Why the Left has to suppress free speech
By: Dennis Prager
The secular progressive left is an avowed enemy of individual free expression of ideas. The free exercise of the first amendment is anathema to them. They realize that their arguments hold no air no logic, no value if held up to competing ideas. They simply try to make ideas going against theirs as if they were vile and the expression of the truth as illegitimate.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Let us begin with this fact: The left always suppresses speech. Since Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917, there has been no example of the left in control and not crushing dissent.
That is one of the important differences between liberal and left: Liberalism and liberals believe in free speech. (The present leftist threat to freedom in America, the greatest threat to freedom in American history, is made possible because liberals think they have more to fear from conservatives than from the left. Liberals do not understand that the left regards liberals as their useful idiots.)
The left controls universities. There is little or no dissent allowed at universities.
The left controls nearly every “news” medium. There is little or no dissent in the mainstream media — not in the “news” sections and not in the opinion sections.
The left controls Hollywood. No dissent is allowed in Hollywood.
That is why we have “cancel culture” — the silencing and firing of anyone who publicly dissents from the left, and even “publicly” is no longer necessary. The National Association of Realtors has just announced that if you express dissenting views (on race, especially) in private, you may be fined and lose your membership in the organization — which effectively ends your career as a realtor.
So, we return to the opening question: Why does the left need to crush all dissent? This is a question made all the more stark because there is no parallel on the right: Conservatives do not shut down dissent or debate.
The answer, though the left will not acknowledge it, is the left fears dissent. And they do so for good reason. Leftism is essentially a giant balloon filled with nothing but hot air. Therefore, no matter how big the balloon — the Democratic Party, The New York Times, Yale University — all it takes is a mere pin to burst it.
Leftism is venerated by intellectuals. But there is little intellectual substance to leftism. It is a combination of doctrine and emotion. The proof? Those with intellectual depth do not stifle dissent; they welcome it.
That is why universities are so opposed to conservatives coming to speak on campus. One articulate conservative can undo years of left-wing indoctrination in a one-hour talk or Q and A. I know this from personal experience on campuses. You can, too. Watch the speeches given by any conservatives allowed to speak on a campus — many of these talks are still on YouTube — and you will see large halls filled with students yearning to hear something other than left-wing pablum. Look at their faces, filled with rapt attention to ideas they never heard that are clearly having an impact. Universities are entirely right to fear our coming to speak. We come with the pin that bursts their $50,000-a-year balloon.
That is also why it is so hard to get any of them to debate any of us. In 35 years of radio, I have never mistreated or bullied a guest. I was unfailingly polite to an icon of the left, Howard Zinn, the America-hating author of the America-hating “A People’s History of the United States.” I even invited a UCLA political science professor and violinist, one of seven members of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra who refused to play when I conducted the orchestra in a Joseph Haydn symphony in the Disney Concert Hall — solely because I’m a conservative. Despite his public letter, in which he accused me of holding “horribly bigoted positions” and wrote, “Please urge your friends to not attend this concert, which helps normalize bigotry in our community,” I nevertheless invited him on my national radio show. He agreed. I had him in studio for an entire hour and treated him and his wife (who accompanied him) with great respect, despite my contempt for his false accusations and his advocacy of the cancel culture. Every American should hear that hour.
Unfortunately for the emotional and intellectual health of our society, he, Zinn and a few others were anomalies. Of the 100 or so left-wing authors, professors and columnists invited to appear on my show, almost none has responded in the affirmative. They prefer NPR, where they are never challenged.
The opposite, however, is not true: Every conservative intellectual I know says yes to every one of the (very few) left-wing invitations we receive. Of course, we are almost never invited. We regularly invite leftists. Leftists almost never invite us. They claim it’s because we are not up to their intellectual level and they have no desire to waste their time. One would think that the opportunity to publicly show how vapid we conservatives really are would be too good to pass up.
Leftists do not debate us or appear as guests on our shows and prevent us from speaking whenever possible, because they (correctly) fear conservatives. Race-baiters such as Ibram X. Kendi or Ta-Nehisi Coates or “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo would never debate Larry Elder, for example. Why won’t they? Because they would be shown to be the intellectually shallow purveyors of hate they are. Deep down, they know it. Larry Elder is one of many conservative black intellectuals who left-wing blacks (and whites) refuse to debate.
Now you know why the left suppresses free speech: because they have to. If there is free speech, there is dissent. And if there is dissent, there is no more left.
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The reason that most people who associate truth with the spoken word do not go on any of their shows do not deign to lend credence to your particular brand of filthy untruths. In particular, this screed against an imaginary "left".
What a steaming pile of horseshit.
Is the poor baby upset because nobody will invite him onto their shows?
Another I'm a victim/being repressed seed.
Ho hum
Isn't it funny that for a bunch of people having their speech silenced, we sure as hell hear a lot from them.
Ho hum is the progressive response to their selective purge of the expression of opposing points by people they wish didn’t even exist.
