The New Inquisition

From Handle’s Haus

Haus in December of 2013 was collecting a list of person harassed, fired, bullied or badgered for expressing opinions and making jokes. He is trying to keep the list neutral and evenhanded, but anyone can see where the vast, vast majority of cases are. There is one group that, as a matter of core dogma, is willing to tolerate differences of opinion in others, and live and let live, and there is another that, as a matter of core dogma, is not.

He is too cautious to call it an Inquisition, but he knows and cannot quite say it. An Inquisition, by the way, as a mechanism for expelling members who do not conform to Church dogma is something I regard as a necessity, even noble, if your denomination is not to end up in the flaccid and misty situation of the Unitarians or the Anglicans. (What made the Spanish Inquisition evil was not the Inquisition but the Spanish, that is, the Spanish king, the secular power, enforced a matter of Church discipline. One the other hand Spain was never taken over by Protestants, whose Inquisitions has as many victims or more, but without the benefit of formal and legal checks on abuses of the power.) If you recall your history, the Inquisition had no authority over non-Christians.

In this case, the Progressives are trying to enforce as much as their Inquisition as they can over non-Progressives, and they are inching ever closer to achieving the secular power to make policing your thoughts a matter of law.

Mark my words, call it a law of sociology: any institution without an Inquisition to maintain the purity of its beliefs and principles, eventually becomes Progressive, and institutes an Inquisition to maintain the purity and Progressive beliefs and principles, regardless of any damage to the integrity or existence of the original institution.

As a public service, hoping it does not offend net etiquette, I reprint his whole list to day here, with links:

Read the rest of this entry »

Originally published at John C. Wright's Journal. Please leave any comments there.