Freedom of (Leftist) Speech

Senator Ted Cruz recently made headlines when he offered the following question to fellow Senator Diane Feinstein:

“The question that I would pose to the senior senator from California is,” said Cruz to Feinstein, “Would she deem it consistent with the Bill of Rights for Congress to engage in the same endeavor that we are contemplating doing with the Second Amendment in the context of the First or Fourth Amendment, namely, would she consider it constitutional for Congress to specify that the First Amendment shall apply only to the following books and shall not apply to the books that Congress has deemed outside the protection of the Bill of Rights?”

Feinstein, after bloviating about how insulted she was by the query, eventually got around to answering “No”, but Cruz’s question is actually a serious one for Leftists nowadays: DO they actually believe that all speech should receive equal protection? After all, these are the same people who held up pornographer Larry Flynt as the ultimate example of First Amendment rights in America.

Based on this week’s news, the answer is: No, the Left only really believes in Leftist speech being free, and everyone else should just shut-the-heck-up. As evidence, I give you the liberal Democrat Mayor of Philadelphia, Kevin Nutter.

From National Review Online:

“Philadelphia magazine is not exactly The Economist; it is best known for things like publishing rankings of the city’s top dentists. But it recently published a nice piece of reporting by Robert Huber on the subject of “Being White in Philly.”

If you know Philadelphia, you will find the picture the piece paints amusing, if unsurprising: White liberals go about studiously not noticing the relationship between race and crime in the city while working to ensure that their children do not end up in majority-black schools; old-timers remark on not having been north of Girard Avenue since 1942; foreigners, who are not equipped with the guilt-powered standard-issue American conversational filter on the subject of race say things that will make you intensely uncomfortable; and whites living on or near the borders between white Philadelphia and black Philadelphia negotiate life carefully. It is pretty standard mildly controversial commentary, and Mr. Huber concludes that our inability to speak openly and honestly about race means that whites are “dishonest by default.”

Mayor Nutter responded by issuing an angry — childishly so, to be honest — denunciation of the magazine and the article, and then called for an official investigation of the magazine by the city’s official thought police, the Human Relations Commission, which is only too happy to oblige.”

Once again, let me welcome you to ‘1984‘, where you are completely free to say anything you’d like, just as long as the Progressives in power agree with you.

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As if that wasn’t egregious enough, a similar tempest in a teapot boiled over near my childhood home, in the Soviet Republic of Massachusetts.

From PatriotLedger.com:

“…Plymouth County Sheriff Joseph D. McDonald, Jr. is defending a joke he made Sunday about President Barack Obama during a local St. Patrick’s Day breakfast for Republicans.

In the punch line of one of McDonald’s jokes, delivered during the annual St. Patrick’s Day breakfast held at the Scituate Country Club, the sheriff says the ghost of President Abraham Lincoln visited Obama in his dreams and gave him advice on how to improve the country: “Go to the theater,” Lincoln, who was assassinated in a theater, told Obama.

The joke has drawn the ire of liberal bloggers – on political sites such as Blue Mass Group and Think Progress – who accuse McDonald, a Republican, of making an “insensitive” reference to Obama being shot. Blue Mass Group has insinuated that an official entrusted with public safety, like McDonald, should resign for making a joke about murder, especially when the target is the President…”

Deliver me, Lord, from self-righteous Liberals.

That particular joke is so old, I remember hearing it in grade school, with Ford as the straight man. I’ve since heard it with Reagan, both Bushes, and Clinton. And as it uses Honest Abe to deliver the punchline, I’m guessing it easily predates the 1970’s, too.

But now? No, no, …we can’t use that generations-old joke because the current president is Barack Obama. Does this make sense to anyone, apart from the permanently outraged Left?

How has it come to this? Did the self-proclaimed defenders of freedom suddenly recant all their alleged love of free speech? No, because they never really believed in free speech; they believe in THEIR speech being protected. It’s why they want all mentions of God out of public discourse, and denounce differing opinions as “Hate Speech”.

Andrew Klavan had a pitch-perfect take on this several years ago which I’ve linked before, but he nailed this better than anyone else has since. While you watch, just remember something else: these are also the folks who claim to not have an ideology.

Could’ve fooled me.