What Is It That People Are Afraid To Say These Days?

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Here’s the latest on the brutal muzzling of free speech in America:

A new Cato Institute/​YouGov national survey of 2,000 Americans finds that 62% of Americans say the political climate these days prevents them from saying things they believe because others might find them offensive. This is up from 2017 when 58% agreed with this statement.

That’s an increase of . . . 4 percent! Clearly George Floyd and the forces of political correctness have wreaked havoc on American culture.

On a more serious note, polls like this would be a lot more useful if they tried to dive into what people are afraid to say. If it’s something like “Black people are lazy” then I’d say the increase to 62 percent means that Americans are increasingly wary of expressing racist ideas in public, and that’s a good thing. On the other hand, if it’s something like “Class-based affirmative action is a good idea” then we might have a real problem. So which is it?

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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