Silent Dissent No Longer Permitted

The message to all employees is perfectly clear: You are expected to fall into line with the approved and required thinking. Nothing short of assent is acceptable. Silent dissent will no longer be permitted.

Anonymous Employee at Chase Bank

    Post authored by:

  • R. Scott Clark
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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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5 comments

  1. It has been said that the difference between authoritarianism and totalitarianism is that the former tries to control everything you do, while the latter tries to control everything you think and do. In his novel “1984” George Orwell introduced the concept of “crimethink,” which was the offense of thinking against the ruling party. Orwell’s “voice” for the propaganda of Big Brother was influenced by his years working for the BBC.

  2. According to the infallible Wikipedia, in quantum mechanics Gell-Mann’s Totalitarian Principle states: “Everything not forbidden is compulsory.” Physicist Murray Gell-Mann borrowed this expression from T.H. White’s The Once and Future King . . .

    The old Miranda warning, c. 1963:

    You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.

    The new transgendered Miranda warning, c. 2014:

    You do not have the right to remain silent. Anything you don’t say, can and will be used against you in the court of public opinion, never mind criminal. You do not have the right to speak to an attorney (because the fix is in) or to have one present when you are smeared in any question begging/self criticism sessions. Whether you can afford paying for the government expense of your “trial” is immaterial. You will be still be charged for it.

  3. Might like to take a look at this …. even in the Missouri Ozarks, I ran into a buzzsaw from the radical wing of the LBGT movement recently:

    http://digitalissue.riverfronttimes.com/article/DailyRFT.com/1752028/215931/article.html

    This article is a more or less fair and accurate summary of the situation, published by a magazine generally supportive of gay issues.

    In fairness, even some of our local homosexuals decided this was a foolish uproar and it died down fairly quickly. This is definitely **NOT** a community in which the battle is going to be won anytime soon by those who, for example, got on our mayor’s Facebook page advocating ordinances forbidding discrimination against homosexuals in housing or employment, or banning “hate speech.”

    But it’s an important wake-up call that while moderate homosexuals want to be left alone to make their own choices in their private lives — something those of us who support limited government probably can live with — there are more radical people in that movement. Toleration of what people do in their own private homes and in their personal lives isn’t enough for some.

    Our Constitution allows for free speech and the right to petition the government for redress of grievances. That means we need to accept the right of those with whom we disagree to speak and publish their views, and advocate changes in law. Homosexuals who wants to be left alone to live their own lives in their own homes are one thing; those who want to prohibit people from speaking or acting who disagree with them, or who aren’t sufficiently supportive of their lifestyles, are a different issue altogether.

  4. From Chase Manhattan Bank? How far has Antonio Gramsci’s Communist “March through the Institutions” progressed, and we and the institutions are so much the worse off for it!

    Years ago, when I was living in Taiwan, I knew an elderly gentleman from Northeast China (Manchuria). Looking back on the tyrannies he had known, he explained that the Japanese were preferable to the Communists, since under the Japanese, you had the right to keep silent.

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