Introduction
Before we get into any seriously controversial issues, a discussion on the open exchange of ideas is essential. These days, we hear professors, friends, family members, and elected officials talk about how important an open exchange of ideas or “diversity” is. The problem is, we seem to have forgotten what that really means and the core meaning of free speech as it relates to the exchange of ideas, opinions, and facts.
The Death of Open Exchanges of Ideas
Sadly, in many places in America, including the vast majority of universities and colleges, the free exchange of ideas is only welcome if those ideas fit under the umbrella of what society thinks is acceptable. These days, that is overwhelmingly skewed towards Leftism. Those who hold conservative values and are not afraid to speak up are ridiculed, called evil racist bigots, and shamed. This has led to the death of an open exchange of ideas. Our colleges, which should be the biggest advocates for an open environment for thought, intellect, and ideas, have become the biggest enemies of that very thing.
I have been on the receiving end of this even in a community college. I know friends who chose to go to a secular university or college who have been under fire for standing up for facts that should be indisputable. Rather than discouraging this insidious behavior on the part of students, professors are encouraging it. They are indoctrinating, not teaching, and they are indoctrinating students with the philosophy that feelings matter more than facts, that there is nothing objective, that there is no hard truth, and that freedom means doing whatever you want. This is one of the most dangerous philosophies that has ever been taught, and many have bought into it wholeheartedly.
Liberals Are Not the Only Ones to Blame
Of course, this is not to say that only liberals hold this philosophy or are teaching it. One of the biggest reasons that conservatives fail time after time is because they do not understand the philosophies they are combating and have often embraced them. Either that or, as was the case at times where I went to college, they stand on tradition but have very little to say on why it matters so much. To conservatives, traditional values matter a great deal. It’s a hill they’re willing to die on to the point that they also may shut down an open exchange of ideas. They, much like many liberals, are unwilling to even hear the argument from the opposition, and therefore they will never learn how to oppose what is wrong with the other side or to accept that there are places where they may have gone wrong.
In the attempt to reclaim an age when ideas could be exchanged and debated without a person taking it as a personal attack, we must go to the heart of the problem and place blame where it duly lies. The Left has launched an aggressive, unrelenting attack on our young people’s minds and philosophies and have done their level best to shut down anything that might counter what they are indoctrinating the youth with. This is something we’ll get into more detail on later as there is clear textual and historical evidence for it.
However, conservatives should not think they are only the victim in this situation because the blame is equally theirs for allowing this to happen. We on the right forgot our history, forgot why the truths we had let society function and work through even some of the greatest flaws and struggles seen in history, and forgot to fight fire with fire. We handed our country over to the radical Left, and only now are people on the conservative side of the fence beginning to realize they’re losing the war. They don’t understand why. We see the world, in many cases, through the lens of fact and reality, not emotion and daydreams.
The Failures on the Right
The failure of either side is to assume that the other should be ignored. On the right, our arguments against economically destructive philosophies has largely ignored the human nature toward greed and jealousy (which leads them to believe that it would be a good thing for big government to ensure they get what they do not have whether due to their lack of work or the natural hierarchy of wealth that occurs due to the differences in ability).
We have ignored the fact that those with less covet what those with more have and, if given the opportunity, are more than happy to have big government step in and take from those who have earned their “more” to give to those who have not earned it. We have ignored the emotionally geared appeal of the Left, and the reality that those who have bought into the Left’s often egregious and dangerous lie of utopia are not operating in the realm of rationality but in the realm of emotion, desire, and moral relativism. Our ignorance of the goals of our enemy, who is not our fellow American but the radical among us who is the enemy of liberty and self-governance, has caused conservatives to lose in almost every arena since the days of the Cold War when people could see a physical manifestation of the horrors an ideology like the far Left holds leads to.
We have lost ground on every area of life that would promote the virtues that lead to self-governance and therefore to liberty. In doing so, we have become more free in the sense that we are free to do more of whatever we want than ever before, but we have become more and more enslaved to the system because in gaining that counterfeit freedom, we have given up self-governance, which must always lead to bigger government, bigger social systems, bigger control, and ultimately bigger and bigger concessions of liberty.
As Sun Tzu once said, when you know yourself but not your enemy, you will fifty percent of the battles you fight. When you know neither, you will win none. But if you know both, then you will win every time.
The right doesn’t know themselves or their enemies. If they knew themselves, they would know why it was important not to step aside and let radical Leftists take any ground at all. If they knew their enemy, they would see where letting them win will take them.
The Failures on the Left
The Left has its own set of failures and doesn’t know its enemies well either. The failure of the American people who adhere to the Democrat party or to Leftist ideals is the failure to reason. Some, of course, do reason and think. These are sweeping generalizations. But my experience has been that very few college-aged students and even fewer die hard liberals who are in their 30s and up are in any way rational. Their system of philosophy consists on glaring contradictions, logical fallacies, and refusal to face history or to learn it. If any of those I have dealt with who have resorted not to facts but name calling and spite have any rationality left to them, I do not know. I haven’t seen it. They deal solely in the currencies of guilt and shame. Those currencies exhausted, however, there is nothing that supports their argument.
