The Crime of Dissent

The fourth is over, and the cardboard canisters of expended fireworks still bear evidence of celebration in the streets of many neighborhoods.  Today, however, we return to the disheartening task of reviewing the news of the day, and the realization that our freedoms - those that we celebrated just yesterday - are being eroded, erased and forgotten.

In Georgia a newspaper publisher and his attorney are charged and jailed for the crime of requesting public information through the Open Records Act.  He was investigating the use of public monies to pay the judge's legal bills. Normal stuff, right?  Not anymore.  The judge had them arrested, jailed, and the long list of ridiculous conditions of their bail was nothing more than  punitive.  You may recall that the press's job is to act as the public's watchdog over government policies and activities.  Sadly, in recent years, the press, actually the media in general, is nothing more than the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.  They protect their own, while attempting to destroy any opposition.  Ten years ago, this would have been thought the tactics of Soviet Russia or Nazi SS.  But in the Kenyan's divisive America, officials don't fear public reprisal anymore - they simply do what they can get away with.

Hello Racist, a new website, has been set up seeking to shame online "racists" through public internet exposure. It is designed to “expose racism, fight ignorance and be the place where people of all races, religion, and political beliefs can share their stories.”  Right.  But only if you're a tolerant, enlightened, left wing snowflake.  Guess what, cupcake?  The Constitution doesn't protect your delicate sensitivities from offense.  You have no right not to be offended.  The Constitution does, however, protect others' right to their own views, beliefs, speech and religion.  Oh yeah, and hate.  Some folks hate other folks for a myriad of reasons.  Get over it, it's human nature.  I'm a white, Southern conservative, and you hate me, right?  So who's the racist?  But now anyone is subject to internet humiliation by virtue of someone else anonymously posting their views on a hate site.  It's a classic example of political correctness embedded in the very nature of the popular mindset.  Well, that's what libel and slander laws are for.  The founder said they wished to remain anonymous due to credible threats of violence and the threatening legal action.  No kidding.  So knock yourself out, little snowflake.

And what about censorship by media giants that control free speech?  If they arbitrarily shut down sites or "pages" with which they disagree, is that not censorship?  Of course it is.  If you espouse a view or activity that's in contravention with the left wing media apparatchiks that force government group think on users, that's dissent by definition.  A case in point is a gun range in Texas that offers free concealed handgun classes for the homosexual-and-sexual-identity-confused community, responding to concerns of homosexuals about Muslims following the Orlando Islamic terrorist attack.  That should have been welcomed with open arms by Facebook and lovers of all things homosexual, right?  Not so much.  You see, it's got to do with guns!  We can't advocate self reliance and self defense.  That's too American.  So Facebook took down both Shiloh Shooting's pages, and as of yet has not restored either account. 

The irony here is that the day after Independence Day, we get stories like these shaming dissent.  Yet what was Independence Day?  It was the day the colonies declared independence from Britain, essentially the United States' birthday.  Yet, sadly, those in the newly formed federal government either learned nothing from, or had forgotten, King George's heavy hand, and 73 years later a new revolution had to be fought.  And today, 156 years after that last revolution, we find ourselves in yet another revolution:  the return of a tyrannical, bloated, over bearing federal government to the citizens who own it.  The Kenyan's administration has apparently learned little from the last two American revolutions, and they forget at their peril.

Dissent is as American as apple pie.  It's who we are, it's what we do.  And that's the way it should be.