By John J. Duncan Jr.
Bob Yarbrough, the very popular host of a morning show on WOKI, hit the nail on the head recently when he said what some people were calling misinformation today should more accurately be called disagreement.
Some on the left just cannot stand to have anything they say or believe even be questioned, much less opposed.
Mr. Yarbrough was pointing out many things on which public health experts had been wrong about COVID and its vaccines.
Rahm Emanuel, the former congressman, mayor of Chicago, and presidential aide, said years ago that liberals should never “let a crisis go to waste” in their efforts to expand the power and control of government.
So those on the left, seeing that the economy was so good that Donald Trump was about to be re-elected, jumped on the virus for all it was worth.
They greatly exaggerated the danger and extent of the virus to give them an excuse to shut down the economy and the schools, to spend trillions of federal dollars, and to buy votes by sending checks to everyone.
When those on the left cannot win arguments on the merits, they frequently resort to scurrilous personal abuse and or childish sarcasm as they have against anyone who has dared to even question the effectiveness (harm) of lockdowns and masks.
Since abuse and sarcasm was not sufficient, they have now resorted to the censorship that has worked so well for them on college campuses.
I have never heard Joe Rogan. But because he has so many millions of listeners and because he put on two experts who spoke with facts about the dangers and harm of the vaccines, there have been demands to censor him.
This was done even though he had a pro-vaccine man on an earlier program.
Judge Andrew Napolitano, in his column on Feb. 10, wrote “Rogan, who is a champion of personal liberty, interviewed two physicians who argued against the prevailing attitudes of the government, big pharma and medical elites about vaccines and face masks”.
Napolitano added that the “Lefties…who want Rogan silence prefer that there be no public dialogue on health care because they hate and fear the speech that liberalizes.”
On that same day, Alex Berenson wrote “the White House has become an extraordinary assault on free speech in America. It is no longer content to merely force social media companies to suppress dissenting views. It appears to be setting the stage to use federal police powers.”
He wrote this because of a Department of Homeland security bulletin describing the “terrorist threat” from those who spread “misleading narratives” or “undermine public trust in government in institutions.”
Berenson, who is a former New York Times reporter, has written many fact- based columns on the virus and the vaccines, none of which have been proven wrong.
Keith Preston wrote in Chronicles Magazine last year that “all the tech and media executives who are centering and de-platforming voices on the right (are) closely tied to the central state and its agencies of surveillance and control, and increasingly wedded to the cultural and political goals of the left.”
Columnist George Will has said there is less free speech on college campuses today than in any place else and that our universities seemed to “celebrate diversity and everything but thought.”
Professors Richard Traunmüller of the University of Mannheim and Matthias Reeves of the University of Leeds wrote a lengthy study entitled “Is Free Speech in Danger on University Campuses?”
They found that it was and wrote “left-leaning students are less likely to tolerate controversial viewpoints.”
It has long seemed to me that those who are the loudest in proclaiming their tolerance are the least tolerant of all.
Professor Jonathan Turley of George Washington University wrote that “society is denying speech rights in the name of tolerance, enforcing mutual respect through categorical censorship.”
He added that instead of allowing the true free speech protected by the First Amendment, “we take refuge instead in an awkward and forced silence.”
