Fine Lines Or Battle Lines?

     It’s gratifying to note how much attention Patrice Stanton’s short piece on “Free Speech & Fine Lines” has received. Truly, the ability to depict a conflict in a visual form has more impact than any number of words. But for some of us, your humble commentator most emphatically included, words are all we have...which might be a good thing:

     I damn sure didn’t go to war for this country twice to come home and be told by a bunch of homely chicks with daddy issues, effete literary fops scandalized by the notion of resistance to Third World pathologies, and nimrod sons of politicians playing at journalism what I can and can’t say. And I don’t think most Americans are ready to have everything they speak, write, or think perused for possible hate criminality by these same goose-stepping creeps.

     We’d rather die than “live” on our knees, begging permission to exercise the right God gave us to say whatever we damn well please, whenever we damn well please, and in the manner we damn well please. And those who want to shut us up better be equally committed if they want to succeed.

     After Garland, they went too far. They showed their hand and their goal, a world where they decide who gets to say what. Imagine the same hysterical social justice drama queens who shriek about microaggressions getting to decide what you can and can’t say. Just understand, you fascist bastards, that if you want to be Nazis, you’ll need to do what the Nazis did and find some armed thugs – yeah, I’m using the word “thugs” whether you like it or not – to come stop us. Tell them to wear Kevlar.

     Please read the entire column. Then multiply it by 100,000,000. That’s roughly the magnitude of the reaction against the sort of vilification that’s been heaped on Pamela Geller...for holding a cartoon-drawing contest.

     The Left’s cat’s-paws in the media may have finally gone too far. But let’s not leave it there, shall we? Let’s take a broader look at the “progressive” campaign against freedom of expression.

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     “You got to use all your weapons.” -- Jim Bouton

     The Left understands Bouton’s insight. The Right does not...at least, we don’t often behave as if we do.

     The Left’s attack on freedom of expression is multi-pronged:

1. Legal: By “lawfare” suits against persons who express views inimical to its aims.
2. Financial: Through boycotts and threats of boycotts against the representatives of viewpoints it disapproves.
3. Ostracism: Through thunderous media denunciations of such representatives.
4. Deceitful: By slandering or libeling those whose statements it disapproves.
5. Tendentious: By carefully choosing words and phrases that misdirect one’s attention.
6. Physical: Through actual campaigns of destruction and physical intimidation.
7. Victim-Blaming: By recasting atrocities as somehow the fault of those attacked (e.g., the attack on Pamela Geller as “her fault” for “baiting” radical Muslims).

     Not every tactic works on every occasion, but the multiplicity of them is sufficient to intimidate, even paralyze, quite a few people with important things to say – things that must be said. If you can be made to feel that all of society’s “big guns” are aimed at you, you can be induced to self-censor, and those must-be-saids might just go unsaid.

     However, if they continue to be said, even by a tiny minority of the un-cowed, anger at the Left’s suppressive tactics will build. So the Left’s agenda depends on achieving total success...and fortunately for these United States, that has proved impossible.

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     A few months back, the following sequence of simple drawings was used to dramatize the Left’s attack on our right to keep and bear arms:

     I submit that the Left has sought to apply a similar progression to freedom of expression, albeit not principally by legal means. Yes, their mouthpieces – including the evil bastard in the White House – have railed against the Citizens United decision, but short of a Constitutional amendment effectively repealing the First one, they’ll get nowhere with that. Their campaign against freedom of expression has mainly used “political correctness:” an attempt to get us to self-censor by disapproving of us so stridently that we become convinced that we’re being naughty.

     Mind you, these are the same people who praise “art” such as “Piss Christ” and “plays” such as The Vagina Monologues. These are the same people who celebrated Andrea Dworkin. These are the same people who adore homosexual-activist parades that feature all manner of “transgressive” dress and conduct. These are the same people who lionize Emma Sulkowicz. When the “naughtiness” supports their agenda, they have no problem with it.

     A full-throated, utterly courageous counterattack is the only credible response. Moreover, it, too, must be multi-pronged:

1. It’s not “reproductive choice;” it’s killing babies in service to irresponsible promiscuity.
2. It’s not “transgressive sexuality;” it’s perversion on public display.
3. It’s not “social justice;” it’s demands by good-for-nothings for what they refuse to earn.
4. It’s not “environmentalism;” it’s a back-door attack on capitalism by closeted socialists.
5. It’s not “anti-racism;” it’s black hatred for and violence against whites.

     ...and so forth. Take especial note of what Peter Berkowitz said in his recent essay on the subject:

     Nevertheless, most of the elite media—overwhelmingly left liberal—have largely neglected to cover the left's crusade against free speech. Operating out of newsrooms, as Powers observes, in which "there is nobody to push back on their biases," reporters seem unable to detect anything amiss on campuses, in the media, and in the political arena where, after all, the draconian regulation of speech is intended to serve avowedly left-wing causes.

     That deliberate averting of the eyes by the media will only break down if we resolve to break it. Now that there are alternative conduits for the news, the Main Stream Media are losing credibility, specifically because people have noticed that they won’t cover certain subjects, and will only cover certain others in a deceitful fashion. That makes it possible for us to bring them to heel, if only we’re willing to be loud enough, numerous enough, and persistent enough.

     Once the Left has lost its control of the media, all else will follow, for without media protection, its various initiatives cannot be sustained. Decent persons, heartened by the crescendo of sentiment against their schemes, will mass to wipe them out.

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     There’s a “potential well” to be dealt with here. Until enough persons find enough courage to speak openly and stridently against Leftist attempts to silence us, there won’t be enough persons to speak openly. That’s part of why I’ve kept on with this drivel for eighteen years now. Someone has to take the early risks. Someone has to expose himself, and at least act as if there’s nothing to fear. Someone must say what must be said.

     The battle lines have already been drawn. Which side are you on?