My colleague Byron York wrote in his Aug. 11 newsletter about a Fox News poll that asked people if they want the federal government to “lend [them] a hand” or “leave [them] alone.” Last summer was the only time in 10 years that more wanted help than wanted the feds to buzz off. Joe Biden swept into power on a temporary swing amid once-in-a-century circumstances when the pandemic racked confidence and the economy.
Normally, Americans prefer government off their backs. In 2011, ’12, ’14, ’16, ’19, and ’21, they opted for more freedom, not more help. This is the fundamental clash between ordinary people and the Left, which mistrusts freedom of all sorts. People want to live as they choose; that’s almost a tautology. Self-reliance is an admirable, traditional American trait, but Democrats are wearing it down by always and everywhere trying to expand central control and force people to live not as they wish but as they’re told. A friend of mine, author Quentin Letts, recently responded to this grating process with an entertaining book titled Stop Bloody Bossing Me About.
In normal times, Americans want the three basic rights upon which the Declaration of Independence is founded — life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right to life is the mother of all rights, without which no other is meaningful. Once that’s assumed, people desire freedom and sufficient space to pursue their goals. These differ from person to person but depend on the right to arrange one’s own affairs.
No right is more under threat than free speech. This is not despite but because it is the most indispensable right of all, which makes it the most problematic for the Left. It is, at a deep level, the right to think independently. People test their ideas in speech against opposing ideas. It’s how we try to get things right, how we endeavor in our shambolic way to make ourselves better and wiser people, how we reach conclusions.
Cancel culture is determined to shut this process down. When people exchange ideas, they find flaws in opposing arguments and arrive at conclusions about culture, morals, and practical policy that the Left does not like. Preventing discussion by canceling people who don’t parrot the new orthodoxies heads off the chance of being shown to be wrong. Conversely, free speech conducted in good faith means you never know who will win. And since the Left is interested not in truth but in power, it’s determined to reduce to nil its chances of losing.
In exasperation, one wants to echo the words of Oliver Cromwell, who wrote 371 years ago to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” But the Left is never mistaken. Doubt is forbidden as we march toward the dawn of a new socialist America. “The future is certain,” as the old Soviet joke goes, “it is only the past that is unpredictable.”
