OPINION — Leftist critics spout only insults, not reasoned arguments

By
Steve Brown
-
16
1276

OPINION — My last column created a certain frisson amongst the people who are bent on destroying your life and your children’s future (see: https://thecitizen.com/2023/04/18/opinion-do-you-have-the-courage-to-save-your-community/).

We know for a fact that there is a concerted effort to create fear and despair in the general public under the threat of violence, public humiliation, termination from employment, and steady pressure to kowtow to a series of ever-growing unhinged leftist ideas.

So, I challenge you. Do not be afraid to oppose those who are determined to crash your family’s future lest your silence is nothing more than the seal of your hapless doom.

Do not allow our culture to devolve into a Maoist-style re-education camp where your children and grandchildren are forced to chant psychotic platitudes in the classroom and workplace such as men can get pregnant, and Abraham Lincoln was in favor of slavery.

Many are currently standing silent, watching while intolerant tyrannical leftists take over as president of the nation and universities. They are turning school boards, regulatory agencies, professional and athletic associations, state and federal courts, and even churches against those who speak out against surgically disfiguring children, scientific corruption, race-based discrimination, or men taking over women’s sports competitions.

All they have are insults

Be sure to peruse the comments offered under my last column. You will see a perfect example of the primary weapon used by the local left-leaning censorship provocateurs: personal insults. And most of the personal insults come by way of anonymous accounts.

Many people are very fearful of being publicly browbeaten on the internet for no other reason than these devotees of leftism cannot defend their counterproductive arguments. Yes, personal insults can be cruel, but their comments undoubtedly prove they cannot debate their agendas, so rude invectives are all they can provide.

Honestly, how are actual biology deniers going to convince anyone that biological male athletes do not have an advantage over females or that men can become pregnant? It’s easy to see why they must resort to violence and insults to force the culture over to their positions.

The cadre of young adults in our community who responded to my last column began to attack me personally with insults because they know the causes they advocate are so far-fetched, so Marxist, that the bulk of the population would never agree with their positions. They know little about history, even less about science, but excel at anarchy.

Campuses where our offspring go to perish intellectually

Thousands of books could be written on the dismemberment of our nation’s colleges and universities. The once bastions of ideological diversity are now the rigid training grounds for identity ideology, subdividing the population, upending a prosperous capitalist culture, and increasingly ruining the everyday lives of future generations.

A routine example of this devastation occurred recently at Stanford Law School where a federal judge was asked to speak at a Federalist Society event. Students mobbed the venue and began screaming at the speaker with insults and threats. The judge’s lessons and opinions were not allowed on the Stanford campus because they did not comport with the Marxist positions they championed.

One of the student militants screamed, “We hope your daughters get raped!”

Realizing that the students were out of control, literally terrorizing the guest speaker, Associate Dean Tirien Steinbach immediately ran to the front of the room and began waving her arms. The students quieted down and Steinbach confirmed that she was on the side of the students wanting to prevent the judge from uttering a single word on campus.

Steinbach is the associate dean of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” which really means she stands for narrowing views on campus to those she approves of and excludes those who do not agree with her and do not look like her.

You must sit in silence

The heartbreaking part is that most of these Maoist-infused students in some of the finest universities will eventually take over law firms, corporations, and high positions in government. They will do so because most are afraid to challenge them. Fragile corporate managers keep their heads low and allow new hires to impose their ridiculously dangerous ideas in the workplace.

As we witnessed in communist nations (today’s students are largely oblivious to this), the first thing they do is rip free speech out of the national fabric.

Only their views are relevant (think colleges that have lists of words and phrases that cannot be said on campuses and prevent speakers from speaking). There is only one way with threats and violence falling upon those who do not follow.

Groups like the Human Rights Campaign and the World Economic Forum use corporate and government peer pressure to force culture change and create a submissive population. Look at their websites.

It’s easy to do nothing and allow failure

J. Budziszewski, a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas, echoes my thoughts, “Explain why we needn’t grieve that so many of us pretend these things aren’t happening, are afraid to speak up, or think having a burning concern about them is a distraction from more important things.” He continues, “The normalization of disorder and empowerment of the lunacy are not to be taken lightly.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Gerard Baker sees where it is all going, demanding a response from employers. “It’s time employers started to resist, and began to educate their employees – the hard way if necessary – why free speech is so important.”

