What is "Debate"?

An Editorial Letter about My Substack and Podcasts

Dear Friends,

I thank you all so much for your recent support, which indeed, as I had informed you in my letter requesting paid subscribers, was needed. Your support is being used for many urgent projects, including having brought me to London to be present in the judicial review of commentator Mark Steyn standing against media regulator OfCom.

My physical presence may indeed have been useful here, as I was able personally to request that I submit my statement to the court, and I was permitted to do so by Mrs Justice Farbey.

So you helped to make that happen, and thank you again.

I am writing now to explain my editorial philosophy for this Substack, “Outspoken,” and also my editorial mission statement for the interviews I present in the form of my podcasts posted here.

I’ve seen some comments recently that seem to ask why I would “platform” certain points of view or perspectives.

For example, I interviewed Dr Henry Ealy, the holistic healer. Dr Ealy explained a philosophy based in some ways upon Eastern sacred texts and understandings of medicine and energy fields. Some Christian-oriented readers challenged me for offering his perspective. The same kinds of questions arose from some readers when I interviewed my mother, Dr Deborah Wolf; some critics objected to what they saw as her “new age” methodology in counseling patients. Others are critical of the fact that I interviewed RFK Jr’s VP pick, Nicole Shanahan, warning that this was “a bridge too far” for them, because she supports legal abortion.

So, especially in this divisive, divided time, when propaganda and coerced consensus are the threats that you know I see them to be, I want to state, or restate, my editorial policy.

What guides my choices in interviewing different figures, and exploring different subjects? What do I think is the intellectual purpose and mission of this page, this set of essays and interviews?

First, let me say clearly what my mission statement is NOT.

The purpose of this page is NOT to give readers a stream of content involving a unified set of beliefs, and a narrow range of opinions, to a group of people who already agree with them.

Many other sites and platforms, on the Left or the Right, Christian or Jewish or Muslim or New Age, already do this. If you go to DailyCaller, you won’t find many people interviewed respectfully who are not conservatives. If you go to The Nation, you won’t find many people interviewed respectfully who are not liberals. If you go to a specific religion’s news and opinion platform, you won’t find subjects presenting points of view from other religions, or ideas that challenge that religion. If you go to an LGBTQ news site, you won’t find critics of aspects of that movement. I could go on and on.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Raised as an old-school opinion writer, and given an old-school liberal arts (meaning at that time: openminded, freethinking) education, and being as I am a student of healthy, strong democracies and of what undermines them, I know that this situation is very bad indeed.

It’s bad for democracy, just as it’s bad for intellectual history. It is even bad for our brains’ very abilities to function well and to refine our own ideas, to exist in an echo chamber that only affirms what we already believe. Sadly, digital technologies have made those echo chambers ever-easier to refine and ever-more-self-affirming.

As a result of these echo chambers, and as a result of overt conditioning in universities and schools (I was just at a protest in London at which LSE students seem to have been trained to avert their eyes and to raise their voices louder, to drown out anyone trying politely to engage with them) — we are losing our ability to listen to others who have different points of view, or who present different streams of evidence than the ones with which we are already familiar.

We are losing, too, as a result of all of this, our ability to examine and test our own beliefs. What if we are wrong? Or what if aspects of our beliefs are wrong, or out of date?

I myself had to do a wholesale, rather painful inventory of my own entire set of beliefs about conservatives, and related issues such as the Second Amendment. I was only able to do so because I was exposed to an entirely new (to me) set of viewpoints and to a new information stream.

Given this general environment of echo-chambering, and the serious damage it is causing to our society and even to our own individual intelligences (as our brains actually require daily critical thinking in order to function well) I very affirmatively try to bring my readers a range of various points of view that I think are interesting or noteworthy or thought-provoking. That does not mean that I agree with everyone I interview, or expect you to do so.

We have been so trained to accept ideological journalism that this may seem hard to process or credit today. When I bring you a discussion with VP contender Nicole Shanahan, for instance, I am not endorsing her. Indeed I cannot endorse anyone, as I have made clear, because DailyClout is nonpartisan.

I think as a reporter that she is an important figure in the politics of the moment and that you should be able to hear for yourself what she has to say.

That’s my ideology: that you should have all the information, unmediated, in front of you, so that you yourself, as an adult, can think what you think, and decide what you decide.

And believe me: that simple act — of bringing people unmediated information — is so radically empowering to citizens (and to readers) that many nefarious interests are seeking to prevent that from happening anywhere.

It is the same set of decisions that guided my essay on Pres. Trump’s speech at CPAC. I am not asking you to vote for or against Pres. Trump.

I am letting you hear what he has to say.

When I interview Dr Nehemia Gordon on the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, I am not promoting the Hebrew gospel over or against Greek gospels. I am bringing you interesting information and a scholarly perspective that you may not know, that I think holds some suggestive possibilities. It is not dogma; it is exploration, which used to be called “scholarship,” or open discussion.

When I interview Dr Ealy about electromagnetism or EMFs or Ayurvedic norms of healing, I am not endorsing them. I can’t! I am not a doctor. I am giving you a perspective from someone whose integrity and analysis I respect. It is the same set of editorial decisions regarding my interview with my mom, Dr Deborah Wolf, on her methodology that uses visualization of “past lives” in her counseling practice. Are there past lives? Who knows? But I think her methods are interesting to consider, and if this approach has helped patients, isn’t it useful to hear about it, whether or not you agree with this worldview?

I could give countless examples of newsworthy subjects with which you may or may not agree. My husband just interviewed an expert on fighting with machetes, who explained why there are suddenly so many machete battles in our cities. I think that’s a really good, timely interview subject. Does that mean that he or I think you should fight with machetes in the streets? No indeed.

One of the most important things an old friend of mine taught me — she was an expert on “Getting to Yes”, a respected negotiation technique — was: “Listening does not equal agreeing.”

So the motto of this page, please dear readers, is: Listening does not equal agreeing.

I am going to bring you material that I think is worth your time and attention. I am going to assume that you want to hear things said with which you may or may not agree. I am going to assume you are adults and understand that we want a free society where the most valued platforms will offer fora for disagreements, thought-provoking subjects, fresh perspectives, and always, always, open and civil debate.

So friends — thank you for listening. I am not going to stop bringing you my own uncensored perspectives in my essays, no matter the battles I face worldwide to do so. And I am not going to stop bringing you a range of voices and opinions from all walks of life and all political persuasions; people who may challenge you, or who believe things that you do not believe.

Why do I do all of that, so persistently?

Actually, I do this because I love you.

And that means that I love your minds, and I value them, and I trust your thought processes.

And I do all of this because I think that the skills required in learning something new or in hearing from someone different from ourselves — or even someone who disagrees with us — supports and strengthens the impulses, and even reestablishes the free and open cultural environment,

That represents the very best that is America.