Republicans have embraced some of the worst abuses of cancel culture progressives.
Speech is speech. Violence is violence. They are not the same.
Not too long ago when the cancel culture left was ascendant, the “speech is violence” sophism was used to punish conservative views at certain workplaces and colleges. Left-wing campuses would rid their public spaces of views they disagreed with by claiming views the disagreed with was violence. When they ran out of conservatives to attack, they would turn their censorship on their fellow lefties in a quixotic quest for ideological purity.
Today, right wing Americans have embraced these same methods, but in many ways it’s far worse because it’s pushed by more authoritarian-minded executives.
Yascha Mounk calls this “the power theory of free speech.” Writing for The Dispatch, Mounk says,
This theory predicts that the left, no longer in control of any branch of the federal government, and seemingly on the back foot in the culture as a whole, will quickly rediscover the importance of the First Amendment. And it also predicts that Donald Trump and his allies, who have for a long time presented themselves as principled defenders of free speech, will in light of their newly acquired powers quickly find reasons why those protections shouldn’t hold when it comes to their political opponents.
President Donald Trump uses executive authority to punish speech he doesn’t like. His Sept. 25 “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence” memoranda uses acts and threats of violence by lone actors as an excuse for a government crack down on organizations that oppose him. The memoranda threatens the use of law enforcement and the IRS against groups whose speech seeks to “change or direct policy outcomes,” which is another way of saying “petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I know it’s just an excuse for Trump because if he genuinely believed speech is violence he wouldn’t post this:
The memoranda designates Antifa a terrorist organization, which doesn’t make any sense because Antifa isn’t an organization. It’s a label, short for “anti-fascism,” that some people identify with, much like some people identify themselves as MAGA.
In response, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced an effort to “identify, investigate, and infiltrate” leftist organizations in his state, because “Corrupted ideologies like transgenderism and Antifa are a cancer on our culture and have unleashed their deranged and drugged-up foot soldiers on the American people.” Paxton’s press release sounds more geared toward boosting his bid to become a US senator than actually fighting crime, given that a true law enforcement effort probably wouldn’t announce their plans to infiltrate groups. Nonetheless, Paxton’s ambitions to use political authority against political foes could hurt real people, as he has already done.
Trump has no interest in protecting freedom of speech for his political opponents. Trump made this clear yesterday when he said he “took the freedom of speech away.”
Trump was referring to his August 25 executive order claiming his administration will prosecute anyone who burns the American flag as an act of protest. In this single EO, Trump is claiming both legislative authority by creating new law and judicial authority by overturning a Supreme Court ruling.
“When you burn an American flag, you incite tremendous violence,” Trump claimed.
While feigning concern for violence, his own federal agents are engaged in state sponsored violence in Chicago. There are too many reports to mention them all here, but here’s one example.
Rev. David Black was speaking to three ICE officers standing on the roof of a detention facility.
“I invited them to repentance,” Black told RNS. “I basically offered an altar call. I invited them to come and receive that salvation, and be part of the kingdom that is coming.”
The officers responded by firing pepper balls at him and the crowd, hit Black in the head, and starting laughing.
Black’s speech was not violence. The officers’ response was.
Professor Mike Austin addresses Meghan Basham’s false claims about AVC’s J29 Coalition
What Else We’re Reading
Arthur Brooks: How to Heal Our Country? Love Your Enemies.
My father used to tell me that moral courage is not standing up to the people with whom we disagree. Moral courage is standing up to the people with whom you agree, on behalf of those with whom you disagree.
Those politicians, when they were calling out liberal Americans as stupid and evil, were talking about my parents. I don’t share my parents’ politics. But there is nothing stupid and evil about them. They loved me. They brought me up as a Christian, with a belief in the radical equality of human dignity, no exceptions, now or ever.
And yes, they voted for Democrats. I don’t care. That doesn’t matter, and it’s not the point. The point is that the offense I took on behalf of my parents is the offense that you must take today with your own side—whichever side that happens to be—to restore this country.
Texas Monthly: “An Austin Church Strove to Be Apolitical. Then Charlie Kirk Was Killed.”
A week prior, Haney did not mention the murder of Charlie Kirk during Sunday services. Backlash was swift. At least a dozen congregants called or wrote to express their displeasure. One attendee blasted the church in an online review, saying they “left empty and more sad than before we came in.” Haney and other church leaders have since spent much of their time meeting with upset congregants explaining the decision and hearing why they were angered.
Though those with negative responses accounted for only a small portion of Riverbend’s 3,500 or so members, Haney told me he was nonetheless shocked. For twenty years, he had fostered an “aggressively apolitical” ethos at the church, believing partisanship can create division that hinders true discipleship. Suddenly, he said, even not saying something was seen as taking a side. “People were accusing us of failing to meet the mark,” he told me last week. “If you don’t mention something now, you almost get indicted for representing something you didn’t say.”
He’s hardly the only pastor facing such a quagmire. In the weeks since Kirk’s slaying—and amid a spate of political violence and murders nationwide—religious leaders say they are feeling pressure not just to speak out but to do so in a way that reaffirms congregants’ beliefs. In that, they see a troubling sign of the shifting expectations for pastors and churches, mirroring the broader polarization of American life that has fueled the very issues on which some now demand they speak.
Ministry Watch: “Canon Press Offer for Christianity Today Nothing More Than Publicity Stunt”
But this non-news offer immediately became kindling for fire starters like Megan Basham. She poured gasoline on this barely viable spark, using it as an excuse to criticize CT, rehashing some of the arguments she made in her 2024 book “Shepherds for Sale.” (Arguments I debunked here.)
She added a new criticism, posting on X: “The mag is now taking money from the Hewlett Foundation (a MAJOR supporter of Planned Parenthood) to cover US elections.”
She failed to note, however, that the Hewlett Foundation has distributed more than 3,000 grants over the past 10 years to a wide variety of organizations on both the left and the right. Other conservative and Christian organizations receiving money from Hewlett include: Heritage Foundation, American Compass, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Religion News Service, the Federalist Society, and Intercollegiate Studies Institute. These last two, in particular, have been core institutions of the conservative movement.
What We’re Watching
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