Fact vs. opinion -- where does it lead?
Article by Steve Karp in "The American Thinker":
Decades ago there began the phenomena known as McCarthyism, named after Senator Joe McCarthy. In short, McCarthy named people in the government or military who had communist sympathies and or carried through deeds which aided the communist movement in America. To many Americans, his accusations seemed to be a fantasy and thus identifying supposed communists became known as McCarthyism.
After his time, McCarthyism became a general accusation often but not exclusively used by the political left against those exposing other’s ideas or acts that undermined the republic or the rule of law. Like Dracula, daylight does a leftist no favor, so all on the left needed to push back against any and all threats of exposure. Occasionally, chatty leftists expose their ideas or acts by going off script to gloat, but then attempt to backtrack. For the former we are grateful, for the latter entertained.
What we are experiencing now is a change in leftist targeting. Our news is filled with stories of people who have written or spoken about race in ways that don’t follow the leftist worldview. They are now labelled as racists, often finding themselves with cancelled contracts or loss of livelihood, even if what was written or spoken of was in decades past, and even when profusely apologized for today.
When you boil it down, what's the difference between these situations? It’s fact vs. opinion.
There were and still are people with a communist belief system who had and continue to undermine our system of government. McCarthy was more right than wrong and he didn't even have the benefit of Venona. National security is what was and is at stake and it remains vital to expose these people and remove them from positions of power. Seventy years ago it was allegiance to the Soviets, today much more likely to China. By extension, those with an Islamic worldview, whose beliefs are aimed at undermining U.S. law in order to replace it with Sharia, must be identified and removed from positions of power and trust.
As a diversion, our attention is now directed toward BLM and their allies, probably temporary, who just don't like what some, mostly white people, have to say about issues regarding race. Although there is a legal mechanism to address outright discrimination, what's really desired by these groups is to place limits on speech. Hurt feelings are now deemed intolerable and enslaving. The endgame appears to be the policing of thoughts, but for today its written and spoken expression is the practical limit.
How far this goes is anyone's guess. Idealists look to the court system for clarification of law based on the constitution and statutes. Realists see something quite different. With the current makeup of the Supreme Court there's no way to divine their interpretation of the First Amendment. Based on their recent interpretation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act my guess is that speech by some will be found to be more equal than others.
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