On the October 3, 2014 episode of the HBO talk show Real Time with Bill Maher, the panel included New York Times bestselling author (and key figure in the New Atheism movement) Sam Harris; actor/filmmaker Ben Affleck; Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristof; and former chairperson of the Republican National Committee Michael Steele. During the panel’s discussion, both Bill Maher and Sam Harris asserted that Islam fundamentally clashes with liberal principles, yet liberals in the U.S. fail to point this out because of their commitment to political correctness. The only solution to this problem, Maher and Harris argued, was for the West to throw support behind “nominal Muslims”...

Marginalization is a form of censorship. It is hard to define the term censorship, but its function is easily imagined, as it is used by people in every society. Indeed, censorship, as I will show in the rest of this essay, is when an individual, a group of people, or a work and their significance are systematically and thoroughly modified (either by demonizing or canonizing them) by powerful people or organizations in order to preserve and promote in whole or part their ideological, ethical, or legal values...

On October 19, 2008, former Republican Secretary of State and retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Colin Powell appeared on the NBC News Sunday morning program Meet the Press to endorse Democratic candidate Barack Obama for president. Powell outlined multiple reasons for his choice, many of which were driven by sober policy concerns and a sense of which person was better suited for the job. But there was also a “push factor” behind his choice: he had grown weary of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the Republican Party and the attempts to tarnish Obama as a Muslim...