Yes, I despair whenever my local Peachtree City government attempts to use taxpayer funds to sue citizens who rightly criticize the city council like the Fleisch administration proposed. Likewise, it is never a good sign when the local government keeps trying to dislodge the citizens from government forums.

The people corrupting our systems are not shy about voicing their views and canceling you. Can you take a stand? Can you do it for your children and grandchildren?

[Brown is a former mayor of Peachtree City and served two terms on the Fayette County Board of Commissioners. You can read all his columns by clicking on his photo below.]

16 COMMENTS

  3. I appreciate those who take the time to show the straw men Steve Brown likes to burn. My only regret is that every time I open the column to read the rebuttals, it shows as another reader and may encourage Mr. Brown to keep writing. But, maybe he is only trying to stir the pot with little regard for accuracy – very similar to a Fox News host who recently lost his job.

  5. Oh Please! Brown gleefully insults people who disagree with him by calling them “Maoists,” intolerant tyrannical leftists,” and “censorship provocateurs” and then whines that he is being insulted. Forgive us if we lack empathy.

    Brown’s topical sentence is: “We know for a fact that there is a concerted effort to create fear and despair in the general public under the threat of violence, public humiliation, termination from employment, and steady pressure to kowtow to a series of ever-growing unhinged leftist ideas.”

    There is, indeed, a concerted effort to create fear and despair in the general public by Mr. Brown and other partisan ideologues by promulgating the idea that the extremes he lists are predominant in our society. Where in Fayette County are we under the threat of violence for our beliefs? Who in our locale lost his job because he didn’t extol transgender rights? How are we being kowtowed to embrace any specific ideology in our community?

    Steve Brown cites a bunch of snowflake college students in California as a reason to hunker down and be intimidated in our Georgia community. He is constantly identifying that nefarious bogey man somewhere else as an imminent threat that must make us quake in fear. Like Joe McCarthy, Father Coughlin, and every extreme ideological “News Personality” and legislator, he has only fear to peddle.

    When someone presents a doomsday weekly column that nefariously spins benign local politics and exaggerates distant grievances, don’t call readers out for laughing him off as a clown. Be glad they don’t identify him with monikers as severe as he sinisterly tosses about.

    • Appreciate your kind note. Please do feel free to provide sources for any of his claims. If Steve has reasoned arguments himself, there will be ample evidence to support it. Claiming liberals are just actually communist, the NIH and CDC anti-science and trans folks trying to do anything except exist in peace make for good opinion articles, but with nothing to back them, will never be anything except hot air.

  7. It is a shame that a bright guy like Brown has gone haywire. I’m not sure why he feels oppressed by people to the left of the extreme right. But he does. Unfortunate and counter productive for our town.

  8. Another rant from our local purveyor of poppycock. Like all committed ideologues, Steve chooses the extreme positions of his foes and presents these as the predominant positions. Everyone an inch left of Sean Hannity is no more a Maoist than everyone an inch right of AOC is a fascist. The vast majority of the populace falls between these poles and clusters around the center. Steve’s extremist rhetoric alienates all but the people already in his camp. So, most of Steve’s columns are merely preaching to his choir and condemning everyone else’s “church.”

    I do strongly agree with Steve’s point that ideological speakers should not be ostracized from academia. Any serious student at any age should be able to be exposed to views that run the gamut of politics, history, social sciences, philosophy, etc. I am much more concerned about government censorship of schools than shouting snowflakes at Stanford. When the government bans books from school libraries, proscribes ethnic topics from history books, excoriates sexual identity discussions, picks religions to tolerate, etc., this is much more dangerous than shouting college students. Obviously, the common sense of teachers should determine the age at which topics are digestible by their students, but book burning and other prohibitions against disseminating disagreeable ideas is just as much a tactic of the far left as it is of the far right.

  9. OK, I’ll take the bait here. First of all, note that Steve only publishing on the opinion page. Maybe there is some limitation I’m not aware of, but at any point he could go through a real editorial review and have someone fact check his claims before publishing. I would be curious to see what still gets published. There is way too much to respond to it all, so I’ll comment on those I have time to rebuke.

    For starters, this choice part:

    1)

    “We know for a fact that there is a concerted effort to create fear and despair in the general public under the threat of violence, public humiliation, termination from employment, and steady pressure to kowtow to a series of ever-growing unhinged leftist ideas.”

    Who’s we here? Steve needs to provide a source on this very salacious claim. I hear this all the time, yet no data to back this claim up. Who is creating fear and despair? Who is losing jobs and getting threats of violence?

