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Lifelong liberal Kirsten Powers blasts the Left's forced march towards conformity in an exposé of the illiberal war on free speech. No longer champions of tolerance and free speech, the "illiberal Left" now viciously attacks and silences anyone with alternative points of view. Powers asks, "What ever happened to free speech in America?"
- Sales Rank: #10292 in Books
- Published on: 2015-05-11
- Released on: 2015-05-11
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.10" h x 1.10" w x 6.10" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
Review
"A searing and courageous indictment of the growing intolerance of the American left—written with passion and eloquence by one of the nation's most principled and fair-minded liberals. An important book on a subject many are simply too afraid to touch."
—Charles Krauthammer, Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Things That Matter
"Kirsten Powers convincingly calls out her fellow liberals for being astonishingly illiberal. A great read."
—Brit Hume, Fox News senior political analyst
"Kirsten Powers explodes and skewers 'The Silencing'—the demonizing and repression of different views, especially conservative views. Here is a liberal calling out other supposedly liberal people who claim to believe in free speech but tell all who disagree with them to shut up. Hallelujah—you are lucky to have this book in your hands!"
—Juan Williams, Fox News political analyst and New York Times bestselling author of Muzzled
"I salute my friend Kirsten Powers for boldly and eloquently breaking the spiral of silence on silencing."
—Eric Metaxas, New York Times bestselling author of Miracles and Bonhoeffer
"Tolerance and free expression are founding values of our republic and yet they're under attack from the extreme wings of the American political spectrum. Shining a harsh light on the 'illiberal left,' Kirsten Powers exposes a grim campaign to silence speech. This is an important book."
—Ron Fournier, senior political columnist and editorial director of National Journal
"In this examination of the multiplying attacks on freedom of speech, Kirsten Powers casts a cool eye on the damages done to politics, academia, and civic discourse by the aggressive assertion of a perverse new entitlement. It is the postulated right to pass through life without being disturbed, annoyed, offended, or discomposed by the expression of anyone else's thoughts."
—George F. Will, Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist and author of the New York Times bestseller A Nice Little Place on the North Side
From the Inside Flap
Free speech and freedom of conscience have long been core American values. Yet a growing intolerance from the left side of the political spectrum is threatening Americans' ability to freely express beliefs without fear of retaliation. USA Today columnist and Fox News contributor Kirsten Powers calls it "The Silencing."
Powers chronicles this forced march toward conformity in an exposé of the illiberal tactics deployed to shut down debate on some of the most important issues of the day. While preaching tolerance and claiming to hold liberal values, the "illiberal left" works to delegitimize political and ideological opponents in ways that stifle freedom of expression, thought, and religious belief.
In The Silencing, Kirsten Powers, herself a proud liberal--but from a far more tolerant Jeffersonian tradition--exposes the illiberal left. You'll learn:
- Why the illiberal left has become an Orwellian "big brother," policing what it deems acceptable speech and opinions
- How the illiberal left is obsessed with delegitimizing Fox News
- How illiberal left pundits--even self-proclaimed "feminists" (and Powers names names)--engage in outrageously misogynistic and sexist dismissals of their female opponents
- How illiberal colleges and universities limit freedom of expression to tightly regulated "free speech zones" and ban speakers (even liberals) with whom the illiberal left disagrees
- How "truth" matters little to the illiberal left, for whom ideology is everything
- How is it that liberalism, once associated with open-mindedness and reason, has become a vehicle for irrational prejudice, ideological conformity, and the marginalization and punishment of alternative opinions? Kirsten Powers chronicles this troubling trend in perhaps the most important--and chilling--political book of the year.
About the Author
Kirsten Powers is a Fox News contributor and columnist for USA Today. Powers has been called "Fox's liberal to be reckoned with" by Mediaite and "an outspoken liberal journalist" by the Columbia Journalism Review. The Women's Media Center lauded Powers as a "trailblazer," "powerful," and an "exceptional professional." Prior to her career in journalism, Powers worked in Democratic Party politics and the Clinton administration. She has been published in the Wall Street Journal, New York Observer, New York Post, The Daily Beast, Elle, Salon.com, and the American Prospect online. A native of Fairbanks, Alaska, and graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park, Powers currently resides in Washington, D.C.
Most helpful customer reviews
526 of 583 people found the following review helpful.
A sweeping account, based on personal experience. Will it change anything?
