How can future generations enjoy the freedoms generations have fought and died for, if they have no concept of the meaning of the Bill of Rights' protections for freedom of speech and freedom of religion and free exercise?
Just hope there are enough citizens out there who understand what's at stake in 2012.
We have the same choice which faced the colonists in 1776:
Liberty for ourselves and future generations
Or,
Slavery to coercive government power
This is the choice.
So-called "progressives" may frame the debate differently, they may use clever semantics to disguise and cloak the kind of "change" they advocate, and some may even fool themselves into believing that what they advocate is right.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C. S. Lewis
In the end, however, their philosophy relies on coercive power by some imperfect human beings over other likewise imperfect beings.
The ideas of 1776 and 1787 were based on another powerful idea.
“The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe, the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”- (John F. Kennedy - 1961 Inaugural)
"Ideas have consequences." - Weaver
One idea led to freedom, opportunity, productivity and plenty for more people than ever had been experienced in the history of civilization. That idea relied upon a Creator-people-government arrangement.
The "other" idea has failed in every society in which it has been implemented, because it relies on a government-over-people arrangement.
"Tyranny is a poor provider. It knows neither how to accumulate, nor how to extract." -Edmund Burke
Well said, lover of liberty. ;-) We need to get on a whole different track; the America we live in now is not what the founders had in mind at all.
It's not a free speech issue. It was only a free speech issue when Mayors Bloomberg and Emanuel asserted that they were going to deny permits to CF in their cites. That's an unconstitutional violation of the 1st amendment because it's government action. Here it's just a private protest. No different than us saying we're not going to support a musical artist whose politics we don't agree with.