So, while the right fails in that it doesn’t blend compassion with reality very well, the left fails because they refuse on the whole to blend rationality, morality, and reason with the concerns for humanitarian behaviors. In this, I am speaking directly to those who are not political activists or government officials but to those who, like me, are the American people. We are educated to the extent that we have bothered to educate ourselves, and we are not–generally–seeking our goals because we stand to gain politically or monetarily. We are standing for what we believe in, for the world we want our children to grow up in. So while many liberal Americans do correctly notice that there are problems, they need to check their premises because the conclusions they come to are nothing short of irrational, at least in their presentation on the whole.
Where the Advantage Lies
The far Left has the advantage right now. This is not because the American general populace who spends their time bashing the opposition have any basis for their argument or are even marginally successful in convincing the opposite side to agree. It is because they did at one point know their enemies as well as themselves and strategically targeted the arenas of life that would gain them the victory in the long run.
The consistent breakdown of liberty by the Leftist infiltration into education, government (in both political parties at our present day, unfortunately), and media has been nothing short of astounding if you understand how hard our Founding Fathers worked to ensure that no politically radical group could hijack the country’s government. They didn’t want one party to have imperial-like power, and they definitely did not want the American people’s interests to be overruled by mob rule, the rule of the few, or a dictatorial system. That was everything they fought against, and the Left has managed to systematically break that down since the days of Lincoln onward. The radicals in power still know their enemy and themselves, and they are winning because of it. They are winning on the backs of hard-working Americans who don’t see the danger they represent.
How This Connects To Open Exchange of Ideas
The first thing to go in any regime, far left or far right, is an open exchange of ideas. The dictator or those seeking to stay in power–whether you want to look at Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Castro, or any other dictator–cannot allow for an open exchange of ideas because that opens the door for people to disagree with them. And that opens the door for the unification of those who disagree against the regime. History repeats this pattern time and time again, and the Left is playing with that same play book. This is an extremely dangerous situation to allow. We cannot lose the open exchange of ideas because once that is lost, so is our freedom of speech and many other liberties that we now take for granted regardless of what side of the fence we’re on.
Why Should We All Care?
Some of you reading this might now be thinking, so what? I’m on the side that has control of the major media outlets, most of academia, and a good chunk of the government whether they claim to be right wingers or not. I’m on the side that’s winning, so who cares what happens to those I disagree with? Some of you might even feel that it’s a good thing if the other side gets stamped into the dust because, depending on what issues are being discussed, you consider the other side to be evil.
I won’t bother trying to convince you that the other side isn’t evil here. The appeal to facts has its place, but there’s a much more fundamental reason for why all of us ought to care when we see open exchange of ideas vanishing. We should care because, as things shift more and more to the radical end of the Leftist spectrum, more and more of us are going to find ourselves on the “wrong” side of the fence. Right now, I’m squarely on the “wrong” side of the fence according to media and much of academia. I care about the loss of open exchange of ideas because I’m already on the side of the fence suffering for that loss. But how long do you think it will be before you too are on that side of the fence because you aren’t willing to take that next step toward a more radical standpoint?
Don’t think that will happen? It will. Do some research into Marx’s First International. A great portion of the members were kicked out because they were considered too soft on communistic ideals. Many were kicked out because they weren’t radical enough, according to Marx and Engles. The same thing happened with Lenin’s Bolshevik party and with Stalin’s Third International. It’s never enough for the radical. The end goal is always the full destruction of anyone who will not serve them 100%.
They are not interested in you or your good, and they never will be. As soon as you won’t budge another step when they want to move forward, you’ll be considered “not radical enough” or “too conservative”. We’re already seeing this as young people accuse some of the most liberal stars out there of being “too conservative” or “racist conservatives” because they just weren’t radical enough. That’s why you should care.
I won’t ask you to care because others’ freedoms will be lost. That is not a strong enough reason for most to overcome their desire to be on the winning side or their self-interest. Whether it should or not is another question, but I won’t use it as the basis for my argument because when it all boils down to it, that won’t be good enough so long as you want the opposition destroyed or at least silenced.
Conclusion
The first tenant of liberty that must be defended is the ability for ideas and philosophies to be openly expressed as well as challenged and defended. Without that, the requirement on us to be rational disappears because there is no one to demand we prove our ideas work. Nowhere is this more clearly seen than in many of those who engage in heated arguments in Facebook comments or in the way that the mainstream media crucifies anyone who disagrees.
They never seem to have anything substantial to prove that they are in the right. Instead, they just drag the person they’ve chosen to disparage through the mud. At some point, though, the guilt currency becomes worthless because the target ceases to care. And when someone doesn’t feel guilty and doesn’t care what’s being said about them, that makes dealing with them much more difficult.
Both sides are doing this, and if we don’t want to lose our forums for open, civil discussion about ideas and philosophies, even when we disagree, we’re going to need to stop doing that and turn to the facts. Let the ideas and philosophies that are tried and proven stand. Let the facts speak for us. Be compassionate toward the underlying emotions and needs that may drive someone to think differently than you–even when you ultimately have to correct a false premise. This is how we can each practically work toward ensuring that we balance feeling with fact to make sure that we uphold truth and the open exchange of ideas.
