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Liberals Must Choose Between Freedom And Fascism
Townhall.com ^ | April 21, 2014 | Kurt Schlichter

Posted on 04/21/2014 4:32:36 AM PDT by Kaslin

Honest liberals are having their Andrew Breitbart moment. Andrew started out as a liberal, except he was the kind of liberal that’s exceedingly rare today. He was a liberal who actually believed in the things liberals say they believe in, like free expression and personal autonomy.

But they don’t.

Andrew’s change began when he watched the Clarence Thomas hearings. He saw a “high-tech lynching,” as racist Democrats intent on stamping out dissent among black Americans channeled their former Majority Leader/KKK Exalted Cyclops Robert Byrd in attacking the black jurist for refusing to toe the liberal line.

Andrews’s views didn't change. What changed was his understanding of who actually stands for freedom. And it isn’t liberals.

Which brings us to the recent kerfuffle involving popular comic Patton Oswalt. He is known as a sarcastic, snarky, underdog with genuine stand-up chops. He’s also an occasional movie and television star who recently had a memorable role on “Justified,” a conservative favorite due to its general awesomeness and the presence of right wing acting legend Nick Searcy.

By all accounts a funny, decent guy, Oswalt thinks of himself as a liberal, and he frequently bickers with conservatives on Twitter. That's fine. Many conservatives died to give him that right. Conservatives don't resent him for doing so even as they disagree with what he says. But that's not true of his allies on the left. They want to shut him up. You see, Oswalt pulled a Clarence Thomas and left the reservation without the chiefs’ permission.

What was Oswalt’s crime? He tweeted approvingly about a Mark Steyn column in which the conservative raconteur took on the global progressive assault on free expression. He made the mistake of characterizing Steyn’s forceful advocacy of free speech as “hitting it out of the park.”

That, the Left cannot forgive.

You see, Mark Steyn is evil. He has ideas liberals don’t approve of. So to cite him as he took on the left’s Ball Gag Caucus was simply unacceptable to the progressive conformity enforcers. Soon Oswalt found himself swamped by a tsunami of Twitter outrage.

Oswalt, stunned but so-far uncowed, tweeted back that his erstwhile allies were proving Steyn’s point. And he was right.

The challenge for honest liberals is to get their collective heads around the fact that the liberalism they think they subscribe to is being advocated and defended only by the very conservatives their prejudices and ignorance have led them to believe are undermining it. The real enemy of free expression isn't the conservative John Lithgow in “Footloose” banning dancing because of some idiosyncratic take on Jesus’s teachings. The real threat is the pseudo-enlightened schoolteacher on “Glee” enforcing his rigid progressive vision of diversity. And his vision of diversity is a diverse collection of those ideas he approves of and no others.

So is Oswalt going to stand up for freedom and take his lumps, or is he going to take the easy path of submission and obedience to the politically correct commands of the gatekeepers of liberalism?

It's a lot easier to submit, to not fight, to not make a fuss. What happens when you make a fuss? Remember John Lovitz? He’s another liberal who stood up to political correctness on social media. Do you see John Lovitz in a lot of movies these days?

Did Lovitz suddenly become unmarketable about the same time he became uncontrollable, or are people just afraid to be seen with him lest his new reputation for heresy rub off?

The temptation for someone like Oswalt, when faced with the braying mob of radical feminists, crypto-fascist academics, and assorted other progressive weirdoes, losers and mutations, must be overwhelming. It's so easy to surrender, to redouble your attacks on conservatives to prove you’re still one of the gang. All you have to do is hand over your autonomy and they'll give you a pass. Sure, it's humiliating, but who needs self-respect when you can guest star on “Two and a Half Men?”

Oswalt can submit, or he can face the fact, as must other honest liberals, that the side they think they are on doesn’t remotely believe in free expression. It doesn’t believe in free thought. It doesn’t believe in diversity. It believes in a crushing conformity enforced by a creepy Red Guard of politically correct goose-steppers with gender studies degrees, Twitter accounts and the burning need to bend others to their will.

We don't have to agree with what Patton Oswalt says, but the difference is that we conservatives aren’t the ones trying to silence him. We will argue with him. We will fight with him. But we won’t try to stick a rag in his pie hole. That's what his “friends” are trying to do.

Oswalt and other honest liberals need to decide who their friends really are.


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: fascism; freedom; hollyweird; liberals
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1 posted on 04/21/2014 4:32:36 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Unfortunately, they already have.


2 posted on 04/21/2014 4:34:51 AM PDT by Maceman
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To: Kaslin

I believe liberals dont view it this way. That is, they dont see it as a need for them to make any choices. Making a choice is for the rest of us. They get freedom while the ideologically impure get fascism and ultimately prison or death. Either you get with their program or get marginalized/liquidated.


3 posted on 04/21/2014 4:37:32 AM PDT by 556x45
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To: 556x45

“Liberals Must Choose Between Freedom And Fascism”....

They made that choice by BEING liberals and pushing their agenda will only get them to Fascism that much faster.


4 posted on 04/21/2014 4:39:48 AM PDT by DaveA37
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To: 556x45
Correct. Liberals have never objected to fascism as long as their people are in charge. In fact, they were even generally supportive of the Nazi brand of fascism until Hitler attacked their better buddy Stalin.
5 posted on 04/21/2014 4:44:08 AM PDT by Vigilanteman (Obama: Fake black man. Fake Messiah. Fake American. How many fakes can you fit in one Zer0?)
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To: Maceman
The president and Scotus can rewrite law. Congress can force us to purchase anything it wishes.

