Opinion: Why today’s elites literally can’t stand free speech

David Kupelian gets to the root of today’s all-out war on the First Amendment

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” – First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States

Forty-five years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union took a controversial yet principled stand for the First Amendment right to free speech when it defended a group of neo-Nazis intent on marching through Skokie, Ill., a Chicago suburb where many survivors of the Holocaust resided. Mind you, these would-be marchers were not boisterous conservatives such as today’s Democrats routinely label “neo-Nazis” and “white supremacists,” but actual neo-Nazis – the kind that wear swastika armbands and think Hitler was a great leader.

Although the electrifying case induced many ACLU members to resign, it ultimately came to exemplify the legal group’s unwavering commitment to the quintessential American principle of nonviolent free speech. For everyone.

Yet today, in every area of American life, free speech is routinely suppressed, often violently and sometimes with the force of law. Moreover, in keeping with the total moral inversion of the Obama-Biden era, whereas in 1978 actual neo-Nazis with their vile ideology and speech could speak and demonstrate peacefully, today’s most “controversial,” “offensive” and censored speech is almost always the most truthful, rational and moral speech, spoken by decent, law-abiding Americans – whom the ruling elites delight in labeling “Nazis,” “fascists,” “white supremacists,” “violent extremists” and “domestic terrorists.”

Such super-charged vilification of America’s tens of millions of conservatives, Christians and Trump supporters is matched by a newly created Orwellian lexicon of attack-phrases deployed to ridicule, discredit – and if possible, censor entirely – speech that doesn’t support the elites’ dark and deranged agenda.

These malevolent yet essentially meaningless expressions, such as “election denier,” “science denier,” “climate-change denier” and “conspiracy theorist,” are accompanied by open attacks on everything conservative and Christian as “hate speech,” “disinformation” and “misinformation.” There’s even a newly manufactured subvariant no one ever heard of before: “malinformation.”

And of course, there’s the favorite, back-of-the-hand catchall insult of the elites: “fake news.”

For example, Wikipedia lists WND as a “far-right fake news website … known for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories.” That’s from a website that daily publishes actual “fake news,” “falsehoods” and “conspiracy theories” on every major political and cultural topic affecting America’s future. In fact, Wikipedia’s massive 29,000-word article on Joe Biden includes only two sentences on Hunter Biden and the massive and overwhelmingly documented level of Biden family corruption and criminality. Here they are: “During the 2020 presidential campaign, Trump and his allies falsely alleged Biden had engaged in corrupt activities in Ukraine related to his son, Hunter. A joint investigation by two Republican Senate committees released in September 2020 found no wrongdoing, nor did a Republican House Oversight committee investigation by May 2023.”

So, no corruption in the Biden family, according to Wikipedia. None at all. It’s all just conspiracy theories, fake news and Russian disinformation spread by white supremacists and Nazis.

How could this happen in America?

Whatever other factors may be at play, there’s one overwhelming reason at the very heart of today’s radical, unprecedented compulsion to crush free speech: The elites – from the permanent “ruling class” in Washington D.C. (aka “the Deep State”) to their propaganda ministry called the “mainstream media” to the Big Tech oligarchs controlling the internet to Big Pharma and other corporate giants, all obsessed with ever-increasing power and wealth – are lying to Americans continually.

It follows, then, that truthful speech, which serves to expose, undermine and annihilate their self-serving agendas, constitutes the greatest threat to their reign, which in turn compels them to crush dissent at all costs. That is the very essence of totalitarianism.

Whether the forbidden speech comes from a courageous public official, a genuine journalist, a principled doctor, a concerned parent at a school board meeting, a conservative speaker booked to address a university audience, or a Christian praying outside an abortion clinic, the response of the ruling class is the same: Dare express viewpoints that undermine the elites’ official narrative and you will be reviled, suppressed and persecuted.

Thus are moral, honest Americans daily smeared as “violent extremists,” “domestic terrorists,” “white supremacists” and “ultra-MAGA insurrectionists.” Or – as Joe Biden characterized tens of millions of Republicans during a major speech last summer, “semi-fascists,” a blanket attack on the great American middle class reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s on-camera remarks before the 2016 election. At a fundraising dinner, she described a very large sector of the American population (i.e., those opposing her) as “deplorable” and “irredeemable” – one of the rare times when leaders of the ruling class speak frankly and publicly about how they really feel about regular Americans.

Sometimes, as with many of the approximately 1,000 Americans arrested after the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot, decent people are unjustly incarcerated as in Third World dictatorships, simply for holding – and expressing – political views condemned by the ruling elites.

Bottom line: Today’s powers-that-be simply cannot stand truthful expression because it exposes both them and their self-serving agendas for what they really are. Thus, truthtellers must be censored, “canceled” and destroyed.

