The very first political video I ever made was entitled “Shut Up.” That’s ten years ago, though it seems like more. The vid is still up on YouTube.
“The left here has been making the ‘shut up’ argument at least since the seventies, when it became clear that all their other arguments had failed,” says my younger and incredibly handsome self. “Since it was the only argument remaining to them, they had to invent different ways to say it. If you pointed out that their weakness allowed the murderous tyranny of Communism to expand, for instance, well, you were a McCarthyite. Shut up. If you proved their leniency toward criminals turned our cities into cesspools, you were a fascist. Shut up. When you pointed out that their welfare policies destroyed black families and created a social disaster of vast proportions, you were a racist, a sexist, uncivil, worse than Hitler, all just different ways of saying: shut up.”
It is sad to see how relentlessly the left has adhered to this approach. With the collapse of their utopia, the Soviet Union, with socialism a drag on life everywhere (yes, including Scandinavia), with leftist Europe sinking under the weight of unrestrained immigration and lack of assimilation and with the presidency of light worker savior Barack Obama an economic and foreign policy failure, leftists, rather than change their minds and their policies, have instead committed to creating a Big Silence meant to hide the truth from all of us, perhaps even from themselves.
This may have once seemed possible given the left’s near monopoly over the means of communication in this country. Hollywood, the news media, the academy — all are nearly wholly populated by leftists. But as the internet and social media began to eat holes in this firewall of disinformation, the left began to fear the truth might reach the people. It was then that their commitment to free speech waned to nothing.
“Free Speech is Killing Us,” headlines a recent story in the leftist New York Times by leftist New Yorker writer Andrew Marantz.
“In the early years of this decade, back when people associated social media with Barack Obama or the Arab Spring, Twitter executives referred to their company as ‘the free-speech wing of the free-speech party.’ Sticks and stones and assault rifles could hurt us, but the internet was surely only a force for progress. No one believes that anymore,” Marantz writes.
Translating that from Leftist into Truth, it means: “Free speech was okay when people said things we like, but not now that people are saying other things.” No one seems to have explained to Marantz that that’s the way freedom feels to everyone: great for you, horrific for anyone you disagree with.
Fearful of Donald Trump’s talent for communicating with Americans without the hate-filled filter of the press, the Left and their media have now launched wars on Facebook and Twitter, trying to cut off the flow of information they dislike. Democratic congressmen grilled Mark Zuckerberg on his failure to censor politicians while, suspiciously in concert, 22 separate news outlets launched attacks on Zuck and his site. Twitter, which was exposed by Project Veritas for shadow banning conservative speech, has announced it will no longer allow political or issue ads. Whose voice do you think they’re trying to silence?
Appallingly, journalists themselves have signed on to this assault on the most basic of American values. In an article in the latest City Journal entitled “Journalists Against Free Speech,” John Tierney describes how journalists from the Atlantic, the Times, Huffpo and other venues have endorsed the version of leftist shut-uppery known as Cancel Culture — though they are shocked when anyone tries to use it on them.
And, according to a recent survey by Campaign for Free Speech, these tactics may be working. Fifty-one percent of Americans want to rewrite the First Amendment to exclude “hate speech.”
Of course, you only have to think logically for half a minute to start asking yourself questions. 1) Who decides the definition of hate speech? 2) Why do they want to? 3) What are they trying to hide?
If you answered: 1) Leftists, 2) Because they want power and 3) The fact that leftism leads to slavery…
…shut up.