The Left’s promotion of censorship has shifted into high gear. A few decades ago, liberals were in the vanguard of demanding freedom of speech to the extreme. “Free speech” became the liberal battle cry in defense of everything from public vulgarity to pornography to communism, all under the guise of not silencing viewpoints because of objectionable content. In a shocking reversal, leftists now openly advocate for censorship of views they dislike. Of course, they still have no problem with vulgarity, pornography, and communism, but now traditional family values has become a viewpoint they want to silence in the marketplace of ideas.
Things are even more bleak in places like Europe, where there is no First Amendment freedom. New rules drafted by the European Union (EU) call for the punishment of disfavored online speech. There is nothing free about this push for censorship. The European Commission is the unelected body of bureaucrats governing the European Union, whose membership fell to 27 when Britain exited in January 2020. The Commission recently approved censorship of online speech critical of LGBTQ+, which can mean anything contrary to traditional gender norms.
These new rules against free speech on the internet take aim at vocal conservatives in Poland and Hungary unsupportive of the direction in which the EU is trying to take those pro-Trump countries. At a convention in Istanbul last year, the Eastern European nations of Bulgaria and the Czech Republic also pushed back against the attempt by the EU to erode family values.
Like Russia, all of these formerly communist countries have seen firsthand the immense harm that liberals cause, and those countries have no interest in returning to the bad old days. Communism in its purest form calls for the abolishment of the family unit. Families have a tendency to work for the good of each other rather than the good of the state, and that is something communism can’t tolerate.
Yet economic pressure keeps these formerly communist nations tethered to the EU despite the threat it poses to their sovereignty. These bastions of family values will one day realize that their deal with the devil of globalism was a bad one. I pray they do so before history tragically repeats itself.
