The real story of Scandinavia, the one the lunatic Left doesn’t want you to hear, is that capitalism saved it from poverty not once, but twice. The Scandinavian countries became rich in the twentieth century on a limited-government, free-market model that they abandoned to their detriment in the 1970s and ’80s. They have since rebounded by reforming their welfare programs, curbing government spending, cutting corporate tax rates, and freeing their markets with less regulation.
The move away from socialism hasn’t ended. Just as they are all over the world, conservative political parties are gaining traction in Scandinavia. This is both a recognition that even their reformed welfare states will eventually bankrupt them and a rejection of the open border policies that have brought Sweden soaring crime rates and overburdened public services.33 The Swedes, like the rest of Scandinavia, have learned from their mistakes and are reversing course.
All Socialism Is Eventually Authoritarian
“I’m the boss,” said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when confronted with criticism of her Green New Deal.34 And when you hear the Democrats standing on the debate stage spewing their socialist agenda, they’re saying the exact same thing. They want to be your boss. They’re talking about government control, the antithesis of our most important value: freedom. We cannot let this happen.
Socialism can’t be maintained without authoritarianism because it defies human nature. It is in everyone’s nature to pursue his or her individual economic interests, to pursue his or her own dreams. This is so basic a right it’s in our Declaration of Independence. The pursuit of happiness is an individual right, not a collective one, and our Founding Fathers believed it is inalienable. That means it can’t be taken away, not even by majority vote. The Declaration of Independence says the whole purpose of government is to secure this right and if it doesn’t, the people are justified in getting rid of the government, not the right.
A socialist system can get along all right temporarily, depending upon how rich the country was before it was instituted. The people don’t notice their rights being infringed because there is lots of free stuff being handed out. But as soon as the country’s wealth is depleted, and the capitalist means aren’t there to produce new wealth, the authoritarianism becomes necessary to prevent people from doing what they naturally do in tough circumstances—work hard and attempt to keep the fruits of their own labor.
This is why Venezuela is an authoritarian nightmare today. Scandinavia would likely have been the same if it didn’t turn away from socialism and make their markets even freer than ours outside of their welfare states. Bernie says, “I believe that health care is a human right, not a privilege. And I believe that there is something embarrassingly wrong when the United States of America is the only major country not to guarantee health care to all people.”35
But he doesn’t tell you the countries that have government-provided health care are in other respects freer economically than the United States, although they’d be better off freer and without the welfare programs. It is their capitalism that pays for the folly of their socialism, not the other way around.
Even within these mixed-economy systems, it is the socialist parts that are in crisis. The British system has been in place for seventy years, but just as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher warned, they have run out of other people’s money.36 Emergency room doctors in the UK told CNN people are dying in hospital hallways waiting for a room to become available.37 Canada’s system is right behind it, with government spending growing at “unsustainable rates,” according to the Canadian Fraser Institute.38 That’s not to mention the long waiting times, care rationing, and other issues that go along with letting the government run health care.
As attractive as free health care or free college might sound, there is no such thing. Should America listen to the Democrats’ siren song of socialism, our ship of state will end up wrecked on the rocky shore of bankruptcy and debt.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ghosting Conservatives
No plan to remake America would be complete without an attack on the very first freedom protected in our Bill of Rights: free speech. In Europe hate speech is prosecuted on a regular basis. The Left would very much like to bring that thinking as well as that ability to prosecute to America.
The purported reason for prosecution of hate speech is that it combats discrimination, intimidation, bullying, and violence. But in reality, these laws are often used to silence voices and to erase certain views from public consciousness.
I’ve been saying for years that hate speech, protected by the First Amendment as the United States Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled, is a term that is being used to thwart free speech that the Left does not want heard. We don’t have hate speech laws in the United States, at least not until the Left succeeds in radically amending this fundamental right.
Free speech is one of those truisms, a fundamental right that for the most part is inviolate, or at least assumed to be. Not only does the First Amendment to the United States Constitution say so, but the United States Supreme Court has affirmed this concept throughout American history. There are of course a few exceptions: the classic shouting “fire” in a crowded theater; obscenity; or call to imminent attack, such as inciting or producing lawless action—like Antifa.
The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that hate speech is specifically protected free speech. After all, why even have the First Amendment if unpopular speech can be squelched? The Court has even addressed the issue of hate, saying there is no First Amendment exception that punishes hate speech. In fact, it is broadly protected.
Those on the Left prefer to limit our free speech if someone is offended or triggered, using their own subjective definition of hate speech. The Supreme Court disagrees, ruling specifically that provocative and offensive speech—by anyone’s definition—is protected.
