Then I read George Washington University Law School professor and Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley's recent column about the crackdown on free speech underway in the U.K., and I grew even more uneasy. Consider this scenario, from Turley:

The crackdown on free speech continues in the United Kingdom as officials use recent rioting to justify a roundup of citizens who they view as “pushing harmful and hateful beliefs.” The government is ramping up arrests of those with “extremist ideologies” in the latest wave of arrests.  The crackdown includes those accused of misogynist views.

[I]t it is [difficult] to get a free people to give up freedoms. They have to be afraid, very afraid. For that reason, governments tend to attack free speech during periods of public anger or fear. That pattern is playing out, yet again, in the United Kingdom. The recent anti-immigration riots have given officials a renewed opportunity to use anti-free speech laws to target those with opposing views.

[...]

For free speech advocates, it is chilling to hear UK officials state that they have been too lax on free speech in the past and must now take censorship and arrests more aggressively.

For those Americans who have remained silent during as this anti-free speech movement grows, you need only to look to the United Kingdom to see what this movement means for our “indispensable right.” That wave has now reached our shores and it will require each one of us to defend a right that defines us all.

Could it happen here, as Turley seems to suggest? If Harris and Walz win in November, the Democrats hold the Senate and retake the House, would a totally Democrat-controlled federal government attempt to crack down on the First Amendment rights of American citizens with whom they disagree? 

There is already evidence of that. 

In March 2023, even PBS reported that attacks on free speech were rising across America.

In Idaho, an art exhibit was censored and teens were told they couldn’t testify in some legislative hearings. In Washington state, a lawmaker proposed a hotline so the government could track offensively biased statements, as well as hate crimes. In Florida, bloggers are fighting a bill that would force them to register with the state if they write posts criticizing public officials. 

PBS quoted Joe Cohn, legislative and policy director with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression:

We are seeing tremendous attacks on First Amendment freedoms across the country right now, at all levels of government. Censorship is proliferating, and it’s deeply troubling. 

And in March 2023, House Democrats used a hearing to savage two journalists while they attempted to explain a government effort to censor citizens. The attack came as journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger testified about breaking the “Twitter Files” story, detailing how the FBI and other federal agencies secretly sought to censor or ban citizens from social media. 

In her opening statement, Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), the ranking member of the House Judiciary subcommittee, attacked Taibbi and Shellenberger as "so-called journalists" and called them "a direct threat" to the safety of others by reporting the censorship story. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) even claimed that “being a Republican witness today certainly casts a cloud over your objectivity.”

Related Reading:

The Anti-Free Speech Candidate

The Democrats Are Moving to Regulate AI and Naturally, It Threatens Free Speech

Big Tech Puts Its Thumb on the Scale Once Again: Facebook Admits It Censored Iconic Trump Photo

Fast-forward to what we saw at the United Center in Chicago over the last four nights. The vitriol. The gaslighting. The blatant lies about Donald Trump, the Republican Party as a whole, and conservatives across America. Is it a stretch to imagine an effort to censor conservatism to a degree in this country not yet seen, if Democrats complete a clean sweep of the White House and both chambers of Congress? No.

While I'm not suggesting Harris-Walz is going to win in November. It still think the race is Trump's to lose. But I am suggesting the possibility is not as farfetched as many of my conservative friends believe. The surrealistic gaslighting extravaganza in Chicago was proof enough. 

The Democrats will now take the ridiculous charade on the road. Toss in the party's ability to get out the vote, and the left's blind hatred of Donald Trump, and nothing will surprise me in November.