FREE SPEECH UNDER THREAT – QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:  The political left is on the march in America, helped by Barack Obama, who is a leftist, not a liberal.  The leftists call themselves "progressives," which they definitely aren't.  There is nothing progressive about supporting or excusing dictators, which is their norm.  Nor is there anything progressive about their regular assaults on free speech.  David Keene, at the Washington Times, has some superb thoughts on this subject:

Liberal progressives have in recent years all but abandoned the American belief in free speech and the First Amendment in favor of shutting down those with whom they disagree. The president pointedly announces that critics of Obamacare or his climate-change policies ought to shut up because “the debate is over.” His supporters in Congress are actually proposing amending the Constitution to eliminate First Amendment protection of political speech and the Internal Revenue Service not only to harass those with whom they and their president disagree, but urges the Justice Department to prosecute those who voice a different view.

Last week Hillary Clinton, a prospective candidate for the presidency, told an interviewer who asked about gun control that “we cannot let a minority of people hold a viewpoint that terrorizes the majority of people.” This is a dangerous, but unexceptional statement coming from a 21st century liberal progressive. She, like the president she hopes to succeed, begins by describing the facts as she wishes they were and then attempts to dehumanize and demonize those with whom she disagrees as terrorists whose ability to express views contrary to her own shouldn’t be tolerated lest they mislead others.

And...

This hostility toward the free-speech guarantees written into our Constitution and the Founders’ concern for the rights of minorities as well as majorities may be traceable to the fact that they are the philosophical sons and daughters of the French rather than American Revolution and the belief that minorities should be allowed only to the extent that majorities decide not to send them to the guillotine.

COMMENT:  Read the whole thing.  It's well worth it.  We are in trouble as a nation, as our basic values are under assault from one of our two major parties. 

About ten years ago a true civil-liberties lawyer (there are some left) told me how worried he was by what was being taught on American college campuses.  He feared that a generation of college students was being taught to have contempt for free speech, and that they would be the leaders of the country in 20 years.  It's now ten years on, and we can already see the changes. 

By the way, when this lawyer tried to protest a free-speech violation at the college his son attended, he was labeled "an outsider."   Kind of like the way segregationist governors in the old days called civil-rights workers "outside agitators."  Hmm.  So similar.

June 24, 2014