Search Results

Ask yourself this: If you cannot speak openly to people, can you develop relationships? Not really anything beyond the shallow. If you are always terrified of saying something "politically correct" and therefore constantly self-censor, how easily can you get to know anyone? Not very easily. When a government puts up roadblocks to open conversation, people become more atomized, more socially isolated, and therefore more lonely. My piece in today's Daily Caller considers all of this in light of Gov. Ron DeSantis's call for a "Digital Bill of Rights" that would allow people to have more open conversations. I explore it in light of my thesis, which is the basis of my book The Weaponization of Loneliness. Here's a link to my essay: https://dailycaller.com/2023/03/01/morabito-after-defeating-disney-desantis-latest-legislation-might-solve-the-loneliness-epidemic/ And here's an excerpt: Intentionally or not, the enforcement of political correctness atomizes people.  The resulting isolation creates a vacuum for terror and social control. Americans must develop an awareness of this connection. It’s obvious from the history of totalitarian systems in which saying anything politically incorrect could land you in a Soviet gulag or put you at the mercy of Mao’s brutal Red Guard mobs. These are just two examples of many such recurring tragedies in human history. Furthermore, our loneliness epidemic both results from and contributes to the practice of self-censorship. Too often we self-silence in order to avoid social rejection for saying something that might be politically incorrect. This is a trap. Power elites use this fear of ostracism to enforce their narratives. They know instinctively that the human need to be accepted – coupled with the natural terror of social rejection – is a powerful driver of conformity.

In today's essay at the Federalist I try to dissect the recent travesty at Stanford Law School in which a mindless mob shut down yet another campus speaker. The designated speaker was a federal judge, invited by the Stanford chapter of the Federalist Society. You can read the whole piece here: Stanford Mob Shows How Speech Restrictions Reinforce Social Isolation. Video of the disgraceful scene appeared on Twitter: https://twitter.com/FreeBeacon/status/1634426288260743168 Clearly, Fifth Circuit judge Kyle Duncan's dedication to natural law, due process, and civil society is why he and others like him are constantly targeted by mobs that despise the idea of real conversation. There's no question we will descend into barbarism as members of such mobs get credentialed to practice "law." They will be sure to shut down speech everywhere, right down to your personal relationships. This is exactly what they are being taught to do by University administrators (their tepid letters of apology notwithstanding) who are ruled by deans of so-called "diversity, equity, and inclusion" (DEI.) As I've written many times before, free speech is a use-it-or-lose it proposition. And mobs of mindless narcissists like those at Stanford are hellbent on making sure we all lose it. We can't let that happen because it is the path to total social atomization. And that means the end of social trust, the end of civil society, and, yes, the end of any path to friendship at all. Because if you can't speak openly to people, you simply cannot develop real relationships with people. That's exactly why totalitarians throughout history have always made a point of shutting down speech, even between two people: they see it as a threat to social engineering and control. I love a recent Twitter post in which a young man duly spouts off woke narratives and apologizes about how he's unfairly "privileged." He has been conditioned to do that by mob enforcement. When challenged by his interviewer, a young woman of color named Savanah Hernandez, he discovers he can actually speak openly. He is able to have a REAL conversation: "Wow, these are the kinds of conversations I love having!" he says. "Now I know where we're at and I can go for real!" Watch: Indeed. People are starving to break free of the isolation--and the loneliness--that mobs are enforcing on them. People are starving for the real conversation and real friendship that's impossible to have without free speech.

Human Events recently ran my column in which I offer a new synonym for the term "woke." My candidate is "anti-thought." The essay is here: "The True Definition of 'Woke' is 'Anti-Thought.'" "Wokeness" adds up to nothing more than mob- and media-enforced group think. For example, mobs such as the Stanford Law mob that I wrote about in my last post had no interest in reason or conversation. They certainly have no interest in the cross-pollination of ideas. And I doubt that they even believe in the slogans they spew because they don't seem to have the capacity to even think them through. They've merely been conditioned and programmed to behave that way. After all, mobs don't think. They can't. Another example is below: the violent treatment of a woman who simply wants to express her concerns about the current erasure of women by the transgender ideology. A couple of weeks ago, Kelly-Jay Keen (whose Twitter handle is @theposieparker ) went to speak in New Zealand at a rally called "Let Women Speak." She was violently assaulted by a totally feral mo b for doing so. Check it out: This is a clear case of mass hysteria, as Michael Schellenberger points out.  No different from the Salem witch hunts, or any other mass delusion in human history.  The destructive passions of a mob--whipped up through academia, the media, Big Tech and many other of our corrupted institutions-- will stop at nothing to silence and destroy anyone who might speak against their ideology.  Indeed, to destroy anyone who thinks a coherent thought.  The woke-- or the anti-thought brigades-- seek to enforce nothing but ignorance and fear.  Like the Borg, they just want to absorb you into their darkness. So our ONLY HOPE is to courageously speak out freely and often against the mobs.  This might seem scary, but it's far better than being absorbed into their insanity.  Indeed, the mob has made it very clear that speaking truth is the one thing that it cannot abide.  So speak up!

