Yesterday Mr. D posted on what any conservative more than five minutes old has learned, which is conservatives are not allowed to have certain thoughts. And, a couple days ago I posted on an irony I’ve longed noticed on the Left, that they view themselves as tolerant and open and decry attempts to enforce, as they see it, conformity, yet they themselves are wholly intolerant when faced with opposing viewpoints.
All this reminded me of a friend of mine from my school daze. He’s a genuinely gentle and nice fellow, but he’s of the Leftist persuasion.
He posted this on facebook awhile back, before the election, and the resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I believe that the most valuable ideal is kindness.<\/p>
I believe that all people, regardless of ethnicity, race, religious belief
or non-belief, political alignment, sexual orientation and status in life
are deserving of respect.<\/p>I’m not perfect in embracing this next ideal but I do my best. It’s all
about having an open mind. I may not agree with the political positions,
religious beliefs, or phobias of others but I do my best to listen to and
respect others.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\nThen, pulling a 12-G turn, he posted this awhile later…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am tired of listening to you all! And now I ask that if you truly believe
that we are better off under the current President, if you believe that we
don\u2019t need stricter laws and bans of certain guns, and\/or if you have or
intend to disparage the young people of March for Our Lives\u2026then please
unfriend me now and save me the trouble of having to do so myself, which I already have done for some others.<\/p>I no longer have the patience to listen to you.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
The resulting tongue baths from other lefty friends were what you’d expect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
You’d think the cognitive dissonance would be strong enough to render a tiny tear in the fabric of space-time. Fortunately, all Leftist hardware comes with a special “the Left is always right” filter factory-installed, and this filter smooths out any wild fluctuations in the logic circuits.
I long ago lost any hope that the Right could simply present the better argument and out-debate the Left while standing on our respective soap boxes in Hyde Park, or Central Park, or Whatever Park. My guiding philosophy has been replaced by this warning from The Terminator<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\nListen, and understand. That terminator [the Left] is out there. It can\u2019t be bargained with. It can\u2019t be reasoned with. It doesn\u2019t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
David French came up in the discussion of Mr. D’s post. He has this article in The Atlantic<\/a>, where he is now a contributor. (Note: if you’re the acceptable House Conservative for a joint that got rid of Kevin Williamson for WrongThink, you’re doing something wrong.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The American right has lost the plot on free speech. The passage of Florida\u2019s House Bill 1557, which bans \u201cclassroom instruction\u201d on \u201csexual orientation and gender identity\u201d in kindergarten through third grade and in a manner that isn\u2019t \u201cage appropriate or developmentally appropriate\u201d in all grades, K\u201312, is merely the latest in a string of what the free-speech-advocacy organization PEN America has called \u201ceducation gag orders\u201d that have been proposed by Republicans and passed by red-state legislatures from coast to coast.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Never mind that French looks to PEN America, a standard-issue Lefty advocacy group, as the authority on what “free speech” is. How French got so far off the beam as to conflate “parents objecting to the sexualization of young children in public schools” with “stifling free speech” is mind-boggling. It is far beyond just a righteous Never Trump knee spasm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The right is now in the process of unlearning liberty. After decades of litigation and legislation, it largely gained what it wanted: a much more free marketplace of ideas. But it is difficult for a commitment to liberty to survive partisan animosity. If you hate or fear your opponents enough, it is hard to resist the siren song of using raw state power to silence their voices.<\/p>
Yet censorship is inconsistent with American pluralism. Speech codes and book bans undermine one of the core purposes of American education. We send our kids to school not just to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, but to learn how to be citizens in a liberal democracy, and a core value of that democracy is a commitment to free speech\u2014for me and for thee.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
It wasn’t all that long ago we would never have imagined that the barricades would be formed by piling up desks at the front of the classroom, but that is where we are. We don’t send our kids to school to be indoctrinated. We are not powerless, doomed to let any radical walk into that classroom and say what they want in the guise of “free speech”. If French is unwilling to defend what is right, and Right, then we’ll have a quick graveside service, close the wall up with our fallen conservative apostates and fight on. French wrings his hands over the use of the word “grooming.” I’m with Kurt Schlichter<\/a> on this one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
See, it\u2019s important that you not use undeniably accurate terms to describe our enemies because by doing so you may convey truthful information that hurts liberals and, according to our conservative cruise ship betters, that\u2019s not who we are. Well, that\u2019s certainly not who they are, because if there\u2019s one thing they simply cannot accept it is victory. And that includes victory over perverts who what to chat up your young \u2018uns in kindergarten.<\/p>
Accordingly, we are not supposed to call groomers \u201cgroomers\u201d anymore because people draw the right conclusions when we do, and that certainly will not do.<\/p>
If there\u2019s anything the failurecons, who constitute a concentric circle with the Never Trump sissies, hate is winning. And we are winning the world\u2019s easiest argument by taking the position that molesters and those excusing and facilitating them are bad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
To the barricades!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday Mr. D posted on what any conservative more than five minutes old has learned, which is conservatives are not allowed to have certain thoughts. And, a couple days ago I posted on an irony I’ve longed noticed on the Left, that they view themselves as tolerant and open and decry attempts to enforce, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273926,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,24,309],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-culture-war","category-indoctrinate-u"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/273926"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81513"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81539,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81513\/revisions\/81539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}