It is always entertaining, and a little unsettling at times, to watch liberal philosophy morph into something ugly, something so far to the political left as to be diametrically opposed to what it was only 50 short years ago and almost unrecognizable.
That it is enveloped in intolerance and rigidity is no more obvious than in its stands on guns and free speech.
How things have changed. President John F. Kennedy, a Democrat, had a life membership in the National Rifle Association — one of eight presidents to have had one, The Washington Post says — and he was a staunch defender of the Second Amendment. Hubert Humphrey also was a Second Amendment advocate. Even George Orwell supported gun ownership. "That rifle on the wall of the labourer's cottage or working class flat is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there," he said.
Compare that with liberals' relentless assaults on gun rights today. They range from silly assault-style weapon and magazine bans, to serial numbering bullets, to presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's promise of more gun control and her praise for Australia's onerous 1996 mandatory gun "buyback" and confiscation scheme.
The left's flip-flop on individual rights is even more telling in its growing disdain for free speech. Instead of the vigorous and robust freedom the left demanded during Berkeley's 1964 Free Speech Movement, now we have university "safe zones" to protect the kiddies from differing ideas and even professors assaulting students who disagree with them — not to mention politically correct speech aimed at fostering politically correct thinking.
Nowadays, the left delegitimizes and marginalizes dissent. Those who question progressive claptrap too often are smeared as haters, sexists, racists or homophobes. And heaven help you if you happen to be religious and believe you have rights.
Nowhere is the left's desire to silence dissent more evident than in political spending. The Supreme Court's 2010 ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, a case striking down limits on independent campaign spending, drives liberals wild. The court sided with a conservative non-profit group, Citizens United, that in 2008 wanted to air "Hillary: The Movie," a political documentary critical of Hillary Clinton — despite restrictions in 2002's McCain-Feingold Act.
The court said political spending is free speech and government cannot bar corporations or unions from spending money to support or denounce political candidates.
In the left's view, the ruling threw open the door for the evil Koch brothers and other wealthy donors to support conservative candidates — while it remains blind to the bulging wallets of liberal godfathers George Soros, or Michael Bloomberg or Thomas Steyer.
The left is in an absolute panic to scrap the ruling. Hillary Clinton declared anybody wanting to fill the late Justice Antonin Scalia's seat, if she is president, must commit to overruling Citizens. Sen. Bernie Sanders and other Democratic senators have tried twice to introduce a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United.
In a Los Angeles Times op-ed piece, John O. McGinnis, the George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law at Northwestern University School of Law, says, "If you hold sway over the media and the academy and yet still fail to convince a majority of voters with your views, suppressing speech that counters those views can start to seem like a constitutional imperative. And make no mistake: Beyond the rough-and-tumble of political campaigns, liberals continue to control the institutions that set the nation's political agenda."
Elections, he says, give ordinary citizens opportunities to dump the apple cart.
McGinnis notes the Supreme Court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has labored to ensure campaign regulation is subject to what he calls "neutral principles." In other words, what applies to other First Amendment questions should apply to all First Amendment questions.
"A government-imposed limit on, say, the amount of money a newspaper could spend for investigative reporters would be obviously unconstitutional," McGinnis writes. "Why, then, should money spent on political campaigns be any different?"
Despite a spate of self-flagellation hereabouts recently about campaign donations influencing decisions, free political speech demands just that — that it be free. As long as the funding source is clear, no harm, no foul. The court in Citizens United rightly left disclosure requirements intact.
The notion of government further regulating politics and political campaigns to smooth what professor Lawrence Lessig of Harvard Law School — a campaign finance reform proponent — describes as the political "distortion," or inequality, of money in campaigns, is frightening. But, as McGinnis correctly notes, "The First Amendment guarantees freedom, not equality. Rights are exercised to radically unequal degrees, and the right to speech is no exception."
That would be the same right to speech, by the way, liberalism once embraced and revered.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the Anchorage Daily Planet.com, a division of Porcaro Communications.
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