Thank you, Dr. Joseph Facal, for your thoughtful article published yesterday in the Journal de Montréal. Thankfully, the latter sill knows how to respect diversity of opinions of its columnists (rather scarce in most of today’s mainstream media). Here is a quick translation:
https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2021/03/23/censure-il-est-temps-de-riposter-fermement
“Glenn Reynolds, Professor of Law at the University of Tennessee, just published a very interesting opinion in the New York Post.
We make a toy disappear, Mr. Patato, because it would embody “toxic masculinity” [Bambi has a post on “cher Monsieur Patate” ?; as shown at the very end of this post].
We make a cartoon character, Pepe, a skunk, disappear because it would normalize “rape culture” [no comment].
You make a book disappear because it contains a word “traumatic” [how sad and unhelpful actually].
Respond
If we did a poll, asks Reynolds, how many people would approve these censors? 1%? [why is most of the 99% of the rest of the population that afraid of them]?
Who voted for it? At the polls, these claims would get laughable scores, even if one might get the opposite impression from reading the complacent commentators of wokism.
They take advantage of the benevolent and peaceful nature of the vast majority of people, who want tranquility, especially no bickering, who do not want their school children to be in the crosshairs of these horny people.
These reasonable people are s, censoring themselves, hoping that this is just passing foolishness.
In a confrontation between a tolerant and an intolerant, the intolerant starts with a huge psychological advantage: folding is not an option.
Stalin would have already said something like: what is mine is mine, what is yours is negotiable.
Isn’t the time, Reynolds asks, to stop bending and retaliate firmly?
Responding does not mean subjecting these petty tyrants to the vile methods they apply to others.
It is not about demanding their exclusion or their silence.
Rather, it is about attacking head-on their most valuable asset: their moral credibility.
These people, says Reynolds, believe themselves to be superior and believe that the correctness of their crusade justifies their violent methods.
For them, the fight against “injustice” justifies breaking as many eggs as necessary.
Let us stop seeing them as idealists whose good intentions go too far.
Let us not fall into this trap of giving them the upper hand on the moral level.
Let’s undress them [OK, watch out we may see their ugliness ?]. Let’s unmask them. Let us take away this mantle of virtue. Let us refuse reasonable accommodation or submission in the name of their so-called idealism.
Let’s talk to them bluntly. Let us tell them, let us tell everyone that their behaviour is abject, dangerous, detestable, condemnable.
No!
In the history of mankind [or humanity], Reynolds recalls, it is not the benevolent, genuinely humanistic people who burned books, censored speeches, demanded dismissals.
They were frustrated, selfish, psychologically rigid people, devoid of empathy and generosity, often socially misfits, with a spirit of revenge on society because their lives were not what they wanted.
Let us refuse that their frustrations poison our lives.
Let’s raise our heads and say no firmly, as many times as necessary.
Simply.”
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