These days, you must hold the right opinions and express none of the wrong ones—or else.

Cant is the vehement public expression of concern for others, or of anger at an opinion casting doubt on some moral orthodoxy that is not, and cannot be, genuinely felt, its vehemence being a shield for insincerity and lack of confidence in the orthodox opinion.

Doctor Johnson defined cant as "a whining pretension to goodness, in formal and affected terms." Cant is contagious, and, when widespread, it creates an atmosphere in which people are afraid to call it by its name.

Wherever people are punished, legally or socially, for expressing an opinion contrary to some recently adopted orthodoxy, or for failing to express the tenets of that orthodoxy, cant is bound to flourish; further, people who begin with an awareness that they are uttering cant come to believe that it is true because no one likes to think that he has spoken only from mere conformity or pusillanimity, or to avoid unpleasantness and the ruination of reputation.

As Kafka put it, "Someone must have traduced Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning." And what is the harm that Lamonby potentially caused, in the judge's opinion? In addition to any offense to Jews, non-Jews might also be offended, even "Grossly" offended, because they might feel that some characteristic-presumably undesirable, though the judge didn't specify what-was being ascribed to them.

In his final sally against freedom of speech, this greatest judge since Pontius Pilate said of Lamonby's views that anyone might be offended because he spoke about things that "Were none of his business." The judge appeared not to realize that, if people were to be denied employment for saying something that was none of their business, the world unemployment rate would be close to 100 percent, except perhaps in North Korea.

In a world ruled by the judge, no generalizations about people would be possible, not even such as, say, that the Dutch are the tallest people in the world.

The woman who informed on Lamonby; the vice chancellor of the university; the employment tribunal that said that the university had a duty to its multicultural student body to "Protect it from potential acts of racism"; and the judge who rejected Lamonby's appeal-all had substituted cant or humbug for thought.

https://www.city-journal.org/the-age-of-cant