AMERICAN DARK AGES
History is not static and it does not progress linearly.
There was more free speech and unimpeded expression in 5th-century BC Athens than in Western Europe between 1934-45, or in Eastern Europe during 1946-1989. An American could speak his mind more freely in 1970 than now.
Many in the United States had naively believed that the Enlightenment, the U.S. Constitution, and over two centuries of American customs and traditions had guaranteed that Americans could always take for granted free speech and unfettered inquiry.
That is an ahistorical assumption. The wish to silence, censor, and impede thought is just as strong a human emotion as the desire for free expression - especially when censorship is cloaked in rhetoric about fairness, equality, justice, and all the other euphemisms for not allowing the free promulgation of ideas.
Welcome to Dark Age America - a Pre-Enlightenment Age when groupthink acceptance of a lie replaces truth on grounds of social utility. When current popular culture is not empirically grounded, but operates on the premise that truth is socially constructed by race, class, and gender concerns. When, in our current Dark Age, logic is ignored in lieu of ideology.
