Insulting Freedom

I support the 1st Amendment. It protects free speech for us all. Oddly enough, the people doing the most to inhibit free speech these days are those who once were it’s strongest advocates.

But today the media, the liberals, and the academics are far more interested in dictating rules of political correctness that limit speech.  

And that’s why I hate political correctness, it insults freedom.

Like most, I don’t believe free speech includes the right to say what you want when it puts other people in serious danger. Yelling fire in a crowded theatre is wrong on a lot of levels. But free speech means you say get to say what you believe whether I agree with you or not. And if free speech really means free, then it means the same applies to me, and the liberal next door and the conservative up the street.

Sadly, liberals don’t agree. That’s why Hillary could call half of Trump’s supporters “deplorable” for exercising their right to free speech. It’s why no one in the Democratic Party called her out for her name calling. In fact, her political base not only accepted her outrageous behavior, they applauded it. Name calling and character assassination have become favored ploys in the liberal play book.

Very often, it’s even worse in other countries. In Britain last week, Tommy Robinson, an admittedly controversial reporter whose work regularly features anti-Muslim stories live-streamed a report that Muslims were largely responsible for an increasing number of rapes in England.

I don’t have the states, but that wouldn’t surprise me. After all, if your religion forces women to wear head-to-toe drapery because it blames them for the lust of men, then how big a leap is it to rationalize rape as the fault of women?  

Most westerners would agree that blaming women for the poor behavior of men is a crazy, upside down way to think about personal responsibility. But, apparently it’s an upside down way of thinking that the British courts have adopted. Outrageously, the courts sentenced Robinson to 13 months in prison. And to make matters deadly, the rumor is that the prison he was sentenced to boasts a huge population of Muslims — the very people Robinson was talking about.

Now, I get it; people in the UK don’t live by our constitutional protections. Still, last I heard, the UK was still a democracy, not a dictatorship. There is supposed to be respect for free speech on the other side of the pond.  

Thanks to Great Britain’s open border policies though, there are millions of muslims in that Island nation. The Muslims there feel they should be protected from criticism. There is a heightened sense that any negative reports (true or false) about Muslims could spark riots, violence, and other bad behavior.

But to lock Robinson away because of the stories he reported is worse than an outrageous. It’s an atrocity against justice. It’s political correctness at it’s very worst. Frankly, it reminds me of Obama turning the power of the IRS against conservatives to punish them for disagreeing with him.

Great Britain is a friend of our’s. We’ve given lives and treasure to bail their butts out in two world wars. They’ve been mostly faithful allies in the war against terror. Our soldiers and their’s have died to protect freedom and the belief in its power to enhance the happiness of individuals and the good of society.

But they’ve taken an ugly turn with the imprisonment of a reporter who doesn’t hew to their sense of political correctness.

I encourage President Trump to reach out to England’s Prime Minister and remind her how much both our countries have sacrificed to expand and maintain freedom, including freedom of speech. Imprisoning journalists insults that sacrifice.