Canceling Tucker

Take Tucker Carlson, the most trusted news personality in America according to a recent poll, yet ousted by Fox News Channel’s ruling Murdoch family on Monday, April 24 with no prior notice nor reason given. The cable news giant has been seriously hemorrhaging viewers ever since. Multiple insider reports have claimed that despite official denials from all sides, Carlson’s expulsion was part of Fox’s $787.5 million out-of-court settlement of the Dominion voting machine lawsuit.

Regardless, many of America’s elites were delighted to see Fox News kill off its top show, since in their minds, the host was a purveyor of extreme rightwing conspiracy theories, an “election denier,” an ally of Vladimir Putin, and – of course – a racist. Consider:

* Tucker Carlson freely expressed the still-forbidden, though wildly obvious, truth that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. After all, totally aside from the mountain of proven election “irregularities” (the last-minute unconstitutional rule changes, the unsavory “ballot harvesting,” the double-counted ballots and so much more), Elon Musk’s public release of the previously suppressed “Twitter files” proved conclusively that the “Deep State” colluded with Big Tech to alter the outcome of the 2020 election. Period. Just weeks prior to the election, the guardians of the internet knowingly suppressed overwhelming evidence of rampant corruption and criminality on the part of the Biden family, very much including “the big guy.” Post-election polling revealed that Biden would have lost and Trump would now be president had Americans simply been allowed to hear the truth about Joe Biden before they cast their vote.

The reality of this is no longer even seriously disputed by the elite media – just totally ignored. Indeed, even Barack Obama’s CIA chief John Brennan, the man behind the pivotal “Russian disinformation letter” signed by 51 former intelligence officials denying the reality of Hunter Biden’s laptop computer, finally admitted just recently that the whole letter project “was political” – which is to say, fake.

* Carlson also exposed the Biden administration’s supremely reckless Ukraine policy of sending gargantuan amounts of taxpayer money and advanced weaponry to the epically corrupt eastern European country with no accounting required, while secretly pursuing the overthrow of Russian President Vladimir Putin – that is, a war of regime change in Moscow – thereby risking all-out global nuclear war.

* He exposed the ultra-dark insanity of the current transgender child-grooming craze, including the fact that not only are Hitlerian doctors surgically mutilating untold numbers of mentally fragile American children pursuing the impossible dream of “gender transition,” they are also plying many more children with the same drugs used to chemically castrate convicted child rapists.

* During the COVID-19 pandemic, Carlson frequently featured guests who told the forbidden truth about the pandemic, often at great personal cost, many blowing the whistle on the Biden administration’s shockingly authoritarian response to the viral outbreak and its corrupt relationship with Big Pharma, who together attempted to force every American man, woman and child to be injected with an experimental, ineffective and dangerous drug.

* He likewise exposed some of the many outrageous lies and injustices associated with the January 6 Capitol riot, dramatically airing for the first time long-suppressed surveillance video from that day on his primetime Fox News show.

The double-edged sword of conscience

To fully grasp what lies at the very root of this phenomenon that is currently tearing our country apart, let’s dig a little deeper.

It’s an extraordinary characteristic of truth that, since God imbues human beings with a conscience (“con” + “science,” literally “with knowing”), everyone actually possesses an inner “knowing” of basic right from wrong. (“I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts.” – Jeremiah 31:33)

On the other hand, those who choose to rebel against the Creator and His truth, thus existing in a state of de facto inner warfare against reality, cannot stand to hear the truth – with which they are already at war internally – spoken by another human being. It burns. This is the basis of persecution.

In the end, the elites’ obsession with “election denialism,” “pro-Putin disinformation,” “white supremacist MAGA conspiracy theories” and other cruel absurdities is really just the playing out of their ongoing internal war with reality. Truth is virtually the only speech the “rulers of this world” cannot endure, since it tends to cause them unbearable conflict, seeing as it fans the flame of their conscience – the truth of God’s moral laws “written in their minds and hearts” – but with which they are at war.

Fortunately, there are still many millions of good, decent Americans – truly the best people on earth. Hundreds of thousands fought to protect this nation and many were wounded in battle – and of course many families have members who paid the ultimate price to defend this nation. They’re horrified at what is being described here. But they still love their country – and they want it back.

A good start in that effort is to speak the truth – boldly, kindly, clearly, joyfully, and without rancor or hate. It’s therapeutic to speak the truth with love. After all, you’re not insane, deplorable, irredeemable or racist, as they insist. You’re an American, with a God-given and constitutionally guaranteed right to speak your mind, come what may.

Or as Tucker Carlson put it on his Fox show just two weeks before being ousted: “Whether you agree with what someone is saying has nothing to do with his right to say it. Americans are allowed to say what they think is true. Period. If they take that right away, you are no longer a citizen. You are a slave.”

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” – John 8:32