Democratic Leaders Encourage Suppression of Speech

Conservative speakers are being denied the ability to express their thoughts and ideas on some of the most elite college campuses across the country — the very venues where freedom of expression should be encouraged.

And the protesters are getting their ideas for shutting down speech from Democratic political leaders.

In one example, a small group of protesters disrupted a scheduled one-hour speech last week by conservative author and columnist Ann Coulter at Cornell University.

She was invited to speak by the local chapter of Network of Enlightened Women (NeW), but shortly after she began activists hurled insults and made loud noises to interrupt Coulter’s speech.

“Your words are violence,” one protester yelled, according to a video obtained by Campus Reform. “We don’t want you to speak here.”

She nonetheless carried on for 27 minutes, trying to make herself heard above the clamor, before she called it quits and was escorted off by campus security.

And they get their idea that free speech is harmful from people like Sen. Ed Markey. The Massachusetts Democrat colluded with a Washington Post reporter to cast Twitter in a bad light after Elon Musk purchased it and converted it into a free speech platform.

Markey allegedly got his feathers ruffled by a parody Twitter account in his name.

Parody accounts purport to belong to well-known public figures but are set up to mock that person.

The most famous one may have been AOC Press, which was a parody of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. It amassed 850,000 followers when Twitter permanently shut it down, even though it clearly identified itself as a “parody.”

But now there’s a new Sheriff in Twitter-town — one with an actual sense of humor.

Markey claimed to be furious when he “discovered” the parody account of himself, and he shot off a two-page letter to Twitter’s new owner and attached it to a tweet.

“A @washingtonpost reporter was able to create a verified account impersonating me,” he wrote. “I’m asking for answers from @elonmusk who is putting profits over people and his debt over stopping disinformation. Twitter must explain how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again.”

Musk decided to have a little fun with Markey.

“Perhaps it is because your real account sounds like a parody?” he asked, adding, “And why does your pp (profile picture) have a mask!?”

At that point Markey exerted his political muscle and threatened to bring the power, weight, and wrath of the federal government down on Musk.

“One of your companies is under an FTC consent decree,” he wrote. “Auto safety watchdog NHTSA is investigating another for killing people. And you’re spending your time picking fights online. Fix your companies. Or Congress will.”

But it turned out to be a ruse, done to make Twitter’s new free speech policy look bad and damage its reputation.

Markey colluded with Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler, who said he first set up a parody account in the name of a comedian.

“I did my test again with the permission of a U.S. senator, Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.),” Fowler wrote. “In a few minutes, I got a blue check mark on an impersonation of the lawmaker, who has for years scrutinized tech giants in the Senate.”

Markey closed his letter to Musk with a demand:

“Allowing an imposter to impersonate a U.S. Senator on Twitter is a serious matter that you need to address promptly.”

Going back to the Coulter protester, where do today’s students get the idea that if they don’t like a speaker, instead of leaving the room they have the right to shut him down? Where did they come up with the notion that “words are violence” and speech can be hate?

They get it from their elders. They got it from their political leaders — particularly liberal Democratic political leaders.

• They got it from former Attorney General Eric Holder, who said, “when they go low, we kick 'em.”
• They got it from then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, when the New York Democrat shouted into a bullhorn outside the Supreme Court building that conservative justices “have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
• They got it from Rep Maxine Waters, when the California Democrat told a crowd of supporters, “if you see anybody from that [Trump] Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

Today’s youth get the idea that freedom of expression should be avoided from pompous buffoons like Edward Markey.

Scratch a liberal and you’ll find a fascist.