art credit: National Coalition Against Censorship
John Kass at The Chicago Tribune comments on the liberal reaction to conservative speech, which is, essentially: “Shut
Up.”
The lie we were told as kids
was this: The end of American liberty would come at the hands of the political
right.
Conservatives would take away
our right to speak our minds, and use the power of government to silence
dissent. The right would intimidate our teachers and professors, and coerce the
young.
And then, with the universities
in thrall, with control of the apparatus of the state (and the education
bureaucracy), the right would have dominion over a once-free people.
. . .
But the lie is obvious now,
isn't it?
Because it is not conservatives
who coerced today's young people or made them afraid of ideas that challenge
them. Conservatives did not shame people into silence, or send thugs out on
college campuses to beat down those who wanted to speak.
The left did all that.
It's there in front of you, the
thuggish mobs of the left killing free speech at American universities. The
thugs call themselves antifas, for anti-fascists.
They beat people up and break
things and set fires and intimidate. These are not anti-fascists. These are
fascists. This is what fascists do.
. . .
What is the cost for all this?
Free speech, without which
there is no republic.
American universities were once
thought to be the last great refuge of ideas, where ideas could flourish and be
challenged and debated. But today, the university is the place where liberty
and ideas go to die.
. . .
Right-wing provocateur Ann
Coulter has been silenced at Berkeley, where the free speech movement was born.
And other intellectuals, including Charles Murray and Heather Mac Donald, have
been silenced at other colleges, attacked by mobs.
If the left agrees with your
views, you may speak. If the left doesn't agree, they will shut you down. This
is America now.
. . .
University administrators have
made a show of wringing their hands. But they're hypocrites. They're part of
this. They are of the same cloth. They allowed this seed to bloom. They watered
it, by giving in to the young who demanded a safe space from intellectual
challenge.
Safe spaces are not about
learning or critical thinking. Safe spaces belong to education camps, where
future bureaucrats are trained in the Orwellian shaping of language and the
culling of threatening ideas.
. . .
All speech challenging the
status quo is offensive — to the establishment. And free speech is what
American liberty is about.
Unless, of course, you're of
the hard left, and can hunt free speech at American universities and crush it.
That's not fiction. That's not
fantasy. And it is not a lie. It's happening now, in the United States.
Read the rest here.
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