Our Democratic friends are single-serving libertarians, happy to say: “If you don’t like abortion, don’t have one.” But that of course doesn’t hold for them where firearms are concerned — or where prayer is concerned, or where employment is concerned, or even where comedy is concerned. Progressives are free to turn off Joe Rogan, but they will not be happy as long as you are free to listen to his podcasts. Progressives are free to advocate abortion, but they will not be happy as long as you are free to advocate nonlethal alternatives. The vegans and the bug-eaters will not be happy until veganism or insectophagia or whatever their particular dietary obsession might be is mandatory. They cannot feel themselves to be free until you aren’t.
The people who want to take crisis-pregnancy centers off the maps want to take nonconforming radio programs and television networks off the airwaves, too. They want to take publications they disagree with off the Internet and off the newsstands, and they want to take comedians who hurt their feelings off television. (Do check out Noah Rothman’s excellent new book on that subject, The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives’ War on Fun.) And, ultimately, they want to control your lives just as comprehensively — and at least as ruthlessly — as the parole system does those under its jurisdiction.
Happily, there already is a palpable sense that the cultural tide is turning against the little suppressors. But progressives will continue to exploit — with all the mercilessness they can manage — their positions of power at the sensitive junctions of important institutions, from regulatory agencies to college campuses, where the especially cruel practice of revoking undergraduates’ admissions as a form of political retaliation against the thoughts and words of children remains in force.
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