Kirsten Powers on ‘The Silencing’ of Free Speech

Last updated on: May 11, 2015 at 10:39 pm by Kate O'Hare

Kirsten Powers on ‘The Silencing’ of Free Speech 2015-05-11T22:39:02-08:00 Kate O'Hare

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The very ideology that championed freedom of expression in the ’60s and led the charge into the Sexual Revolution has now declared victory for itself … and the power to dictate what can and cannot be said is apparently one of the spoils of war.

In an extensive interview with Christianity Today, Fox News contributor, Democrat, self-proclaimed liberal and former Clinton administration staffer Kirsten Powers talks about her new book, “The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech,” published on Monday, May 11.

Powers, a former Episcopalian who said she “would waver between atheism and agnosticism” in her 20s, eventually became a Christian herself, but not before facing her
own closed-mindedness.

As she told Christianity Today in 2013, recalling when a Christian boyfriend asked her if she ever could believe:

Then he said the magic words for a liberal: “Do you think you could keep an open mind about it?” Well, of course. “I’m very open-minded!” Even though I wasn’t at all. I derided Christians as anti-intellectual bigots who were too weak to face the reality that there is no rhyme or reason to the world. I had found this man’s church attendance an oddity to overlook, not a point in his favor.

At length, she realized, “The Hound of Heaven had pursued me and caught me—whether I liked it or not.”

Because of the faith circles she traveled in, Powers became aware of the case of abortionist Kermit Gosnell and how he was killing babies born alive after attempted abortions in his Philadelphia clinic. In 2013, Gosnell was found guilty on three of four charges of murdering the infants, and also of involuntary murder in the drug-related death of a female patient.

Powers was one of the first people in the mainstream media to jump on the story – –as she told me in a 2013 interview for Zap2it.com — and has frequently shown intellectual courage and honesty in calling out her fellow liberals on air and in columns when she sees hypocrisy or misinformation.

Now Powers is doing just that, but in book form, decrying the increasing tendency of those who call themselves liberals to display an entirely opposite attitude toward people who hold views different from their own.

In a review posted at Amazon.com, one of Powers’ Fox News colleagues wrote:

“A searing and courageous indictment of the growing intolerance of the American left—written with passion and eloquence by one of the nation’s most principled and fair-minded liberals. An important book on a subject many are simply too afraid to touch.”
—Charles Krauthammer, Pulitzer Prize–winning syndicated columnist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Things That Matter

If she’s fearless on the page, Powers is equally candid in conversation. Here’s an excerpt of her from the current Christianity Today interview:

But what struck me while writing the book is that the illiberal Left reminds me of religious zealots, except of a secular religion. The average religious person has their beliefs, but they’re not trying to get people fired who don’t have their beliefs. But zealots do do that. It’s not enough for them to believe it; they can’t tolerate other people who don’t believe what they believe, and they have this absolute certainty that they’re right. It’s self-sanctifying. They have to establish that they are morally superior to people who disagree with them. It’s social signaling: “My identity comes from the fact that I’m pro-gay marriage and pro-choice and believe in climate change and oppose charter schools.”

There’s nothing wrong with believing those things. It’s the need to de-legitimize anybody who doesn’t believe them, that puts them in a different category.

Click here to read the rest.

Of course, not everybody is happy with Powers’ book. Click here to see some Twitter exchanges she had with online critics.

Images: Courtesy Regnery Publishing

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