Drag Queen Story Hour: The Liberal Way

How a minor issue became a wedge to advance authoritarianism, and why we must fight back

Welcome to The Liberal Way, a new series by TaraElla. In this series we will discuss what the liberal way for dealing with various cultural and social controversies should look like. I think this is needed because too many people have lost sight of what the proper liberal way is. In particular, I'm concerned that some people, who started opposing postmodern critical theory on liberal grounds, have clearly lost sight of those liberal grounds they were defending. They have lost sight of why things like free speech are important, and why emotionally charged action is suspect. Instead of defending and rebuilding the liberal way, these people have become anti-woke for anti-woke's sake, to the extent that they even support illiberal means of 'combating wokeness', thus defeating their original rationale for opposing postmodernism. Not losing sight of what the liberal way should look like would prevent us from going down that path. Moreover, I believe that revival of the liberal way could potentially end the divisive culture wars plaguing the West right now.

In this first episode, I want to examine the controversy around Drag Queen Story Hour. Specifically, I want to focus on the political reaction to it, rather than the issue itself. While it is a relatively minor issue in the big picture, it has been deliberately deployed as a wedge issue in the past four years, and is effectively responsible for some changes we've seen in US Republican Party politics, and in the Republican-aligned part of the 'anti-woke' movement. These changes have brought anti-wokeism away from the classical liberal values it once proclaimed, towards what is now being called National Conservatism, which is an authoritarian movement aligned with Trumpism, that clearly doesn't value things like free speech.

The story begins with the famous Ahmari-French debate of 2019. Drag Queen Story Hour was a prominent part of that debate. Ahmari believed that the government should act to shut it down. French, on the other hand, couldn't see what the government could do about it. This was because the free speech rights that prevented government from banning Drag Queen Story Hour were also the very rights that guaranteed things like religious liberty. "So you would undermine viewpoint neutrality in First Amendment jurisprudence?" French asked. "Yeah, I would," Ahmari said. This was the difference at the heart of the debate.

Note that this is not about one's views on Drag Queen Story Hour at all. The crucial point is this: government intervention against free speech and expression, especially when it's done in a way that is clearly non-neutral, and applied to contentious moral issues where good people continue to have strong disagreements, is simply dangerous. If you allow the government to intervene against Drag Queen Story Hour, it will set a precedent that will lead to the erosion of freedom in many other, more important areas of life. Having a universal and viewpoint-neutral consensus on things like free speech is, by definition, an all or none deal, and we must fight to uphold this consensus whenever it is under threat.

Don't get me wrong. You certainly don't have to agree with Drag Queen Story Hour itself. Those who disagree with Drag Queen Story Hour can certainly speak up about their concerns. They can certainly argue against it in the marketplace of ideas. What they cannot do is to use state power to ban it. This crosses a line, similar to how Trump's denial of his 2020 election loss crossed a line. In both cases, fundamental moral principles are at stake, and we must respond by defending those principles, and clearly condemning those who want to erode them. Also note that, once a line is crossed, it is more likely to happen again, as seen in the recent movement of election denialism in Brazil, and the ongoing worry about what is going to happen in 2024 in America. This makes pushing back against those who want to cross the line even more important.

To build a strong consensus for liberal principles, we need to show that the application of such principles will be fair to everyone, and the promise of freedom will apply to everyone equally. This is why ensuring that there is free speech for all is so important, and why I have been so against cancel culture, de-platforming, and the postmodern critical theories that have supported these practices. In fact, the NatCon Right has been using the postmodern Left's violation of liberal values to argue their case for authoritarianism, and successfully inserting themselves into the mainstream of Republican politics, to the extent that multiple Republican states are now considering banning drag performances in public venues, or even taking away the parental rights of parents who expose their kids to drag. Let's face it: the postmodern Left's cancel culture has contributed to this dangerous state of affairs we now find ourselves in, and the only way this will end is by a re-embrace of liberalism, especially free speech for all.

A truly free and fair marketplace of ideas requires that all kinds of voices be heard, including those you don't like. As a Moral Libertarian, my views on social and cultural issues start from the eternally correct view that none of us are perfect, that none of us are always right on every matter, and therefore none of us have the moral right to coerce others to agree with us, either in words or action, when it comes to morally contentious matters. This is the reason I have been fighting against cancel culture from the Left. However, there is now clearly an even bigger threat to the marketplace of ideas of the West, and we must recognize it before it's too late. State-enforced book bans, legislated restriction of cultural activities, and especially intrusion into parenting rights are now being done in the name of 'fighting wokeness', and true liberals need to recognize, and speak up against, the scary implications of this kind of politics.