by Robert M. Traxler

Freedom of speech is the right to articulate one’s opinions and ideas without fear of government retaliation or censorship or societal sanction.

The New Your Times reported April 26^th on the warnings from two icons of left-wing America:

“Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described Democratic Socialist, this week scolded anyone who would shut out Ms. Ann Coulter. “What are you afraid of — her ideas?” he asked.”

“Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, argued that the controversy only handed Ms. Coulter the big platform she craved. “If you don’t like it, don’t show up,” she said. Even The Onion weighed in with a satirical blurb about Berkeley being on police lockdown after loose pages of The Wall Street Journal were abandoned on a park bench.”

Quite frankly I am confused as to why anarchists and radical Socialists, folks Judge Jeanine Ferris Pirro referred to as “Snowflakes in bad Ninja suits,” are working so hard to shut down free speech. If we look at our educational system, American history is not stressing the free speech movement that led to our independence from England. Inclusion and diversity are taught as more important than liberty and freedom of speech.

History teaches us that the radical left throughout history started with condemning free speech: the German socialists, Italian Fascists, Russian Socialists, Iran, Egypt, Iraqi, Baathist (the Mideast’s word for Fascists) and many more all started with violently suppressing free speech.

Senator Sanders is a left-wing Socialist and he speaks freely; he is not denied free speech by conservatives, the right does not dress up in low budget movie or comic book character costumes and riot burn loot and assault to shut him up. I am not a fan of Senator Sanders, but he has the intestinal fortitude to stick to his belief in a failed, flawed system of government. Socialists are folks who have not been mugged by reality and refuse to believe in history’s bloody lessons. However, I do admire Senator Sanders’ steadfastness; in my America, he has the right to be wrong and speak freely.

As a young man growing up in the deep south in the 1960s, I witnessed firsthand the supporters of Jim Crow and separate but equal, who refused to allow civil rights activists to march or speak in their communities. The reason given to deny African Americans free speech or the freedom to assemble was that their safety could not be guaranteed. Ms. Ann Coulter, a conservative speaker, is banned from the University of California at Berkeley, because her safety “cannot be guaranteed.”

The administration at Berkeley is no better than Alabama Governor George Wallace or Sheriff Bull Conner, staunch segregationists who used government to deny free speech. Berkeley is an appendage of the State in the same way the University of Alabama was on July 11^th, 1963 when they denied African Americans freedom of speech and assembly.

Blinded by ideology, the radical left cannot see their own flaws and intolerance of others. Disagreement is criminalized in their rhetoric and violence rationalized. The main stream left just may be waking up to just how far left and how irrational they have become. Senator Sanders’ and Senator Warren’s warnings should be a clarion call to the left.

When the radical left’s Gestapo comes up with concepts like “micro-aggressions,” parsing every word to condemn speech, it is time to return to planet Earth.

Senators Sanders and Warren are correct in asking just what ideas the left-wing radicals are so afraid of.