“If We Don’t Speak Now”, Those Who Have The Right To Speak, But Choose Their Right To Remain Silent, May Lose Both Rights And Choice

CLEVELAND, OHIO –  “Speak now or forever hold your peace” is based upon the marriage liturgy of the Christians’ Book of Common Prayer. Today it may refer to our self-monitoring for the irrational fear of not being politically correct. After reading my essay, “An Assumption of Dignity,” on the Internet, a reader commented:

“I circulated it to our editorial board who found it very moving. However, based entirely on the reality of it not being ‘politically correct,’ I am recommending that it will not be posted on our educational site. That said, given its compelling nature, I will circulate it privately and selectively.” 

This poignant communication appears to be from an academic, corporate or military milieu, who wants to share it but is constrained by a fear of being classified “intolerant.” In years past, he’d have thought nothing about forwarding and posting the article with his observations on said educational site. Today, in this post-Obama era, he is threatened by the vitriol that would explode were he to dispatch ideas antithetical to those who set the political agenda, intimidated by the possibilities that harm would come to his family, and concerned that he could be summarily dismissed from his position if the first two and harassed if the third.

Although our First Amendment remains unchanged, with its protections extended to all individuals in the United States, the writer nevertheless reasoned that sharing information contradictory to the views of the ruling class could offend and must be done surreptitiously and with extreme caution. He is judicious and self-monitoring, but feeling defenseless in his isolated position, he is slowly conforming to “the plan.” Guarded, he is gradually growing fearful and more submissive to those in power.    

The purveyors of hate-speech accusations work to divide us into groups based on their immutable features – race, religion, ethnicity, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, family breakdown, and views on innumerable subjects. They have always existed in history but are far more forcefully promoted by those who now hold sway over our schools, government, and the workplace. When these were still insufficient to more completely affect our massive population, the ruling class devised issues for additional divisiveness – climate, abortion and post-partum infanticide, American monuments and symbols, slavery and LGBTQ reparations, a unique foreign invasion, and so many more. And when our young adults leave the schools to join the mainstream of American life, they will take with them not only their learned prejudices, but also their ways of stifling the free speech of others who would dare to disagree.  

The left has worked doggedly to insert their values into our lives, and because they use compassion as their tactic, traditional Americans failed to see that the compassion was highly selective. Compassion for the mother is denied the unborn child; compassion for the gender-confused is denied the healthy heterosexual; compassion for the Muslim newcomer is denied the indigenous Christian and Jew. We have even witnessed the compassion shown more for the criminal than for his victim in a court of law.

This selective compassion is denied our President, a man who serves his country selflessly, even donating his paychecks to worthy causes. Why does the left rant about President Trump, insult his every sentence, mannerism, activity? For one thing, it serves to comfort the left, to keep them engaged with trivia to dodge the discomfort of acknowledging his triumphs. For another, and perhaps the crux of the issue, is that when they cannot suppress his speech, they can still suppress what they hear. They impose their will on others by censoring what’s available to the public, such as Google, Facebook and Twitter, and discredit the rest. The Shangri La for the left is when society is so controlled that it becomes self-censoring. We are almost there. 

Our founding fathers ensured that freedom of speech became the unambiguous law of our land, yet many who claim to support that freedom work to silence the views of others, to eliminate dissent and satisfy their desire for power – even dictatorially seeking to inflict harm on those who disagree. By making full use of the conflicts inherent in multiculturalism, and further dividing the population into their own cultural attributes and values, now identified as intersectionality, social havoc has been created with political liberty.

Our United States has been fragmented into warring tribes, as we see those who insist on protection from ideas they find intolerable have, themselves, become intolerant of the speaking rights others. Mainstream media publishes and reports only their leftist view on any subject and event.  Muslims who insist on shari’a law for themselves are dedicated to overtaking their host by denying Americans their Constitutionally guaranteed culture and religious worship. Demeaning insults abound against any opposition, and democrats now debase men in general and white males in particular for the ills of racial segregation, although they were enacted by the democrat-mandated Jim Crow laws of racial segregation, from the 1870s, after the Reconstruction era, to 1965. 

The ideological tactic is also defined as cultural Marxism, when one party can issue invectives to force the other party into “politically correct” silence. This unhealthy situation has replaced honest debate that arrives at understanding and/or gracious compromise. The resultant increasing levels of antagonism are causing a decline in our social stability – allowing invasion, crime by overpopulation, escalating disease, homelessness, drug abuse, rising sexual crimes, heightened loneliness and suicide, violence – all adding a serious strain to our national debt, as well. Allowing these failures results from one side’s preying on the compassion of others. We must recognize that “Limited speech must come from debate, not before debate.” – Izzy Kalman. 

We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. – Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The Gulag Archipelago.