On Free Speech

Free speech does not really exist in America.
Or at least, it might, but woe to one who offends the political or social sensibility of another group.
The degree by which people are trying to coerce and limit what one can say and believe is becoming tantamount to infringing on free speech. It is becoming a de facto limitation on the First Amendment right.
The traditional teaching we give kids in school is the First Amendment was written in the Bill of Rights by the Founding Fathers to protect the press, religious groups, the public in their desire to say what they held dear without fear of persecution, and so forth.
Supreme Court findings since set limits only so far as a person may not jump up in a crowded theater and shout "Fire!" when there is none, causing fear and panic. Nor may one willfully slander or knowingly make untrue or malicious statements.
But what we are finding today is that because of the ideological diversity in this country, groups and individuals are developing sensibilities so exclusive, that they judge other groups utterly offensive and intolerable.
I speak of so-called political correctness.
The term describes people with either an overt, or inadvertent social sensibility and essentially, an agenda to attempt to legislate morality. It is a mental paradigm that in recent decades – if not merely recent years – has developed outside the traditional Judeo-Christian heritage, or at least beyond traditional long-held American values.
Without getting into specific case examples here, let me just make reference to the fact that people cannot say certain things they may believe without fear of repercussions.
Even if their intent is unmalicious, and they mean no harm, they may be forced to keep silent.
The thought police – i.e., politically correct people – are making this the case by manipulating this society by every means available.
Conditions today:
You can be fired from a job for expressing certain views.
You can be censured by co-workers for expressing certain views or values.
You can lose your girlfriend or wife as the case may be. Or women may have their man leave them too.
This is really a subset problem, if you will, of the greater overall divisiveness in this country.
We are in a shake-out, and who knows where we are really heading ideologically.
Never mind politically, or economically or militarily.
Sticking just with ideology, we are at a point where Big Brother is watching you.
If you have values that find the lifestyle or beliefs of someone else in your community as abominable (and I do not overstate the case), or otherwise wrong, then you had just better keep it to yourself.
This is the lesson being learned – and enforced here in the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.
There are those out there who make it their aim to accept and make way for that other person's lifestyle or beliefs you find personally offensive and against your values, and they will go after you if you say otherwise.
It is getting so we cannot agree on any values.
All values are ultimately OK. Or are they?
Sure, as long as you kowtow, and make yourself as benign and non-controversial on key sensitive subjects as possible.
In other words:
If a person wants to hold office, they better line up.
If they want to keep their job, they better not buck the trend.
If they want to continue to do business, they better shut up.
This is a description of a coercive state of affairs; a chilling effect on true liberty.
It may not mean to be that way, but the tremendous irony is that the so-called "love everyone, exclude no-one" types are in fact excluding and shutting down others who may not feel the way they do.
Their actions go beyond "invalidating" people on the other side of the ideological fence. They are actively pushing their right-think agenda in an effectively brutal manner.
Keep going on this track, and you have a recipe for a totalitarian society.
When you start writing laws to enforce one brand of morality at the expense of perhaps an equally viable, but unpopular morality, that is where we are heading.
Now that is, ironic, folks!
Could mental subservience result from the misguided enforcers of freedom?
The ones proclaiming acceptance are doing it in a way that is approaching thought control by definition, and the trend is not reversing, it is gaining momentum.
The message: free speech is free, so long as you agree with me.