In Europe, however, hate speech is prosecuted on a regular basis. I interviewed Professor Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff who was prosecuted for “offending” Muslims by talking about Muhammad. Her conviction was affirmed by the European Court of Human Rights. The opinion stated Elisabeth’s “freedom of expression” infringed upon “the right of others to have their religious feelings protected.”1 So, in short, the right not to be offended when it comes to your religion trumps another person’s free speech.
I don’t really give a damn about how you feel about what I’m saying. I have a right to say it! But apparently the European court disagrees.
As this concept moves across the pond, we’re hearing from the Left that speech needs to be prohibited here if it offends others. They insist that free speech not always be protected.
You may recall on September 25, 2012, two weeks after Benghazi, President Barack Obama stood before members of the United Nations and said “the future cannot belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” I remember thinking to myself back then: What does slander have to do with the killing of four Americans? But, it was a prescient statement about where the Left, starting with Obama, wants to take the United States.
The Left’s mantra is that our free speech is the enemy of their political correctness. In other words if what we say does not jive with their view of the world, it must be suppressed and punished. But never in the history of this country has there been a balancing test weighing free speech against how others feel about that speech. There is no measuring of the harm to someone’s psyche or feelings when weighing the legality of someone’s speech. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s crazy. It is how the Left is trying to change the way we think. If people are shamed or outright prosecuted, as they are in Europe, for speech the Left feels is contrary to their worldview, then free speech is a right of the past.
Tech Giants Censor Conservatives
We haven’t gone as far as Europe in prosecuting free speech. Instead, the Left’s agenda to eliminate conservative speech has been taken up by social media giants. Near monopolies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other web search and social m
edia companies have twisted their own terms of service agreements in knots to find ways to either limit the exposure conservatives get on their platforms or ban them altogether.
Technically, this is not a First Amendment issue, as the Bill of Rights only protects us from infringement of our rights by the government. But there are still legal questions to be answered regarding this behavior. Regardless, this trend represents not only a danger to our free society, but a glimpse of what the Left would like the government to do in terms of limiting conservative speech.
In the beginning, the Left went after obvious targets—people everyone could get behind hating. They took down the conservative provocateurs and conspiracy theorists who spread outrageous ideas that not only misinformed the public, but also were in fact unnecessarily offensive to many people.
These fringe figures were banned because they had engaged in what people at Twitter consider “harassment,” although they did not physically hurt anyone or attempt to incite violence. I don’t think anyone was too upset to see them go. They were the kind of people who are always the first to be singled out when freedom is being assaulted—people whom no one will miss.
So said German pastor Martin Niemöller, who gave lectures in the years before World War II. This was when the Nazis were just beginning to burn books, destroy works of art, and decide who in Germany had the right to free speech and who did not.
“First they came for the socialists,” Niemöller said, “and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”2
If Niemöller were here in the United States today, he might say, “First, they came for the extremists.” The pattern is eerily familiar. Already, the Left has moved from banning fringe figures to people who articulate mainstream, previously uncontroversial conservative positions.
In other words, they are coming for anyone who opposes their radical plan to remake America, and they are doing it out in the open.
They came for YouTube commentator Steven Crowder, whose show Louder with Crowder goes out live on YouTube to about three million people. In May 2019, Crowder got into an online argument with Carlos Maza, a commentator for far-Left Vox. Crowder used a few words he probably shouldn’t have and Maza fired right back. At one point in the exchange, while on a kind of comedic run, Crowder called Maza, who is gay, a “lispy queer.”
Should he have said that? Probably not, and had he said it in my presence I would have let him know it. But did it violate YouTube’s terms of service? According to YouTube, no, it did not.
Right after the incident, the company released a statement saying that it would not suspend Crowder’s account because he hadn’t encouraged anyone to harass or commit acts of violence against Maza or anyone else. But being the crazed Leftist he is, Maza refused to accept the company’s judgment about what it does and does not allow on its platform.
Within a few days, he and his followers on Twitter had organized a boycott against YouTube and posted a message online to the company’s mostly liberal employees. The message read, in part, “YouTube has decided to side with the people who made our lives miserable in high school. It’s decided to use the platform you’ve helped create in order to arm bigots and bullies with massive megaphones. Why do you stick around? What are you going to do about it?”3
In that situation, only one person was acting like a bully, and it wasn’t Steven Crowder. It was the lunatic liberal journalist who thinks he can silence people just because they’re mean to him. Maza had every right to disagree with Crowder, to tell Crowder his comments were homophobic or at least in poor taste, if meant as humor. He had every right to refuse to associate with Crowder. But he didn’t have the right to silence him, which is what he tried to do.
As is usually the case, YouTube caved to the pressure and “demonetized” Steven Crowder’s account. This means that although he would still be allowed to broadcast his show, he wouldn’t make any money from it. This was a clear-cut case of the liberal mob getting its way, bullying a company into submission with the kind of tactics we haven’t seen in this country since the Salem Witch Trials.
