Tancredo: Approaching (and Applauding?) the Twilight of Freedom of Speech
August of 2017 might be recorded as the date the ground shifted under the feet of defenders of constitutional liberty and freedom of assembly in the United States. The nation’s newspaper establishment is now providing a public platform for normalizing the claim that the Constitution’s protections for freedom of the press and freedom of speech are inadequate weapons for winning the fight against a “rising tide of racism,” and therefore, violence may not only be justified, it may be the only moral alternative.
Thus sayeth the lords of “Antifa,” the newly respectable priests (and armed enforcers) of vigilante justice.
On Sunday, August 27, the Denver Post gave front page status on its weekly “Perspective” opinion section to a Project Syndicate column by Australian writer Peter Singer. Project Syndicate is a Bill Gates and George Soros-funded newspaper syndication service based in Prague. Professor Singer asks this question in a bold headline: “Is violence the way to fight racism?”
In seeking the answer to this ominous question, Professor Singer does not marshal quotes or arguments from John Stuart Mill, Louis Brandeis, or Ruth Bader Ginsberg. He instead quotes favorably only one authority, the “Antifa” crusaders who have been heavily involved in the violent “counter-protests” in Charlottesville, Berkeley, San Francisco, Phoenix, and elsewhere. The mission and business of Antifa are to disrupt and terrorize rallies, speakers, and events it chooses to label as right-wing, racist, neo-Nazi, or just plain unprogressive...
Anyone with half an education in 20th century Soviet and Maoist techniques of oppression will recognize this as a totalitarian argument to silence dissent. It is reminiscent of the Marxist-Leninist use of psychiatry as a tool for declaring political dissent illegitimate. If you do not love communism, you are obviously insane and need to be either “reeducated” or removed from society and placed in confinement...
The argument that the First Amendment is antiquated and ill-suited to fighting racism and bigotry is reminiscent of the teachings of that neo-Marxist cult figure from the late 60s and 70s, the German “Frankfurt School” entertainer, Herbert Marcuse. His innovative theory of “repressive tolerance” rationalized and incentivized the rise of ideological intolerance in academic circles, but until very recently we have not seen its totalitarian fruit being marketed in the public square...
Thus begins the official legitimization — or “normalization” — of the rejection of the First Amendment’s protections of freedom of speech in the name of “fighting racism.” And who will be empowered to decide what groups and what forms of speech are forbidden the protections afforded civil libertarians? Why, our nation’s idealistic social justice warriors, of course...
Woe be unto the defenders of liberty when the mainstream media begins to marginalize you as an antediluvian agent of oppression.
CAIRCO Research