Funny how that works
That's my response to tiresome bullshit
It's ho hum because it's pure BS, but you keep on since it seems you have nothing else to do but whine and complain.
I’m going to be dealing such defense of the Trump administration and of free speech for the next four years. The resistance is just beginning.
I am sure Trump would be entirely impressed and grateful for your efforts. Just imagine what you will be able to accomplish. Awesome! Write him a letter and tell him how you will always have his back.
Fat lot of good it'll do ya!
But hey go for it!
By the way, resistance to what?
The Biden regime. As for going for it, careful what you wish for. We are living in a time when some Americans will happily resort to using a Russian internet server and security in order to prevent other Americans from silencing and or censoring their expression of their beliefs and ideas.
Conspiracy theory ... not a good look.
Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, on the basis that such material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or "inconvenient." Censorship can be conducted by governments, private institutions, and other controlling bodies.
And people can dream up all sorts of imagined evils and work each other up into a frenzy instead of rationally processing reality.
Or we can go to the Russians to get around the censorship efforts of other Americans....
The censorship wasn't imagined. During the election social media boldly, without hesitation censored the New York Post for posting a story on Hunter Biden, which turned out to be TRUE. During an election!
What happened with Parler is outrageous.
Are you really going to deny that it was censorship?
It was FALSE plus Hunter wasn't running for President!
To the contrary, the FBI has since confirmed it.
plus Hunter wasn't running for President!
Bur his father was!
My comment applied to this:
This is twisting reality to portray the Biden administration as some force that is oppressing free speech and forcing us to go to other nations ... even those as bad as Russia to gain our lost freedoms.
Parler was denied service by Amazon, not by Biden. And Amazon did it because Parler content violated their terms of service. (The same thing could happen to sites like NT if content were to go outrageous.) You may disagree with their decision, but they have the right to protect their image and impose rules on how their services are used. Parler is free to use other cloud hosting services.
In short, the Biden administration did not censor Parler. MAGA's comment was ridiculous and emotional. And if this is a result of our society then it was Trump who has been PotUS these last four years. So, again, MAGA's comment (my focus) was nutty conspiracy theory that clearly had not been thought through.
If you want to label Amazon's move to deny service to a customer who violated their terms as 'censorship' then you have the right to your word choice. To me, censorship by Amazon would be true if Parler did not violate Amazon's terms of service but was cancelled simply because Amazon disagreed with the content. A court of law must decide this. Partisans will make up their minds on much simpler criteria.
How do you Censor a newspaper that is delivered physically and digitally everyday?
I do. The fact is you can go to Twitter and Facebook and find plenty of hate filled commentary/insanity coming from the left. If they have a policy it is clearly biased against Conservative speech. That would be fine if there actually were other social media outlets. They are monopolies that must be broken up, if for no other reason that they deny free speech.
Your scale of having your feelings hurt is demonstrably thin.
It's demonstrably biased against murder, assassination, and talk about civil war over an election or a cult of personality.
Gap, Minds, MeWe, Parler, Storm Front, to name a few.
That opinion has at least a bit of merit
That opinion has no merit at all, sorry.
Twitter and Facebook are not Amazon. They have their own policies. To show Amazon's actions against Parler were censorship you would need to compare their stated reasons for denying service to their policy and to the evidence against Parler. Twitter and Facebook do not enter into this equation.
Further, per my point, the policies and enforcement thereof by private enterprises are not being controlled by Biden.
He’s simply standing up for the free expression of a diversity of opinion and beliefs which is now public enemy number one of big tech social media, the lamestream media, and the progressive left.
Again, horseshit.
He's a whining snowflake.
There are plenty of conservative outlets for learning and speech.
I said nothing about NT. I'm responding to the article. Why would YOU think otherwise?
He never said they weren't. In fact he's saying that there are "plenty" of outlets where conservatives can be heard, Newstalkers is one of them. The seed is just another ridiculous false claim of conservatives being silenced that MAGA is free to come here and seed and whine about.
He's basically shouting that liberal witches "turned him into a newt", then realizing everyone can see he's obviously not a newt has to backtrack and proclaim "Well I got better...".
Likely make another comedic reference to a Monty Python film as I did above. I certainly wasn't attacking you, just pointing out the error and commenting on the ridiculousness of the above seed which is just another in a long line of whiny victimhood seeds our resident newt posts almost daily.
That you think so makes the seeding of it all the more worthwhile to this 1st amendment defending patriot.
We want Parler back and that’s just the beginning of the defense of free speech. CNN is leading efforts to get Fox News, OANN, and NewsMax TV taken off of all cable systems. Taking conservative outlets away from us will not return us to msm preferred sites and sources. Instead we will go into the shadows and even turn to foreign providers and become more not less conservative
Go build your own servers and application. No one is stopping you. Gab & Telegraph did it. The Mercers, who financially back Parlor, have billions so they can afford it.
Fuck CNN too. All three of those options are free to stream on my Roku TV were I to find need to be constantly feed bullshit. This is just more proof there are plenty of far right purveyors of propaganda. Prager and company can quit with the poor me bullshit.
