We need to protect our free speech rights

This week I was appalled by a law moving through our California legislature that limits free speech (AB2943). In Canada they’ve gone one step further and now have “compelled speech” laws as well as tribunals to enforce them. It’s a huge problem. It’s political correctness gone way too far.

How could this happen?

I blame in part some university professors as well as the national media.

Why the university professors?

I have often complained about how many journalism graduates I have to interview in order to find a good candidate. It’s a challenge to find someone who can write and structure an objective story with several sources who isn’t on a social justice campaign.

I always ask them what they are passionate about in life. I’ve actually had grads tell me blatantly that their No. 1 goal is to effect change in their readers. Without much thought, this may seem innocuous, but it is exactly the problem we have in some of our media today and it violates the very foundation of protections our founding fathers knew we would need to keep our freedoms and why they chose to protect media as the only constitutionally licensed industry.

No matter where you stand politically, it is not the journalist’s job to make their readers believe the same as they do. It’s their job to write news stories as unbiased as possible with both sides reflected so they can make an educated choice based on the facts presented. It’s dangerous to have journalists of any age (especially 22-year-olds) writing to change people’s minds.

We need to continue to scrutinize our media and hold their feet to the fire and make sure they aren’t acting as social justice warriors who needed to retreat to “safe zones” in university and who are brave and courageous enough to allow the free exchange of ideas and critical thinking and encourage people with opposing opinions to have a voice platform instead of shutting them down.

Part of the responsibility for this problem lies on the shoulders of university professors who thrust their social justice beliefs upon students.

The sad result is that the national media is largely silent while personal freedoms are under attack.

How did we get here? Some universities continue to uphold Socialism, Communism, Postmodernism and Neo-Marxism as virtuous – and successful western culture, based on individualism and Judeo-Christian principles (dare we even say it?) is seen as evil. But the emperor has no clothes. Aside from Hitler, no one talks about the hundreds of millions of people who were tortured, enslaved and murdered in Russia, China, Cambodia, etc. under Stalin, Lenin, Mao Se Tung or Pol Pot because it doesn’t fit with their narrative, even though it’s historical fact. Or currently, what about newly socialist Venezuela? Their people are now starving.

According to news reports, Venezuela's inflation has soared to 24,571 percent. President Maduro's socialist government controls most of the country's economy and is in the midst of a crisis with food and medicine according to news reports and even toilet paper is having to be rationed out.

And it still holds true that if you don’t know history, you are destined to repeat it. The 20th century was a terribly oppressive murderous century because of Socialism, Communism, Fascism, and Marxism.

Our western culture is certainly not perfect, but its people are far more prosperous than those cultures that leftist academics and politicians are working hard to usher in through indoctrination and new laws.

Instead of celebrating the individual with individual freedoms, they lump us into groups, divide and conquer by separating us under the guise of diversity and equity and by fostering distrust and class warfare between the groups.

Everyone is either a victim or an oppressor. A victim can’t be responsible and an oppressor has to pay for his sins (especially if he/she is productive and successful). While some activists’ hearts are in the right place and we sincerely have to continue to fight for everyone’s rights, it’s an incredibly dangerous game to limit individual rights in the name of equity, diversity and inclusion.

In the end, it’s about power, not to “empower” the individual to speak or live as he sees fit for himself and his family as one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, but for self-proclaimed people who divide us and believe they are above the average citizen and the constitution.

Note: I’m assuming that everyone understands the difference between a news piece and an opinion piece (as this is clearly labeled).