The Leftists Hate Free Speech

Benjamin Franklin wrote, “Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech.”  Much later, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said, “Censorship reflects a society’s lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime.”

From the Nazis to Stalinists to Maoists, tyrants have always started out supporting free speech, just as American leftists did during the 1960s. Their support for free speech is easy to understand. Speech is vital for the realization of their goals of command, control, and confiscation. The right to say what they please is their tool for indoctrination, propagandizing, and proselytization.

Once the leftists gain control, as they have at many universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed. This is increasingly the case on university campuses. Much of the off-campus incivility we see today is the fruit of what a college education has done to our youth.

Walter E. Williams, The Fruits of College Indoctrination

Family Is Still the Building Block of Society

The methodical, deliberate redefinitions of terms such as life, gender, marriage, identity, etc. and the replacement of critical institutions, like the family and the faith community, with the government, have created the new normal. Many citizens now look to government programs to fulfill needs and solve problems, releasing them from a sense of personal responsibility or ownership and lessening dependence upon family.

Today, one’s identity is warped into a social construct permitted by some conjured up “right” to reject biology. Marriage, similarly, has been redefined to make a political point instead of its purpose as a key in a healthy society to procreate and provide sustenance and support. These reckless maneuvers borne on the political Left aimed to establish a more “progressive” society are, in fact, resulting in its destruction and material harm to individuals. …

The Left demands “educational equity” in schools but won’t dare touch the facts that children do better when parents are their first teachers, and a home is comprised of a mom and a dad. The “liberated” women of the Left, now even more angry and militant than ever, seem to thrive in the newly defined male persona of either an effeminate and compliant being or excessive in masculinity that translates into violent, oppressive, and sexist behavior. As noted in the June 2014 edition of the Institute for Family Studies, these women, united in their grievances, completely disregard social science that demonstrates “daughters whose fathers have been actively engaged throughout childhood in promoting their academic or athletic achievements and encouraging their self-reliance and assertiveness are more likely to graduate from college and to enter the higher-paying, more demanding jobs traditionally held by males.”

Robin Smith, The Family Is Still the Building Block of Society.

Immigration Can Be a Trojan Horse

The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits. ... The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass....it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils. ... To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens, the moment they put foot in our country...would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty.

Alexander Hamilton, Message to Congress, 7 December 1801. Cited by Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.182-183.

Body Problem or Mind Problem?

Does a man who has a healthy arm surgically removed because he doesn't feel it is a rightful part of his body have a body problem or a mind problem? When a man who is fifty-two identifies as a six-year-old girl, does he have a body problem or a mind problem? Does a woman who has anorexia and starves herself to death have a body problem or a mind problem? Just so, when someone who argues that they are transgender and, therefore, contemplating irreversible gender reassignment surgery, we must help them understand that they do not have a body problem, but a mind problem. It goes without saying that there is also a spiritual problem!

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.161

Logical Thinking Is Hindered

When your mind has been so seared by acceptance of evil that you condone amputation of healthy body parts, it's not surprising that your ability to think logically is hindered. If you start with the premise that radical mutilation of the body is an acceptable practice ... you shouldn't be surprised to find it applied in ways that are different, yet equally disturbing.

Joe Carter, "The Diabolic Logic of Transableism," The Gospel Coalition, 6/5/15.

Absurdity is No Longer an Argument

In a culture where reason and common sense no longer carry any weight, absurdity is not longer an argument against anything.

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.160

The Unthinkable Becomes Thinkable

There is a "thinkable" and an "unthinkable" in every era. One era is quite certain intellectually and emotionally about what is acceptable. Yet another era decides that these "certainties" are unacceptable and puts another set of values into practice. On a humanistic base, people drift along from generation to generation, and the morally unthinkable becomes thinkable as the years move on.

Francis Schaeffer, cited by Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.141

The Indoctrination Of the Next Generation

Today’s gay activists have carried the campaign a step further, invading children’s lives by wrapping themselves in the banner of tolerance. It is literally the equivalent of the wolf coming to your door dressed as your grandmother. The radicals in control of the gay establishment want children in their world of moral decay, lack of self-restraint, and moral relativism. Why? How better to truly belong to the majority (when you’re really on the fringe) than by taking possession of the next generation? By targeting children, you can start indoctrinating the next generation with the false construct that gay people deserve special treatment and special laws. How else can the gay establishment actually get society to believe, borrowing from George Orwell, that gay people are indeed more equal than others? Of course, the only way to get that idea accepted is to condition people to a nihilism that forbids morality and judgement.

Tammy Bruce, The Death of Right and Wrong, p.87

The Subtle Enemies

Enemies that come loudly and visibly are usually much easier to fight than those that are undetectable … but the erosion of character, the spoiling of innocent pleasures and the cheapening of life itself that often accompany modern popular culture can occur so subtly that we believe nothing has happened.

Kenneth A. Myers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes, pg.xiii.

We Become What We Enjoy Looking At

There is the myth that what we watch doesn’t affect us. However, various studies have shown that violent video games and other media can produce both short-term and long-term aggressive behavior in adolescents and adults; and we hardly need a study to prove the degenerative effects of pornography use on everything from marital relationships to how young people view sex. Why would advertisers spend billions for ads if what we see doesn’t affect our behavior? Let me put it even more strongly: we become what we enjoy looking at.

