Conspiracy of Silence

Freedom of speech permits publication of truth without interference from other people or acceptance of their moral or political ideologies. Both professors and journalists, as researchers, have similar ethical and moral responsibilities. Ethically, they must speak out even when very few people will listen. Morally they must stand their ground when attacked by those who would silence them. That calls for a strong and independent psyche predicated upon reasoned thought and feelings, not on political affiliation. [01]

Both professions have a responsibility to research information and have a constitutional right to report truthfully their findings in the public interest. They provide the public with accurate and reliable information that enables them to function in a free society. Democracy depends on the populace having reliable and accurate facts presented in context.

Writers must neither maintain silence by pandering to race, gender, or other considerations, nor qualify their remarks to avoid offense to people with opposing views. Anything less defines as political silence or political correctness. [Political Correctness]

Few writers in either profession use candor or take risks when writing about controversial subjects. Instead, they spend their time and energy maintaining conspiracies of silence. [02] That silence negates the verification that separates journalism from propaganda, fiction or entertainment. Neutrality has no part to play in ethical writing and silence begets anonymity. [Evil, Anonymity, and Social Tyranny]

Laissez-Faire means Abuse Federal and municipal officials charged with oversight of Council House adopted laissez faire policies. They neglected to investigate reports of elder abuse, racism, harassment and alleged homicide. They also condoned eviction without due process of law. Laissez-faire emphasizes the profit motive at the expense of those whom the law protects while government officials acquiesce for political and economic expedience.

Journalists and professors must have a personal sense of ethics and responsibility - a moral compass. Fairness and accuracy require expression of differences, not just similarities, whether in the newsroom or on campus. This stimulates the intellectual diversity necessary to understand and accurately cover an increasingly diverse society. [03]

Commercialization of the academe has brought the teaching and reporting professions closer together. The new academic liaison with the business world forces it to drop its anarchic attitudes and become accountable; however, that has a price. Universities now have commercialized curricula that change learning into a training function allied to industry instead of an educational process.

For the journalist, conglomeration has made news a function of politics or advertising. News organizations answer to a variety of constituencies, including advertisers and shareholders. However, writers must maintain allegiance to their readership and the public interest by providing news without fear or favor.

Ethical and competent professors and journalists (writers) have reached hiatus which damns them if they comply with politically correct policies and damns them if they do not. History will probably record political correctness codes as having caused irreversible damage. It will also record whether writers made a conscious decision to rebel against denial of freedom of speech (or academic freedom) guaranteed by the constitution or allowed demagogues to silence them.

Political correctness, the need not to offend anyone of any race, religion, or sexual proclivity, begins with a conspiracy to suppress thought and ideas by silencing speech. It imposes a prior restraint - unlawful control of discourse or media before publication. Those with power curtail diverse expression when they find speech or writing politically or theoretically unacceptable to them individually or as a group. [Political Correctness]

Writers play an important part in watching those with power affect people negatively. First Amendment to the US Constitution recognized this as a rampart against despotism when they ensured an independent press which courts later affirmed. First Amendment rights prohibit government officials and lawyers from imposing restraints upon expression. [04] The term “prior restraint” describes unlawful schemes that deny use of a medium before publication. [05] This limit on free speech ranks as a serious and intolerable infringement of rights. [06]

Anyone who wants to lawfully practice prior restraint must obtain a judicial determination before imposing the restraint. A court must find that the material does not qualify for First Amendment protection. [07] To obtain such a finding, litigants must justify their proposed action by proving a heavy presumption against constitutional validity. [08] Nothing less suffices. [Prior Restraint]

Political correctness proponents try to create ideological conformity by internationalizing local community standards to suit secret political agendas or to cover up their unlawful activity. Elected judges, with their own political agendas, frequently support prior restraint by unconstitutionally using anti-harassment, privacy, trespass, surveillance, and stalking laws. They then curtail diverse expression when they encounter information that they find politically or theoretically unacceptable. [International Community Standards]

Alternative publishing methods similar to the Internet and self-publishing offer a modicum of hope for independent journalists if they can stand firm and avoid Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP). Affluent demagogues often bring SLAPP lawsuits with intent to silence writers. They primarily aim to bankrupt the writer to stop him obtaining legal representation. They then appeal to the irrational passions and prejudices of corrupt judges to obtain prior restraint orders based upon unlawful premises. [Prior Restraint - SLAPP]

Tyrants know that they cannot continue to hold power if they allow disagreement or interpretation of their doctrines without controlling them. Increasingly, writers do not question their assumptions and do not care how much ideological disaffection their readers may feel. Instead they bow to indoctrination.

