It’s hard to keep up with the left these days. It seems, every morning I get up to learn they’ve been busy overnight trying to warp Americans’ views of President Trump and his supporters in so many sleazy ways: falsely accusing him of being responsible for Obama-era photographs comes to mind. Berating and demonizing his constitutionally sworn law enforcers for enforcing American law is another.
It seems I have to prepare myself for what they’re doing today to restrict my liberty and run my life. Sometimes I feel like a top hat, thimble, or a shoe on the left’s Monopoly board. They want my guns, they want my speech, and it seems, now, they’re coming after my thoughts through leftist-defined “hate-speech.” Do not pass go; do not collect…
The left has an unfair advantage because the media and academia are on their side, and they’re always on the political offensive. On Father’s Day weekend, I went to the annual Northwest Microbrew Festival with my family. During my captivity in long lines of fellow beer enthusiasts, signature gatherers for all sorts of leftist causes barraged attendees: clean air and water (because the right doesn’t want clean air and water, right?), a carbon tax, and “gun safety.” Why won’t they just put gun confiscation on their signs? At least, that’s honest.
On the other hand, the right, conservatives, libertarians, and Republicans are constantly playing catchup or are on defense. I had a Boston Red Sox hat on at the time I was approached and couldn’t help but tell one man-bunned, face-pierced signature collector, “In Boston, we like our ‘dirty water!’ ”
This popular culture disparity in the left and right’s political quivers seems to occur because the left is never satisfied with how much progress the nation has made or how good things are in America, especially when compared with the past evils that, thank God, we’ve eradicated. When they look at America, they don’t see good; they don’t see greatness; they don’t see exceptionalism; they envision something else. Don’t ask them what, exactly, they want. They just know it’s not this America.
After the compromises of the original Constitution, the inequitable status of certain groups, including blacks, non-property-owning white men, certain religious minorities, all women, indentured servants, American Indians and, later, Hispanics, Chinese, etc., we fixed those necessary concessions to the realities of the times and said good riddance.
Still, the left doesn’t seem to care much for the America of our founding, not even the ideals to which the American experiment aspires, not even after mending the faults mentioned above; that’s clear. Even after the American people had eradicated the evils of slavery and later the Democrat-led effort to dull the edges of emancipation, they still don’t appreciate what they have. They don’t get it, the miracle that happened here.
Lefties seem to ignore that we eventually cut away the wicked tendrils that kept large swaths of our society in a prolonged, de facto, sociocultural bondage even after the 13th Amendment was ratified, having been sanctified with the blood of some 40,000 black and 294,000 white soldiers who gave their lives for the cause.
The mainstream right is struggling to preserve what is best about America and to continue to progress toward its potential—a more perfect union. The mainstream left continues its fight to destroy the best of the American ideal dedicated to economic freedom and individual liberty. They wish to replace it with some nebulous socialist state “Utopia” unrecognizable to those who cherish freedom. Their motto: We’ll do it right, this time—socialism.
And the left is waging the war against American history and traditions in Marxist, Stalinist, and fascist ways. Today, the left is engaged in a sustained assault on traditional America. They don’t wish to live side-by-side with their fellow Americans. Instead, they wish to recreate America as a modern, in effect, slave-holding state. But this time, as with the single-payer health care system they tout, they’ll lie to the slaves, telling them they’re free (as a collective), and there will be only one slave-holder: the Party, the government.
Another unfair advantage the left has is in its regressing view of free speech. America has one group—broadly the right—who consistently speak and act in reverence of free speech, defending even speech with which they disagree. Just listen to the right-wing radio and TV pundits, guests, and callers, and you’ll see the predominate free speech sentiment among conservatives and, obviously, libertarians.
Meanwhile, leftist activists are seen everywhere trying to shut down free speech. And even if the so-called mainstream Democrats don’t overtly support them, though many do, they do so tacitly by their silence. The fascist left’s formula is to label as “hate speech” any speech with which they disagree. And they contend the U.S. Constitution does not protect so-called hate speech.
That makes no sense on its face. Why would the framers, or anyone so engaged, acknowledge a right that only protects speech with which people agree and do not find offensive? Where’s the need to protect that sort of expression? In other words, why would any political document committed to individual liberty only protect speech people agree with? They wouldn’t!
