David Bolling: Free Speech – Use It Or Lose It

There are at least 200 words or terms in a list compiled by the New York Times, and first published in March, that are being purged from the official vocabularies of federal agencies at the behest of President Trump and his lockstep, quavering minions. Included are such incendiary words and terms as activism, Black, discrimination, diversity, Gulf of Mexico, inequity, minority, pronoun, Native American, oppression, racial identity, racial justice, sexual preferences, they/them, transgender, tribal, victim, underrepresented and women. That’s right, women.

It’s an impressively diverse list of anti-diversity terms, the elimination of which from Bureaucratese seems intended to silence discussion and recognition of fundamental realities of the human condition, like race, gender and the ongoing struggle to achieve the objectives of the American Declaration of Independence. As you may recall, that sacred document declares, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

That our founding principles, as outlined in this document, and in the Constitution to which all federal sworn representatives pay allegiance, failed to extend the enumerated rights to women, slaves, people of diverse sexual orientation, or even to people with physical disabilities, does not seem to trouble the Trump coterie, despite our nation’s ongoing, back-and-forth efforts for almost 250 years to correct the omissions of the founding fathers.

That seems to be because the principles of diversity, equality and inclusion – the bedrock principles of a truly free, democratic society – conflict with the autocratic, kleptocratic and wealth-centric interests of Trump’s power-crazed administration.

This obsession to influence and virtually regulate the language we use in professional, administrative and even social contexts runs headlong into one of the most sacred pillars of that hallowed Constitution. The First Amendment, as you may remember, succinctly states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” 

Of course, the Trump/McConnell-packed U.S. Supreme Court has granted the position of president virtually unlimited powers, so if Donald Trump wants to abridge our freedom of speech and of press, stopping him gets a little more complicated.

Which is why we need to remind ourselves how another autocratic ruler exercised power, murdered perhaps 12 million people all-told, and triggered a global conflict that killed 70-to-85 million more.

This is not to suggest that Donald Trump is a Nazi – he would be significantly easier to control if he were – but like Hitler, Trump is obsessed with power. He seeks vengeance against those who oppose him, and considers the presidency a legitimate position in which to conduct profitable business deals for himself and his cronies.

And as he scurries around inside his sanitized presidency, where no banned word dare be spoken, pretending to be a “strong” and “forceful leader” who can stop the war in Ukraine in 24 hours, and bring manufacturing back to America in maybe a month or two, what is perhaps most frightening – what at least should be most frightening – is the ease with which he has gained compliance from the newspapers, the television conglomerates, the universities and the law firms he has threatened and bullied.

Because what is really on the line here is the First Amendment, about which Donald Trump could not care less.

That there is not such a barrage of litigation at this point that the nation’s courts seize up solid with overload is remarkable and shocking by itself.  It may be the boiled frog syndrome. You know the example – put a frog in a pot of water, turn the heat on low, raise the temperature slowly degree-by-degree, and the frog is cooked before he knows it.

Every law firm that submits to Trump pressure, every media outlet that surrenders a First Amendment right, every University that compromises academic independence in exchange for federal funding, represents another degree of heat under the collective pot in which we all sit.

Editorials like this one should appear all the time everywhere across America. Every legislative body not silenced by MAGA should adopt a resolution condemning the incremental attacks on our First Amendment rights.

It is later than we think. Free speech is literally at risk right now. Let’s start really using it while we still have it.