The Plan to Erase Conservatives, Censorship is Just the First Step

I do not agree with a word you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

Thus began the first words I spoke to my young eighth grade students as we began a unit on American government during the 2009-10 school year. These words, often ascribed to the French writer and philosopher, Voltaire, were actually written by Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her biography of Voltaire. To reinforce the concept of the quote, and to help students understand how powerful our first amendment right of freedom of speech was, I provided a couple of examples of reprehensible speech and action protected by this amendment. One example I gave regarded a scenario in which neo-Nazis could actually plan and conduct a march in their local community should they choose to do so. The other example was of individuals burning the American flag as a form of freedom of expression. My students were understandably horrified by both examples. Explaining that I, too, would be horrified by both situations, these were, nonetheless, forms of speech protected by the first amendment.

My, how far we have fallen as a nation in just ten short years. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that leftists on college campuses haven’t tried to abridge freedom of speech by enacting speech codes and free speech zones in decades prior to the new millennia. It’s just that from 2016-present (the Trump years), those on the left seem to be spiraling out of control whenever they encounter anyone who does not agree with them. I must admit, I never took them seriously. Chuckling to myself, I would wonder how these snowflakes were going to survive in the “real world.” Little did I know that what was being birthed on university campuses would grow into the monster we see today, devouring conservatives, libertarians, and Christians alike—in fact, anyone who resists groupthink.

The Left Comes After Conservatives Over LGBTQ Issues

Here’s a case in point. In 2013, the owners of Sweet Cakes, a bakery (since closed) in Oregon City, refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple’s wedding. Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners, explained that baking the cake for the wedding would not align with their Christian views. One could argue that cake decorating, like painting or sculpting, is a form of expression. Therefore, how could one force an artist/baker to create something if they did not desire to do so. In addition, how could anyone force someone to participate in an act that violated their sacred beliefs. Both concepts are covered in the first amendment to the Constitution.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

One might think the first amendment to the Constitution would have been upheld, but unfortunately, the Oregon Bureau of Labor found that the Kleins had violated a 2007 state law protecting LGBTQ individuals. The owners of the bakery tried to fight the ruling in court, but were ordered to pay the lesbian couple emotional distress damages in 2015. The Kleins’ appeal in 2017, arguing that their first amendment rights had been violated, were rebuffed by the Oregon Court of Appeals, which ordered them to pay the couple $135,000. The couple—who long since had to close their bakery—finally were vindicated in 2019 by the Supreme Court, but at what cost?

Many conservatives and Christians lamented the Kleins’ ordeal, myself included, but WE DID NOTHING.

A similar situation happened in 2012 to Chick-fil-a, a fast food restaurant chain owned by Dan Cathy. He had previously made public remarks about opposing same sex marriage and had donated millions to Christian organizations like the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, both of whom also oppose same sex marriage. As a result, LGBTQ activists led protests against the food chain and boycotted several restaurants. However, conservatives and Christians stepped up in support of Chick-fil-a, leading a counter “buycott” which former Governor Mike Huckabee called Chick-fil-a Appreciation Day. Thousands, nation-wide, stepped up to support Cathy.

Unfortunately, Dan Cathy has since stopped donating to the two Christian organizations due to the negative press which resulted in at least one of its restaurants closing in the UK. What is both ironic and sad is that the Salvation Army actually helps many LGBTQ individuals every day.   According to a spokesman for the company, “We serve more than 23 million individuals a year, including those in the LGBTQ community. In fact, we believe we are the largest provider of poverty relief to the LGBTQ population.” As Rush Limbaugh often says, liberals always produce the exact opposite of their intended goals.  At least conservatives fought back in this instance and flummoxed the leftists and their mainstream media lapdogs who are used to weak and ineffectual conservatives and Christians.

In yet another example of the left silencing anyone who does not march lockstep to the preferred dogma of the LGBTQ community, Brendan Eich, inventor of JavaScript and CEO of Mozilla was pushed out of his leadership position in 2014.  What was his crime?  He dared to contribute $1000 to a proposition in California (where he resides) which aimed to maintain the definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman.  His situation was also one of the first instances of doxing.  That is another technique leftists use to silence people on the right.  In essence, doxing is the act of releasing the physical address, the email address, and the phone number of their target, so activists can bully them into silence.  It worked in this case.

The Left Calls on its Thug Base to Harass Conservatives

During President Trump’s four years in office, with orders from congressional members like Maxine Waters, leftist activists engaged in a war on anyone serving in Trump’s administration and all Trump supporters.  Let’s recall what Representative Waters said.

That’s right.  Because Maxine Waters’ preferred candidate didn’t win the presidency in 2016 and she didn’t like the President’s policies, she called for mob action to bully and silence conservatives. Can anyone say hate speech?

