WSJ: When the Left Censored Speech

link

There's little comparison--thus far--between the left and the right on this issue. Progressives conducted a massive, multi-layered, decade-long campaign against basically any speech they didn't like, including obvious truths and respectable science--and they did much of it in secret. Thus far Trump has issued some unenforceable nonsense about flag-burning. Whereas the left "cancelled" people for saying ordinary, obvious things of no consequence and important truths alike--again, let me stress, for a decade--the right has gone after people saying truly heinous and false things in joyous celebration of the death a champion of free speech.

   The left wants to emphasize the fact that, at a rather high level of abstraction, the right is doing the same kind of things the left has done. And that should be noted. However, the difference in degree is so vast that there is hardly any real comparison. Both the sameness in very general kind and the vast, yawning difference in degree should be noted.

   A voter motivated only by concerns about free speech, and forced to choose between the contemporary left and the contemporary right should have no trouble deciding which faction to back.

   We live in a world of both differences of degree and differences in kind. Ignoring the former because of the latter is generally not rational.