Guest author Murray Buttner explains what Roger Williams, the first “cancelled” American can teach us about free speech and tolerance.
I am pleased to print this fascinating bit of American historiography from Dr. Murray Buttner, family physician by day and historian by night. — AK
It was on this day, October 9th, in 1635 that Roger Williams was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony for holding “new and dangerous opinions against the authority of the magistrates.” Exile at that time of year was essentially a death sentence. Fortunately for Williams, Governor John Winthrop intervened to postpone the banishment going into effect until the Spring. However, when Williams kept spreading his “heresies” in his home church, the magistrates had had enough: they sent a gang of men to apprehend him and send him as a prisoner back to Britain, where he would most likely face trial by the ecclesiastical authorities and then execution. One could say that the censorship-industrial complex was a lot more efficient and ruthless back in the 17th century!
Cancelling, deplatforming, shadow banning… the growing intolerance of those with different worldviews and the suppression of dissenting voices by those in power that we are living through is not new. The world has been here before, many times. Some might say these behaviors are hardwired into our species. Lord Acton famously said, “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” When we hear that phrase, we tend to think of the second clause regarding absolute power and imagine infamous tyrants and genocidal mass murders: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot. But power can corrupt up and down the pecking order, and nobody is immune to its temptations.