"I Don't Think I Have a Lock on All the Truth in the World"

"Leftists spend a lot of time attacking liberalism and a lot of time relying on it to protect them, like children who assume they can say awful things to their parents and their parents will still be there for them. That's true of (most) parents, but politics doesn't work that way. If you call for a bookstore not to stock your enemy's book or rejoice when a problematic classic is taken out of print, your enemy will do the same. Then it just comes down to who has more power. You won't have a universal principle to appeal to. During the McCarthy era, American communists like my father understood this. Stalinists were more liberal than the liberals, if only out of self-preservation."

At Dissent, Katha Pollitt explains why "The Left Needs Free Speech."

No No-Platform

"Why can't feminists, like other people, be valued for what they get right—for the questions they raise and the productive lines of thought they open up—rather than declared personae non gratae for what they get wrong? It's hard to find an intellectually curious, energetic writer or scholar or activist or human being who hasn't said or written something very, very mistaken. But you can still learn from them—if only how better to argue against them. And if that's too upsetting, you can always stay home."

Katha Pollitt in The Nation criticizes those who "have tried to force universities to cancel speakers they've decided are beyond the pale."

Change Their Minds and Change the World

"The only scion of a once-grand Boston family, Marston was equal parts genius, charlatan, and kinkster. As an undergraduate at Harvard just before World War I, he was thrilled by militant suffragists like the ones who chained themselves to the fence outside 10 Downing Street. Maybe that's where his fusion of feminism and bondage started—imagery of slavery and shackles abounded in the movement's demonstrations and propaganda. His experiences in the psychology department left their mark, too. Marston was a lab assistant to the prominent Harvard psychologist Hugo Münsterberg, a rigid German who opposed votes for women and thought educating them was a waste of time. Münsterberg would surface in the comics as Wonder Woman’s archenemy, Dr. Psycho. ('Women shall suffer while I laugh—Ha! Ho! Ha!') Busy strapping Radcliffe students to blood-pressure machines in Münsterberg's lab, Marston invented the lie detector—a forerunner of Wonder Woman's golden lasso, which compels those it binds to speak the truth."


In The Atlantic, Katha Pollitt reviews Jill Lepore's The Secret History of Wonder Woman.

"A Giant Get-Out-of-Reality-Free Card"

"In April, Mississippi became the nineteenth state to enact its own RFRA, which essentially legalizes discrimination against LGBT people by individuals as well as businesses, as long as the haters remember to attribute their views to God. Instead of protecting LGBT people from discrimination—a business refusing to serve them, for example—Mississippi will be siding with the bigots, just like old times. Last year, the state passed the Student Religious Liberties Act, which gives pupils the right to express themselves freely on matters of faith without consequences. Johnny can tell his classmate Jane that she'll burn in hell because she's a lesbian and write all his biology papers on Adam and Eve and their dinosaur pets, and the school can't say a word about it. That would be intolerant."

Katha Pollitt in The Nation calls for repealing 1993's Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

"Forced to Choose Between God and Man, Choose Women"

"According to Walsh, religious freedom is reserved for 'anybody but Catholics.' Nonsense. Are Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses and other pacifists exempt from taxes that pay for war and weapons? Can Scientologists, who abhor psychiatry, deduct the costs of the National Institute of Mental Health? As an atheist, a feminist, a progressive, I ante up for so much stuff that violates my conscience, the government should probably pay me damages. Why should the bishops be exempt from the costs of living in a pluralistic society? Walsh cites the Amish, who are exempt from buying health insurance because they have a conscientious objection to it, but the Amish are a self-isolated band of would-be nineteenth-century farmers; they don’t try to make others read by kerosene lamps or demand the government subsidize their buggies. The Catholic church, by contrast, runs institutions that employ, teach and care for millions of people, for which it gets oceans of public money. A great many of those employed and served aren’t even Catholic: at Jesuit universities, almost half the students aren’t in the church; at Notre Dame, almost half the faculty is non-Catholic, and that is not unusual."

Katha Pollitt in The Nation defends the Obama adminstration's contraception decision.

And Joan Walsh in Salon says that Catholics should support Obama and preach what they practice.

In Newsweek, Andrew Sullivan argues that Obama has won the debate.

"Let the Market Handle It"

"It’s a little strange to see people who inveigh against Obama’s healthcare compromises wave away, as a detail, Paul’s opposition to any government involvement in healthcare. In Ron Paul’s America, if you weren’t prudent enough or wealthy enough to buy private insurance—and the exact policy that covers what’s ailing you now—you find a charity or die. And if civil liberties are so important, how can Paul’s progressive fans overlook his opposition to abortion and his signing of the personhood pledge, which could ban many birth control methods? Last time I checked, women were half the population (the less important half, apparently). Technically, Paul would overturn Roe and let states make their own laws regulating women’s bodies, up to and including prosecuting abortion as murder. Add in his opposition to basic civil rights law—he maintains his opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act and opposes restrictions on the 'freedom' of business owners to refuse service to blacks—and his hostility to the federal government starts looking more and more like old-fashioned Southern-style states’ rights."

In The Nation, Katha Pollitt wonders why some progressives like Ron Paul.

Our Country and Our Culture

"Most writers who advocated socialism during the 1930s no longer saw themselves as 'rebels and exiles'; in the early years of the cold war, many even agreed that America had 'become the protector of Western civilization, at least in a military and economic sense.' But few intellectuals extended their new optimism about the nation to mass culture. 'Its tendency,' the editors of PR complained, 'is to exclude everything that does not conform to popular norms; it creates and satisfies artificial appetites...[and] has grown into a major industry which converts culture into a commodity.'
"In our own uncertain era, it is useful for women and men with a reputation for thoughtfulness and creativity to reflect on issues that bear profoundly on both their craft and their country. We asked four questions:
"1. What relationship should American intellectuals have toward mass culture: television, films, mass-market books, popular music, and the Internet?
"2. Does the academy further or retard the engagement of intellectuals with American society?
"3. How should American intellectuals participate in American politics?
"4. Do you consider yourself a patriot, a world citizen, or do you have some other allegiance that helps shape your political opinions?"

E. J. Dionne, Jr., Katha Pollitt, and others attempt to answer these questions in a special issue of Dissent.

Can This Marriage Thing Be Saved?

"The fundamental question we must ask ourselves at the beginning of the century is this: What is the purpose of marriage? Is it—given the game-changing realities of birth control, female equality and the fact that motherhood outside of marriage is no longer stigmatized—simply an institution that has the capacity to increase the pleasure of the adults who enter into it? If so, we might as well hold the wake now: there probably aren't many people whose idea of 24-hour-a-day good times consists of being yoked to the same romantic partner, through bouts of stomach flu and depression, financial setbacks and emotional upsets, until after many a long decade, one or the other eventually dies in harness."

Caitlin Flanagan in Time ponders the current state of marriage.

Katha Pollitt responds in The Nation.

Speaking Freely

"Hari pulled no punches: 'All people deserve respect, but not all ideas do. I don't respect the idea that a man was born of a virgin, walked on water and rose from the dead. I don't respect the idea that we should follow a "Prophet" who at the age of 53 had sex with a nine-year-old girl, and ordered the murder of whole villages of Jews because they wouldn't follow him.' Hari's column caused--surprise!--violent riots; what is more shocking, and more unusual, is that Indian authorities arrested the editor and the publisher of the paper for "hurting the religious feelings" of Muslims."

Katha Pollitt in The Nation considers the condition of religion and free speech around the world.