Live Free Or Die

by Sean Hannity

  Antifa already has a long, sick record of violent assaults. In fact, the group managed to get one of its own killed in Tacoma, Washington, on July 13, 2019, after one of their supporters set fire to a car outside an ICE detention facility for illegal immigrants. The attacker, Willem Van Spronsen, then opened fire on the building with an AR-15, hurled Molotov cocktails, and attempted to blow up a propane tank. Police shot Van Spronsen when he aimed his rifle at them and ignored their commands.48

  The most recent (and egregious) example of Antifa’s incitement was the plague of riots following the death of George Floyd. The president tweeted that moving forward, Antifa will be recognized as a terrorist organization.

  There can be little doubt Antifa will be responsible for more casualties unless authorities take a much stronger approach to their violent acts and adopt a much more proactive policy of defending the free speech rights of the group’s targets.

  DEMOCRAT DIGITAL DOMINANCE

  America’s social media giants are mostly owned and run by leftists, and it’s common knowledge, except among leftists who deny common knowledge, that they are discriminating against conservatives on their platforms. Actually, I find it amusing that leftists deny they discriminate against conservatives on social media while simultaneously defending their right and even their duty to do it—supposedly to protect users from hate and misinformation. They’ll make up some pretext or another for suspending or suppressing conservatives—violation of terms of service, using “manipulated” images, etc.—but everyone understands what’s really going on here. When conservatives, like Daily Caller reporter Chuck Ross, get suspended from Twitter for tweeting “learn to code” at liberal journalists—meant to point out the heartlessness of leftists who say laid-off workers in disfavored industries should simply learn a new trade—it’s obvious social media is cracking down on one political camp and protecting the other.49

  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey adamantly denied that Twitter bases its decisions to rank content or enforce its rules on political ideology. “We believe strongly in being impartial, and we strive to enforce our rules impartially,” Dorsey told Congress.50 But the facts show otherwise. Richard Hanania, a postdoctoral research fellow at Columbia University, assembled a database of prominent, politically active Twitter users who were temporarily or permanently suspended. “My results make it difficult to take claims of political neutrality seriously,” wrote Hanania. “Of 22 prominent, politically active individuals who are known to have been suspended since 2005 and who expressed a preference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, 21 supported Donald Trump.”51

  Hanania also notes that conservatives are often punished for certain types of speech that liberals engage in with impunity. He cites Sarah Jeong, an editorial writer for the New York Times, who posted many tweets expressing her contempt for white people. Twitter had no problem with those tweets, but it suspended conservative Candace Owens when she copied some of Jeong’s tweets and changed “white” to “Jewish” to make a point. And it’s not just Twitter, Hanania points out. He noted that if you type “Sarah Jeong” in a Google search box, it will not provide auto-complete suggestions that refer to her controversial tweets, whereas Bing and Yahoo both suggest “Sarah Jeong racist.” (As I write this, Bing no longer suggests “Sarah Jeong racist,” though it does suggest “Sarah Jeong Jews.”) “While one could argue that individuals’ worst moments shouldn’t follow them around forever, it is difficult to imagine a big tech company suppressing unflattering information about a conservative in a similar manner,” said Hanania.52

  At Facebook, company officers don’t go to particularly great lengths to disguise their political preferences. In fact, Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election right on her platform. “Tonight, I am hopeful thinking about what it means for my children to watch Hillary Clinton accept the Democratic nomination for president of the United States and for me to be able to tell them #ImWithHer,” Sandberg posted on Facebook.53 Oops—guess that was a little premature. But Sandberg’s announcement was especially brazen given that Facebook had just recently been accused of suppressing conservative stories, and several of their executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Sandberg herself, had met with conservative commentators to try to convince them of Facebook’s political neutrality.54

  At Google, a window opened into the company’s culture when a software engineer, James Damore, sent around a memo proposing that biological differences between men and women could explain the gender gap in tech companies, since women are more prone to “empathizing” and men to “systematizing.” In response, Google CEO Sundar Pichai sent a memo to employees beginning with his assurance that “we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves”—and then he completely undermined that guarantee by whining about how Damore’s memo made his snowflake employees feel “under threat” and unsure whether they can “safely” express their views. Soon after that, Damore was fired.55

  Similarly, in 2014, before “Cancel Culture” was even a thing, Brendan Eich was hounded into resigning as CEO of Mozilla when it became known that years before, he’d contributed to California’s Proposition 8, affirming that marriage is between one man and one woman. There was no tolerance, no mercy, and no forgiveness for Eich, just naming, shaming, and unceasing harassment until he could no longer continue in his job.56

  I’ve often featured James O’Keefe on my show to highlight his incredible investigative reporting of abominable leftist behavior. His Project Veritas organization interviewed whistle-blowers from Pinterest and Google, revealing that these companies intentionally suppress conservative content in an effort to promote the left’s agenda and prevent another “Trump situation” in 2020.57 Proving O’Keefe’s point, YouTube and Vimeo blocked access to the interviews.58

