And that’s part of the problem.

Because they’re STILL lying and I’m not even sure that they know it—which is a most interesting (if not surprising) “feature” of our so-called intellectual elites:

Several examples (of many):
“…the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides…”
So it’s “on all sides”, is it?

“….While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture…”
So you’re saying that from its “starting point” on “the radical right” it’s “also spreading” to “our culture”? (One has to love “our culture” part. “Censoriousness”, too is lovely; but why not just say “intellectual depravity” and leave it at that?)
Yes, it’s “Airbrushing-Out ‘R Us” indeed. (That is, if they’ve even noticed what it is they’ve airbrushed out….)

“We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences.”
Might one dare assume that “[preserving] the possibility(?) of good-faith disagreement” means ending the flagrant slander and lies about Trump and his supporters?…. (No, didn’t think so…)

For starters….

They’re most dishonestly striving to come to grips with the obscene reality they’ve helped to create.
….but should one say that at least they’re trying…(?)

In any event, for anyone also interested (as should be the case) in French Connections more recent:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/07/learning-from-france-68.php

“Dr. Pinker:

What’s the average age and IQ of the people defending you versus the people trying to get you canceled?

Maybe 65 / 140 vs. 40 / 115?

The intelligent old idealists might win this round, but the young, dumb, and filled-with-hate have time and numbers on their side.”

Jared Holt works for an outfit founded by Norman Lear. Like the $PLC, they were subject to an expose in Harper’s about 20 years ago. The writer, IIRC, was a former employee who’d left the organization in dismay over the trivial character of their activity. One of the features in their newsletters was on the year’s ‘most challenged book’. The disaffected employee reported: “The ‘most challenged book’ typically has fewer than 10 complaints against it. A complaint is typically one parent’s gripe, about which nothing is done”.

Unfortunately, M. Danton was found to be insufficiently enthusiastic in the area of revolutionary zeal, and he too met the Nation’s Razor.

(I think that’s a winner—especially if one jettisons the second sentence, which is kind of weak beer, in any case….)

Jared Holt
@jaredlholt
Something I would read: how that self-pitying Harper’s letter came to exist in the first place

Mediaite rounds up responses from left and right, so the letter-writers are over some kind of target. Or else they are the target.
Personally, I hope they have the guts to actually DO something the next time someone gets hounded for their offenses, even if it’s just one of them, although they don’t make any promises, threats, or even suggestions about what that kind of something might be.

PS Both Mediate and NYP claim the letter doesn’t cite specific examples, but it has a whole paragraph of recent instances; it just doesn’t give the details. I recognized all of them, being an addict of the media cycle.

https://nypost.com/2020/07/07/j-k-rowling-among-dozens-to-call-for-end-to-cancel-culture/

I’m not quite as cynical as streiff at RedState; I think most, if not all, of the signatories really do believe what they said:

The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right,censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.

We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms.

There follows a long list of recent news events, NONE of which involve censoring by the right, radical or otherwise.
Loosely translated: that person whose life was ruined for no good reason could have been ME.

Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away.

Why not just say: The cure for bad speech is more speech.*

We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

Translation: There is no protection for anyone from Woke mobs, and we don’t want you coming after other people any more, because at some point you might (and now have) come after us — even if they really DO believe what they signed onto.

Considering how long the left has been okay with trashing the idea of “good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences,” this group is a day late and a dollar short with their beggar’s petition.

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” Attributed to Edmund Burke, quoted by John F Kennedy in a speech in 1961.
* * *

*The origins for this saying are generally traced back to Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis’ concurring opinion in the 1927 Whitney v. California case:

“To courageous, self-reliant men, with confidence in the power of free and fearless reasoning applied through the processes of popular government, no danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the processes of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence. Only an emergency can justify repression.”

Everything is an emergency for the Left, because leaving any time for discussion reveals the bankrupt and corrupt foundation of their agenda.