Think out loud

Free thought and speech can challenge popular views. But supporting ideas can be risky. Persons who wave high their banner, despite establishment penalties and street-level threats, do so in the spirit of American independence. 

They need not hide their lamps beneath a bushel. Yet.

The few candles in the modest home gave dim, soft light. Several friends and family members huddled on the living room floor. An old man opened a Constitution booklet.

“We the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect --”

One nephew heard a vehicle. He crept to a window, and saw a black van under a streetlight. Three masked and black-clad figures disembarked.

“Justice Keepers!”

The mother pulled a veil over the wall crucifix. And the old man opened a floorboard hiding place, secreting the historic words.

In 2026, that scene seems ridiculous. But remember that progressivism moves gradually. “Hate speech” codes already exist, as do “Hate crimes” laws. We now face the perils of ‘Hate thought’ and intellectual and moral ‘right thinking’ theories.

America-based social media corporations hew closely to European Union speech guidelines, abandoning our nation's traditional ideal of safeguarding voices, in favor of private gain. And pro-repression progressives here in the United States applaud England's siccing police on disfavored internet speakers, and slamming cell doors behind them.

Should progressives' desired attitudinal uniformity become a standard, most citizens would likely pretend at acquiescence. One can imagine employers subjecting job applicants to values and ideological screenings. Industries might maintain blacklists. Anyone wishing paychecks would be required to bend a knee at the unholy altar of groupthink.

Perhaps landlords would deny housing to those refusing such litmus tests. Places of public accomodation might devise suitable requirements, lest they seem insufficiently woke and alienate a customer bloc. (One already reads of anti-ICE protesters putting up rackets outside agents' hotel rooms, and of chains acquiescing.)

Teachers might discipline students for expressing ‘wrongthink.’ And what of religious faith? Would traditionalist Catholics like this writer be sent to re-education camps?

The spectacle of massive financial institutions denying business associations on political bases has already loomed - even for President Trump.

The greatest minds of Western Civilization gave us logic, reasoning, and philosophical articulations of inestimable value. A man’s right to believe and proclaim what seems correct to him, and best reflects his values and faith, is fundamental to the promise of our American Constitution.

More importantly, it is Divinely bestowed. And no weapon formed against it shall prosper.