  FREE SPEECH AS A THREAT

  Even Ravelry, a presumably apolitical knitting website, banned pro-Trump messages and users from its site, claiming Trump’s message is racist.59 Notice the telltale nod to inclusiveness as Ravelry drummed out political dissidents from their knitting club: “We cannot provide a space that is inclusive of all and also allow support for open white supremacy.”60 Why would a knitting site take such a polarizing political stance? The answer, as I’ve told you, is that the left politicizes everything. Leftism is their religion. It is their constitution. It is their be-all and end-all. You’d think they’d enjoy bringing people of various political views together to share their common hobby, but no, everything is subservient to left-wing politics.61

  Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign’s digital guru, explains that “Democrats view free speech as a threat to their political ambitions.”62 They “are extremely concerned about the power of social media to circumvent the standard media channels they control. Legacy media outlets such as CNN and The New York Times are vital to the Democrats’ political power, using their influence to create an ‘echo chamber’ in support of liberal viewpoints,” said Parscale, referring to Ben Rhodes’s media manipulations, as I detailed earlier.

  The left has employed this strategy often during Trump’s term, with their media mob acting in unison to undermine Trump and his agenda, such as their despicable smearing of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh. “Today’s mainstream media act more like public relations firms on the payroll of the Democratic Party than independent seekers of truth,” Parscale explains. But President Trump counters the Fake News attacks through his “revolutionary use of social media.” This has terrified Democrats, who aren’t used to competing on a level playing field, “so they want social media companies, especially Twitter and Facebook, to carry water for them just like the legacy press has done for so long,” says Parscale.

  Oftentimes, these social media giants do just that. For example, Twitter used fake-news CNN and the Washington Post, of all newspapers, as their fact checkers, which is laughable.

  Parscale notes that Democrat presidential candidates urged Twitter to ban Trump pe
rmanently, and congressional Democrats are trying to intimidate Facebook into policing “hate speech,” meaning conservative speech. Democrats support Twitter’s decision to ban political advertising, says Parscale, “because social media executives are in bed with the Democrats and most of their employees are far-left ideological zealots” who use their power “to undermine conservatives and advance a radical liberal agenda” while claiming they are promoting “fairness.”63 The Democrats have no real regard for fairness or free speech protections, which are just platitudes they invoke when it helps promote their agenda or stifle conservative policies.

  Several remedies have been proposed to curtail the unfair treatment of conservatives. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act shields certain internet platforms from liability for posts their users publish. The law’s rationale is that these social media platforms are like phone companies—neutral platforms, not content providers, and they allow people to post regardless of their political views. But some Republicans, including Senator Ted Cruz, argue these companies censor conservative content, so their status should be revoked. Senator Josh Hawley introduced the “Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act,” which would amend Section 230 to provide that social media companies will lose their immunity from liability unless they submit to an external audit to show that their content removal practices are politically neutral.64

  President Trump has suggested looking into antitrust action against these companies by the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission. After all, the reason a few Silicon Valley firms have been able to suppress the conservative message is that they have near-monopolies. “No one cares who gets kicked off MySpace,” writes Peter Van Buren. “If you end the monopolies, you defang deplatforming.”65

  Liberals have been outraged at the prospect of losing their media monopoly since the birth of the alternative media. And the advent of social media, even with its current biases, is particularly threatening to the media mob, empowering any old Dick or Jane to post alongside the “professionals” and possibly see their contribution go viral. The hate-Trump media mob has reacted by calling for more speech suppression—they want filters, more censoring of “hate speech,” and the positioning of media outfits as arbiters to rule on the truthfulness of users’ posts.

  WEAPONIZING CAMPAIGN FINANCE

  It particularly frosts Democrats that Republicans oppose campaign finance reform on free speech grounds and that the Supreme Court’s 2009 Citizens United decision vindicated that view, holding that the First Amendment protects political speech, which includes corporations spending money on political advocacy. At issue in the case was whether the Federal Election Commission could ban a movie criticizing Hillary Clinton, then running for president in the Democratic primaries, from distribution by a nonprofit company.66

  The reasoning is that freedom of speech is meaningless in elections if Congress can prevent you from spending money to communicate your message. “If the First Amendment has any force, it prohibits Congress from fining or jailing citizens, or associations of citizens, for simply engaging in political speech,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy in his majority opinion. “The government may not suppress political speech on the basis of the speaker’s corporate identity.” The Court made clear that “it is our law and our tradition that more speech, not less, is the governing rule.”67

  What part of “Congress shall make no law” do people not understand? The Democrats tried and failed to secure a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United and narrow the First Amendment by empowering Congress to limit fund-raising and spending on election campaigns and independent political speech.68 Gaining the support of fifty-four Democrat senators,69 the proposed amendment, instead of “leveling the playing field,” as Democrats falsely claimed, would hurt candidates trying to unseat incumbent congressmen and limit ordinary Americans’ expression of their views about candidates. By an amazing coincidence, it would also benefit Democrats, who have a built-in advantage with the liberal media. So under the amendment, the media mob could continue dedicating their huge resources to promoting Democrats, while spending would be constricted for conservatives trying to counter those messages.70

