The headline above reflects the state of free speech and communication in the United States today. And if you are anti-gay marriage then you are homophobe. If you are in favor of supporting the police then you are a racist. And lastly if you’re anti-Hillary you’re sexist. I have written several pieces dealing with this issue of free speech and communications in the United States and the significant decline of open and free discussion of opposing views.
You may recall the incident last spring, when Brendan Eich the CEO of Mozilla was forced to resign, because he made a contribution to a ballot initiative in California, that was banning gay marriage. The gay community sent out e-mails, instant messages, and tweets encouraging their followers not to use the Mozilla search engine. The company board met and decided that the Eich had to resign in order to protect their company. In essence the gay community use blackmail to get their way. The gay community did not want anybody saying anything against gay marriage, any thoughts their opponents had were not of value, and so they should just shut up.
{mosads}Eich of Mozilla never had a chance to discuss openly and freely why he was against gay marriage, his opinion didn’t matter. He was opposed to what they believed and therefore he had to be destroyed. My guess is that he will never be able to work in this industry again for he will always be tainted as a homophobe. I believe that in the 6+ years that Obama has been president that this idea of anti-free speech has accelerated. Any time somebody challenges a policy or decision of the president he or she is called a racist. Even Hillary, when she was running for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 2008 said that it was appropriate that people should have right to criticize President Bush. But when it came to Obama, we do not have the right to criticize him for his policies or his bad judgment because if we do we are called racist.
Now the president finds himself at odds with many of his fellow Democrats in the House and Senate over issues that are important to them. The Senate recently voted 98 to 1 in favor of requiring President Obama to bring the Iran treaty to be reviewed before it is effective. Now the junior senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren (D) is challenging the president on his foreign trade bill. The president when asked about Warren’s objection said, “She is just wrong.” There was no discussion where she was wrong: she was just wrong.
One last example of the problems with communication is what happened in Baltimore. In almost any other City in America if the events would’ve happened that took place in Baltimore the race mongers would’ve been out in force. Baltimore has a black mayor; a black chief of police, black states attorney and a police force that was at least 50 percent black and the mayor suggests racial prejudice was still an issue. The mayor raised the question of racism and bias in the police force, she requested an investigation of her own police force, by the Treasury Department. If anybody raised the question about what happened to the 1.8 billion dollars given to the City of Baltimore from the president’s stimulus package, they were called racist.
We have a new word when we talk about freedom of speech, that word is but. The people in Texas had the right to hold their meeting in private. When people were asked should they have held a meeting? Do they have the right to hold the meeting is it free speech? A growing swell of people responded to the question. “Yes they do, but.” I have studied the Constitution for a long time and as I read the section concerning free speech I can’t seem to find the word, yes we have free speech but, is not in there. Whenever we put a qualifier on speech that is not free. You might disagree with gay marriage but that doesn’t automatically make you a homophobe. You may believe that the police charged in the incident in Baltimore are innocent until proven guilty under the law but you’re not a racist. You should be able to question the qualification of a person running for president without being called a sexist. If a society cannot have an open and free exchange of ideas without labels then a society is not truly free. What we as a nation must decide is how free do we want to be, or do we want a small minority of people thinking for us because we are to bigoted?
Perkins is an author of a trilogy on nuclear terrorism against United States. He is a registered investment advisor with over 40 years of investment experience. He has appeared on over 500 radio and TV shows in the last 12 months speaking about current events.