At the Heritage Foundation, Arthur Milikh has published a sobering and comprehensive report on the threat posed by the notion of “hate speech” to the American regime. Milikh concludes:

At least two possible outcomes may await America: despotism if “hate speech” advocates fully have their way or rebellion if they do not. On the one hand, the obedience of a free people to the goals beneath such laws is not produced through the kind of compulsion prescribed. If laws repress speech slowly, the nation will make of citizens mindless subjects incapable of political judgement and suited to being ruled by the state or by a triumphant marginalized group acting through it. On the other hand, free citizens, while still living with the memory of political liberty, will come to despise this new order and may well rebel against it. In such a rebellion, a new fierce spiritedness could be born that judges democracy and equality to be contemptible and grotesque ideals. An unstable mixture of the two is imaginable.

The entire report can be found here. At The American Mind, we are convinced that a robust and principled opposition to what Milikh calls the “New Tyranny over the Mind” is ever more urgent for the survival of our American liberties. We present responses to and elaborations upon Milikh’s ideas by Mark Bauerlein, Thomas Powers, Scott Yenor, and Kyle Shideler.