Thinking Citizen Blog — Religious Freedom, Big Tech, and Herbert Marcuse
Thinking Citizen Blog — Saturday is Justice, Freedom, Law, and Values Day
Today’s Topic: Religious Freedom, Big Tech, and Herbert Marcuse
Should anybody be worried about the plight of religious freedom in the United States? Is that freedom being suppressed by Big Tech? Recently, Youtube shut down the talk of a respected theologian as a “content violation.” The subject was the Christian view of sex. Is a “new fundamentalism” taking over our culture? Today, the summary of an article by two traditionalists (one Catholic, another Protestant) that makes that case. Experts — please chime in. Correct, elaborate, elucidate.
THE NEW FUNDAMENTALISM, BIG TECH, AND THE NEW PUBLIC SQUARE
1. “Instead of encouraging the dialogue of democratic process, the fundamentalists seek to impose their rigid certitude unilaterally.”
2. “Social media enables the new fundamentalism, enforced by the mysterious rules of Big Tech’s quasimonopoly.”
3. “On public sidewalks, the First Amendment still theoretically protects free speech. In the new public square of the internet, power displaces liberty and conscience.”
THE IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS OF THE NEW FUNDAMENTALISM: MARCUSE (1965)
1. In his essay, “Repressive Tolerance,” Marcuse argued that “what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today….is serving the cause of oppression.”
2. “Thus a ‘liberating tolerance’ might require ‘new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices which…serve to enclose the mind within the established universe universe of discourse and behavior.”
3. “In other words, intolerance in the service of a new and allegedly ‘liberating tolerance’ is not only acceptable, but praiseworthy.”
NB “Killing freedom in the name of freedom is the Orwellian proposition at work.”
DOES RELIGIOUS FREEDOM MATTER? IS IT CENTRAL TO THE “AMERICAN EXPERIMENT”?
1. “The American experiment was founded on, and has always thrived on, the freedom of religious believers to speak, preach, practice, serve and work in peace — not only in private, but in the public square — for the truth about God and humanity that ennobles their lives and all lives.”
2. “The more we diminish that freedom, the more crippled we become as a people.The more we feed it, the deeper and more robust the roots of our nation and its freedoms grow.”
3. “Those are the two paths before us. Here’s the good news: We get to choose.”
FOOTNOTES — Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone and Jim Daly
1. The authors of the article are Catholic Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco and evangelical radio preacher Jim Daly whose radio show “Focus on the Family” reaches a global audience of 220 million.
2. Daly “was abandoned by his alcoholic father at age 5, and orphaned by his mother’s death from cancer when he was 9. He was then placed in a foster home, initially in Morongo Valley, California,” until he moved in with his older brothers and then with his father, who eventually turned back to alcohol and died. By the time that Daly was a senior in high school, he was living on his own.”
3. “Daly experienced a Christian conversion at 15 while attending a camp run by the Fellowship of Christian Athletes.”
NB: Archbishop Cordileone is known for his espousal of the traditional Latin mass and his opposition to same-sex marriage.
Opinion | Social Media’s Threat to Religious Freedom
For the last three years of posts organized by theme:
PDF with headlines — Google Drive
YOUR TURN
Please share the coolest thing you learned in the last week related to justice, freedom, the law or basic values. Or the coolest, most important thing you learned in your life related to justice, freedom, the law, or basic values. Or just some random justice-related fact that blew you away.
This is your chance to make some one’s day. Or to cement in your mind something that you might otherwise forget. Or to think more deeply about something dear to your heart.
