Speech crimes and brazen homosexuality
Fifteen years ago James Twitchel’s For Shame: The Loss of Common Decency in American Culture argued for the socially redeeming character of shame: “Shame is the basis of individual responsibility …It is where decency comes from… shame inhibits behavior— that's the point. It retards action, it increases reticence, it invokes self‑censorship. Its final object is not banishment, but reintegration.” Twitchell’s book describes a past moral ethos eroded by an ideology of radical sexual freedom that shamelessly rejected the “old ways.” In 1996 Senator Fred Thomson said of Bill Clinton: “He is a man of his times…He literally has no shame.” And Bill agreed, saying: “I do not regard this impeachment vote as some badge of shame.” But shaming has not disappeared. It is now used to punish speech against the new reigning orthodoxy of politically correct relativism, rather than to condemn personally reprehensible moral acts. People lose their jobs because of one misplaced word. Pat