Just look at the examples: Middlebury College in Vermont shutting down a professor’s speech. How many times has Ann Coulter had to duck a pie thrown at her? How many liberal colleges and universities have rescinded invitations to speak or barred conservatives from speaking on campus? Remember the conflagration at Berkeley? Ironically, the “birthplace of free speech.”
In all my years working in one of the most protest-prone cities in America, I never, not one time, had to work a demonstration conducted by conservatives that turned violent. Never! However, in covering the riots in Berkeley, Time.com’s Katy Steinmetz, in a well-written but seemingly left-favoring article, composed an apparent attempt to show the right and left are equally at fault for the resulting violence.
She quotes one man identified as a libertarian organizer, “There is a huge faction of the right that is just like the left. They deal in absolutes. They’re outrageously angry. They need an excuse to relieve a lot of that pent-up aggression.” Why choose a quote that doesn’t come close to matching reality?
While I don’t quibble with the fact there are violence-prone people on the right, I do challenge the notion that the “faction” is “huge.” I dare anyone to use Google, Bing, Duck Duck Go, whatever search engine you prefer, to do the following: make two columns, one each for the left and the right engaging in violent demonstrations over the past two or three decades. The results won’t be remotely equal.
The same cannot be said for leftist demonstrations. I know; I was assigned to too many of them to remember them all. Most, at least in my city, and I’d bet in many others, were unpermitted, and they frequently turned violent.
Another unfair advantage is the leftist media’s promulgation of the accusation against the right of using “dog whistles” and “microaggressions,” which tends to keep those on the right off balance. How do you fight against accusations of so-called unconscious bias? You don’t know you’re biased, but you are.
Right-wing: “I am not biased.”
Left-wing: “Yes, you are, but you don’t know it.”
Right-wing: “No, I’m not!”
Left-wing: “See?”
Nifty sleight of hand, right there.
The right needs to fight back. I can’t tell you the number of conservatives, libertarians, or traditionalists who refuse to debate lefties when they spout their liberal drivel. Or they won’t wear clothing that proclaims their political leanings, such as hats, pins, patches, t-shirts, or jackets. On the other hand, how many progressive messages do you see? “Resist,” “Dump Trump,” and don’t forget those silly, pink vagina hats. (I never imagined in a million years I would use that three-word combination in any sentence.)
And while those on the right tend not to start political discussions, they should think about being prepared to counter leftist absurdity when they hear it. Oh, and a patriotic t-shirt or two can make a poignant counter-point—not to mention, it is kind of fun to watch the liberals nearly vibrate out of their skin, as their eyes widen in affront, as they absorb your “hate speech.”
Remember the microbrew festival I mentioned earlier? I was wearing a shirt that proudly displayed, “America Matters.” Several people pulled me aside and told me they liked my shirt. Most of them almost whispered it as if they were in danger of arrest if the “wrong person” heard them. What a shame any American should fear to express a peaceful opinion.
A while back, I wore a t-shirt my wife got me as a gift. On the front, it reads, “Blue Lives Matter.” On the back, there is a large Punisher logo with a vertical blue stripe through it. I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had commented about it during one of our walks (I’ve heard it before), but, on this occasion, we heard no comments. Still, the facial expressions and disgusted eye-rolls were priceless as I micro-aggressively plodded the pavement around the lake.
Now, I’m wondering what I should wear next time. I have three choices in mind for my next walk or run in the city. I have an OpsLens t-shirt that reads: “#Freedom Isn’t Free,” which, I imagine, might poke a liberal or two—because they think it is.
I also have a shirt from a local brewery that displays an image of (what the left calls) an assault rifle on front and back. Also, there is the name of the brew: AK-47 Stout. I can envision the heads exploding as we speak.
Finally, and yes, I realize this one might be kind of mean—even when it tweaks an intolerant lefty, but I can’t help myself: I have another t-shirt that seems designed to niggle even the least hostile liberal to a sensory overloaded catatonic state, leading to imminent vapor lock. I can see it now. The leftist collapses onto the side of the trail, retracts into a fetal coil, and inserts thumb firmly into mouth. Either that, or the leftist extends its talons, narrows its eyes, and then launches at me like a seahawk on a salmon.
On the back, the t-shirt reads CrossFit. Probably, no offense there. But, displayed on the front in bold letters, it reads “INFIDEL.”