If writers do not express themselves after research and without bias then all attempts at diversity seem irrelevant. This allows tyrants to claim sole interpretation of absolute ideological rules as religious leaders have done for centuries by denying exegesis.

In Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell foresaw behavior similar to that which now predominates. He described outright historical revision and falsification of documents to deny prior experience and qualifications. [Silent Withholding]

Now endemic, “dumbed down” curricula support grade inflation and avoid dissent. This has resulted from racial quotas imposed by administrators despite experience showing that sub-literacy mainly pervades the white, blue-collar class. Statistical manipulation, record forgery, and fake adjudicative proceedings, all predicated upon administrative agendas, rampantly create an image of unanimity that evades diversity.

Professors frequently inflate grades to gain unearned student evaluations that influence their personal standing with senior faculty members and administrators. These social climbers dangerously affect students by providing low quality education and by creating the dearth of student ethics now evident in universities.

Frequently, faked faculty committee elections insure that political hacks support the chairperson’s totalitarian intent to dumb down faculty. This portends graduation and elevation to faculty status of dumbed down students. After three decades of dumbing policies, many politically motivated and commercially oriented deadheads now rule the roost.

Exasperated, some writers with merit lose their sense of self-worth and coalesce with powerful social movements. As clones they become unanimous and outspoken about nothing more than their unanimity which pacifies them both cognitively and emotionally. They classify anyone else as a pariah. [Cloning Pointy-Headed Cabalists]

Speaking out means heretic nonacceptance of ideology. Clones think aloud to show that they recognize the errors of their past. This provides a model for others. It also affirms ideological solidarity using silencing techniques to eliminate dissent. Those techniques copy methods used by cults, cabals, and religious mass movements in the past. [09]

At Hampshire College, faculty committee members ruled that they would not renew an assistant professor’s contract because he failed to mount a challenge to “the canon.” Fearfully, he had indulged in self-censorship to avoid collegial retribution for expressing dissenting views about the canon. He maintained political silence because he opposed political correctness. [10] His fear of retribution proved well founded. The committee followed a set of inherently illogical rules and conditions to decide his fate then fired him for not speaking out.

Professors frequently encounter this type of behavior by committee members. However, they often cannot obtain redress through grievance procedures because the same people make the rules. At adjudicative hearings they also act as both judge and jury, deny due process, then quash appeals.

Technocrats have also made considerable inroads into the academic process through control of communications tools. Prior restraint or political silence has emerged with a new generation of technocratic censors. They probably rank more dangerously than those encountered in the past due to their lack of academic savvy and liberal arts education. They arbitrarily silence dissent through denial of access to Internet and communications networks.

After gaining control of the means of communication, they suppress information that they find unpalatable. To cover up that machination, they use unsubstantiated accusations of infraction of systems rules to deny access and then refuse due process. If challenged they retroactively change the rules and the databases supporting them.

Their reasons for denying access become clear if one understands that:

They consider themselves above the law and, in their personal denial, consider themselves immune from prosecution. [Impunity]

They subscribe to the traditional Mafia omerta (oath of absolute silence) and know that if they break it they will receive the traditional "bullet behind the ear" from their colleagues.

They know that allegations against them have substance and that they will indict themselves if they speak out.

Suppressing ideas with which one does not agree then corrupting academic freedom describes precisely what the First Amendment prohibits. Technocratic administrators act from self-interest. They target expression because it often seems less expensive than addressing the real issues that speech and writing signify. [11]

A medical professor in Ohio touched off an uproar among some users of computer networks. He unleashed a program that censors messages sent to electronic bulletin boards. He said that he had tried to silence disruptive notes sent anonymously to bulletin boards devoted to scientific discussions. He then demonstrated how to restrain expression on the Internet.

