Why are we afraid? Why have we who deal in reason and data allowed ourselves to be effectively silenced?
Frank Camp answers that question in a piece on The DailyWire. According to Camp, we are broadly afraid to be called a “racist” or have it said that we are “complicit” in some unworthy system. We're also afraid that if we speak up, we'll lose our jobs or friends and family members will turn their backs to us.
Of course, all this is not new. However, "this present silencing feels different then previous attacks from which we emerged bruised but alive," writes Camp. Why? "The difference is that the weapons we previously used to wage verbal war against absurd ideologies have been effectively neutralized. Data and reason have been replaced by 'lived experience' and 'personal truth.' Exchange of information has been supplanted by the brute force of emotions," which has been "nurtured by legacy media, progressive politicians, academia, and Hollywood," with relatively little pushback.
Given this present reality, it might seem that our only option is to retreat to safety, which, in this case, means complete and deafening silence. But the retreat of reasoned people will only encourage the growth of the irrational minority. And the fact remains that despite the emotional assertion by the minority that the reason- and data-driven majority are racist is only a perception. It is not real. "It’s a wholly perception-oriented phenomenon. We mistakenly "perceive that a majority of Americans are participating in this revolution, and because of that, we fear that a 'racist' or 'complicit' label will stick."
However, this perception is incorrect. "Those seeking to undermine our system and the values undergirding it, those who would call 'racist' anyone who disagrees with their orthodoxy are in the minority – a minority that has of course been amplified by social media, legacy media, progressive politicians, academia, Hollywood, and the vociferousness of the movement’s participants," write Camp.
So what can be done? As Camp notes, "if majority rules – perceived or real – we for whom reason and data matter must step out together from inside our hiding places, and push back. This cannot be accomplished by only a few brave individuals. It must be a rising done in concert with many others."
How do we do this? How do we rise together? Camp suggests it may take a set of prominent figures "who have little to no fear of reprisal to generate the momentum that will set off a larger counter-push." He wonders if the letter in defense of free speech from JK Rowling, Malcolm Gladwell, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Haidt, Steven Pinker, and more than 140 others might be a "counterpunch from left-leaning public figures" that "could provide some form of cover behind which average Americans could get a running start."
Camp writes that "the story of the woke revolution and those who will resist the fear of stinging labels is ongoing, and the outcome can still be changed – but action must be taken as soon as possible. It might be that in this inestimable slice of time in which we still have the means to defend the truth, there is no other option but to set aside our terrors in order to act as a barrier between what we know to be good and the mob that seeks to tear it apart."
So…stop the retreat! Speak up! And don't be intimidated by the loud and irrational minority!
