The contemporary left gives lip service to freedom of speech, but where they are in power they actively seek to ban the speech of those who disagree with them. We see this clearly on campuses where speech codes, anathema to any concept of freedom of speech, are the order of the day. It is no accident, as Marxists used to say, that representatives of the Democrat party are busily seeking to jettison the concept of free speech when it comes to elections. Kevin Williamson gives us the details at National Review Online:
Which is why Harry Reid wants to repeal the First Amendment.
Go here to read the rest. Contemporary liberals will defend to the death your right to agree with them. Otherwise they will do their worst to shut you up. Oh, and if you want to start the work week on a howlingly funny note, go here to read the amicus brief filed by the Cato Institute and PJ O’Rourke that gives the Ohio law in the SBA case a beating to be remembered.
O’Rourke, as always, makes the arcane digestible. Or something.
They are remarkable like Islam – whining about their rights when out of power, crushing everyone else’s when they are in.
“…the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes.”
– Twain, Letter fragment, 1891
c matt: They are remarkable like Islam – whining about their rights when out of power, crushing everyone else’s when they are in.”
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“My sentiments exactly. How often I have thought these thoughts, but I am forbidden by the thought police to think these thoughts, much less express them out loud. You have given words to my thoughts.
What amazes me is that it never occurs to liberals that the pendulum might someday swing back and all the anti-dissent machinery they have built will be in the hands of their opponents.
If they are truly haunted by nightmares of a “Republic of Gilead” it could arise much more easily once the Bill of Rights was repealed.
What else is new?
This is what the modern Democrat does. Silence, or attempt to silence any opposition.
Liberalism, aka. progressivism is so full of itself it cannot conceive the possibility of being in error. Utopian zeal embodies an insatiable appetite for control. This is the fundamental basis for the totalitarian state. To the liberal progressive, free speech is a means to an end. When that end is achieved, free speech is banned.
Café Hayek quote of the day: “is from page 82 of Alain de Botton’s delightful 1993 volume, On Love (original emphasis):
“’Amorous politics begins its infamous history in the course of the French Revolution, when it was first proposed (with all the choice of a rape) that the state would not just govern but love its citizens, who would presumably respond likewise or face the guillotine.’