Take a little trip back with me down memory lane. Those old Cold Warrior among us will recognize the ploy right away, those younger and taught history in guv’munt schools may need to just trust me on this and read up later.
Throughout the Cold War the Left would always prattle on about “peace” – the last decade of the Evil Empire’s life we had to deal with the useful idiots of SANE/FREEZE, anti-Pershing/GLCM protesters, anti-School of the Americas moonbats, the left-wing of the Democrat Party, and the garden variety pro-Sandinista/FMLN, that managed to run you out of the Presbyterian Church. Ahhhhh yes, you remember.
We also had the comically mis-named Non Aligned Movement, Arab League and other assorted fellow travelers.
What did they, along with their ideological tops, The Soviet Union, ask for? Peace.
Who could be against peace, right? As always you have to understand how they define their terms. Peace was/is for them simply the absence of opposition. As long as you understand that, then all the lost millions murdered in the gulag, laogai, killing fields, or random pock-marked walls were all the price for peace.
So now in the second decade of the 21st century we see the same people calling for “civility” – and by civility they mean one thing; shut up and let me do what I want.
A free society relies on vigorous debate – it is the intellectual churn that keeps our little pond healthy. A Representative Republic needs – no, requires – sharp elbows and thick skins. I say bollocks to your false civility.
Silence is the oxygen of tyrants. Speak up, challenge – give as good as you get. If you want to sit there like a eunuch at court – good luck with that. Too many people have died so we can get carried away with our freedom now and then. Use or lose it.
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