First, they came for the conspiracy theorists, then they came for the off-color, somewhat offensive commentators like Crowder. Did it stop there? Of course not.
When Laura Loomer, a conservative activist who broadcasts her views primarily through Twitter, criticized Representative Ilhan Omar for being “anti-Jewish,” she was banned from Twitter for hate speech. Loomer is an extremely bright, quick-witted millennial, who tears into anything she sees as un-American or anti-Semitic, consequences be damned. Having been banned from social media, she is suing Twitter, Facebook, and Google. There is talk of her running for Congress in 2020.
Another one banned was actor James Woods. In May 2019, Woods was locked out of his Twitter account for posting this message after the release of the Mueller report: “If you try to kill the king, you best not miss #HangThemAll.” According to Twitter, the tweet constituted “harassment.”
Seriously? Harassment against whom? All Democrats? Did anyone at Twitter sincerely believe James Woods literally wanted to hang Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe, John Brennan, or Peter Strzok? Of course not. They saw that they had a clear and plausible shot against a conservative (one of the few in Hollywood), and they took it. Clearly, this is not about protecting anyone or creating a safe environment for sharing ideas. It’s about making sure conservatives have no right to free speech or expression in the digital sphere and remaking social media the same way they remade old media in a distinctly liberal direction.
By the way, Woods is a phenomenal actor, but when was the last time you saw him in a movie? Need I say any more about the Left’s censorship or Hollywood’s hypocrisy?
Just before this book went to print, they came for someone not even the furthest-Left loony could claim was publishing hateful, offensive, or intimidating content, unless you consider traditional American values like due process, freedom of speech, and free enterprise intimidating. I’m talking about Dennis Prager, a well-educated, well-spoken, and thoughtful conservative I’ve had on my show, Justice, several times.
Mr. Prager is the founder of Prager University (PragerU), an organization that publishes short videos online, lending conservative perspectives on a range of topics. Unable to find a pretense under which to completely ban PragerU from their platforms, Google and Twitter have instead found ways to limit its reach. YouTube, which is owned by Google, has either restricted or demonetized over fifty of PragerU’s videos. Google/YouTube claims these videos, including two titled, “Ten Commandments: Do Not Murder” and “The World’s Most Persecuted Minority: Christians,” respectively,4 are “inappropriate for younger audiences.”
You heard that right. The Ten Commandments are now inappropriate for younger audiences. Of course they are! They’re part of the foundation of Western civilization, which the Left despises and wants to destroy. This is such baloney. The most popular movies, video games, and songs today are laced with hate, violence, and profanity. And the Left wants to censor the Bible? The truth? Our history? How dare they?
“We’re living in America through the greatest assault on free speech in American history,” said Prager. “If it is pro-America, if it’s pro-Israel, if it is pro-religion, it is likely to be censored by Google or YouTube.”5 PragerU has filed a lawsuit against Google/YouTube for “continuing to unlawfully restrict and restrain speech and expression,” which is still pending as of this writing.6
From fringe conspiracy theories to off-color humor to legitimate accusations against anti-Semitism to the Ten Commandments, the types of things conservatives are not allowed to say online have become less and less controversial. What will be next? God forbid that Donald Trump doesn’t win in 2020. This will be the new reality, where we may not be able to
quote our own founding documents, not even to articulate our inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Once we are no longer allowed to talk about them, they literally cease to exist.
The New Public Square
The First Amendment provides the strongest protection of free speech anywhere in the world. Not even relatively free societies like the United Kingdom and France go as far as we do in guaranteeing this right. With few limitations, we are essentially free to say whatever we want, whenever we want.
Our founders believed liberty could not be preserved unless everyone, regardless of their political views, was allowed to express those views freely and without fear of government reprisal. Once those views were out in the open, previously literally and now figuratively in “the public square,” they would compete with conflicting views, the best ideas prevailing and becoming public policy. Legal scholars call this the “marketplace of ideas” theory, and it depends on having an inalienable right to free speech.7 Without that right, it would be impossible to discover the truth regarding important political matters. Truth itself dies when people are denied the right to express it.
For most of our nation’s history, political ideas have been disseminated through the media. First it was broadsides, newspapers, and pamphlets, then newspapers and magazines, then newspapers and cable television. Even in the early days of the Internet, you simply couldn’t stay informed if you didn’t read a newspaper or watch a nightly news broadcast.
Although often accused of a liberal bias, perhaps not without justification, twentieth-century newspapers and major television news organizations at least made an effort to deliver the news of the day objectively, without inserting their political biases. Believe it or not, it wasn’t that long ago that it was difficult to know for sure what political beliefs news reporters held, even if you suspected they were liberal.
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