Erwin W. Lutzer, The Church in Babylon: Heeding the Call to Be a Light in the Darkness, pg.124

Liberty Requires Responsibility

Free societies are responsible societies with citizens who are ready, willing, and able to assume personal responsibility.

Os Guinness, Last Call for Liberty

Christianity — A Vital Spiritual Element

Christianity is not just a religion but a vital spiritual element of Western identity, something that allowed Europe to maintain a strong sense of continuity, linking the ancient with the modern and absorbing into itself a variety of intellectual inspirations. By rejecting Christianity—after having marginalized the classical heritage—Europe, and indeed, the entire West not only slides into cultural aridity, a process noticeable for some time, but falls under the smothering monopoly of one ideology whose uniformity is being cleverly concealed by the deafening rhetoric of diversity that has been pouring into people’s minds at all occasions and in all contexts.

Christianity is the last great force that offers a viable alternative to the tediousness of liberal-democratic anthropology. In this respect it is closer to the classical rather than the modern view of human nature. With Christianity being driven out of the main tract, the liberal-democratic man—unchallenged and totally secure in his rule—will become a sole master of today’s imagination, apodictically determining the boundaries of human nature and, at the very outset, disavowing everything that dares to reach beyond his narrow perspective. The only thing he will be capable of doing is occasional, albeit capricious generosity in tolerating some form of dissidence at the far peripheries of his empire.Without a strong competitor the liberal-democratic man will reign over human aspirations like a tyrant. There will appear no one who would dare or be ready, in compliance with the existing rules, to call his reign into question; the rules that exist do not permit such extravagant acts, and a supposition that there might be other rules has long since been discarded as absurd.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.174

Strong Resemblance Between Leftist and Communist Activists

One does not have to be overly acute to see a strong resemblance between a communist activist on the one hand, and a feminist, a homosexual activist, and a liberal-democratic lumpen-intellectual on the other. Their opinions have the same tedious predictability, their arguments are based on similarly crude syllogisms, their styles are similarly vulgar, and their minds are equally dogmatic, unperturbed by any testimony from outside and prone to the same degree of zealousness. On both sides we also see what the Marxists called the unity of theory and practice, which translates into clear language meaning the total subordination of thinking to the ideological precepts of political action; this subordination, instead of being a cause of shame, is proudly held up as an achievement of the new times.

Both sides—communist and liberal democrat—share their dislike, sometimes bordering on hatred, toward the same enemies: the Church and religion, the nation, classical metaphysics, moral conservatism, and the family. Both are unable to mitigate their arrogance toward everything that their ideology despises, and which, in their revolutionary ardor, they seek to remove from the public space and from private lives. Both are fixated on one or two things that they refer to ad nauseam because those things delineate the unbreachable boundaries of their mental horizon. In every sentence from the Leninist and Stalinist catechisms one can replace “proletariat” with “women” or with “homosexuals,” make a few other minor adjustments, and no one will recognize the original source. Both sides desire a better world so badly that in order to have it, they do not hesitate to control the totality of human life—including these aspects that are most personal or intimate. Both, unfortunately, have been successful politically and have taken over the ideological power of institutions, laws, and even something as elusive, but nonetheless important, as political atmosphere. It is true that both—those in the communist countries and those throughout the Western world after the demise of communism—were and still are quite frequently an object of jokes, sometimes quite deadly, but at the same time their presence evoked, and the latter case are still evoking, feelings of fear or at least a sense of the clear message that opposing those people is not safe. Finally, both sides had spectacular victories among the intellectual and artistic elites; this is particularly puzzling because one would think that the people endowed with artistic and intellectual talents would be the first to reject with contempt something whose repulsive primitivism only person with serious mental deficiencies could miss.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.138-139.

The Evil of Egalitarianism

Because egalitarianism weakens communities and thus deprives men of an identity-giving habitat, it creates a vacuum around them. Hence a desire exists for a new identity, this time modern and in line with the spirit of militant egalitarianism. The ideologies fulfill this role perfectly. They organize people's consciousness by providing them with the meaning of life, an individual and collective purpose, an inspiration for further endeavors, and a sense of belonging. With the emergence of ideology the problem of a lonely individual in an egalitarian society no longer exists: feminism makes all women sisters; ;all homosexuals become brothers in struggle; all environmentalists become a part of an international green movement; all advocates of tolerance join the ranks of a universal antifascist crusade, and so on. Once a man joins an ideological group all becomes clear to him and everything falls into place; everything is either right or wrong, correct or incorrect. And this perception soon changes the man himself.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.137

Despotism Needs to be Checked!

When unchecked, despotism meets with no barrier for its self-aggrandizement. This is one of the major reasons why despotism was never effective in traditionally structured societies, where each group, even if situated on a low rung of the social ladder, had considerable autonomy and its own code, hierarchy, and rules of cooperation. Where there are no such groups and no internal differentiation within a society, where there is a social and political vacuum, the despotic power is left as the only form of control. But to be really effective, the despotic control needs something more than sheer terrorism and intimidation. It must supply the people it has deprived of old social environments with a new identity and a new sense of belonging. And this is the role of ideology.

Ryszard Legutko, The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies, pg.133