How the Coddling of American Minds is Destroying Free Speech & Public Discourse

Today it appears that most people who strongly identify with their political parties are unable to speak with the opposing side and those with oppositional points of view.

Richard Markosian

October 11, 2021

**This story was edited 10/14/2021 to include some of the results of our Reddit forum experiment (see bottom)

**This story was edited 10/13/2021 to include an example of bothsiderism, and to correct a few errors.

Our founding fathers came from extremely diverse backgrounds, economies, and political beliefs, yet they were able to assemble a Constitutional Convention and wrap the Colonies in a set of ideals that bound us together in a common Constitution. This motley alliance enabled the United States to have just enough federal power to protect the young nation against adversaries but also usher in the greatest amount of freedom humans have ever enjoyed.

The Constitutional Convention depicted on the backside of the $2 bill.

Today it appears that most people who strongly identify with their political parties are unable to speak with the opposing side and those with oppositional points of view.

Utah Stories is now engaging the Reddit users to consider both sides to the vaccine passport debate, which we covered in a previous episode of the program. We will not get into the nature of that debate in this article or episode but instead, take a step back in examining how our public discourse and spirited debate have eroded in the United States both on the local and national levels. How is it that those who are of different political persuasions can no longer speak?

Our concern is not so much that they aren’t speaking but they have so much disdain and hatred for each other. This was demonstrated when demonstrators descended on a local restaurant The Bayou, whose ownership supports vaccine passports. Is there any historical precedent for this? And what are the root causes of this extreme tribalism and mob mentality?

A Lack of Diversity of Thought

Why at this moment in history are we finding less tolerance for diversity of ideas and opinions than ever before? Why are we finding that on college campuses groups fighting to shut down speakers who they oppose? And why do so many people on opposing political sides believe that the members of the opposite party are simply ignorant or stupid.

We have covered in a previous episode how the rise of social media certainly has a lot to do with the growing sentiments of intolerance for political ideas. “Filter bubbles” allow users of Twitter and Facebook to have the most hyperbolic posts, along with their own opinions delivered to their feeds. The algorithm works this way because social media companies realize it’s these emotionally charged posts that glue readers to the platforms. But a fairly new best-selling book provides compelling evidence that our climate of growing intolerance for differing ideas and opinions is rooted in Universities.

“The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt points out how iGen students in college today have not been taught not to honor and respect opposing points of view, but instead they need to seek out and find examples of racism, bigotry, homophobia, xenophobia and transphobia and silence or mob professors, students or speakers who might have values that run contrary to “inclusiveness”.

Furthermore, a spirit of open debate and discussion is no longer a major component of college campuses, but rather the rise of “safetyism” has taken over. Where administrators are providing means for students to never need suffer hearing about ideologies that might threaten their world views. Students have labeled the condemnation of their ideas as “micro-aggressions” and they are beginning to equate speech with violence. Administrators across the nation are further coddling students by creating “safe environments” where they cannot be exposed to ideas that might be labeled as “toxic” or more recently “Trumpist”. Furthermore administrators are firing teachers who students believe might not “inclusive” to popular ideology such as LGBTQ and trans-rights, and the use of proper pro-nouns applied to trans-students. Brett Wienstien was forced to resign from Evergreen State College in Oregon, after a mob of students claimed he was a racist. The school administrators did little to defend Wienstein, but placated the students who mobbed and attacked Wienstien.

Lukianoff and Haidt point out that by professors encouraging the dismissal or complete rejection of oppositional points of view create a myopic view of the world. By not allowing students to have their world-views or political ideologies challenged, the Universities are not producing graduates fit for the harsh realities of the workplace. Instead, Universities are fostering the world view of popular SJWs creating an “Us vs. Them” mindset, where around half of the citizens of the United States are among “the basket of deplorables”. (as Hillary Clinton stated in the 2016 presidential election).

This also is causing those who are involved in the public discourse to adopt and “safetyism” approach to debate and work to find those who should be canceled believing that “cancel culture” is a great thing, whereby those with differing points of view are silenced. We found in our Reddit experiment that most of the people who participated in commenting were defending “cancel culture” and most believed that it was a positive trend, and had historical president and that it wasn’t exclusively a left-wind phenomenon.

Could An American Civil War or “Peaceful Divorce” Be Coming?

Those who are most heavily involved in the culture wars are actually calling for a “peaceful divorce” if not an all-out Civil War to divide our country. This is a ridiculous assertion, and would certainly make the United States a fallen empire, unable to manage the rising threats from Russian, China and the Middle East that will inevitably challenge our freedom.

