In recent years, the true character of the secular creed of Tolerance, Diversity and Free Speech has at last become clear.
As Stanley Fish saw years ago, and many others realized long before him, the aim of the movement is not to remove particular moral, political and religious values from the public square, leaving a Free Space devoid of substantive commitments where everyone can say live and let live. (Indeed, since substantive commitments of some kind are unavoidable, the very idea of this kind of Free Space is incoherent, and even those who thought that this is what they were seeking were in fact pursuing something else.)
Rather, the aim is to promote (and indeed where possible to impose) a very particular set of commitments, while at the same time treating those commitments as axiomatic – Things Upon Which All Decent People Agree. Anyone who for whatever reason takes exception to the paradigm must not be debated with; they must be silenced or excluded.
The most obvious example is the increasing prevalence of “No-Platforming” – the attempts by (for example) University student societies to exclude speakers from campus on the grounds that their views are (regarded by some people as) offensive.
As someone once said, the new religion of Tolerance, Diversity and Free Speech has two articles of faith: (1) All views are welcome; (2) If you don’t agree with me, shut up.
There’s a great deal that could be (and has been) said about this cultural shift. I want to make just one simple point:
This stance is cowardly. It reflects the conviction that these views are too weak to hold their own, and must therefore be protected from challenge in order to remain intact.
Thus, for example, a generation ago, university students had the courage to attend debates featuring speakers whose views they abhorred, in order to engaged them in argument. They did this because they were confident that their own convictions were strong enough to win the day. Marxists debated with capitalists, pro-abortionists debated with pro-lifers, atheists debated with Christians, and so on, because they all had the moral courage and intellectual backbone to put their views in the ring with the opposition and (verbally, of course) slug it out.
There are still some today willing to engage in this sort of public debate. But those who believe that the only way to preserve their own values is to silence debate and shut down opposing views are not among them.
