{"id":7203,"date":"2014-04-10T15:19:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-10T22:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7203"},"modified":"2014-04-10T15:19:29","modified_gmt":"2014-04-10T22:19:29","slug":"the-new-inquisition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-inquisition\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Inquisition"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Content Agency<\/a>\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n

What if you believed that the planet might not have warmed up the last two decades, even though carbon emissions reached all-time highs?<\/p>\n

Or, if the earth did heat up, you thought that it was not caused by human activity?<\/p>\n

Or, if global warming were the fault of mankind, you trusted that the slight increases would not make all that much difference?<\/p>\n

The\u00a0Los Angeles Times\u00a0would not print your letter to the editor to that effect.<\/p>\n

The CEO of\u00a0Apple Inc.\u00a0might advise that you should “get out of this stock.”<\/p>\n

Or maybe if you were a skeptical climatologist, you would cease all research and concede that man-caused global warming needed no further scientific cross-examination — as columnist\u00a0Bill McKibben\u00a0recently advocated.<\/p>\n

If you were a drought-stricken\u00a0California\u00a0farmer and worried about diversions of irrigation water to support fish populations, you would be told by the president ofthe United States\u00a0that the real problem is not a failure to build reservoirs and canals, but is due entirely to global warming, which is a “fact” and “settled science.”<\/p>\n

What if you supported equality for all Americans regardless of their sexual preference, but — like presidential candidate\u00a0Barack Obama\u00a0in 2008 and about half the country today — opposed making gay marriage legal?<\/p>\n

If you were the CEO of Mozilla,\u00a0Brendan Eich, you would be forced to resign your position.<\/p>\n

If you owned a fast-food franchise like\u00a0Chick-fil-A, boycotts of your business would ensue.<\/p>\n

If you were a star of “Duck Dynasty,” your show would be threatened with suspension or cancellation.<\/p>\n

What if you thought that foreign nationals who broke the law to enter and reside in the U.S. were aliens residing here illegally?<\/p>\n

Three or four years ago, you would have been advised to use only the politically correct term “illegal immigrant” — even though not all arrivals crossed the border to live permanently in the U.S. The more legally precise noun “alien” was no longer allowable.<\/p>\n

Then, about a year ago, you would have been further advised that the adjective “illegal” was suddenly also no longer acceptable.<\/p>\n

Yet all the while, entering and residing inside the U.S. without legal permission stayed a federal crime — just as it is in every other nation in the world.<\/p>\n

What if you thought that supporters of both the Israelis and Palestinians would wish to air their positions on college campuses?<\/p>\n

If you were the Israeli ambassador, you would be shouted down at\u00a0University of California, Irvine.<\/p>\n

If you were a Jewish student organization asking to ensure free speech at theUniversity of Michigan, you would probably be cursed at with racial epithets, as happened recently.<\/p>\n

If you were a faculty member organizing a scholarly trip to\u00a0Israel, you would be harassed at\u00a0Vassar College.<\/p>\n

What if you were a professor at\u00a0Oberlin College\u00a0or the\u00a0University of California, Santa Barbara, who wished to teach literature that sometimes dealt with class, race, gender and sex?<\/p>\n

If the ensuing class discussions did not meet left-wing dogma, you might soon be asked by student groups to offer “trigger warnings” on your syllabus — as if your class were a toxic cigarette or pesticide in need of warning labels.<\/p>\n

We are in a new Inquisition. Self-appointed censors try to stamp out any idea or word that they don’t wish to be aired — in the pursuit of a new race, class, gender and environment orthodoxy.<\/p>\n

Hounding out people with different views is seen by the Left as a necessary means to achieve its supposedly noble goals — just like the Spanish Inquisitioners who claimed God was on their side as they went after religiously “incorrect” Jews, Muslims and heretics.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has been part of the problem, not part of the solution. Its appointees used the once-impartial\u00a0IRS\u00a0against conservatives. They monitored\u00a0Associated Press\u00a0reporters. They denied that the NSA was eavesdropping on average citizens. They arbitrarily chose not to enforce laws they didn’t like.<\/p>\n

