“If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
-----George Orwell
Charlie Kirk may not be the best choice for a martyr, but he can't help becoming one. This is a man who called for then President Joe Biden to be sentenced to the death penalty. Kirk said it. Look it up. Yet that's okay, but saying his assassin is a MAGA extremist gets Jimmy Kimmel fired. The world is upside down, and speech in America is no longer free.
“To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
-----Theodore Roosevelt
The Right is trying to silence the Left and everyone inbetween. They act as if it is morally reprehensible to challenge or disagree with Donald Trump, or, for that matter, any of his cronies in the Cabinet or throughout the country. ANTIFA, which is an anti-fascist and anti-racist movement made up of individual groups without a central hub, Trump wants to label a terrorist organization. Yet he has no such plans for the Proud Boys, which is a centralized organization that promotes violence, and which has been declared a terrorist group in Canada. Trump wants to destroy balance in our country, and he has lots of help.
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
-----George Washington
Freedom of Speech in America is not dead, but it has been shot, and ICE agents have taken it into custody, preparing to deport it. They are now after its family members, Freedom of the Press, Freedom of Religion, the Right to Peacable Assembly, and the Right to Petition the Government. But Speech goes first, replaced by the freedom to accuse anyone you don't like of being unpatriotic.
“Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.”
-----Benjamin Franklin
Beware! Poets warn. Alarmists keep watch. Ignore them at your peril. Our country is in danger of slipping into totalitarianism, and soon. We are not staging mass executions or sending people who disagree with us to the Gulag, yet. But we are encouraging employers to take away their livelihoods because of how they think. In a country dedicated to majority rule with a strong minority to check them, we are run by a minority and subjected to their opinions without the benefit of a proper check and balance system. Without that, dictators rule and opponents perish.
I leave you with this dire warning from John Adams, “Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.”
Is that what we are witnessing now? Can we prevent it? I know two things: fear is the weapon, and silence is the enemy.
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