Adhocracy, Why the Progressives are against Free Speech - Granite Grok

Adhocracy, Why the Progressives are against Free Speech

Kevin D. Williamson -- Credit his Twitter feed.
Kevin D. Williamson — Credit his Twitter feed.

Remember when the Democrats unanimously voted to repeal the First Amendment back in 2014? Remember when Hillary wanted to curtail free speech when it pertains to politicians? And how about all those times over the past several years when Progressives and leftists called for silencing “hate speech” where hate speech is anything they don’t like? Remember all of those? You should at least remember the one because the latest example was just last week in Boston.

I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist, so it’s always lost on me why people would call for limiting speech when someday someone would try to limit their speech and mine. It seems to me so naive and short sighted in that you never know who would be the one in control silencing others. More amazing is that a lot of these calls coming from Progressives and leftists are getting louder now. With Trump sitting in the White House and Sessions as Attorney General!

Now, I simultaneously held that view AND completely understood the evils the Administrative State F.A. Hayek warned about in Constitution of Liberty. So when I heard Kevin D. Williamson marry the two together, I had a forehead smacking ”Oh yeah, Duh!” moment. Once again a little transcript from Mad Dogs and Englishmen Podcast, where Kevin discusses the reasons Progressives want speech police, check it out:

What they want is bureaucratic adhocracy, right. Where there aren’t clearly defined, generally applicable rules like the First Amendment, which is more or less absolutist. What they want is something that is situational; that’s defined on a case-by-case basis by essentially unaccountable bureaucracies. Because they believe, as Progressives, they have some confidence that over the long term they will be able to control the relevant bureaucracies. And they’ve actually had some pretty good luck with that. So even if you look at the elections where Republicans have dominant positions both in the states and in the Federal Government, you know it isn’t going to be the IRS harassing left wing groups. It isn’t going to be the Department of Education harassing left wing groups or left wing professors who are trying to punish their institutions. It isn’t going to be the Environment Protection Service coming after global warming people and claiming that what they’re engaged in is fraud, and that they should be indicted, and investigated, and perhaps even jailed for it. So they believe as progressives that they are going to have control over the relevant bureaucracies and institutions irrespective of who wins the elections. And I don’t think that history gives us much reason to think that they’re entirely wrong about that.

Aside from saying “Service” instead of “Agency,” that is pretty darned spot on. Progressives are confident that they’ll infiltrate and inevitably control the speech police bureaucracy because they’ve been successful doing so in so many other government bureaucracies. This is not to say that some or many Progressives today will not be subject to and silenced by Progressives tomorrow. I mean just look at the recent example of today’s Democrats tearing down the statues erected by yesterday’s Democrats. It’s still a dangerous, short sighted proposition to put a Silencer in Chief in charge of speech. And I still believe many calling for it are short sighted and assume they’ll always be the ones in charge. But, as Kevin said, “I don’t think that history gives us much reason to think that they’re entirely wrong about that.”

Scary stuff Winston.

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