“The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have …”
The literary critic and Old Leftist Irving Howe glimpsed the looming threat of liberal censorship nearly 70 years ago
All the forms of authority, the states and institutions and monster bureaucracies, that press in upon modern life—what have these shown us to warrant the surrender of independence?” — Irving Howe in This Age of Conformity.
It is not surprising, really, that the signature reality of the modern age is conformity.
To be sure, each of us awakes every day, and every day the pressures to conform to social norms and paradigms nip at our heels like small yapping dogs. And we think: Just today, and today only, I will try to quiet the dogs with a small treat. No one will ever know. But after a month, the bag of treats is empty.
And so it is with conformity. ….