A Big Thanks to Our Subscribers

Halfway through 2023 is a time of reflection and gratitude

By JOHN LEAKE

Hard to believe we’re already halfway through 2023. At dinner with Peter on Friday evening, we had a long conversation about our reader feedback, both positive and critical. Though time doesn’t allow us to respond to all of your comments, we carefully read them. We are grateful for your praise, your constructive criticism, and your additional information.

The genesis of Courageous Discourse was our alarm at rise of censorship and cancel culture that punishes—sometimes with great severity—people who express heterodox opinions. As the U.S. Founding Fathers recognized, such imposition of orthodoxy and its accompanying punishment for heresy has been a fundamental harbinger and element of tyranny throughout history.

The word COURAGE means “of the heart,” and it originated in old French and English during a time when the heart was thought to be the seat of feelings. In boxing we still saying that a fighter has “a lot of heart,” and we still hear the expression “I didn’t have the heart to tell him.” I thought courage an apt word for the title of a Substack whose principle author is a cardiologist.

Our original concept for Courageous Discourse was to showcase the ideas and work of brave men and women who are standing up to the creeping tyranny that now threatens the basic, liberal principles of our civilization—principles that have enabled our American people to be the freest and most innovative in the world. Substack recently improved its video posting function, so in the coming months we are going to conduct interviews in which we showcase the work of brave individuals who are doing their best to ascertain and speak the truth about our extremely complex and confusing world.

Reading the critical comments our our readers, I often see expressions of consternation about some of the heterodox views that we express or endorse. We have noted this especially in comments about our posts on transgenderism, the war in Ukraine, and the presidential candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

I would like to emphasize that these are complex subjects that resist simple classifications and characterizations. While we are all inclined to get drawn into arguments about myriad details, we believe it is useful to let any conversation be guided by basic principles. These include:

1). We are skeptical of U.S. government and mainstream media representations of controversial subjects. Indeed, we have often found that when the U.S. government and the MSM make vehement assertions about a person or state of affairs, it’s a fairly reliable indicator that the exact opposite is true. Truly crackpot ideas are simply ignored. You know you’re over the target when you are vilified and censored.

2). We are a free speech platform, which means that we welcome heterodox views. While we do NOT approve of commentary that we regard as patently false, ugly, or ad hominem, we cannot get into the business of deleting and censoring comments with which we disagree. We believe in the Classical Liberal concept of the Marketplace of Ideas. When conversation is free and uncensored, the opinions most closely approximating the truth will prevail, and the claptrap will ultimately be dismissed.

3). Many of the subjects we are tackling contain novel phenomena, and are thus far from being fully understood. We must therefore do our best to research, investigate, and talk about them. In writing about these subjects, we do NOT presume to be issuing the final word about them. Courageous Discourse is NOT the Gospel of Peter and John, but an ongoing, inquisitive conversation.

Thanks again for reading our work and for commenting on it. And special thanks to our paid Subscribers. We are extremely grateful for your financial support.

Best regards,

Peter and John