In yet more attempts to silence individuals on the right, leftist anarchists have mobbed Republican members of congress, officials serving in the Trump administration, and conservative news hosts . These thugs often were incited to do violence by many on the left, including Democrat congressional members and the mainstream media who have applauded their efforts.  Here’s a disturbing example of left wing goons trying to intimidate Rand Paul and other Republicans attending President Trump’s closing speech at the Republican National Convention.

But, in what could only be called political jujitsu, Democrats ALWAYS project onto their enemies their nefarious actions.  That’s how, after the summer of Hell where BLM and Antifa lit cities and businesses on fire in chaotic riots, Democrats are able to call what happened at the White House on January 6th sedition.  The world is indeed upside down.

A Quick Review

Let’s review.  The left has used boycotts, lawsuits, doxing, and mob justice to intimidate individuals on the right to either agree with them about issues or suffer termination of employment, public shaming, physical assault, loss of revenue, or loss of a business. Hmmm.  I remember a time when people who disagreed politically would engage in robust debate and walk away with a greater understanding of an issue or simply agree to disagree.  

The Left Purges Conservatives From Social Media

Well, at least we can vent with likeminded people on social media, right?  Nope. During the four years Donald Trump was in office, Facebook and Twitter made a concerted effort to silence the President by suspending his accounts or adding a tag on posts calling his claims false. The same thing happened to conservatives on these two platforms; that’s why I deleted my account on Facebook over a year ago. That was bad enough, but it’s getting so much worse now.

The leftist tech giants today are waging an all out war on anyone and anything conservative.  For example, after the January 6th melee on the capitol, Twitter and Facebook didn’t just suspend the former President’s accounts; they banned him from their platforms.  However, that wasn’t enough for these digital bullies.  Amazon Web Services–a subsidiary of Amazon– quickly moved to deny web hosting to Twitter’s competitor, Parler, a site which many conservatives flocked to since its inception in 2018 because of its stance on allowing free speech on their platform.  Gosh, what a novel idea!

In conjunction with the denial of web hosting by Amazon, the Apple store and Google Play store took down Parler’s app.  That might seem insignificant to many, but most young people interact with social media via their phones, not their computers where old timers like me do.  It was plain to see the tech giants were engaged in total war.  For the uninitiated, Britannica defines total war as, “a military conflict in which the contenders are willing to make any sacrifices in lives and other resources to obtain a complete victory.”  Although this is not a military excursion, the notion that Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are willing to sacrifice anything to be rid of all conservatives is mind boggling.  Indeed, according to PJ Media, Facebook and Twitter have lost a combined $51.2 billion in market value since banning Donald Trump from their platforms. 

What Can Conservatives Do to Preserve the First Amendment

What can we, as conservatives, do to the digital media that is trying to crush our thoughts and opinions?  We can begin by closing our Facebook and Twitter accounts as many have already done. Next, we must search for alternatives.  The following are sites very similar to Twitter, in that you may express your opinion, and upload videos and pictures to share:  Codias, Gab, ProAmericaOnly, Minds, Telegram, Signal, Spreely, and MeWe. There are also social media sites strictly for Christians like MyFaith, FaithSocial, and Social Cross. Unfortunately, however, for those of you who just want to share photos with family and friends, only one site appears similar to Facebook:  FreedomBook.  Alas, if any of these sites are hosted by left-wing activists who begin to see a significant increase in subscribers to these alternate sites, they will just de-platform them as they did to Parler.  These new social media sites must work quickly and diligently to build their own servers and host their own sites–if they have enough money, that is.  Startups seldom have extra cash lying around, and that’s what these “techno-opolies” are counting on.

Regarding Google and its subsidiary, YouTube, there are also options.  I use DuckDuckGo rather than Google when searching the Internet simply because I want to deny Google any possible revenue they might gain by tracking my searches.  DuckDuckGo promises private searches and tracker blocking.  Likewise, Rumble offers an option to YouTube, but is a new company, hence the lack of videos until it builds its library and subscribers.

Why You Should Ditch Amazon

What about Amazon?  You know, the company that has raked in billions during the pandemic shutdowns.  In a July 2020 Forbes article, readers learned that Amazon made $570 billion since the beginning of these forced governmental house arrests.  That was July; I wonder how much more money they’ve made since summer.  I, too, have loved the convenience of shopping online, having items delivered within two days, getting free shipping, and watching a plethora of movies provided by their streaming service.  But, after Amazon de-platformed Parler, my husband and I cancelled our Amazon Prime account.  Hey, I never said it was going to be easy, but if we want to win this battle regarding the trampling of our first amendment rights, we must act NOW. 

