The Power of a Bad Idea
7th January 2016
David Cole is delightfully dyspeptic today.
To me, the most striking image from 2015 was that of pro-censorship black students at Yale carrying signs and banners proclaiming “We are loved.” It was surreal—black students demanding firings and expulsions for “racist” speech, steamrolling weak and terrified administrators, marching and chanting and bringing campus life to a halt with the message “We are loved.” Those poor cretins, lacking the self-awareness to know that only people who are completely insecure about actually being loved would feel compelled to parade around proclaiming that they are, have now come to think of censorship as a surrogate mother or father, something to help them feel wanted, a way to perhaps compensate for absentee or abusive parents. Just as communism and socialism gave moochers “dignity,” censorship is being used to give positive self-esteem to losers who feel unloved.