His critics charged that he was trying to impose his own brand of order on a free and open system. [12] Later he admitted that "the whole exercise was a mistake." However, he still argued that he wanted to protect the network from novice users who post (what he considered) abusive messages. He said that: "If we don't take a certain amount of responsibility for what goes on with our news groups, then some outside force may come in and impose some sort of control on us."

He overlooked the fact that he had already tried to impose the same type of control by trying to impose his own perception of order on a free and open system. One protestor exclaimed: "He scares me more than any other person on the net."

Recent attempts to control Internet communication include privacy groups that denounce Google Gmail as an intrusion upon privacy. Google plans to insert advertisements into email messages based upon their content. In return they offer clients 1GB of storage space in a similar way to Hotmail (2MB) and Yahoo (4MB).

Privacy groups wrote to Google urging them to suspend the service. Others asked dozens of governments to shut down the free e-mail service. Critics say that Gmail collects a person's entire e-mail history without adequate legal safeguards. Clients claim that they should make up their own minds without government interference. However, privacy zealots continue to clamor for a ban on the service despite client willingness to participate.

Administrators, almost entirely amateurs and technocrats, consistently work to consolidate their personal positions and orient themselves toward elevation and increased salaries. They consider academic standing less important than the absolute loyalty of their colleagues. Frequently, unprofessional faculty members forge political alliances with these incompetents and swear oaths to their totalitarian agendas. In return, they receive special privileges (usually department chairs) and financial rewards for their unethical behavior.

Productive and honest professors find themselves under constant attack because they remain independent and oppose abhorrent political agendas. [13] Ultimately, they realize that to survive in a closed academic society their only hope rests in maintaining political silence. As a result, few people hear what they have to say; then they lose their self-confidence and self-worth - they resign themselves to a lifetime of hiding from the truth that they have sworn to uphold.

Expecting reporters and professors to support each other to reach a common goal sounds unrealistic. They have different experience and professors have the luxury of tenure although many do not use it to resolve censorship problems. Conversely, reporters get fired at will and for no particular reason.

Whistle blowers in both professions become pariahs and suffer ostracism and economic sanctions for taking a stand. However, rocking the boat achieves nothing in corrupt, closed societies. Whistle blowers should either try to shake the boat loose or at least swim for the shore then write about their experience.

News managements primarily concern themselves with economic considerations more than truth and accuracy in reporting. Perceived interests of the reader take precedence and focus groups determine content instead of the right to know. Research grants financed by corporations tend to determine what professors publish instead of encouraging true scholarship.

Democracy depends upon an informed populace. Clearly, news organizations fail to inform the public to the extent needed and journalists manufacture stories in increasing numbers to placate their editors.

When everyone thinks alike, very few think at all. Moreover, they develop an exclusionist cultural bias by accepting special group interests through coercive persuasion then try to gag others. This effectively destroys inconvenient speech through non-selection and non-promotion of writers with nonconformist views. It also results in journalists coming completely under the control of readers and advertisers. In both journalism and the academe this results in qualitative control by those making decisions for economic or political self-interest.

More important, it supports a cultic instinct toward conformity that eliminates any inconvenient nonconformity (also honest dissent). [14] This insures that writers and researchers can remain free from critical inquiry so that they can wallow in their own mediocrity. Subsequently, the conformity destroys any vestige of individuality. The exclusivity forces everyone to become a clone of someone else. [Cloning Pointy-Headed Cabalists]

This type of coercion enables those in power to deny freedom of expression to dissenters and allows the powerful to destroy the careers of nonconformists. It also outlaws any behavior that tyrants find inappropriate. The war cries "inappropriate" and "politically correct" then define synonymously in a totalitarian environment. Lest we forget, conspiracies of silence, in both the academe and media, preceded the European holocaust and other twentieth-century genocides. [Lest we Forget]

Nmesis.