Second Thoughts About Free Speech?

A recent article in The Week, by Damon Linker, asks, “Is America Having Second Thoughts About Free Speech?”. Not that Mr. Linker wants to restrict free speech. He doesn’t. But he sees a trend out there—a desire to do just that.

It would be kind of hard to miss.

One thing that he doesn’t mention is that free speech is already being gouged away, big-time, by our colleges and looniversities and other left-wing castles of coercion. It’s very much a one-way street, which can be easily demonstrated.

They say they want to rein in “hate speech” (two-minute laugh break). Hey, it makes people feel bad! But the same people who want to silence our supposed hate speech are producing plenty of their own.

A left-wing “journalist”—I put the word in quotes because I’m not sure what it means anymore—says he’d like for college professors to drown their conservative students, “water-board them to death”. “I’m not joking,” he tweets. I can’t think of any reason not to believe him.

That was pretty “hateful,” wasn’t it? But you could go blind, trying to draw up a comprehensive list of exceedingly hateful remarks made by leftids. Just try to stop any atheist from continually saying things specifically intended to make people feel bad.

They say they want to rein in speech that attacks people’s religious sentiments and beliefs. Especially when that religion is Islam. But look at the kind of speech they habitually applaud.

An alleged “female rabbi” is being lionized for blasting away at God, “this man-made figurehead of the patriarchy,” blah-blah. In a tour de force of foolishness, she claims God sexually harassed Eve, who thus became “the first case of #MeToo.” With Eve as the first and only woman in the world, it’s difficult to see how any “too” could be involved. Soon this ninny will have a book coming out, which those who want to restrict free speech will review enthusiastically and hail it as a triumph of feminist wisdom. They’ll stand up and cheer for her, but at the first sign of a Nativity scene, they’ll pitch a tantrum.

If leftids couldn’t do hypocrisy, they couldn’t do anything at all.

Then there’s speech they want to stomp on simply because it’s bogus and inane—like, for instance, Climate Change Denial: you shouldn’t be allowed to voice that opinion. But bogus and inane speech from their side, the rest of us are expected just to suck it up.

Hillary Clinton gave a speech last week which for sheer fat-headedness would be almost impossible to beat. She embellished the usual Climate Change doom and gloom with the self-satirizing prediction that women “would bear the brunt” of The End Of The World. Cue the lugubrious piano music: “Women will bear the brunt of looking for food, looking for the firewood, looking for the place to migrate to when all of the grass is finally gone,” probably while the men watch football or something. No matter how many times I type that quote, it remains intractably ridiculous.

As Mr. Linker does point out, once you start restricting speech, it’s all politics. The “in” party will say and publish anything they please while the “out” party is gagged. So they, the leftids, will keep on singing all their same old songs—white heterosexual men stink, anyone who believes in anything it says in the Bible is a public enemy who must be silenced, anyone who denies Climate Change deserves to be tossed into prison, only Black Lives Matter, etc.—while everybody who doesn’t share in those opinions had better just shut up, or else.

We already know what this looks like. Our colleges and universities have shown us, in neon letters ten feet high. It will be the history of that lamentable, blood-soaked 20^th century all over again, this time doing in America the things they did in Russia, Germany, and China.

I think that’s what they want. Don’t you?

I have discussed these and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com/ . Stop in and visit. A single click will take you there.

E-Mail Lee Duigon: leeduigon@verizon.net