A search of options–should you decide to drop your Amazon Prime account–yielded these results:  E-bay, although an auction site, allows buyers to purchase items immediately with a “buy now” button.  Some items are listed by manufacturers at great prices, and many offer free shipping.  Overstock is another site familiar to most; you can opt for a yearly $19.95 membership which offers free shipping and 5% back on every purchase as well as free returns and price matching. For those techies in your life, Newegg might be the answer.  They have a price match guarantee and three day free shipping commitment. If you are serious about making sure our first amendment right of freedom of speech remains intact, you need to seriously contemplate ditching Amazon Prime.

The Left Wants You Destroyed

For some, what you’re reading might seem silly and perhaps an overreaction to the censorship of conservatives.  If that’s you, think about this.  Students at Harvard University are demanding the university revoke Kaleigh McEnany’s law degree. (In case you’ve been living under a rock, Kaleigh McEnany was former President Trump’s press secretary.)To these radicals, if you’re not espousing their views, you must not have a means of making money in America.  They want you erased, destroyed, cancelled.  

Books are Dangerous?

Consider Josh Hawley, the first senator to side with Representative Mo Brooks’ view that voting irregularities should have been examined before the slate of electors from each state were counted.  For that crime, Simon & Schuster decided not to honor the contract to publish the senator’s new book entitled The Tyranny of Big Tech. Dana Canedy, the head of Simon & Schuster explained, “I do think there has to be a fine line between books that inform the reader about different perspectives, that maybe open them up to a way of thinking about the world or an issue in ways that they haven’t, and that work that’s dangerous or somehow doesn’t add public value, if you will.” 

You heard that right.  Some ideas are just too dangerous for public consumption.  Interestingly, that’s what the book burners in Nazi Germany thought.  Here is a list of some classic books burned because they were too risky for the German population to read: The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, The Time Machine by H.G. Wells, The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, The Call of the Wild by Jack London. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.  Who decides in a free country what is too dangerous for consumers to read?  

And, as if that weren’t enough, according to a Los Angeles Times January 15th article this year, novelist Barry Lyga has penned a letter entitled No Book Deals for Traitors.  The letter is an attempt to intimidate publishers from making any book deals with Donald Trump or any officials from his administration, and 250 authors, agents, editors, and other publishing professionals have signed it. So, rather than censoring a book after it is written (which is bad enough), these leftist activists are attempting to “kill the baby before it’s even born.”  That shouldn’t be surprising to any of us since Democrats are the party of abortion on demand.

They Can Drop Your Insurance

Like Josh Hawley, Curt Schilling, former Boston Red Sox pitcher and current conservative commentator on BlazeTV, has felt the wrath of the left. Recently AIG dropped his medical insurance coverage because of his social media comments.  Schilling explained that he will be fine because of his wealth, but has warned that this is not a “one off.”  These are the tactics that left-leaning businesses will be using to silence conservatives.

The Left Wants to De-program You

Still haven’t convinced you?  Maybe this will do the trick.  Last week, speaking at a town hall event, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (AOC) spoke about the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump, calling them white supremacists. She stated that healing was possible, but “we need to double, triple, or quadruple the funding to de-radicalize brainwashed white supremacists.” Likewise, Katie Couric, the intellectual giant of journalism, had this to say about Trump supporters.

Similarly, a Twitter thread from shortly after the Presidential election asking how to deprogram 75 million Trump supporters, yielded the following sentiments. “Reeducation camps for those salvageable,” said one person. “Firing squads for irredeemable malcontents. Round up entire families to ensure the disease doesn’t spread,” stated another. And, the pièce de’ résistance was this response: “1) The FCC should revoke Fox News’ license. 2) Remove radio talk show hosts from the airwaves through rigorous application of the hate speech laws. 3) Send free newspapers to schools so kids can be exposed to the truth. 4) Free college tuition for all.” This is chilling and reminiscent of the gulags in the USSR and the current re-education camps in Communist China today.

A Final Thought

To sum up, Democrats, leftist activists, and the mainstream media all want to forcefully attempt to change how people think and speak politically. They don’t want to unite; they want you to agree with their policies and political views.  If you don’t, they will censor you, de-platform you, boycott you, sue you, drive you out of your job, physically assault you, take away your university degree, not allow you to publish books, deprive you of conservative social media, radio, and television programs, round you up and place you in re-education camps.  And if that doesn’t work, they want you executed by firing squads.  

Friends, we are living George Orwell’s 1984. We can no longer just be content to live quiet lives.  We must take a stand.  The Bible exhorts us to “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.” Given all that you now have been made aware, I will leave you to ponder the words of George Washington, our first president.

If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.