WATCH THE PODCAST

In this episode, we also examine a term called “bothsiderism” which is a growing sentiment on the left that believes that some arguments are “pointless” and by examining the opposing points of view readers are giving credence to wrong thinking.

The state of our nation and the state of our president have all but passed the point of rescue, but the press, in misguided pursuit of objectivity and led by the New York Times, still “bothsides” its coverage. Make no mistake: This too is bias, and though it’s not nearly as corrosive to democracy as the Trump administration, it distorts and accelerates that corrosion—all in the name of neutrality, no less.
— Roger Sollenberger, Paste, 27 Dec. 2018

Examining various points of view is what makes ideas and values grow stronger. Strength is derived by being challenged in our belief systems and in life, by coddling our children and teaching them that the opposition to their values is deplorable people or “Trumpists”, we are setting the stage for an authoritarian government to be established with the abolishment of free speech.

Believe we are wrong? We would love to hear from you.

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Debate, Opinion, Podcast, Politics, Utah Stories

civil discourse, coddling of American mind, free speech

Richard Markosian

I am a story teller and journalist. I have a passion for farmers, local craftspeople, and folks who aspire to create, build and grow their business in the local marketplace. Why local? By supporting locally-owned businesses we create more opportunity for entrepreneurs, and we claim our sovereignty to shape our communities how we want to see them. I aspire to build Utah Stories Magazine into a household Utah name, and assist Utah businesses and makers with marketing. On the journalism side of things my passion is investigative journalism that offers true insight into issues. I believe strongly in the forth estate: strong, meaningful, insightful journalism is essential to a free market Democracy.

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Prakash Shah is the kind of man who has spent enough time around risk that he no longer treats it like an interruption.

Today, he works in business brokerage and advisory, helping owners sell companies, helping buyers decide whether they should step in, and, when the fit is right, helping connect those buyers with private equity. He works in a world of valuations, leverage, due diligence, and hard questions that most people would rather postpone. He also operates in Utah real estate and has built a career around seeing value before it is obvious to everyone else. That is who he is now. What makes him interesting is how early that instinct started to form, and how little his life resembles the way most Americans are raised to think about comfort, career, and security.

He grew up in Nepal in a boarding school system that would feel severe to many Americans. He was an only child, yet he saw his parents only twice a year for twelve straight years, until high school graduation. He lived inside routine. He shared space with boys from different social classes and different family circumstances. The school was structured enough that money did not buy you any special standing once you were inside. Everyone followed the same rules. Everyone was subject to the same discipline. In his case, it was an army school. Everything was measured. Everything was scheduled. In that kind of environment, you do not build your life around preference. You build it around adaptation.

That contrast matters.

A lot of American children are raised to search for what fits them. What are you passionate about? What do you enjoy? What feels right? Those are not bad questions, but they can create a habit of waiting for life to align itself before action begins. Prakash learned something else much earlier. He learned that life often does not align itself first. You enter the room as it is, you deal with the people in it, and you figure out how to function without making your comfort the center of every decision. He said that one of the biggest lessons from those years was tolerance, the ability to live with people from all walks of life and genuinely learn to get along with them. That is not a soft value. In business, it turns into resilience. In negotiation, it turns into patience. In career terms, it turns into range.

When he came to the United States over 25 years ago, he did not arrive with the kind of runway that allows for a prolonged identity search. He came with two suitcases and enough money for one semester. He went to Hunter College in New York City, then to NYIT near Central Park, studying media and then media and technology management. He also studied psychology. Those details matter because they show something about his mind. He was interested in people before he built a career around deals. Even then, what attracted him was not technical prestige. It was understanding motives, behavior, and how people reveal themselves.

But New York is merciless toward vague ambition. It demands payment in rent, transit, food, and time.

Prakash worked constantly. He took multiple jobs. He paid tuition, paid rent, and skipped most of what Americans imagine as college life. There were no romantic years of drifting from café to concert to self-discovery. He talked about not having the luxury of dates, travel, or finding himself. He was working. Even laundry was not a small detail. In New York, he pointed out, you do not just throw clothes in a machine at home. You haul them to the laundromat, count quarters, and measure what is necessary. He also described distraction in a way that most native-born Americans probably do not think about. For immigrants, distraction is not always pleasure. Sometimes distraction is the constant pressure of competing needs. Tuition or rent. Food or savings. A better coat or another month of making do. He was not romanticizing the struggle. He was describing the arithmetic of it.

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One story from that period says almost everything about how he operates. He knocked on a door one night around 8:45 and found himself facing a huge man with a gun on the table, pit bulls nearby, and a half-eaten pizza in front of him. It had all the ingredients of a very bad scene.

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