The Lies We Were Told About Who Would Silence Free Speech

Townhall ^ | 5/2/2017 | John Kass

[simpson96]

The lie we were told as kids was this: The end of American liberty would come at the hands of the political right.

Conservatives would take away our right to speak our minds, and use the power of government to silence dissent. The right would intimidate our teachers and professors, and coerce the young.

And then, with the universities in thrall, with control of the apparatus of the state (and the education bureaucracy), the right would have dominion over a once-free people.

Some of us were taught this in school. Others, who couldn't be bothered to read books, were fed a cartoon version of the diabolical conservative in endless movies and TV shows. The most entertaining of these were science fiction, sometimes with vague references to men in brown shirts and black boots goose-stepping in some future time.

Women would become handmaids, subjugated and turned into breeders. And men would be broken as well. The more lurid fantasies offered armies of Luddites in hooded robes, hunting down subversives for the greater good.

But the lie is obvious now, isn't it?

Because it is not conservatives who coerced today's young people or made them afraid of ideas that challenge them. Conservatives did not shame people into silence, or send thugs out on college campuses to beat down those who wanted to speak.

The left did all that.

It's there in front of you, the thuggish mobs of the left killing free speech at American universities. The thugs call themselves antifas, for anti-fascists.

[RGF]

Didn’t they start it when they changed National Socialism (Nazis) into “right wing”? It’s about as far from right wing as anything else.

[Bogie]

It can come from anywhere.

Free speech is a problem for any organization or ideology.

[V_TWIN]

The left is very adept at deceptively accusing their enemies of doing what THEY are actually doing. An old trick in their book.

[buckalfa]

Early 1960’s in reverse?

[Kid Shelleen]

Any honest student of American history knows "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism". (I think Huey Long said it first)

[FamiliarFace]

Yes, he left has been busy redefining the English language for years.

[simpson96]

I think part of it is calculated deception.

I also think it's often pathological, i.e. "projection".

[FamiliarFace]

He = the

[fungoking]

One of my favorite authors is the late William Manchester. His personal account of being a marine in the Pacific (Goodbye Darkness) is outstanding.
He was an unabashed liberal, a Kennedy speech writer. In his narrative history of the United States (The Glory and the Dream) he argues that the biggest threat too civil liberties has always come from the left, not the right. He was correct.

[RideForever]

Previously posted, numerous times. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3550048/posts

[ctdonath2]

The Left took on the facade of “liberal” just to get their intolerable views tolerated, shaming the center & right into letting bad ideas get equal say. Once they hit a critical mass, Leftists dropped the “liberal / tolerance / diversity” facade and revealed they’re outright totalitarians, violently suppressing anyone who disagrees.

[mikeus_maximus]

In other words, the Left are the Nazis they’ve obsessed about for decades— suppressing free speech, smashing windows, setting fires, beating people up?

Who would have thought that leftists are twisted, self-centered hypocrites. Shocker.