When I graduated from Clarion State College in Western Pennsylvania back in 1976, in the Spring of America’s 200th birthday, I came away with a four-year observation:
The number one thing that those on the Left hate is “free speech.”
I watched that insight play out down through the decades in what began, like a snowball, as a small roll. But, as Ernest Hemingway’s memorable line suggests, things changed “gradually, then suddenly.”
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The very first Letter to the Editor I ever had published was back in the early 1980s in The New York Post. I shared my Clarion knowledge with a one-sentence submission, “Free speech is great, as long as the person doing the talking is saying what you want to hear.”
I have since seen memes that state that “hate speech is any speech I hate,” pointing out that it’s not really about speech itself, but about whose speech.
And now, through these past many years, the crackdown in the form of cancellation and even incarceration for “thought crimes” has become overwhelmingly obvious. Here’s just one recent example in the category of “Nations That Should Know Better”:
Great Britain seems to be leading the way with the arrest of comedian Graham Linehan for a few rather innocuous tweets slamming the trans insanity and the illegal immigrant fiasco. To learn the details, you will want to check out Andrea Widburg’s excellent essay from a few days back here at American Thinker which covers this subject in depth.
First for a Reason
Freedom is all about saying what you think. That is, perhaps, the key reason why our Founders made it the very First Amendment. If you must guard your tongue in a debate, you have effectively self-censored and have permitted another person (or government) the right to do whatever they please under the guise of “silence bestows consent.”
Corporations are fond of holding “visionary” meetings where the phrase “blue-sky thinking” is tossed around. Leaders of the group will say something like, “We want everyone to share; remember, no idea is too far out there”—and this is all said as a positive, to grow and prosper a company. Of course, in today’s corporate world, it may certainly have been this wild-eyed thinking that led to Bud Light and Cracker Barrel’s brand disasters. But that’s when the dark clouds of current culture overtake what used to be the positivity of blue skies.
The Founders and the Bible
The Founding Fathers based our entire form of freedom of, by, and for the People on two foundations clearly stated in the Declaration of Independence: “Nature and Nature’s God.” The Founders were not perfect people (as those on the Left are quick to point out), so they relied on a perfect God who put everything in order.
The Bible is, of course, the definitive book of practicality in this matter of how we express ourselves through speech. Consider just two statements from the Old Testament, and two from the New:
“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure, who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
“From their callous hearts comes iniquity; their evil imaginations have no limits.” (Psalm 73:7)
and
“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” (Luke 6:45)
“You [Pharisees] belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)
These words of Jesus from the Gospels seem to be especially applicable today. In the second of the New Testament quotes, Jesus was specifically addressing some corrupt Pharisees of His day, so-called religious people who had gone astray from the Truth. No one had successfully challenged them, so they continued in their nefarious deeds.
Is that Pharisaic spirit alive today?
Jonathan Cahn unravels this suggestion in a couple of his most recent New York Times bestsellers, notably, The Return of the Gods (September 2022) and The Avatar: The Return of the Ancients & the Future of America (September 2025). Cahn points out Biblical parallels to events -- and people -- living today, in nations across the globe.
Could a “spirit of deception and destruction” explain why so many people who promote incredibly malevolent and senseless ideas -- the sexual mutilation of children, wide open borders, jailing non-violent people for speaking against blatant evil -- have no fear of taking a stand? Could it be that they feel that the current wave of thinking that declares “evil good and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20) is backing them up?
What Does Our Future Hold?
America is fortunate that Donald Trump dodged a bullet in Butler last July, sparing this great nation a potentially disastrous future. For now.
President Trump has made our country faith-friendly again, and more and more people are finding the courage to “speak the truth in love” as they rejoin the public debate. We can do many things while the skies are still clear; among those things, we can “encourage one another on to love and good deeds.”
And perhaps most importantly, we must take Trump’s inspired exhortation to “Fight Fight Fight” to that next crucial level: “Pray Pray Pray.”
Albin Sadar is author of Obvious: Seeing the Evil That’s in Plain Sight and Doing Something About It, as well as the children’s book collection, Hamster Holmes: Box of Mysteries. Albin was formerly the producer of “The Eric Metaxas Show.”