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Author of The Intimidation Game comes to Hamilton College
By Maddy Maher ’18
January 26, 2017
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On Wednesday, January 24, the Alexander Hamilton Institute, in partnership with The Manhattan Institute, presented a talk and question and answer session by author, journalist and Wall Street Journal editorial board member Kimberly Strassel. The self-proclaimed “first amendment fanatic” writes the weekly WSJ column, “Potomac Watch,” and recently released her newly published book The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech.
Her talk, which essentially summarized the arguments and stories in her book, began with an anecdote about her three children and their different views on what free speech is and how we ought to limit it. Her oldest child expressed a conservative view, her middle child a libertarian view, and her younger child a “totalitarian socialist view on free speech, claiming “you can say what you want to say as long as I like it.” Strassel claimed that this totalitarian socialist view most closely mimics contemporary instances of government overstep in cases of conservative speech.
After garnering a few laughs and “aws” with her opening anecdote, Strassel launched into a brief history of how modern oppression of free speech came about and deemed the 2010 Citizen’s United Ruling as the spark that ignited America’s political free speech debate. Arguing that money now serves as a proxy for free speech, Strassel explained that Campaign Finance Laws were essentially “Free Speech Laws” and noted that liberals were outraged by the “knock down” of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform (McCain Feingold) Act of 2002 and by the disbanding of governmental regulation on financing political campaigns.
Strassel then launched into the heart of her book; a review of the “intimidation tactics by bureaucrats and other agencies of the federal government” that suppress free expression of political opinion. She sited events like the John Doe Raids in Wisconsin as an example of targeted, coordinated action against conservative expression taken by liberal government officials. Playing to her primarily college-aged audience, Strassel discussed how left leaning organizations, like environmental agencies that support “UnKoch My Campus” Movements, are also suppressing conservative free speech, and, in doing so suppressing “intellectual diversity on college campuses.” She finished off her 40 minute presentation with a discussion on the dangers of overexposure and biases that accompany full disclosure of political views.
Her argument, riddled with rhetorical flares that deliberately called out and criticized the Obama administration’s approach to free speech, garnered a mix of enthusiastic nods and disgruntled glances from the students in the room. First-Year Student Eric Fischer commented on Strassel’s explicitly conservative angle. “Mrs. Strassel’s lecture gave a detailed and interesting history of free speech suppression in today’s political scene. Her arguments were logical and compelling, but, not unsurprisingly, only examined the issue from a single perspective. Still it was refreshing to hear a more conservative viewpoint on today’s political activism.”
Fischer’s diplomatic analysis reflected the general atmosphere of the event as a whole. Despite Strassel’s self-proclaimed conservatism, she had no qualms about making quips at Trump, and while the heart of her lecture focused on instances of liberal intervention in free political discourse, she was willing to answer questions about instances of Republican intervention as well. While rumors of a protest prior to the event had circulated early in the day, the question and answer session remained fair and civil.