When the free press becomes the greatest threat to freedom

Rod Dreher shudders, as do I.  Was a time when freedom meant the freedom to be, well, a nasty, rotten, lousy, no-good wretch of a person. As long as you didn't actually do, or provoke, violence against someone, you were free to be obnoxious and wrong.  You were certainly free to have opinions, though a sense of common decency, long since dismantled by American liberalism, kept public debate on a mature, respectful plane.

Nonetheless, the emergent Left wants none of it.  It wants freedom and liberty dismantled.  The Constitution?  Bah.  The Leftist meme is that the whole thing was just a big pitch for slavery and racism (racism officially being the unforgivable sin, though I'm sure the list of unforgivable sins that preclude mercy will grow).

The funny thing?  When I was in the College of Education, c. late 1980s, the big movement was 'Schools should have nothing to do with our private lives!'  Of course by that they meant teachers or students who indulged in gay sex, group sex, living together, smoking pot, enjoying porn and all the yummy carrots that the Left dangles before the population.   In fairness, they never said this included punishing wrong-think, private or otherwise.

But that's the miracle of the emergent Left.  Principles? Standards?  Morality? Ethics?  Truth?  Even facts?  Why, here today, gone later today.  The emergent Left is almost rushing toward a 20th century unfree society of thought control and oppression, and doing so proudly. It is almost a carbon copy of everything liberalism condemned in the later half of the 20th century.

Mr. Dreher notices the obvious warning flags, bells, whistles, and anything else that sane and mature and decent and common sense people who want a free society based on equality, liberty and the common good notices.  He also sees the glaring problem in our nation today, and that's the sad fact that the institutions that should be protecting us and our freedoms are, in many ways, the ones that are threatening them the most.