This question isn't directed at you, but to all, and I ask how elections can possibly reverse these tyrannical precedents? Are we a free people? No. Okay, so what should be done?

6 posted on 04/21/2014 4:45:37 AM PDT by Jacquerie (Are we a free republic if our freedom depends on who sits in the Oval Office?)
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To: Kaslin

Liberals want to be free to have the government make other people do what the liberals want them to do and believe what the liberals want them to believe.

That is how liberals view freedom.


7 posted on 04/21/2014 4:46:16 AM PDT by Iron Munro (NSA reports Malaysia Flight 370 black box signals detected in Bermuda Triangle)
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To: Kaslin

Don’t call them “Liberals” or “Progressives”....call them “Regressives”, because they want to regress back to the days of Feudal Lords, where they are the “nobility” and we’re the “Peasants” and “serfs”.


8 posted on 04/21/2014 4:50:21 AM PDT by MuttTheHoople (Nothing is more savage and brutal than justifiably angry Americans. DonÂ’t believe me? Ask the Germa)
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To: Kaslin

Liberals will always choose wrong. Always.


9 posted on 04/21/2014 5:02:20 AM PDT by demshateGod (The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.)
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To: Jacquerie

What should be done? As Shakespeare had it, “First, we kill all the lawyers.”

That’s a good start, but probably not workable ;)

Elections CAN change things, and I would suggest that we already have the means to effect change in the TEA Party movement.

Find out where the nearest chapter is and get in touch. Then get to work.


10 posted on 04/21/2014 5:09:45 AM PDT by Walrus (I love the America that used to be ---I hate the America that now IS!)
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To: Kaslin

It was a personal experience in 1971 of the left suppressing free expression that started me on my journey away from them, and ultimately against them. Reading Robert Ringer and Milton Friedman throughout the 1970’s ‘splained it to me.

I was taking pictures at the Revolutionary Peoples’ Constitutional Convention when a Black Panther “official” demanded that I give up my camera. He said “we authorize all pictures.”

I was not about to give up a camera that had been a gift from my parents, so I satisfied him by giving up the film. Later in the day, a pickpocket got the camera.

I had bought the obigatory VW bus by working twelve hours a day at a job. One of the Panthers told me that the people were going to need that vehicle. Well, the “people” were not making the loan payments.


11 posted on 04/21/2014 5:15:45 AM PDT by Daveinyork
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To: Iron Munro

It’s worse,
they advocate the use of force to, as you said, force others to do and believe what the libs want them to,
deny that they are authoritarians,
and feel good about themselves for their advocacy.

Bloomberg just expressed what most libs think of themselves -
“due to the policies I’ve advocated for, I’m waltzing into heaven, skipping the interview”


12 posted on 04/21/2014 5:26:49 AM PDT by MrB (The difference between a Humanist and a Satanist - the latter admits whom he's working for)
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To: MuttTheHoople

if only that was true. Back then serfs pay less than 5% tax. Didn’t US revolt against the Crown over 3% tax? These days we pay 50%+ taxes if you include everything. We’re more like slaves to government


13 posted on 04/21/2014 5:40:47 AM PDT by 4rcane
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To: Kaslin

Oswalt played a character on last week’s “Agents of S.H.E.I.L.D” episode. Will probably be in tomorrow’s episode too.


14 posted on 04/21/2014 5:41:03 AM PDT by PapaBear3625 (You don't notice it's a police state until the police come for you.)
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To: Kaslin

Patton has never said anything even remotely funny. He is a hack riding on Kevin James’ coattails.


15 posted on 04/21/2014 5:42:50 AM PDT by subterfuge (CBS NBC ABC FOX AP-- all no different than Pravda.)
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To: Maceman
"Unfortunately, they already have."

Liberals have chosen, and consummated themselves with treason.

16 posted on 04/21/2014 5:43:37 AM PDT by Carl Vehse
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To: Kaslin

An “honest liberal”?

Puleeeze!


17 posted on 04/21/2014 5:49:57 AM PDT by JT Hatter (Who is Barack Obama? And What is He Really Up To?)
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To: JT Hatter

Andrew Breitbart obviously was one. Otherwise he wouldn’t have seen the light. Think about it.


18 posted on 04/21/2014 5:55:02 AM PDT by Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)
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To: JT Hatter

Many start out that way, but it makes for an unstable compound. Eventually they either wise up or the mask falls and they go full-bore Stalinist. That’s when they become so revolting normal people can’t stand to be around them, and they become divorced from polite society.


19 posted on 04/21/2014 6:00:44 AM PDT by Cyber Liberty (H.L. Mencken: "The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.")
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To: Kaslin

Liberals are inherently dishonest, especially with themselves.

It’s like the old joke about the Democrat puppies and Bill Clinton. Once they open their eyes they become Republicans.

Liberalism is founded on false principles, false premises. It is inherently dishonest. And so are all liberals.

Once they wake up, open their eyes, they’re no longer liberals.


20 posted on 04/21/2014 6:07:28 AM PDT by JT Hatter (Who is Barack Obama? And What is He Really Up To?)
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