By Graham H. Seibert
Kirsten Powers opens up by explaining that she is not a natural conservative. She comes from an Irish, working-class background and considered herself Democratic all of her life. She went to George Washington University and the University of Maryland, one which I attended, the other one just down the street. They are liberal bastions. Her life's experience has made her more conservative.
The subtitle of the book, How the Left Is Killing Free Speech, and her choice of a publisher, Regnery, suggest that this is a radically right-wing book. It is not at all that. It is simply a plea for common sense. Here, already before she has started, her point is made. Liberal orthodoxy has so defined the spectrum of thought in modern America that simply to question it, which is all she really wants to do, is to brand oneself as a right-winger.
Miss Powers is a USA Today contributor and a Fox News contributor. These are both centrist mass outlets, conservative mainly in the sense that they are often smeared as conservative. At 36 she is relatively young. She does not make many historical references. Let me start out with a few.
Saul Alinsky wrote the book on smearing conservatives. He called it “Rules for Radicals.” (NB: I included his rules as the 8th comment below.) The techniques that Miss Powers describes have been used by propagandists for all of my lifetime. I live in Ukraine, and note with chagrin that Russia is extremely effectively applying most of the techniques that she describes in order to vilify Ukraine and turn the Russian people (and American and European libertarians!) into unthinking supporters of Vladimir Putin.
The illiberal liberal camp, her word, champions pet issues which will be familiar to any reader of this review. On the social scene they advocate feminism, same-sex marriage, and racial equality. In public policy they believe in Obamacare and have a dogmatic belief in global warming. They do not argue. They assume the correctness of their positions, and use all of Akinsky’s nefarious techniques to demonize, discredit, disorient and delegitimize their opposition.
Powers' examples are in large part from her own life. She refers repeatedly to Fox News. It is a favorite bête noire of the liberals. They delegitimize it, calling it not really a news organization. They accuse it of constant, unremitting bias. They invent cute names for it like Faux News. And yet it thrives – the beast thrives! The American people are not dumb, and they are becoming inured to the unrelenting propaganda attacks.
The book is very strong on examples concerning women and women’s issues. She talks about the so-called “rape culture” on campus and the feminists’ vicious attacks on people such as columnist George Will who question the statistics that they drag up to support their case. She points out the hypocrisy of women who attack other women simply because their politics are not in accord with progressives. They question the very femininity of women on Fox, calling them blonde bimbos and sarcastically questioning whether they are really women, or men masquerading as women, or female robots controlled by men. They use every device that they can muster to delegitimize the people, without addressing the arguments that the people make.
Second to the feminists is her attention to the gay rights lobby. They absolutely will not brook dissent, any deviation from the party line. Even fellow homosexuals can be brutally attacked when they advocate, for instance, tolerance of other points of view.
Although race is a subtext in many of the arguments, Powers generally steers clear of race issues. She tackles Al Sharpton in the sphere of sexism. She has a chapter covering the supposed rape that never happened at the University of Virginia (the Rolling Stone fiasco), Duke University (the lacrosse players) and New York – Tawana Brawley. Going back in history, she does recount the treatment of Democratic stalwart Daniel Patrick Moynihan when he questioned the pernicious effect of single-family upbringings within the black community.
Besides George Will, other personalities she cites frequently include Jeb Rubenfeld of Harvard, a lawyer who frequently challenges the legality of many of the illiberal liberals’ positions. He is, incidentally and not mentioned, the husband of Tiger mom Amy Chua. Powers talks about what happened to the chief executives officers of Chick-fil-A and Mozilla when they made statements and political contributions to support a traditional definition of marriage. She spends a page on Steven Pinker, the Harvard/MIT professor who has been very brave and eloquent in his defense of academic freedom. I recommend Pinker’s book The Blank Slate for a description of how not just conservatives, but honest scientists are abused by people when their science might reveal things that the liberals don’t want brought to light.
As an example, she cites the treatment of a famous scientist, Lazar Greenfield, who juried an article which came to the conclusion that women who have unprotected sex seem to get a mood elevating experience which is not shared by women who have sex with condoms. His conclusion was that there is something in semen that elevates women's moods. The feminists took offense and got this eminent scientist fired.