As I catch up with my blog, I must say that in November I enjoyed my second fantastic interview with Vicki McKenna. She is one of the most dynamic and insightful and knowledgeable radio hosts around. If you're in the Madison-Milwaukee area, you'll definitely want to tune in to The Vicki McKenna Show at 1310 WIBA/1130 WISN weekdays 3-6 pm. We talked about my book The Weaponization of Loneliness, and how people are so vulnerable to the fear of ostracism. Especially youth, and interestingly, women. It's a fear so hard-wired that it is used by tyrants to silence us and, ironically, drive us even further into isolation which makes us more easily controlled. Vicki has an astute knowledge of history, particularly of communism and totalitarian systems. Click on the link below to hear my interview with her. The show is titled "Stockholm State" and is found at the bottom of the page. My segment is 20 minutes and it begins around 1:13 and ends around 1:31. https://tunein.com/podcasts/The-Vicki-McKenna-Show-p1532335/?topicId=218346086

Loneliness, by Hans Thoma, 1880 (Wikimedia Commons) Last month Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released an 81-page advisory called "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation." In it, he makes the case that loneliness and social isolation have caused a major public health crisis. There is no denying that social isolation contributes to health problems both mental and physical. This is well documented. Hence, the advisory urges immediate government action to address the problem. But the devil is in the details. I recently wrote a three-part series for The Federalist in which I analyze the advisory and what it portends for our lives. I predict the advisory will cause even greater isolation if it is implemented. It provides an open door for the government to intrude on private life. See the following links to my three articles: To Address the Loneliness Epidemic, the Feds Want to Control Your Town and Your Friends Federal Loneliness Advisory Sketches Blueprint for Regulating Everyone's Private Life Federal Loneliness "Advisory" Threatens to Destroy Freedom by Occupying Private Life Among the many points I make in my essays are the following. First, government policies are in large part responsible for cultivating our crisis of loneliness. But far from easing up on those policies, the government continues full speed ahead to implement agendas that promote family breakdown, abortion, urban blight, addictions, censorship, and more that serve to separate people from one another and to promote social distrust. Second, after playing such a large role in creating this malady, the federal government is now offering its "cure" in the form of a six pillared strategy that will build an "infrastructure"--both social and physical--to monitor our levels of social connection, from the public library to your volunteer fire department to your church and your family. It will enlist the entire health sector as well as Big Tech to aid in that endeavor. And it expects everyone to participate. Third, the advisory states that the divisive policy called "diversity, equity, and inclusion" will be a big part of the strategy to promote social-connection policies on every level of government, and everywhere people might gather. It further notes that the benefits of social connection--if you have a strong family and friendships, for example--are not equitably distributed. Those who have strong social connections have access to benefits (read: "privileges") in terms of health, education, employment, finances, and so on. The big question is how in the world would the government be able to "equalize" those benefits? Well, in some way, it would have to regulate the relationships that provide access to them. Most Americans don't realize that this advisory is a blueprint to invade the private sphere of life -- the institutions of family, faith, and community--under the guise of bringing us together. This would be a totalitarian's dream-come-true. Needless to say, it would be very dangerous for the survival of civil society. I fear that few understand that strong social connections can only develop in the privacy that allows you to speak in confidence. You need those connections to fall back on in order to speak openly, especially in these days when doing so can lead to major reprisals by the government. The scope of this advisory is unprecedented. Anyone who is paying attention to current trends--and who loves their family and friends--should find it chilling. More Americans need to wake up and push back against such plans. Because, as psychiatrist Carl Jung noted many years ago: "The mass state has no intention of promoting mutual understanding and the relationship of man to man. It strives rather for atomization, for the psychic isolation of the individual."

beginning at 33:30