No, I haven’t had a change of heart. I’m just taking back the word “liberal.” The Left can’t have it anymore. They have hijacked the word. They aren’t liberal, and we all need to realize that and stop calling the very illiberal left “liberal.” You can call them leftist. You can call them progressives, fascists, or Marxists. You can call them late for dinner, but please stop calling them liberal.
I am liberal. America’s “conservatives” are the only ones fighting to preserve America’s liberal tradition today. We are fighting to conserve your God-given rights, no matter what your views may be. We are fighting for your constitutional rights, and, at this moment, your First Amendment rights especially. You should be able to say whatever you want, whenever you want. I know there are exceptions, like falsely yelling fire in a crowded theater, but ever since we added “hate speech” to our vocabulary and our laws, we have been weakening the First Amendment in ways that would have pleased the former Soviet Union.
I don’t give a flying frankfurter what adults do in their own bedrooms, how many tattoos or piercings you might have, or what color you want to apply to your hair. If you want to peacefully protest, I may not agree with what you have to say, but have at it. I live in a weed state, and though it’s not my thing (and you are breaking federal law), I don’t really care if that happens to be your thing. Just don’t drive or break any laws when you do it. If you ride motorcycles, listen to rap, gamble or dance the tango, you do you. If I don’t believe it is right for me or my family, I won’t do that activity. Protecting the Constitution should be every American’s goal, not stifling someone else’s speech or keeping anyone from believing what he wants to believe.
This country increasingly has moved further and further away from our Constitution. Some of us saw this coming and tried to warn you, but we were also duped about who were friends to liberty. We once thought we could trust the now NeverTrump Republicans. Like the fair-weather friends they were, these illiberal Republicans just wanted our votes, our viewership, and our click-throughs; they never really cared about our rights slowly dissolving or how far we were straying from our founders’ intentions. They might have tolerated the likes of us in their now-defunct magazine as long as we were writing about how wrong the Democrats were, but Tea Parties and 9/12 Projects were a bridge too far for them.
In the election of 2016, the one thing they couldn’t stomach was how plainspoken President Trump was—how uncaring about their feelings and the “normal Republican” way to do things (which, incidentally, was just the same as the “normal Democrat” way to do things), and how unattached President Trump was to the corporations, power, and money that made their lives worth living. The bureaucracy, red tape, and outright denial of justice our president and this country have been put through in the last four years was as much a plan of the Democrats as it was the NeverTrump Republican swamp creatures.
NeverTrumpers and powerful Democrats have something besides their hatred of Trump in common. They both have a disdain for regular people who think they deserve a say in how their government is run (simpletons!) and both Democrats and NeverTrumpers share a deep love for the system that made them powerful. Their aim is to silence you, not to protect your right to speak. They want to make the rules, not let you have a hand in your own government. They want to dismantle the constitutional process that made it possible to elect a non-swamp nationalist like Trump, not preserve your right to elect who you want. They are the furthest thing from liberal, and I’m calling them out.
President Donald Trump is the most liberal president (in the sense I’m using it here) we’ve had in decades. He cares about how many lives and how much treasure we spend on endless middle-eastern wars. He cares that we all have jobs, that everyone has the same opportunities as everyone else, and he fights back against the constant lies the media tells about him and this country. He has reexamined and acted upon established deals with Russia, China, Iran, and others that have worked against America’s interests.
Trump ran on draining the swamp, but unfortunately, he didn’t realize how deep that swamp really is. As a brand new president, he tended to believe that our systems were based in the Constitution, our bureaucrats were not corrupted, and our judicial system was fair. I was afflicted with the same naiveté. I feel robbed by the Left of what an unfettered Trump presidency could have looked like.
An eternal optimist, I never would have thought President Trump’s entire presidency would be plagued with unfounded rumors, illegal spying by the former administration and unelected career bureaucrats, as well as continual deceit by the progressive legacy media. I am angered by the endless investigations into the Trump Administration and the delayed and possibly never coming justice.
Protecting the Constitution is the most important thing we can do right now. If you believe you are liberal, whatever party you may vote for, you really need to think long and hard about which candidate is most likely to continue to protect the Constitution and which candidate is a sad dementia-riddled puppet for extreme leftists who will protect your right to free speech only if you say what they want you to say.