More than five years ago, I wrote in these pages of a growing trend on the left toward compelled speech – the forcing of citizens to repeat approved views and values. It is an all-too-familiar pattern. Once a faction assumes power, it will often first seek to censor opposing views and then compel the endorsement of approved views.
This week, some of those efforts faced setbacks and challenges in blue states like Washington and Illinois.
In Washington state, many have developed what seems a certain appetite for compelled speech.
For example, Democrats recently pushed through legislation that would have compelled priests and other clerics to rat out congregants who confessed to certain criminal acts.
Despite objections from many of us that the law was flagrantly unconstitutional, the Democratic-controlled legislature and Democratic governor pushed it through.
The Catholic Church responded to the enactment by telling priests that any compliance would lead to their excommunication.
U.S. District Court Judge Iain D. Johnston enjoined the law, and the Trump Administration sued the state over its effort to turn priests into sacramental snitches. Only after losing in court did the state drop its efforts.
In the meantime, the University of Washington has been fighting to punish professors who refuse to conform to its own orthodox values. In 2022, Professor Stuart Reges triggered a firestorm when he refused to attach a prewritten “Indigenous land acknowledgement” statement to his course syllabi. Such statements are often accompanied by inclusive and tolerant language of fostering different viewpoints in an academic community. However, when Reges decided to write his own land acknowledgment, university administrators dropped any pretense of tolerance.
Reges was not willing to copy and paste onto his syllabus a statement in favor of the indigenous land claim of “the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip, and Muckleshoot nations.” Instead, he wrote, “I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property, the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.”
His reference to the labor theory is a nod to John Locke, who believed in natural rights, including the right to property created through one’s labor.
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