  But the left never gives up. Our friend Adam Schiff has proposed another constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.71 And the Democrats have launched a separate attack through H.R. 1, a bill deceptively called the “For the People Act” but more accurately described by Senator Mitch McConnell as the “Democrat Politician Protection Act.”72 The bill would encroach on free speech rights by empowering Congress to “regulate the raising and spending of political money.” Ted Cruz noted that the legislation would give “Congress power to regulate—and ban—speech by everybody.”73 Even the left-wing American Civil Liberties Union warned the bill would “unconstitutionally infringe the freedoms of speech and association” and “silenc[e] necessary voices that would otherwise speak out about the public issues of the day.”74 Yes, exactly—that’s the point of the bill, and that’s the aim of the Democratic Party.

  THE LEFT’S ASSAULT ON RELIGIOUS LIBERTY

  Let’s now turn our attention to the left’s assault on religious liberty. Many leftists are outwardly anti-Christian. The left denies they’re antireligious, and I don’t challenge the sincerity of progressives who are professing Christians. But there is no disputing that liberalism by and large today is hostile to Christian values and religious liberties. They oppose homeschooling and can’t seem to tolerate Christian-based symbols like Christmas trees or even candy canes on public property. They revile Vice President Mike Pence and his wife, Karen, for their Christian faith.

  The Democrats showed their true colors when they booed God at their 2012 convention. That was no one-off incident—it’s part of a deliberate effort to diminish Christianity and champion atheism. In August 2019, the Democratic National Committee unanimously passed a resolution celebrating the religiously unaffiliated, noting—nonsensically—that they’re the “largest religious group” among Democrats. The resolution also affirmed that they “overwhelmingly share the Democratic Party’s values” and “have often been subjected to unfair bias and exclusion in American society.” The Secular Coalition of America, a lobbying group for atheists, agnostics, and humanists on public policy, praised the resolution as the first time a major party “embraced American nonbelievers.”75 Sarah Levin, director of affairs from the Secular Coalition of America, said the resolution would help “to ensure that policy is driven by science and evidence, not sectarian beliefs,” implying that one must choose between one’s religious beliefs on the one hand, and science and evidence on the other.76 Annie Laurie Gaylor, copresident of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, touted the resolution as a “political landmark” that is “long overdue.”77

  The resolution maligns believers and denounces their alleged abuse of religious liberty to infringe on certain groups’ civil rights. “Those most loudly claiming that morals, values, and patriotism must be defined by their particular religious views have used those religious views, with misplaced claims of ‘religious liberty,’ to justify public policy that has threatened the civil rights and liberties of many Americans, including but not limited to the LGBT community, women, and ethnic and religious/nonreligious minorities,” the resolution reads.78

  What conservatives have long understood is that the left is not just trying to convince people of their arguments but to suppress opposing views. We saw that in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, in which a gay couple sued the owner, Jack Phillips, not because he refused to serve gays in general but because he refused, based on his religious beliefs, to make a cake celebrating a same-sex wedding. We saw the same impetus in Beto O’Rourke’s demands to strip Christian educational institutions, churches, and other charities of their tax-exempt status unless they recognize same-sex marriage.

  The Obama administration targeted Christian adoption agencies for trying to place orphans with Christian parents and sought to compel Catholic nuns to
comply with an Obamacare mandate to provide access to contraceptives and abortifacients as part of their health-care package.79 Obamacare enforcers also came after Hobby Lobby, which refused to comply with the mandate because of its founders’ religious convictions. NARAL, a pro-abortion group that supports Democratic candidates, opposes conscience laws that permit medical doctors and other providers to opt out of activities, such as abortion or euthanasia, that violate their religious convictions.80

  The Democrats are also trying to advance this agenda through the Equality Act, which was introduced in the House in March 2019 and would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the 1964 Civil Rights Act. “This would essentially remove any legal protections that small business owners, nonprofits, churches, schools, and private individuals currently enjoy to live and operate according to traditional and deeply held religious beliefs about sex, the human family, and human dignity,” writes Rev. Joseph D’Souza, founder of Dignity Freedom Network.81 “This is not a good-faith attempt to reconcile competing interests,” said University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock. “It is an attempt by one side to grab all the disputed territory and to crush the other side.”82

  Fortunately President Trump strongly defends America’s religious liberty. “On every front, the ultra-left is waging war on the values shared by everyone in this room,” he said at the 2019 Values Voter Summit. “They are trying to silence and punish the speech of Christians and religious believers of all faiths…. They are trying to use the courts to rewrite the laws, undermine democracy, and force through an agenda they can’t pass at the ballot box. They are trying to hound you from the workplace, expel you from the public square and weaken the American family and indoctrinate our children. They resent and disdain faithful Americans who hold fast to our nation’s historic values. And, if given the chance, they would use every instrument of government power, including the IRS, to try to shut you down…. We know that families and churches, not government officials, know best how to create strong and loving communities…. And above all else, we know this: in America, we don’t worship government, we worship God.”83