Jun 23 The Intimidation Game: How the Left Is Silencing Free Speech

The Left, once the champion of civil liberties, is today orchestrating a coordinated campaign to bully Americans out of free speech. For nearly 40 years, Washington and much of the American public have held up disclosure and campaign finance laws as ideals, and the path to cleaner and freer elections. Yet, as Kimberley Strassel argues and details through first-hand accounts, both campaign finance are disclosure reform have been hijacked as weapons against free speech and free association, becoming one of the most powerful tools of those intent on silencing their political opposition. Through scare tactics and overreach, harassment of conservative politicians, targeting of groups by the IRS, state actions intimidating activists and businesses, and the politicization of a host of federal government agencies, America’s basic freedoms are increasingly besieged and under serious threat.

Kimberley Strassel is a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, based in Washington. Since 2007 she has written the "Potomac Watch" column and has worked for the Wall Street Journal in Brussels, London, and New York. An Oregon native, Ms. Strassel is a graduate of Princeton University.

Charges of racism aren’t really what Kimberley Strassel is writing about.

She’s concerned with Lois Lerner using her IRS position to threaten political opponents. With the Wisconsin AG who ran a campaign of terror against Scott Walker and his allies. With mob attacks on proponents of Prop 8 in California.

This isn’t just verbal harassment, it’s much worse.

In country after country, when left wingers are out of power, they are champions of unrestricted speech. Prior to 1917, Lenin and Trotsky were free speech advocates. If and when they gain the levers of power, they move to suppress opposition speech. We saw a preview of that under the Clinton Administration, with the use of the IRS to attack conservative organizations, a tactic the Obama Administration repeated and doubled down on. Meanwhile, gutter trash like SJWs and Black Lives Matter thugs intimidate opposition protests. This tactic is like a pincer: pressure from above and pressure from below. The Bolsheviks and Nazis followed the same route: the government found ways to suppress opposition and street thugs (Red Guard, Brown Shirts) physically intimidated any public demonstrations.

What makes America different from Russia, China, or Germany is the degree of independence that local and state governments have from the central authority. In the Northeast, the West Coast, and the Upper Midwest, and urban areas outside these regions, state and local authorities are of the same mindset as their Federal counterparts. Do not forget that the Left has plans to take over the rest. California is the template: a formerly moderate to conservative state has morphed into a cross between a Scandinavian socialist state and a Latin American narco-state. The Golden State is the Left's vision for the rest of the country, and indeed all the Western democracies.

However, until the remaining moderate to conservative states develop leadership with backbone, the fate of these states will be like that of California. Southern and Plains state politicians love to whine about Obama, the Federal bureaucracy, and the Federal courts. They pass toothless legislation that routinely gets struck down by the courts. However, no governor or legislature has threatened to actually stop Federal power through preventing the Feds from, for instance, blocking roads in national forests or refusing to pay for health care for illegal aliens.

Humanly speaking, I cannot see any hope for this country until state and local authorities unequivocally tell the Federal courts and bureaucracy that their decrees cannot be enforced in their jurisdictions.

‘The Bolsheviks and Nazis followed the same route: the government found ways to suppress opposition and street thugs (Red Guard, Brown Shirts) physically intimidated any public demonstrations’

What is currently being done in this country by the political Left to suppress free speech and organizing by the likes of the Tea Party is far too close to what Bolsheviks and Nazis did.

This is an ugly and dangerous game that they are embarked upon.

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