SPEECH: Put muzzles away

If you need proof that the radical Left is about muzzling free speech and silencing dissent, you need look no further than Friday’s Op/Ed from Professor Cornell Clayton at Washington State University.

He cites a Pulitzer Prize winning Communist “journalist” by the name of Richard Hofstadter in decrying the “paranoid right wing political discourse” in our country. In the professor’s words, if you disagree with the Leftist party line, you are “uninformed,” “unhinged” and a “conspiratorial thinker.”

And if you dare to voice an opinion contrary to Leftist dogma about Leftist rioters destroying our cities, voter fraud, mask mandates, the professor declares that you are NOT entitled to have them taken seriously OR HAVE THEM PUBLISHED (emphasis added).

He goes on to say that “We would all benefit from a little more editorial judgment about what The Press prints.”

This reminds me of the New York Times longtime slogan, “All the news that’s fit to print.” So, who gets to decide what’s “fit?”

Less than 90 years after the Nazis determined which books were “fit” for German people to read, the process has begun in our country, starting with Dr Seuss. And our college students are being indoctrinated with this Marxist tripe by professors like Cornell Clayton in classrooms all across our country.

Contrary to the professor’s claims, Thomas Jefferson once wrote: “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” President Jefferson and Professor Clayton can’t both be right.

TODD KAVANAGH

Coeur d’Alene