Kira Davis has a great piece at Townhall.com. She examines a trend brought on by the radicalization of the left. The growing number of perfectly fine liberals who are being pushed to the right. People who vote Democrat, from famous Hollywood types to your own friends and neighbors, who have become targets of the progressive-mob and the far-left agenda.
Related: The Culture That Hates Speech
Day after day it seems we are watching happily progressive celebrities be swallowed up by the standards they themselves championed. No one ever thinks that they will run afoul of the progressive mobs, but that is the slippery slope of censorship. Once you make it okay for the truly “horrible” people, it’s not long before it becomes okay for the sort of horrible people, and then the maybe horrible people and then it’s just a free-for-all for anything that makes anyone feel sort of, kind of, maybe uncomfortable for a moment.
Davis gives some high profile examples. Members of the liberal elite whose bona fides fail to protect them from liberal mobs on social media. Icons to factions within the far-left that found themselves pilloried mercilesly until they capitulated.
Walkbacks. Apologies. Sorry I had one opinion or spoke one word outside the bounds of the ideological plantation.
One Small Step…
This is not to say that these bastions of liberal expression have abandoned their beliefs in a road to Damascus-like epiphany. Not at all. They are, in fact, still very liberal, mostly Democrat. Instead, I suspect, their minds have been sown with a tiny seed of dissent. The beginning of an internal dialogue.
I’m not safe here. It is not reasonable to share a thought that occurs to you in casual conversation. If you can’t speak it, how long before you can’t even think it? What does this mean to me as an entertainer, musician, educators, neighbor, or friend?
If I can’t openly explore ideas with people I assumed were my peers am I no longer an individual?
We Are Borg
The absence of free thought is a prison. The social media and mainstream media are the corrections department. If you are famous or a public figure your manager, publicist might serve as your Rasputin. Folks who’s livelihood is dependent on your remaining successful.
The fact of the matter is that there is a prohibition against intellectual or ideological diversity on the left. A Rube-Goldbergian trap they set for themselves. One with so many tripwires that it is impossible to navigate.
When they stumble into a pit they dug (or at least facilitates) the Right laughs. You did that to yourself.
Where We Can Agree to Disagree
No, the right is not immune to confirmation bias or ideological tunnel-vision. But except for occasions rare or few, we do not forbid you to think or say things with which we may not agree. In fact, we encourage it.
The stage upon which the left performs its political theater is less forgiving. A state that increasingly encompasses almost every aspect of your life. One with Progressive stormtroopers who will enforce the Left’s boundaries regardless of age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, physical or mental disability, national origin, public profile, or how Woke you were before you crossed the line.
The higher your profile the farther you have to fall.
The left wants you reigned in. They don’t care who you think you are.
You don’t have to agree with the Conservatives. But we’ll let you disagree with us. You’ll get no such quarter from the new left. They’d rather destroy you, make an example of you, than tolerate diversity of speech or thought.
A notion that will, as Kira notes, push otherwise perfectly fine liberals away from supporting the Democrat party.
