09/05/2017 / By JD Heyes
The Left has engaged in an all-out assault against Americans’ constitutional form of government for decades, seeking to replace it with a more authoritarian form of European-style socialism. The assault continues today and has taken on a bizarre, hypocritical form.
At a time when the Left-wing “mainstream” media is seeing its dominance and influence wane dramatically, it is lashing out against conservatives in unprecedented ways. For instance, the Washington Post, which has published more than its share of “fake news” in the Age of Trump, is now actually calling for limiting the free speech of those it disagrees with politically.
As reported by The Daily Caller, the First Amendment is supposed to guarantee freedom of speech and expression to everyone, regardless of whether or not said speech is universally acceptable. But the Post doesn’t think so; in fact, the Post believes that politically conservative speech should be banned on the basis of how Left-wing liberals define it. Otherwise the editorial team would not have given voice to history professor Jennifer Delton recently, who argues that liberals should not allow people they deem “alt-right provocateurs” to speak on college campuses. (Related: College students “triggered” into a state of total hysteria over the spotting of a banana peel (seriously.)
It’s bad enough that Delton describes conservative speakers as “provocateurs” — without assigning a similar description to Left-wing bomb-throwers like Barack Obama, Michael Moore, Bill Maher and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., just to name a few.
But then she justifies her call for a campus speech ban by comparing conservative speakers to the American communist movement of the early-to-mid 20th century:
Most famously, liberal activist Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. argued that communists hid behind the First Amendment to attack liberal democracy, using it as a shield as they sought to destroy the democratic system that upheld those rights.
Schlesinger understood there weren’t enough communists in the United States to actually foment revolution. But there were enough to divide progressive forces and thus create an opportunity for conservative Republicans to take power and repeal the New Deal, which he believed would in turn destabilize American capitalism and possibly tilt the balance of international power to the Soviets. Liberals would be chumps to let a principled commitment to “freedom of speech” undercut the pragmatic goal of political survival, which was the only way to ensure progress in civil rights and social welfare.
What hubris. What arrogance.
First of all it should be known that without Republicans, there would not have been successful civil rights legislation in the 1960s. Democrats were also not unified in passing civil rights legislation — which is understandable if you know of their party’s historical alliance with, and allegiance to, the Ku Klux Klan.
But I digress. Delton’s purposeful mischaracterization of conservative political thought is typical of the far Left today. It’s adherents have assumed the power and authority to characterize their political nemeses in their terms, then use those biased descriptors to justify denying conservatives their constitutional rights — in this case to speech, assembly, and expression.
Let’s consider the highlighted portion of what Delton wrote above. She is saying that liberals aren’t really committed to constitutional principles as much as they are committed to being in power so they can make the rules and decide the social, cultural, and political makeup of the country.
A just-released poll in Virginia also provides new evidence as to how far the “progressive” Left has advanced its anti-free-speech agenda. As The National Sentinel reported, just over half of Virginians would limit free speech on college campuses in order to stop “discriminatory” speech.
“Now mind you,” The National Sentinel noted, “one person’s ‘discrimination’ is another person’s difference of opinion. Leftists have portrayed President Donald J. Trump’s travel ban from six terrorism-infested countries as a ‘discriminatory Muslim ban’ when it is nothing of the sort, for example. And his upcoming decision to reverse President Obama’s very unconstitutional DACA program is going to be considered ‘racist’ and ‘discriminatory’ by the Left when again, it’s nothing of the kind.”
Liberals are attempting to have it all: They want to pick and choose who in society is evil, then deny them their rights based on their biased mischaracterizations. We can’t let them get away with it.
J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.
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Tagged Under: Alt-Left, ban conservatives, biased, Censorship, fake news, First Amendment, mainstream media, Washington Post