As someone who has spent most of my adult life as a professional comedian and writer, freedom of speech the way we do it here in the good old U-S-of-A is essential to my livelihood. It’s a right that, in theory, is held dear by all Americans. However, it is especially precious to those of us who have to pay the bills by freely expressing ourselves. In my 40-plus years in comedy, every credible threat to free speech in this country has come from the American Left.
That side of the aisle will tell you a different story, of course; it’s just one of the many lies upon which progressivism is built.
Whenever progressives are screaming loudly about First Amendment rights, it’s a safe bet that they are trying to protect aberrant — usually violent — behavior. Their interpretation of “the right of the people peaceably to assemble” hinges entirely upon ignoring the whole “peaceably” part of it. As we are all painfully aware, in the minds of leftists, it’s just not a real protest until something gets broken or set on fire. They give themselves bonus points for looting and assaulting any wrongthink people who get in their way. At the highest levels, Democrats feel that plunging a knife into another human’s heart while screaming “Impeach Trump!” should be protected by the First Amendment.
Some of you may say I’m being absurd to make a point there, but am I really?
One of the tedious and fact-free themes in the Left’s ongoing smear campaign against President Trump is that he is reneging on his promise to be a champion of free speech and is, in fact, doing everything that he can to crush it. According to leftists, Trump is also responsible for polio, 1970s wallpaper, and the Peloponnesian War, so it’s best to greet their assertions with no more than an eyeroll.
The Mahmoud Khalil case is the perfect example of the Democrats assaulting and perverting the First Amendment in an attempt to use free speech as a cover for an American-hating criminal. As a vocal leader of the “Death to America/Death to Israel/Death to All Jews” crowd, Khalil is a natural fit with the long-term plans of the Democratic National Committee. That was all he needed in order to get the Dems’ flying monkeys in the mainstream media — the biggest abusers of First Amendment rights — slobbering all over him.
The story that they’re telling is that President Trump and his administration were going after Khalil to deport him solely because he was protesting for the anti-Semitic Free Palestine crowd. As Robert wrote a few weeks ago, however, free speech poster boy Khalil was tempting legal fate:
This is actually quite clear in American law regarding green card holders such as Mahmoud Khalil. U.S. Code § 1182 states that “any alien” who is “a representative” of “a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity” is “inadmissible.” U.S. Code § 1227 adds that such an alien “is deportable.” The Associated Press described Khalil on March 10 as one of the “student leaders of Columbia University Apartheid Divest” (CUAD). The Washington Post reported on March 18 that “No one disputes that Khalil was the face of Columbia University Apartheid Divest.”
In Aug. 2024, CUAD posted this on Instagram, then removed it once it started getting noticed among the sane: “We are Westerners fighting for the total eradication of Western civilization.” Also, during the anti-Israel protests at Columbia, the demonstrators screamed “Death to America.”
Yeah, you’re outta here buddy.
The Harvard lawsuit against the Trump administration is a more complex legal situation but the heart of the matter is that Harvard is a cesspool of anti-Semitism and a breeding ground for 21st century Brownshirts and Trump is saying that he doesn’t think that the taxpayers should be funding that. He didn’t say, “We’re going to shut you down for being the bigoted commies that you’ve always been.”
It is beyond ridiculous to posit that Trump and his team are trying to shut down all dissenting voices, which is what the mentally unwell lunatics who rant in the Opinion pages of The New York Times and The Washington Post have been doing. First, they’ve poisoned half of the country, so that’s a lot of shutting down to do.
Second, President Trump has his hands full trying to fix the myriad messes that Joe Biden’s Cryptkeeper Commie Cabal left behind. He’s got more important things to do than use the government to ruin the lives of everyone who opposes him politically. That was Biden’s thing.
Here is the reality regarding the state of free speech in Trump’s America. My colleagues and I just spent several years toiling under the actual thumb of oppression when it comes to free speech. The government was working in cahoots with social and mainstream media to destroy the livelihoods of anyone in conservative media who questioned the Dem false narratives on COVID, climate change, election integrity, and a host of other things.
It’s not a perfect world now, but we’re not worried about being blackballed and de-platformed by all of the social media giants we rely on for a significant part of our revenue because we point out the hypocrisy of the climate hysteria people or say that Anthony Fauci should be shipped to a tent in Antarctica for his COVID crimes.
Free speech is more alive and well in the United States than it has been at any time in the last four years. The latter-day Nazis at Harvard still get to be loathsome human beings, they just won’t get to rip off the American taxpayers as much anymore.
Unless another “America-Last” judicial psychopath mucks up the works.
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