I will not be silenced

Here's a local example - in which I personally play a central role - of the phenomenon Mary Katherine Ham and Guy Benson discuss in their new book End of Discussion: How the Left's Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters and Makes America Less Free (and Fun).

As I've mentioned occasionally here before, I am a columnist for the local paper in the city where I live.  My column appears about every five or six weeks.

A few things characterize this city.  As I've also mentioned, it is home to the world heardquarters of a Fortune 200 company in the power-generation business.  The dynasty tracing its roots back to the company's founding was indeed visionary in many ways, such as making the city an architectural showcase of world renown.  That era is over, and the company is now truly global.  The last several CEOs were alums of hoity-toity business schools.  Downtown is now completely dominated by this company.  Whenever office space comes on the market, it is snatched up as a place to put the mostly Indian, Chinese and Latin American IT and engineering people the company has been hiring hand over fist.

The company's philanthropic foundation - really, the company itself - is a poster child for corporate acquiescence to the Left.  Some of this got going during the above-mentioned dynasty, the second-to-last scion of which was heavily involved in the National Council of Churches and the Council on Foreign Relations (and was on the list of Nixon's political enemies that John Dean read at the Watergate hearings).  It is huge on "diversity," "social justice," the "environment" and such.

Here's the odd thing: for some years, local government has been monolithically Republican.  The Dems have been scattered to the perimeters of the political scene.  But all is not well.  Knowing that the recently-conducted primary would settle the mayoral race, one Pub wing put up as a candidate a current city council member with ties to the establishment, which very much includes the company discussed here.  The incumbent mayor represented a steely-eyed pragmatism and fiscal responsibility that didn't see much use for grandiose projects when roads needed paving.

I'll cut to the chase and say that I supported the incumbent mayor, but I still felt the central set of issues was missing from the entire debate.  Which is why I wrote the column I did, after realizing that its print date would be the day after the primary.

Here is that column:

This is an interesting week to have a column due date.  The finished product will be in your hands the day after the Athens of the Prairie has determined who it wants as its next mayor.

What I offer, then, is the victory speech I would give had it been me instead of one of the two actual contenders - and rest assured, this pundit has zero interest in vying for the position.

But here goes:

Thank you for your expression of confidence in my vision of leadership.

Let me reiterate the themes I ran on, as I have no intention of diluting them or compromising on them.  After all, you knew what you’d be getting, and pressed the button that you did.

As I said during the campaign, government can’t create jobs.  It’s not even very good at “fostering an environment” for job creation.  Human ingenuity and the faith placed in it by investment capital creates jobs, and there’s no way to tell what someone is going to come up with that is a game-changer. A year before Clessie Cummins put his first diesel engine in a Packard and took W.G. Irwin for a ride, no one anticipated that development.  Ditto the Reeves brothers and their variable-speed pulley.

So, while the Economic Development Board’s studies, surveys and outreach junkets can yield useful information to those with either ideas or capital, there’s not much of a role for government beyond taking every step to keep regulation and taxation to a bare minimum.

Don’t look for my administration to put all its education eggs in the public basket.  In particular, the push for ever-proliferating pre-K will fall on deaf ears in my office.  It’s yet another bureaucratic busy-work scheme.  If it has any purpose beyond that, it’s to indoctrinate each new crop of our youngest citizens in the ways of a centrally planned society.  Ditto job training.  We must champion private-sector alternatives to the twin aims of the public sector: preparing the youth for some kind of pre-determined “jobs of tomorrow” and filling their heads with all kinds of mischievous notions about “social justice” and “sustainability.”

Speaking of this latter notion, don’t look for my administration to channel any resources toward anything “green.”  The global climate is not in any kind of trouble, and so we’re not going to formulate policy on a fiction.

And with regard to the other notion mentioned above, you won’t be seeing any kind of programs wasting your tax dollars on “diversity” or “inclusion.” The 44,000 people who live here come in all kinds of colors.  A few of them have unconventional notions of companionship.  Making this a point of focus presumes that some of these demographics are subject to discrimination, and need government to erode everyone’s general liberty to protect them.  This is as much of a fiction as a troubled global climate.

With regard to how people in my administration treat each other, I’ll be setting a tone of mutual respect.  That said, I’ll not brook any subversion of the orientation I’m outlining here.  Furthermore, I understand that, at the local level, government and politics are particularly susceptible to turf battles and gossip.  If such conduct comes to my attention, or that of the human-resources office and is shown to be detrimental to my aims, those involved will get one chance to knock it off and act like team players.

Mainly, my administration is here to keep you safe, keep our public property modernized and upgraded, and get out of your way. 

It’s your Columbus.

Fast-forward to this morning, when a letter to the editor appeared that was penned by a local citizen whose occupation is folksinging.  He's actually a star in that field. Some of his CDs have won awards, and he's toured internationally.  He also does some acting.  He's had speaking roles in several movies and TV series episodes.  Just wanted to give you a taste of his general orientation.

Here's his letter:

I love my hometown newspaper, but while reading local election results this morning, I came across yet another radical, narrow-minded and self-centered opinion piece by community columnist Barney Quick. Please. Enough. His overarching view of the political world is, to say the least, stilted, and if it weren't so out of touch, I'd say dangerous. My notion of a community columnist is that they share their opinions, and this is what Quick does. In doing so, he reveals his divisive biases and expresses ridiculous rhetoric as truth. This recent column should, in my opinion, seal his fate as a community columnist. His treatises are a waste of ink in a paper that has a level of pride in its product. Sure, his opinions may be fodder for an underground blog, but The Republic? Quick clearly states he is close-minded on compromise. His inability to recognize the clear, inarguable, unassailable scientific evidence of global warming by stating, "The global climate is not in any kind of trouble," and that global warming is "fiction" reveals both his intellectual capabilities and the misguided hope that speaking ignorance often enough can dismantle the pillars of truth. This is a person who believes that racism doesn't exist (anymore) in America. He has a callous disregard for "diversity," "social justice" and "sustainability." He cannot recognize the value of public education and doesn't appreciate the value of government as a defender or champion of the public good. We are all entitled to our opinions, but those of Barney Quick, as extreme and out of touch as they are, have no business in The Republic.

Now, this, like the content of my column, is an absolutely defensible expression of one's viewpoint. I don't much like a viewpoint that calls for my getting canned as a columnist, but there it is.

But let's hope that this is the extent of the matter.  This column is a paid gig, part of the constellation of my writing activities.  Messing with my professional opportunities would take the situation to a whole new level.

I'm not trying to borrow trouble.  My expectation is that this, like dustups over previous columns - and there have been some - ends with a few days of social media chatter and maybe a few more letters to the editor.

But I will not idly sit by for a silencing.  At that point, the war for the soul of this city and indeed Western civilization takes on a more direct form.