John Kass is a journalist for the liberal Chicago Tribune. He is also a recovering liberal, who has now joined the bright side. In his newest article he tells of his education as a liberal and the freedom of speech. He says that he was lied to because he was taught that the conservatives were the ones who wanted to take away everyone’s freedom of speech.
Here is what he wrote in part:
The lies we were told about who would silence free speech
The lie we were told as kids was this: The end of American liberty would come at the hands of the political right.
Conservatives would take away our right to speak our minds, and use the power of government to silence dissent. The right would intimidate our teachers and professors, and coerce the young.
And then, with the universities in thrall, with control of the apparatus of the state (and the education bureaucracy), the right would have dominion over a once-free people.
Some of us were taught this in school. Others, who couldn’t be bothered to read books, were fed a cartoon version of the diabolical conservative in endless movies and TV shows. The most entertaining of these were science fiction, sometimes with vague references to men in brown shirts and black boots goose-stepping in some future time.
Women would become handmaids, subjugated and turned into breeders. And men would be broken as well. The more lurid fantasies offered armies of Luddites in hooded robes, hunting down subversives for the greater good.
But the lie is obvious now, isn’t it?
Because it is not conservatives who coerced today’s young people or made them afraid of ideas that challenge them. Conservatives did not shame people into silence, or send thugs out on college campuses to beat down those who wanted to speak.
The left did all that.
It’s there in front of you, the thuggish mobs of the left killing free speech at American universities. The thugs call themselves antifas, for anti-fascists.
They beat people up and break things and set fires and intimidate. These are not anti-fascists. These are fascists. This is what fascists do.