The president bragged of using “a pen and phone” to circumvent the legislative branch, and urged his supporters to “punish our enemies.” The attorney general calls Americans who have different views from his own on matters of affirmative action “cowards.”<\/p>\n

All of that them\/us rhetoric has given a top-down green light to radical thought police to harass anyone who is open-minded about man-caused global warming, or believes that gay marriage needs more debate, or that supporting\u00a0Israel\u00a0is a legitimate cause, or that breaking federal immigration law is still a crime and therefore “illegal.”<\/p>\n

Our civil liberties will not be lost to crude fascists in jackboots. More likely, the death of free speech will be the work of the new medieval Torquemadas who claim they destroyed freedom of expression for the sake of “equality” and “fairness” and “saving the planet.”<\/p>\n

(Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0is a classicist and historian at the\u00a0Hoover Institution\u00a0andStanford University, and the author, most recently, of “The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost — From Ancient Greece to\u00a0Iraq.” You can reach him by e-mail at\u00a0author@victorhanson.com<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\n(C) 2014 TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Content Agency\u00a0 What if you believed that the planet might not have warmed up the last two decades, even though carbon emissions reached all-time highs? Or, if the earth did heat up, you thought that it was not caused by human activity? Or, if global warming were the fault […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[136],"tags":[900,236,291,1031,570,1021,80],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Sb","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1666,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/global-warming-rip\/","url_meta":{"origin":7203,"position":0},"title":"Global Warming–RIP?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Not long ago, candidate Obama promised to cool the planet and lower the rising seas. Indeed, he campaigned on passing \u201ccap-and-trade\u201d legislation, a radical, costly effort to reduce America\u2019s traditional carbon energy use. The theory was that new taxes and greater regulations would\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Energy"","block_context":{"text":"Energy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/energy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7072,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-pseudo-scientism\/","url_meta":{"origin":7203,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Pseudo-Scientism","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Too hot? Too cold? Regardless, it must be global warming. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online\u00a0 President Obama came to California. He saw a drought. He announced the cause to be global warming and left. How accurate was the president\u2019s diagnosis of harmful, man-made climate change in stopping\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9235,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-politicization-of-the-english-language\/","url_meta":{"origin":7203,"position":2},"title":"The Politicization of the English Language","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 8, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Tribune Media Services Last week, French President Francois Hollande met President Obama in Washington to discuss joint strategies for stopping the sort of radical Islamic terrorists who have killed dozens of innocents in Brussels, Paris and San Bernardino in recent months. Hollande at one point explicitly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4113,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/anatomy-of-a-media-bias-nothings-more-closed-than-a-colonized-mind\/","url_meta":{"origin":7203,"position":3},"title":"Anatomy of a Media Bias: Nothing’s More Closed Than a Colonized Mind","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com One of the pleasures of reading the\u00a0New York Times\u00a0is spotting the myriad ways liberal ideology shapes stories and presents as fact what is a debatable supposition. Global warming, for example, is a \u201ccrisis\u201d about which the\u00a0Timeshas already made up its mind. Rather than a contested\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5999,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/flat-earth-democrats\/","url_meta":{"origin":7203,"position":4},"title":"Flat-Earth Democrats","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine The victims of the tornado that hit Moore Oklahoma had not even been counted when Democrat politicians made fools of themselves by trying to link the disaster to global warming and Republicans. California Senator Barbara Boxer said, \u201cThis is climate change. We were warned\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1974,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/who-really-is-anti-science\/","url_meta":{"origin":7203,"position":5},"title":"Who Really Is “Anti-Science”?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine In any national election we can depend on the usual liberal\u00a0ad hominemattacks on Republicans and their candidates. One chestnut already appearing is the charge that Republicans comprise the \u201canti-science party,\u201d as even a Republican, presidential primary candidate Jon Huntsman, fretted recently. Huntsman\u2019s angst arose\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Global Warming"","block_context":{"text":"Global Warming","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/global-warming-2\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7203"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7204,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7203\/revisions\/7204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}