Andrew Allis, Granville

I propose the use of parrhesia in 2023 as the remedy for cancel culture and the twin sins of apathy and cowardice that are proving the death knell of these United States and Western Civilization at large. Parrhesia is a Greek term for a type of speech that entails speaking freely, candidly, and clearly, not in any way veiling what the speaker is thinking and believes. This is direct and bold speech, specifically stated in the face of danger and for the common good, even at the risk of personal harm.  Thus parrhesia presupposes courage and the willingness to suffer loss for what you believe in order to benefit society.

The word was used in describing Socrates as he spoke fearlessly and with unclouded perspicuity when on trial for his life, as well of the apostles Peter and John in Acts 4:13: “Now when they saw the boldness (parresian) of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated, ordinary men, they were astonished and they recognized that they had been with Jesus.” Note that this scripture verse authenticates the important truth that “men don’t follow titles (or degrees), they follow courage.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran Pastor martyred under the Nazi regime for standing up and opposing it, gets at this same concept another way with a Latin word he used in one of his letters from prison about people who had hilaritis which he described as “optimism about one’s own work, as boldness, willingness to defy the world and popular opinion, as the firm conviction that they are doing the world good with their work, even if the world isn’t pleased with it.”

The unapologetic consistent stating of self-evident (but in this twisted and inverted culture, now controversial) truth will eventually defeat the ridiculous unsustainable woke lies which contradict reason and nature itself. (Examples: That people can change the sex with which they were born, that men can become pregnant and give birth, or that math, science and highways are racist!)  However, speaking truth in the face of danger would require many Americans rediscovering, or discovering for the first time, courage, and courage is especially needed in the exercise of parrhesia today for, in the words of George Orwell, “truth is treason in an empire of lies.” David Azerrad’s (Professor at Hillsdale College in Washington, D.C.) definition of courage as “the bold and principled defiance of the lies of the age,” also gets to the heart of this remedy for woke cancel culture.

So how exactly do we defy lies? We act as Aleksandr  Solzhenitsyn, the prominent Russian dissident novelist philosopher and historian, exhorted those suffering under the totalitarian communism of the former Soviet Union to do: “LIVE NOT BY LIES,” and “refuse to say that which we do not think.” We not only refuse to join in the lies by not voicing them, or by remaining quiet while they are told, but we speak truth in the face of danger and do so unrelentingly.  When enough of us refuse to go along with insane lies, even if we must suffer some short-term loss, their leftist, illiberal, intolerant, monolithic, totalitarian system will collapse for their lies are so outrageous, and represent such a departure from reality, that they will eventually show themselves to be unsustainable.

So what does parrhesia look like in practical terms? It means not hesitating to state obvious truth even in hostile contexts. It means being the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen’s folktale who cried out “the emperor has no clothes” when no one else had the courage to.  It means not calling that man at work a woman, even if doing so results in your company’s Human Resource Dept. taking your job for refusing to submit to the new woke religion’s blasphemy laws which are now ruthlessly enforced for the least misstep and slightest deviation from leftist orthodoxy.  It means speaking up at school board meetings against a curriculum that sexualizes your children in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” nice sounding words for the indoctrination of your kids into the anti-God, anti-American, ever-expanding alphabet soup (LGBTQIA+++++) of the Cultural Marxist counter-religion to Christianity.

The left has mastered the art of name calling to silence conservatives and unfortunately it’s proven to be all too effective. They hurl their now cliched epithets such as racist, Nazi, bigot, sexist, misogynist, homophobe, xenophobe, transphobe, climate denier, conspiracy theorist, etc, and expect you to wilt under their accusations. So many won’t stand up, or speak out, for this very reason. Their attitude is basically, “let some other outspoken conservatives do it for me and take the heat. I’ll just keep my head down until this craziness blows over.” Well, this madness isn’t going anywhere, it’s already deeply embedded itself into every institution in this country.  The only thing that can eventually dislodge it is if enough ordinary Americans find their voice and say publicly (not just to their TV screens) ENOUGH!

You’re losing your freedoms America. They are being taken from you right in front of your eyes as you passively watch it happen. Winston Churchill defined an appeaser as one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” Let’s not feed one another to the jaws of a pernicious ideology and the power structures that have been poisoned by it, but in 2023 let’s support those, and be those, who are willing to tirelessly give a clear articulation of truth in the face of increasing intolerance and hostility, even if it comes with a cost.