By Petronius
At a recent appearance on MSNBC’s The Ed Show, The Heritage Foundation’s Ryan T Anderson was brought on to discuss Indiana’s recent religious liberty law and its implications. Where Dr. Anderson probably thought he was going to be given a platform to offer a logical and thought-out counterpoint to what Indiana’s governor has called the “misrepresentation” and “mischaracterization” of the bill. What he got instead was a shout-down from Ed Schultz, demagoguery, and having his microphone cut-off before he could answer the question that was being asked of him.
You can watch the video here:
What you’ll notice is that Schultz only nominally asks Anderson for the answer. He knows what he’s going for; he knows what he wants to hear. He was expecting a confused mess of a man quoting scripture and saying things that would sound pro-discrimination to his audience. But instead, Ed got logic and subsequently barked and panicked.
In the video you can actually somewhat here Anderson give a logically consistent and sound explanation of corporate personhood and institutional conscience that would give even the loudest of the anti-Hobby Lobby squawkers pause for a moment of silent reflection. This explanation is cut short however, because Shultz simply doesn’t want to hear it.
When Anderson demands that Schultz “point to names” of who exactly in the conservative movement is arguing in favor of kicking LGBT people out of restaurants, the host can’t do it, mainly because they don’t exist. Rather what Schultz does is point to a question that any freshman ethics student could see is not analogous to what Anderson was asking, and can only bark louder and move on when called out upon it.
The kicker occurs when Anderson actually calls Schultz out on his own intolerance by slandering Governor Pence as a “bigot” and a “homophobe.” I assume at this point, Schultz’s ego was falling apart under the weight of his own logical inconsistencies, which might have actually killed him. Rather than address Anderson’s claims of slander and logical arguments that didn’t match up with his, Schultz then simply demands that Anderson’s microphone be cut off with no further room for discussion.
The liberal silencing of dissent is nothing new in our culture, but it seems that it’s only getting worse. It seems that as the arguments against religious liberty become only more fallacious and misrepresented, that the removal of articulate, logical disagreement is only going to get more and more egregious.
The American Scrivener 