Free Speech or “Re-education Camps?”
One of the most important issues to be decided in November’s election is whether we will remain a country with freedom of thought and expression or be subject to the dictates of cultural Marxism, with any dissent severely punished.
If that seems extreme, it’s already happening. England now holds about 1000 political prisoners in its jails, most of them for saying or writing something deemed “Politically Incorrect.” In one case, a man was arrested for criticizing Islam. In court, he showed that he was merely quoting from the Koran. The judge, saying that “Truth is no defense,” sent him to prison. This in the land where our liberties originated! The situation is similar in France, Canada, and other countries we are told are “free.”
It’s also happening here, in many universities and corporations. If someone dares to suggest, for example, that men and women are inherently different and their traditional social roles reflect their inherent differences, they are given a choice between expulsion or firing or taking “sensitivity training,” which demands the mouth the lies cultural Marxism demands. They must condemn their own race, sex, culture, and sometimes religious belief. If they dissent, they fail the course and are terminated.
This is what the cultural Marxists – and both Kamala Harris and Governor Walz are fervent cultural Marxists – seek to do in the country as a whole. Anyone who defies their ideology is to be arrested, tried, and sent to a “re-education camp” where they will only be released after they have been brainwashed in the tenets of cultural Marxism.
All ideologies have totalitarian aspirations, with the possible exception of libertarianism. If the Democrats win the Presidency and both Houses of Congress and then pack the Supreme Court, they will be able to take giant steps in that direction. All they nee is for a packed court to rule that “hate speech” is not protected by the Constitution, and many of us will face arrest. Why? Because cultural Marxism defines hate speech as any dissent from cultural Marxism.
President Trump, in contrast, is a defender of freedom of thought and expression. In the last year of his first term, he initiated a federal rule that no university not adopting a strong, University of Chicago-like policy of freedom of thought and expression could receive any federal funds, including research grants. By including the latter, his rule would change the political balance on every campus, because with their research money at stake the hard science faculty members would go to the faculty meetings they avoid and vote for such a policy. Unfortunately, President Trump’s new rule had not completed the (long) federal rule-making process before he left office, and I’m sure the Biden administration killed it on day one. But I think it likely he would revive it in a second term.
At the same time, conservative investors have been successfully pressuring corporations they invest in to drop so-called ESG policies, which are pure cultural Marxism. If they are not including “eliminating sensitivity training” in their demands, they should be. Corporations may rightly require certain decorum among their employees, in the form of normal politeness. But that is not the same thing as allowing some employees to denounce others as “racists,” “sexists” or “homophobes” while demanding those so charged apologize rather than defend themselves.
If cultural Marxism can kill freedom of speech, it will have taken a giant step towards turning America into a totalitarian, ideological country. Keep that in mind in the voting booth in November, whether you are a conservative or not.