How Free Speech Became a Conservative Value and Why That Should Terrify Us All
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How Free Speech Became a Conservative Value and Why That Should Terrify Us All
A child of oppression warns that Western civilization's cornerstone principle is crumbling. Freedom of speech, once championed by those fighting slavery and tyranny, has been rebranded as a right-wing talking point. The radical left shuts down debate not because their opponents are dangerous, but because their own ideas collapse under scrutiny. From intersectionality to structures of oppression, these narratives lack logical foundation and survive only through labeling, smearing, and silencing dissent. When words like "racist" lose all meaning and "white supremacist" becomes the new weapon of choice, we've entered dangerous territory. This is the perspective of someone whose parents sacrificed everything to escape a society without free speech, only to watch that same freedom erode in the country that once promised liberation.
The Radical Left's Dependence on Silencing Dissent
One of the biggest problems with the current political landscape is that anyone who challenges the radical progressive leftist narrative in any way is automatically labeled right-wing. Many of these narratives, whether it's intersectionality or structures of oppression, don't actually have any logical or reasonable underpinning. The only way to defend them is by shutting down people who don't agree.
When you have a reasonable, rational argument, these views crumble like a house of cards because they're not built on anything. They're built on facile logic and assertions without any basis in fact. That's why the radical left, not all of the left, but the radical left, have come to this place where they have to shut down, label, and smear anyone who doesn't agree with them. Their ideas are not based on anything solid.
How Freedom of Speech Became a Conservative Value
It boggles the mind that we are now in a position where freedom of speech, which is a fundamental cornerstone of Western civilization, has become a conservative value. That is an absolutely insane position for someone who came from a society where freedom of speech did not exist.
Parents essentially sacrificed their life savings to send their child to boarding school in a free society. They didn't move over themselves. They sent their child with the only money they had. The reason they did that was so their child could be in a free society. To think that this fundamental principle of this country is now a marginal issue that supposedly is right-wing at best is mind-boggling.
The Historical Importance of Free Speech to the Oppressed
In the past, it's usually been the left that has seen the value of free speech. The current debate would have you believe that free speech is just something that conservatives believe in so they can belt up on everybody else. But in the past, those who felt oppressed understood how important it was to them so they could have their grievances heard.
Even if you go back as far as slavery in America, the slaves who were protesting about their condition were demanding freedom of speech in order to be able to argue for their liberation. It's a fundamental principle.
The Weaponization of Language
The most innocuous remarks about somebody else can be painted as bigotry, as hatred, the doozy of them all, racist. But it's used as a weapon against people who simply want to discuss differences, and it debases language.
Lionel Shriver appeared on the YouTube show called Trigonometry and made a brilliant point: the word racist has been used so much and so inappropriately that we now use terms like white supremacist because being a racist is no longer enough. You have to take it up a notch. That's why the word white supremacy has come back.
Shriver pointed out that in her childhood, white supremacists were people that if you walked up to them and said "are you a white supremacist?" they'd be like, "Hell yeah." That was what a white supremacist looked like. Now, apparently, we're being told it's these people who are undercover and pretend they're not.
