They say honesty is a virtue, and that’s the truth. In the deepest sense, being honest means seeing the world as it actually is and not pretending that what is, isn’t, or that what isn’t, is.  What makes that a virtue?  It allows clear-sighted individuals and whole societies to meet the many challenges that confront them. How can one expect to deal effectively with reality if one isn’t willing to see it for what it is? The ancients called this prudence.

That makes dishonesty a vice, a misguided attempt to fake and out-fox reality. It’s a fool’s errand and, unfortunately, today it’s a most popular political pass time. Consider the legions of radical activists who obviously don’t believe in the causes for which they claim to be fighting. (READ MORE from Jerome Huyler: The Limited Government We Don’t Have)

(1)  The woke progressives who are busy fighting for Environmental Social Governance (ESG) couldn’t possibly believe that humanity confronts an imminent global climate crisis and that a cataclysmic event will soon occur if we don’t immediately curtail the emission of CO2 gases. If they did feel such urgency, they would no doubt hold massive protest rallies in front of every Chinese embassy in the world. China’s reliance on (a) an ever-growing number of coal-fired, power plants and (b) massive amounts of dirty Iranian oil which they import pose a far more alarming threat to the planet than do the cleaner-burning fuels produced in domestic U.S. fields. America is home to the cleanest-burning coal, oil, and natural gas reserves in the world. Nonetheless, it’s only American energy that apparently threatens the world’s climate.  And the fear-driven environmentalists also object to the safe, next generation, and non-polluting nuclear power plants the United States can come up with.       

 (2)  Environmentalism used to go hand in hand with animal preservation.”Endangered species,” like the snail darter, furbish lousewort, and spotted owl had to be protected from predatory farmers and other despoilers of the land. So where is the concern for the hapless whales and dolphins that now routinely wash up on North Atlantic shores in close proximity to the massive, off-shore windmill farms that supply us with renewable, wind energy (and make politically-connected businesses and investors wealthy). Nothing is more important to the greenies than the rapid anti-industrial/anti-capitalist crusade that dates back to the radical 1960s.      

(3)  Advocates of Critical Race Theory (CRT) point to the racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, toxic masculinity, white supremacy, minority voter suppression, conservative hate speech, and rampant police brutality that pervade mainstream America.  Only there is no empirical data that supports the absurd claims. All available evidence points to the remarkable progress this country has made in the area of race and gender relations. Men and women of every imaginable racial, ethnic, and religious background who are willing to work hard, accept temporary disappointment, and keep on striving have every opportunity to advance the conditions of their lives. If success is becoming increasingly tougher, it’s due to the heavy burden big government now places on the free market the wokesters decry. 

(4)  For years, left-leaning college students have demanded that college campuses be converted into “safe spaces.” Professors have had to issue “trigger warnings” before raising topics that might offend the sensibilities of their students.  Everyone had to be on the lookout for the dastardly “microaggression.” Use of an unwanted pronoun often sent the snowflakes into a tizzy. Yet today on college campuses across America angry denunciations and heated threats against Jews, generally, and Israel, in particular ring out all across the halls of ivy.  Protestors wave flags, carry hate-filled signs and sing angry songs condemning Israel’s “genocidal” deeds. They engage in brave acts of symbolic violence, like bashing a piñata with Bibi’s likeness to pieces. Never mind the atrocities the brave “soldiers” of Hamas captured on their devices and proudly displayed on October 7th. The radicals won’t allow reality to stand in the way of their “righteous” cause. The whole CRT/ESG/DEI chorus of malcontents has organized a well-funded movement to match the Anti-War protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s. 

(5) Ever since Karl Marx posted his blistering critique of capitalism in1848, the left has been the laborer’s champion. It has stuck up for the interests of the oppressed and exploited working classes struggling in the pressure-cooker that is capitalism. Yet the war on American energy has cost tens of thousands of pipeline and oil field workers their livelihoods, not to mention their pursuit of happiness. The production of far dirtier fossil fuels from Russia, the Middle East, Iran and Venezuela ring no alarm bells for the “save the planet now” crowd. But it’s much worse than that. Never mind the high-paying jobs that are being denied these skilled and highly-trained workers. What about the poorly-skilled workers just barely surviving around the world?

The enemies of capitalism charged that the West’s rush to industrialize left the working classes in misery. They were paid only enough to stay alive and return to their work bench, as much as seven days a week. Nothing was more urgent for the political left than putting an end to the awful conditions suffered by capitalism’s victims. Yet to obtain the rare-earth minerals required to make batteries and end our reliance on fossil fuels and gas-powered autos, workers are being worked to the bone in some of the most hazardous conditions the planet has ever experienced. Siddharth Kara, a fellow at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health and at the Kennedy School has exposed the high cost of mining for cobalt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. As his research showed: “People are working in subhuman, grinding, degrading conditions. They use pickaxes, shovels, stretches of rebar to hack and scrounge at the earth in trenches and pits and tunnels to gather cobalt and feed it up the formal supply chain.” A recent report of Kara’s findings concludes that

the mining industry has ravaged the landscape of the DRC. Millions of trees have been cut down, the air around mines is hazy with dust and grit, and the water has been contaminated with toxic effluents from the mining processing. What’s more, he says, “Cobalt is toxic to touch and breathe — and there are hundreds of thousands of poor Congolese people touching and breathing it day in and day out. Young mothers with babies strapped to their backs, all breathing in this toxic cobalt dust” raises virtually no concerns as long as we produce the batteries that go into our EV autos and smart phones.”

If protecting workers, wildlife, and the woke and preventing worldwide climate calamity are not motivating left-wing radicalism, what is? Their valiant efforts to suppress dissenting opinion tell us all we need to know. 

While free thought and expression is the hallmark of a tolerant society, the progressive left displays little tolerance for recalcitrant, democratic voices. Self-appointed authorities assert the right to cancel views that smack of “disinformation,”  “misinformation,” or that can be summarily dismissed as some “conspiracy theory.” Many on the left will glibly announce that opposing claims have already been thoroughly “debunked.” Yet no one has ever visited a National Debunking Bureau. More broadly there is the large-scale effort to enforce a soft form of censorship (that is not always so “soft”). Anyone who dares utter a politically incorrect thought will face ostracism and social abandonment. Suggest that global climate change poses no threat to us or that you are a Trump supporter and . . . wait for it.  (READ MORE: The Dangerous ‘Disinformation’ Smear)

It has gotten so bad that in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election FBI agents told social media platforms to be wary of reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop that smack of Russian disinformation. Yet, all the while the Federal authorities had positively concluded that the laptop belonged to Hunter Biden.

So why would anyone want to suppress free thought and expression? People who can think for themselves can’t be controlled. They know better than to believe or do as they are told. Look around the world at the percentage of humanity who crouch under the yoke of absolute despotism and who dare not utter a word of defiance against constituted authority. America is not immune to the awful human propensity to acquire power and bend others to a ruling elite’s corrupt will. To paraphrase the famous Barbara Streisand: People who need to control other people are the most dangerous people in the world.