Read on Twitter
The thing about the Harper letter isn’t that people with different principles can’t sometimes come together. They absolutely can, and should.
There are people who want single payer health insurance and people who want Obamacare shored up who absolutely *hate* each other and who nonetheless agree on the basic principle that Trump’s gotta go, and will work together toward that end.
The problem was that the letter was written so broadly, and so vaguely, that it’s completely unclear what the principle was, and so will be weaponized possibly beyond an individual signer’s intent.
It’s like, I definitely do not support treason! I do not like treason! Treason is bad. Do not commit treason!
BUT if I found out I had signed a joint letter with Ann Coulter saying “Treason is bad” I would be like, “oh, get me the fuck out of here” because I’m not actually standing in solidarity with Ann Coulter and her shitty, anti-intellectual bad faith treason takes.
That’s the problem with seeing people on that letter who have, in bad faith, weaponized the first amendment to try to silence criticism.
It muddies the actual principle you want to stand for.
It muddies the actual principle you want to stand for.
People who back out are doing so because they’re realizing that their support for a principle they care about may be interpreted to undermine that very principle.
It’s *not* because they think they can’t make common cause with someone they disagree with on other fronts.
It’s that they’ve realized they can’t make common cause with someone on *this* front.
It’s that they’ve realized they can’t make common cause with someone on *this* front.
I *also* like free speech. I like it so much that I remind people often that being criticized is part of free speech, and is not “silencing.”
There is a very firm split between people who believe that criticism is censorship and people who believe that criticism is free speech; both groups use the language of “free speech” to describe the position, and they are on opposite sides of a very wide gulf.
That’s why the Harper letter was a disaster: It used weasel-word language that could be interpreted to support either side of that very broad divide, and determining what it meant then becomes a matter of looking at who is doing the speaking.
There are also people who take an in between stance: they believe that criticism is free speech if it is being done by someone with a foot in the door of intellectual pretension, but it’s valueless bullying if anyone else does it.
