The State of Freedom at the End of the Year

Start the last full week of 2015 off with some truth from Kevin Williamson, as he looks ahead to the next year:

Donald Trump may talk like a brownshirt, but the Democrats mean business. For those of you keeping track, the Democrats and their allies on the left have now: voted in the Senate to repeal the First Amendment, proposed imprisoning people for holding the wrong views on global warming, sought to prohibit the showing of a film critical of Hillary Rodham Clinton, proposed banning politically unpopular academic research, demanded that funding politically unpopular organizations and causes be made a crime and that the RICO organized-crime statute be used as a weapon against targeted political groups. They have filed felony charges against a Republican governor for vetoing a piece of legislation, engaged in naked political persecutions of members of Congress, and used the IRS and the ATF as weapons against political critics.

On the college campuses, they shout down unpopular ideas or simply forbid nonconforming views from being heard there in the first place. They have declared academic freedom an “outdated concept” and have gone the full Orwell, declaring that freedom is oppressive and that they should not be expected to tolerate ideas that they do not share. They are demanding mandatory ideological indoctrination sessions for nonconforming students. They have violently assaulted students studying in libraries and assaulted student journalists documenting their activities. They have staged dozens of phony hate crimes and sexual assaults as a pretext for persecuting unpopular organizations and people.

As Williamson notes, the Left generally (and the party that most fully represents its interests) has not been pushing back on the excesses.  That means they’re either in agreement with the radicals or they are dangerously naive.

Perhaps those who sincerely believe in basic freedoms to disagree just think their progressive allies are overstating for effect as part of a political theater vaudeville, but things tend to be “just talk” until they aren’t.  Frankly, the gap between those who hold what are now mainstream liberal/progressive views and those who would take them too far doesn’t strike me as much of a firewall.

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