It Has Become About Far More than Mere Insults

There simply is no bigger fight for the Right today than the fight to save the First Amendment and America from the totalitarian Left.

Ironically, I first noticed the “insults come with the territory” reality at Ohio State during law school. The law school student paper put out an awards issue at the end of our last year. Among other awards, I won “Most Likely to Kick a Homeless Person on the Ground.” You may wonder what I did to “earn” that award, as at the time I was one of the few students volunteering my time on the board of a local arts group heavily involved in community outreach efforts. As my class’s most visible conservative—I served as President of the law school chapter of The Federalist Society—I earned the award simply because everyone knew, at least the Leftists who ran the paper knew, conservatives, especially evil Federalist Society members, mistreat homeless people. Kicking homeless people is sport for us, right?

Later, on a date, upon learning about my political ideology, my date stated she couldn’t be a Republican because she “believed in helping people.” Forget for a moment that year-after-year the Internal Revenue Service data shows conservatives donate far more to charity than liberals, but few groups are more heavily engaged in helping people than conservative religious groups. Conservatives have always believed in the power of a community hand down, rather than a government hand out, and that most people face obstacles in their lives in which a helping hand is needed. The “conservative as Ebenezer Scrooge” narrative, however, is a deeply embedded one.

During the debates over public sector collective bargaining in 2011, John Gage, President of the American Federation of Government Employees, referred to conservatives who opposed collective bargaining for government workers as “mentally retarded.” Did elected Democrats or the media castigate Gage for the offensive and inappropriate slur? Of course not, slurs are okay so long as they are uttered about conservatives (see “Uncle Tom” in reference to any black conservative).

And, who can forget how the U.S. Department of Justice targeted parents as “terrorists” who simply showed up at school board meeting to voice their concerns with the obscene material being placed in front of their young children, the genderless bathroom policies putting girls at risk, and the wholesale politicization of the classroom? For years, conservatives have had to tell their kids to hide their political views in high school and college, so their liberal teachers and professors didn’t unfairly give them poor grades. We also have to mask our kids’ activities on college applications to hide any hint of Right views lest risk them getting denied purely based on the left-wing politics of the typical college admission counselors. We know it happens.

Even when we just want to check-out and be entertained, we have to overlook insults. The last two theater performances I attended involved ad lib moments in which Donald Trump and his supporters were denounced. The first came during a production of Giacomo Puccini’s “La Boheme” and the second at a performance of the Broadway musical, “Hairspray.” Like the other conservatives in the audience, I just rolled me eyes, as we conservatives are used to the jabs. Having spent time on the boards of arts groups, which are perpetually desperate for funding, those groups might want to realize that a good chunk of their audience might be more inclined to donate if they didn’t get insulted every time they spend their hard-earned money on a ticket.

Why does any of this matter?

It matters because what used to be mere insults based on caricature has become the pervasive and overt canceling and suppression of conservatives and their voices by the Left, the media, Big Tech, the entertainment industry, and the Deep State. Even the sports industry joins this mob when it goes after conservative athletes and coaches who fight back against biological men competing against women or simply refuse to kneel during America’s National Anthem. They’ve even gone after young men who merely support law enforcement by carrying a flag.

With the revelations over the last two weeks from Elon Musk’s disclosure of Twitter documents, we now know with certainty what we suspected about shadow-banning, banned accounts, and suppression of the Right over the last six years. We also know how these nefarious actors used the murky cloak of “disinformation” to hide information harmful to the Left’s electoral chances. In case-after-case, Twitter bigwigs in close coordination with Deep State actors at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence acted to hurt the Right and help the Left. I’m not aware yet of one case in which their actions helped the Right and hurt the Left. You can bet if it happened at Twitter, it was and is happening at Facebook, YouTube, and other social media apps.

When our Founding Fathers wrote the First Amendment, they didn’t limit its application to just one side of the political spectrum. In fact, given the robust debate that appeared in newspapers across the colonies on the proposed Constitution which ultimately led to the enactment of the Bill of Rights containing the First Amendment, it is clear they deemed all political speech, even speech they vehemently disagreed with, as vital to America. They would be appalled at how government actors and their acolytes in the media, Big Tech, and elsewhere have tried to silence the Right.

Look, we conservatives can handle the insults and slights that come with being a conservative. We must, however, draw the line at the pernicious silencing, suppression, and disinformation by the Left and its hack allies that is rampant in America today, as well as the weaponization of the justice system against conservatives. America rests on the knife’s edge of rule by a Wilsonian elite who look down upon at least half the country or rule by “we the people” as intended by our Founding Fathers. We the people can’t rule when government controls who gets heard and what gets publicized.

There simply is no bigger fight for the Right today than the fight to save the First Amendment and America from the totalitarian Left.