined to tell the truth.

And here’s a suggestion. Check out Amazon’s Prime Video program “Electric Dreams” and pay particular attention to the last episode of the anthology series – Kill All Others. It’s a hyperbolic representation of what might happen if our society continues in the direction we’re headed.

I posted something about Ray Bradbury yesterday because I was working on this post on his courage.What do I find courageous about him? Well, allow me to quote the author’s own words, found at the end of my copy of Fahrenheit 451. Here in the “Coda” Ray Bradbury gave some final thoughts on the implied message of the book, but more, he talks broadly about media manipulation.

About two years ago, a letter arrived from a solemn young Vassar lady telling me how much she enjoyed reading my experiment in space mythology, The Martian Chronicles.

But she added, wouldn’t it be a good idea, this late in time, to rewrite the book inserting more women’s characters and roles?

A few years before that I got a certain amount of mail concerning the same Martian book complaining that the blacks in the book were Uncle Toms and why didn’t I “do them over”?

Along about then came a note from a Southern white suggesting that I was prejudiced in favor of the blacks and the entire story should be dropped.

Two weeks ago my mountain of mail delivered forth a pipsqueak mouse of a letter from a well-known publishing house that wanted to reprint my story “The Fog Horn” in a high school reader.

In my story, I had described a lighthouse as having, late at night, an illumination coming from it that was a “God-Light.” Looking up at it from the view-point of any sea-creature one would have felt that one was in “the Presence.”

The editors had deleted “God-Light” and “in the Presence.”

…

How did I react to all of the above?

By “firing” the whole lot.

By sending rejection slips to each and every one.

By ticketing the assembly of idiots to the far reaches of hell.

The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book [emphasis added]. And the world is full of people running around with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist / Unitarian, Irish / Italian / Octogenarian / Zen Buddhist, Zionist / Seventh-day Adventist, Women’s Lib / Republican, Mattachine / Four Square Gospel feels it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blancmange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme.

…

Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described howthe books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, then that, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever [emphasis added].

…

I sent a play, Leviathan 99, off to a university theater a month ago. My play is based on the “Moby Dick” mythology, dedicated to Melville, and concerns a rocket crew and a blind space captain who venture forth to encounter a Great White Comet and destroy the destroyer. My drama premieres as an opera in Paris this autumn. But, for now, the university wrote back that they hardly dared to do my play–it had no women in it! And the ERA ladies on campus would descend with ball-bats if the drama department even tried!

Grinding my bicuspids into powder, I suggested that would mean, from now on, no more productions of Boys in the Band (no women), or The Women (no men). Or, counting heads, male and female, a good lot of Shakespeare that would never be seen again, especially if you count lines and find that all the good stuff went to the males!

…

For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan, or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conservationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws. But the tip of the nose of my book or stories or poems is where their rights end and my territorial imperatives begin, run and rule. If Mormons do not like my plays, let them write their own. If the Irish hate my Dublin stories, let them rent type-writers. If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mush milk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture. If the Chicano intellectuals wish to re-cut my “Wonderful Ice Cream Suit” so it shapes “Zoot,” may the belt unravel and the pants fall.

For, let’s face it, digression is the soul of wit. Take philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet’s father’s ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Sterne said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading! Take them out and one cold winter would reign in every page. Restore them to the writer–he steps forth like a bridegroom, bids them all-hail, brings variety and forbids the appetite to fall.

In sum, do not insult me with the beheadings, finger-choppings or the lung deflations you plan for my works. I need my head to shake or nod, my hand to wave or make into a fist, my lungs to shout or whisper with. I will not go gently onto a shelf, degutted, to become a non-book.

All you umpires, back to the bleachers. Referees, hit the showers. It’s my game. I pitch, I hit, I catch. I run the bases. At sunset, I’ve won or lost. At sunrise, I’m out again, giving it the old try.

And no one can help me. Not even you.

–Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451. “Coda.” 1979.

Ray Bradbury’s point is quite clear. We should not censor the words, opinions or perceptions of others. We are all entitled, or should be entitled, to voice our interpretation of a matter without being persecuted. I can respect and admire an appropriate rebuttal or disagreement. Minority or not, we should not think ourselves so disadvantaged or disgraced by the words of another that we think it our right to get offended at the opinion of another. It’s foolish to hear an insult when the speaker or writer did not intend an insult.

Although Ray Bradbury limited his argument to printed press, I expand that thought to all communication. In today’s world we are required to tread carefully and lightly with our words. We cannot walk about giving our opinion freely–especially about matters of race, gender or sexual orientation–without anticipating an assault from of an enraged group of offended individuals. “Don’t talk about religion, politics or any topic where my feelings might be hurt.” Seriously? Are we that delicate? Surely we can control our tempers and appreciate an opinion or expressed point of view even if we don’t agree?

I am not advocating the abuse or disenfranchisement of any group of people or of any right. I am not defending prejudice in any of its many forms. I decry censorship and prejudice. Discrimination is not necessarily prejudice or inherently bad, and yet some form of prejudice often comes to mind when we talk about discriminating, notably racial discrimination. Discrimination can be defined as simply discerning between two things. ‘Discriminating against’ is different from ‘discriminating,’ ‘discriminating between’ or ‘discriminating among’.

There is very often a time and a place and an audience for certain words and topics. Let us use discretion and wisdom in when and where. We should not, however, be afraid to voice our opinions even when they are unpopular. We should not have to expect to receive a barrage of angry and sometimes foul words from any opposing party. We can expect challenge to our views and we should respond passionately, with respect for those who disagree.

Some may think that my convictions are unique to the color of my skin or my favorite sports team, my religious background or my sex, my preferred political candidate or some other affiliation. Though they discriminate on these grounds, which is no crime, I echo the those same convictions of those who identify with different races, religions, genders, political parties and philosophies in general.

Do not censor me in my opinions. Do not censor my freedom of expression. What is it that you fear so much that you find it necessary to try and hush or alter every word and opinion that is not in accordance with your own?

Alas, I expect the successful of censorship on behalf of the easily-insulted will continue under the guise of “for our own good”.. I encourage a different approach. Stand up for your beliefs in a civil and dignified matter. Do not proclaim tolerance while working to institutionalize intolerance against those with whom you disagree.

I welcome thought provoking comments.