Quite a bit of the book focuses on campus life, especially the enforced political correctness on American university campuses. She says that conservatives have a difficult time being accepted. They are not accepted as commencement speakers, they are shouted down in classrooms, they are denied tenure and sent elsewhere. I will say amen to that. I attended the graduate school of education at the University of Maryland starting in 2004, on a free tuition program for senior citizens. The professors were almost universally hostile to this experienced, older straight white man; the students split between being aggressively hostile and simply curious that a person such as me might exist in the world. Rather than fight the educators, I switched to a PhD program in statistics, where facts matter. I can speak with authority about the magnitude of the problem on campus ten years ago. In this connection I recommend an excellent book by David Gelernter, Unabomber victim and Yale professor, America Lite, offering his analysis of how the radicals took over American academia starting in the 1950s and the power they now have.
What purpose does this book serve? Miss Powers does a good job of documenting a situation that exists. She has an extraordinarily extensive biography, and I can offer one as well, all of which document the same thing as it has occurred not only for all of her lifetime, but even over all of my lifetime. Telling people about it, however, does not change much. It has been done many times before.
She offers a large number of examples of the illiberal liberals turning on their own. As mentioned, the homosexuals who advocate tolerance of other points of view; feminists who are willing to listen to the pro-life arguments; people who would actually invite students to listen to opposing points of view; reporters who honestly investigate the sins of not only the Bush administration but the Obama administration. One would hope that some of these liberals might be chastened. They might become frightened for the future of America, and speak up against the abuses that they suffered at the hands of other liberals. Sadly, this is not usually the case. They simply learn to shut up. That is the precisely message that the illiberal liberals want to spread – shut up if you know what’s good for you.
Where does it go from here? I think one needs a broader perspective on society than simply these media oriented issues, social issues. This liberality has destroyed higher education. See Dinesh Dsouza 's Illiberal Education for the definitive work on higher education. Diane Ravitch, though somewhat disparaged by Powers in this book as a doctrinaire liberal, did a pretty good analysis of the school bureaucracies in Left Back: a Century of Failed School Reform. This liberality has moreover destroyed the economy. Conservative voices, dissenting voices have not been allowed in economic policy. This is true not only in America but the whole developed world. It is uncontroversial to claim that the levels of public debt worldwide in 2015 far exceed any historical record. It is becoming increasingly less controversial to claim with horror that it will end badly, in a prolonged recession and social turmoil. Although Powers does not make the point, the feminist and GLBT movements have severely undercut white and Asian America’s ability to reproduce itself. There will never again be a generation nearly as large as the baby boomers, and the following generations are simply unable to support them with the generous benefits they have voted themselves in terms of Social Security and Medicare. Something has to give.
In summary, Powers book is not going to solve the problems, but it does a great job of documenting them. When the problems solve themselves, in whatever ugly fashion they choose, her book will have turned out to be prescient. A five-star effort.
291 of 325 people found the following review helpful.
"We must silence Free Speech--FOR THE GREATER GOOD!", said the ILLIBERAL
By ProfessorF
Be afraid, be very afraid, because the events described in Kirsten's book are snowballing. I think this should be a candidate for book of the year. Let me explain. I am a professor at a liberal state university, and I see all of the situations in Kirsten's book unfolding first hand. In fact, my university was listed in Kirsten's book as one of the colleges that threatened or derecognized Christian groups for their refusal to say they would not 'discriminate' on the base of belief--and I served on one of those hearing committees!
Anyway, this book exposes a disturbing trend happening in the US and specifically in college campuses in general--the assault on free speech by a growing segment of liberals that Kirsten calls ILLIBERALS (I like this term because it sounds like illogical and liberal juxtaposed).
For ILLIBERALS, free speech is fine, as long as it's the kind of speech they agree with. Anything else must be silenced FOR THE GREATER GOOD. Of course, they define what "the greater good is" and it rarely is good for society as a whole.
ILLIBERALS feel any speech they disagree with is violence against them. And they feel warranted in some cases to use physical violence. Kirsten gave the example of a UCSB professor who >physically attacked< a teenage pro-life activist. Her university hailed her as a hero. Which I find funny because a professor at my university tweeted a post about fat graduate students not having will power, and he was reprimanded, and told to take sensitivity training, removed from committees, and had to issue a public apology.
Kirsten describes two main techniques that ILLIBERALS use to silence free speech, and gives copious examples throughout. The techniques are:
1) Dehumanization--you're not a good open-minded person (GOMP)!
