77 Quotes by Kirsten Powers

This inability to engage in debate or handle disagreement is becoming the calling card of the left.

When people are afraid to express their opinions because they’ve seen other people treated as deviants deserving of public shaming or worse, they will be less likely to speak freely.

The problem with the illiberal left is that it believes a “progressive” take on issues is an objective take, and cannot conceive that there are other legitimate points of view. As William F. Buckley Jr. once quipped, a liberal is someone who claims to be open to all points of view – and then is surprised and offended to find there are other points of view.

A “dialogue” with the illiberal left is one in which they inform you of the “right” way to think.

Casting disagreement as a physical attack or “hate speech,” or any host of socially taboo behaviors, has become a central tactic in an ever expanding campaign to silence speech.

Debate and persuasion should be the default response when someone encounters a person who does not share their view, not demands that the other person change their position or be pushed to the margins of polite society.

We no longer prize intellectual conversation, preferring instead to dismiss our opponents in 140-character feats of rhetoric,” Ambrosino noted. “We routinely scour the private lives and social media accounts of our political opponents in the hopes of demonizing them as archaic, unthinking, and bigoted.

Posner and Shiffrin are influential legal scholars and they are not alone in their views. Their intolerance of free speech that leads to what they deem the wrong policy conclusions or offends the wrong people is frankly typical of the illiberal left. Today’s progressive legal policy is less likely to treat the First Amendment as a bulwark against government infringement on the free expression of Americans than a roadblock to a progressive ideological agenda.

60 Minutes was once famous for asking hard questions. Now, at least if you’re President Obama, an interview with 60 Minutes looks more like a campaign promo.