Cancel culture keeps targeting Amy Coney Barrett. Now it's an absurd call to ban her book

It is hard to believe that writers and editors are championing censorship just because they don't agree with Barrett's stance on abortion

In the last ten years, censorship has become the rage from the halls of Congress to college campuses. Free speech is now often portrayed at an existential threat rather than a right defining our constitutional system. 

This crisis of faith is more no evident in the call of writers and journalists for books to be banned or speakers to be silenced. 

The latest (and one of the most disturbing) examples is a letter signed by hundreds of "literary figures" last week to get companies to block publication of a book by Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett because they disagree with her judicial philosophy. After all, why burn books when you can effectively ban them?

ANGRY LITERARY FIGURES DEMAND AMY CONEY BARRETT BOOK DEAL BE SHUT DOWN IN OPEN LETTER TO PUBLISHER

The public letter entitled "We Dissent" makes the usual absurd protestation that, just because we are seeking to ban books of those with opposing views, we still "care deeply about freedom of speech." They simply justify their anti-free speech position by insisting that any harm "in the form of censorship" is less than "the form of assault on inalienable human rights" in opposing abortion or other constitutional rights.

Official photograph of Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett taken by Supreme Court Photographer Fred Schilling, 2021. (Supreme Court of the United States)

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett smiles after a public conversation with Board of Trustees Chairman Frederick J. Ryan, Jr., at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation in Simi Valley, Calif., Monday, April 4, 2022. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes) (AP)

A popular liberal talking point that Amy Coney Barrett would back President Trump’s efforts to overturn the election didn’t come to fruition. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) ( )

U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library Foundation in Simi Valley, Calif., Monday, April 4, 2022. (AP)

Yet, the letter is not simply dangerous. It is perfectly delusional. While calling for the book to be blocked, the writers bizarrely insist "we are not calling for censorship."

While the letter has been described as signed by "literary figures," it actually contains many who are loosely connected to the "broader literary community" like "Philip Tuley, Imam" and "Barbara Hirsch, Avid reader." It also includes many who are simply identified by initials or first names like "Leslie" without any stated connection.

Nevertheless, there are many editors and publishing figures who list their companies and university presses with their titles in calling for censorship. The list speaks loudly to why dissenting or conservative authors find it more difficult to publish today. These are editors who are publicly calling for banning the publication of those who hold opposing views from their own.

'RUTH SENT US' GROUP HINTED AT TARGETING SUPREME COURT JUSTICE BARRETT'S CHILDREN, CHURCH

The focus of the letter is the fact that Barrett voted with the majority in the Dobbs decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. Barrett has been the singled out in the past due to her judicial philosophy (which is shared by many federal judges and millions of citizens). Her home has been targeted and activists have published school information on her young children.

Recently, Rhodes College alumni sought to strip references to Barrett from the college because they disagree with her views. 

Her college sorority was even forced to apologize for simply congratulating her for being one of a handful of women to be nominated to the high court.

Members of the Supreme Court pose for a group photo at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC on April 23, 2021. Seated from left: Associate Justice Samuel Alito, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Standing from left: Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. (Photo by Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images) (Erin Schaff-Pool/Getty Images)

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett meets with Sen. Martha McSally, R-Ariz., not pictured, Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool via AP) ( )

Amy Coney Barrett listens as President Donald Trump speaks before Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas administers the Constitutional Oath to Barrett on the South Lawn of the White House White House in Washington, Monday, Oct. 26, 2020, after Barrett was confirmed to be a Supreme Court justice by the Senate earlier in the evening. ((AP Photo/Alex Brandon))

Family members of Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett arrive for the confirmation hearing for Barrett, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Wednesday, Oct. 14, 2020, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool via AP) ( )

No attack appears to be beyond the pale for media or the left. Barrett sat through days of such baseless attacks on her character and even had to face attacks referencing her children. Ibram X. Kendi, the director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University, claimed that her adoption of two Haitian children raised the image of a "white colonizer" and suggested that the children were little more than props for their mother.

The most striking aspects of these protests is the insistence that these individuals are still faithful to free speech as they seek to silence those with opposing views. The signatories express a common righteous rage to justify censoring others. We have seen this hypocrisy openly displayed by those who want to censor authors or journalists in the name of free speech or the free press.

JUSTICE AMY CONEY BARRETT ONCE CLIMBED PRIEST'S FENCE IN HIGH HEELS TO ESCAPE NEWS CAMERAS AFTER CHURCH

The editors of the legal site Above the Law have repeatedly swatted down objections to the loss of free speech and viewpoint diversity in the media and academia. In a recent column, they mocked those of us who objected to the virtual absence of conservative or libertarian faculty members at law schools

Senior editor Joe Patrice defended "predominantly liberal faculties" based on the fact that liberal views reflect real law as opposed to junk law.  (Patrice regularly calls those with opposing views "racists," including Chief Justice John Roberts because of his view that race-based criteria in admissions are unconstitutional forms of racial discrimination). He explained that hiring a conservative academic was akin to allowing a believer in geocentrism (or that the sun orbits the earth) to teach at a university. 

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE FIRST AMENDMENT

It is that easy. You simply declare that conservative views shared by a majority of the Supreme Court and roughly half of the population are not acceptable to be taught.

Writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including academics rejecting the very concept of objectivity in journalism in favor of open advocacy.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE OPINION NEWSLETTER

Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll has denounced how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being "weaponized" to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford Communications professor, Ted Glasser, rejected the notion that the journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views "journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality."  

Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith and University of Arizona law professor Andrew Keane Woods have called for Chinese-style censorship of the internet, stating that "China was largely right and the United States was largely wrong."

These are professors, writers, and editors who are sawing off the very branch upon which they sit. That would not be a problem but for the fact that they are doing lasting damage not only to free speech but their professions. For a writer to be against free speech is like an athlete being against exercise. It is the defining right for our country and an existential right for writers and academics.

This letter is not simply another manifestation of viewpoint intolerance. It is a statement of virtual self-loathing from people who work in the literary world; writers and editors who cannot abide the publication of opposing views.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

As for Justice Barrett, such attacks are unlikely to deter her from ruling according to her long-held and well-established jurisprudential views. 

She does not deserve such attacks but these individuals are the face of rage in our society.  It is the license of rage that can overwhelm every value. It is a general psychosis that overwhelms every countervailing value; it allows writers and editors to oppose free speech and expect us applaud them for it.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM JONATHAN TURLEY

Load more..