2) Demonization--you're racist, sexist, misogynist, or any other *-ist
Here's why you should be concerned. These ILLIBERALS are trying to kill free speech, and more generally freedom of expression and freedom of choice in videogames, science fiction, comic books, and all other entertainment media.
ILLIBERALS are trying to force a narrative on society, to force society to think a particular way. The use silencing and shaming techniques to beat people into thought submission. And they justify this force as FOR THE GREATER GOOD.
It's scary, because we think ILLIBERALS are just wrong. But ILLIBERALS feel deep in their hearts that we -- the classic and moderate liberals -- are EVIL, a menace to society that they are morally justified in stamping out by any means possible. Sure, it's silencing & shaming tactics today, but tomorrow?
So get this book read it, and spread the examples far and wide. Expose this assault on free speech.
210 of 245 people found the following review helpful.
Free Speech is the most important right we have because without it we can't enjoy any of the others.
By Craig Matteson
Like millions of other people, I watch and enjoy Fox News. Kirsten Powers is one of the reasons I enjoy that News Outlet. While many of the Progressives / Liberals on that channel are also fine journalists, some of the Liberal talking heads are there to carry water for their bosses, be it Obama or Hillary or whomever. Kirsten Powers is a person of deep conviction and belief. She comes to her views sincerely and honestly, and I enjoy hearing from people like that.
She grew up as a Liberal child in Conservative Alaska. Her parents were Liberal academics who taught at the local University. Her house mourned when Carter lost to Reagan while their neighbors cheered. During her adult life, she became a professional in various aspects of Democrat political life and eventually she came to Fox News. A few years after that, she became a Christian. Still a sincere Liberal, she also began to see the bubble she had been living in for what it was.
Powers uses this book to point out the problems with the political debate in our Country right now and while both parties have some guilt in the sins she enumerates; the Liberals in academia, the media, and in the highest offices in the land are the most egregious and systematic offenders.
She points out that only about a quarter of adults over 45 think there is too much free speech in America. But over 45% of those 18 to 45 do! That means as those adults mature and become the authority figures in society, free speech is going to be in trouble. We hear many on the Left, including Hillary Clinton(!) saying the first amendment must be changed because it is infringing on too many other rights – the ones she and other Progressives prefer and can’t win if there is open and free debate about them. Powers is quite concerned about this and thinks that the Liberals in this country should own the first amendment the way Conservatives own the second. I don’t know about that, but I understand her sentiment. She calls the Liberals who want to stifle and regulate free speech for their political agenda’s sake “illiberals”.
In this terrific book, the author takes us through the weaponization of delicate sensibilities and how those most widely and easily offended gain tremendous power in academia. They get professors tossed, students kicked out, the awful speech codes, “free speech” zones (isn’t all of America supposed to be a free speech zone?), speakers cancelled, and administrators fired. She shows us the awful hypocrisy of feminists in using language and illogic that would be offensive if used by a man, but is dismissed when used by the likes of Jezebel.com, Gloria Steinem, and the other High Priestesses of Political Feminism. Powers herself has been attacked for working at Fox News by Steinem and others, and dismissed as a just another “Fox blonde”. Just horrible stuff. Somehow Feminists can dismiss a woman because of her looks, but if mentioned by ANYONE else, it is a capital crime.
The feminists also use bogus statistics such as the women earn 77% of men trope. Even though it is widely discredited, it is still used. When called on using this phony statistic, the Center for America Progress claimed it was merely a “colloquialism” as a stand in for the greater economic truth. As Powers points out: “It’s not true, but represents the truth. Got that? And don’t you dare question it.” (page 178).
I also enjoyed her discussion of how other journalists have been sticking for Fox News against the well-orchestrated and baseless attacks from the Obama Administration and Media Matters. Good for them. She also points out how thin skinned the Obama team is. They have even resorted to providing their own videographer and changing or censoring the pool reports the media uses to do their reporting on the Whitehouse. When Elena Kagan was nominated for the Supreme Court the ONLY interview she did was put out by the Whitehouse TV. Really. (page 134).
I agree with the author that we would all do better if we broadened our social circles to include people we don’t normally feel comfortable socializing with. We don’t always have to agree. But we should always be able to discuss and have conversations with people who don’t view the world as we do. We might learn something.
Please get and read this very fine book.
Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Saline, MI
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