Don't Feed Your Conscience to the Dogs

Manifesting One's Innermost Thoughts and Moral Convictions Should Never Be Done at Gunpoint

“Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.” —Mt 7

We live in a society where people are forced to manifest their conscience on issues ranging from sexuality to geo-politics to abortion—even on whether or not they agree with someone else’s tweet—in real-time, and practically at gunpoint. The threat of ostracization, job loss, or public ridicule lurks behind the slightest deviation from the mimetic moral norm of the day.

Even among people who recognize that this is obviously a serious problem, I believe the problem goes deeper than they may imagine. The issue is not merely about ‘free speech’, as Jonathan Turley thinks.

At a far more fundamental level, it is a fight about the very nature of the human person—a battle between those who acknowledge and respect the existence of the conscience as the sacred center of a person (even if it may at times be wrong), and those who do not.

The consc…