Writing for Quillette, philosopher and psychologist Peter Hughes straps on his ideological blinders and warns us of "The Temptations of Tyranny":
"If a tyrant relieves us of the burden of seeking liberation, and if we surrender our individuality to the will of the group, the rewards of that submission and the vengeance we can wreak upon real or imagined enemies will be worth the price of liberty. Currently, historically marginalised groups are attempting to restrict free speech, which was instrumental in elevating them to a position of cultural dominance."
Therein lies his focus: the immense danger of "marginalized groups" -- read: progressives, including guilted-out, shamefully privileged, upper-middle-class whites -- seeking to inhibit free speech.
Hughes prefaces his lengthy, not unreasonable reproach of leftist-American censorship with the wildly unreasonable, fatuously incomparable warning of Mao's Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 with Red Guards who "desecrated the graves of Confucius’s ancestors...; smashed coffins, plundered them for jewels and relics, and hung human remains from trees."
Such is the philosopher and psychologist's asinine endpoint of certain progs yelling down free speakers on college campuses, insisting on the violently ungrammatical "they" for "he" or "she," or demanding the reparation of professorship terminations in silly cases of presumed "safe space" invasions.
It'll all lead, warns Hughes in so many words, to America's social warriors hanging the human remains of First Amendment defenders from trees.
I stand second to no man in my contempt for progressive censorship, whether exercised or merely advocated, and so I have written. But, as our Uncle Joe would say, "C'mon, man."
Counterattacking by frightening America's right-wing children with bone-chilling tales of Mao's bloody cultural rampages, which resulted in the deaths of probable millions and sent millions more to brutal reeducation camps?
What's more, our good philosopher entirely and ironically overlooks the real, actualized danger facing America today: the tyranny of Trumpism, its relentless assaults on free speech and a free press, its dehumanization of all opponents, its promise of authoritarianism — spearheaded by a singular tyrant, backed by nomadic hordes of fascistic, cultural hall monitors — "reliev[ing] us of the burden" of freedom.
It is, of course, the tyrant and his pack who believe that "if we surrender our individuality to the will of the group [their group], the rewards of that submission and the vengeance we can wreak upon real or imagined enemies will be worth the price of liberty." Ultimately, the pack's liberty will also by consumed by the tyrant.
This rather obvious playbook gets somehow misplaced by Hughes in his essayed screed about illiberal progressives — though slyly, he never employs the word — and their intended "revolutionary overthrow of an entire social order," still inhabited only by Ozzie and Harriet.
As noted, I outspokenly detest the lengths to which some progressives have already gone in their preening, self-celebratory machinations to shut down free speech and in their somewhat laughable delusions about remaking America in OAC's image. But their priggish schoolmarming is ephemeral and so too shall their "moral panic" pass.
But Trumpism? Its empirical devastation to all that's American, and its "promise" of more? Much more? That defies the ephemeral, for authoritarianism is but the grinding way of too many liberal democracies, suffering from the burdens of freedom.
Yet, as is their wont, Trumpism's apologists simply cover their "intellectual" crimes by punching down.