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I just love Monty Python's ability to point out the absurdity of religion and blind faith and . . . . . . . .
Some folks are just eternal victims of repression
Many years ago (15-20) Dennis Prager was a relatively moderate conservative who could make accurate arguments more based on fact than hard line right wing ideology. That ship sailed some time ago. Although as far as I know he is still polite, his beliefs are not particularly mainstream any more. For example, Prager says there is no such thing as white supremacy.
Somebody wants to be meaningful to the far right and inherit Rush Limbaugh's AM radio base,
I cannot think of another reason for such a one sided stream of sweeping generalizations
but then I remembered that Dennis's cash cow is the non profit PragerU
banned from NT because it is an off the chart Questionable source.
PragerU regularly has videos banned from You Tube and lost in court in 2017 trying to force You Tube to reinstate the propaganda.
In short Dennis Prager is PragerU and vice versa.
If that's all it was somebody here would be able to offer a counter argument. I notice only one attempt thus far.
According to MBFC? I see...
PragerU regularly has videos banned from You Tube
You Tube is owned by Google (Sundar Pichai). Enough said.
lost in court in 2017 trying to force You Tube to reinstate the propaganda.
The Founders never envisioned that a few ideological oligarchs would totally control speech on social media, otherwise I'm sure they would have added to "Congress shall make no law...
Just a minor point - the people should get to decide what is true or false.
In short
In short it is a matter of fairness & decency and unfortunately, as we all know “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Counter what? He says that Biden must not want unity unless he drops the impeachment trial in the Senate. That is ridiculous.
Then he infers that white supremacists might not exist because he's never met one. More silliness.
What is it that you think no one can counter?
Is that what you read in that article? Oh, you are only concerned with the video. Well John, Biden's call to unity is dead the second he characterizes people the way he has, regardless of the faux impeachment which is also unconstitutional. BTW McConnell is ready & waiting. You may get what you want so badly.
Then he infers that white supremacists might not exist because he's never met one.
No he's questioning the false & divisive narrative of "systemic racism." Do you want to show us where it exists, I'll be glad to hear it. As a matter of fact John, I'd say that the US is not only beyond racism, I would say that the left has created a system of race based benefits and spoils. Those lilly white liberals are using "white guilt" to advance their race based program. The American people can't defeat them until they rid themselves of "white guilt."
Please make your argument about "systemic racism." I'd love to hear it.
What is it that you think no one can counter?
Only DP has even tried. Countering such a solid argument as Prager has would be a feat beyond the abilities of anyone here. That's why.
.
He’s already on the radio at the same time as Rush.
Our goal is to get all conservative media news, opinion, and social off the charts questionable according to the gate keepers to prove their obvious and blatant bias against Christian and Jewish conservatives.
Well said on all points. I see as well.
We guarantee that if there is a trial that during it there will be no unity, no healing, no peace. We will not be quiet during such a travesty.
Then try to get them to honor their religious tenets by telling the truth and preach love, not hatred.
Simple.
Good to know you remain loyal to the Constitution and keeping an open mind... ( /s)
Well, we would be disappointed if you were. Again, the Constitution allows the 'travesty'.
So it shall be.
It's 47 or 48 lines of lies. Too long to counter seriously.
I choose to waste my time working casually,
playing mahjong & solitaire with and against the wife
rather than argue the commentary of a hateful poisonous lunatic like Dennis Prager.
At least here on NT we get to read it and come to our own conclusions.
Too long to counter seriously.
I see.
I choose to waste my time working casually,
I assume you work from home?
playing mahjong & solitaire with and against the wife
Mahjong is popular in certain quarters around here.
rather than argue the commentary of a hateful poisonous lunatic like Dennis Prager.
I take it you don't like him? Oddly enough I think he uses basic logic.
Not odd at all that we disagree. The whole "seed" is a partisan opinion.
He presents his own opinions as facts and spins nice yarns to justify his own blindness.
That you agree is no surprise.
I regard it as conventional reasoned opinion as opposed to the campus rhetoric which has infected the government and the media.
That you agree is no surprise.
Let's not make it personal. Remember what Perrie said about that.
Can I conclude that you are not going to put up an argument to refute anything he said?
You conclude correctly.
Enough melodrama, please.
Sure, I would rather call for a HoneyDipper, I thought that was clear, crystal clear.
Arguing about whether white is blue or green is red just gives credence to the inane.
Lol, I have a great response to that one, but it's not worth it.
Prager is right about this and he’s a great American. One of my favorite Op-Ed writers and I absolutely love Prager U.
Sometimes somethings are so right so important to get across even temporarily that they are worth it.
His beliefs and opinions are clearly and obviously well within the mainstream of American conservative thoughts and ideals.
The screed looks like a deranged injured 13 year old wrote it.
Prager sold his soul for gold sometime ago.
That's how all of the screeds posted look.
That they look that way to one political persuasion is proof positive of the great value the ideas at his U and in his writings are to the American people.
That’s actually what most secular progressive opinion writers have done.