    2)

    “Do not allow our culture to devolve into a Maoist-style re-education camp where your children and grandchildren are forced to chant psychotic platitudes in the classroom”

    Again – sources, Steve! Where is this happening? Last I checked the only state sponsored chant happening is forcing our children to pledge allegiance to a flag! That’s the most communist thing I ever heard, no one bothers to research why we do this. First we pledge to the flag and then ‘for which is stands’. OK, so the point is the flag is a symbol of “freedom and liberty” yet, someone felt the need to add “Under God” to the pledge at some point. Hmmm, not much freedom if you are forcing your God on my child in school. We could just pledge to freedom and liberty, skip the flag altogether and for sure the God part – despite what folks believe, the nation was not founded as a Christian nation. Our founding fathers understood that, and despite their own personal beliefs, did not codify Christianity into our founding documents and went out of their way to separate it from the state.

    3)

    “Many are currently standing silent, watching while intolerant tyrannical leftists take over as president of the nation and universities. They are turning school boards, regulatory agencies, professional and athletic associations, state and federal courts, and even churches against those who speak out against surgically disfiguring children, scientific corruption, race-based discrimination, or men taking over women’s sports competitions.”

    Again – sources. This is a lot of hearsay with nothing to back it up. Who is really being intolerant here? Steve notes one example from Stanford, yet 99.9% of people won’t go there and that was an isolated incident. What about all the colleges here in GA, they all cess pools of the left now too?

    4)

    “As we witnessed in communist nations (today’s students are largely oblivious to this), the first thing they do is rip free speech out of the national fabric.”

    Who is banning books and drag shows right now? It’s not liberals.

    5)

    (From the linked article)

    “The entire nation is in a precarious position, not just the west coast, and, yes, we need to act or face the consequences of our inaction.”

    If you are not consuming media (left or right) that operates on fear to keep eyeballs, and by association ad buys, you do not think the nation is in a precarious position. This is just alarmism, but unlike the “climate alarmism”, there is so peer reviewed scientific data to backup Steve’s claim.

    6)

    (From the linked article)

    “The destruction is occurring in metropolitan Atlanta with large school systems subdividing students by race, promoting a false historical narrative, and convincing black students in particular that they are incapable of achieving, resulting in educational standards being slashed.”

    Steve needs to provide sources on this. You can not just claim school systems are breaking federal law, lying about history and their students potential without supporting docs. What is true is that the leading indicator for your ability to move up in life is your zip code. Those born in neighborhoods with poor school systems, public transit and overworked parents are simply less likely to do better than their parents.

    7)

    “I have had debates with young adults who grew up in our community, went to college, and returned advocating various tenets of communist doctrine. They may call it “democratic socialism,” but the doctrines they espouse are straight out of the Communist Manifesto and Mao’s Little Red Book.”

    Steve found the dumbest college educated folks he could then. No reasonable liberal – which is most of them, just like conservatives – wants anything close to communism. We already have socialism in the United States (Fire Dept, Police Dept, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Corporate Bailouts) but we just pretend like we don’t.

    8)

    “Judeo-Christian morality is the underpinning of our American society and there are forces that actively plot to expunge it from our memories.”

    It is not and never has been. I served combat missions with Jews, Muslims, Atheists, Christians and Wiccans. Nobody cared why you did the right thing went bullets started flying, just that you did.

    9)

    “Many grown adults still follow the anti-science decrees of the NIH and CDC.”

    You can claim the NIH and CDC is too cozy with private companies, but to claim it is anti-science with no evidence is just lazy. There is no evidence to suggest this, besides this OPINION article.

    10)

    “The barbarism of the trans cult has led to indoctrination at the earliest stages of childhood, sometimes leading to pharmaceutical and surgical depravity on innocent children. It is almost like some form of human sacrifice, offering up harmless children. Twelve states have had to outlaw transgender-related sex surgeries and cross-hormone therapies for minors and other states have pending legislation.”

    Hmmm, seems weird that this just became an issue now. In all those twelve states, it’s been like 10+ years since treatment for body dysmorphia become common, yet all the sudden it’s a big issue? FACT: Literally every other type of surgery has higher regret rate than trans folks seeing treatment via medicine or surgery.

    I could go on, but Steve makes a load of claims but never backs them up. When annoyed and less than articulate folks comment, he talks about how they are only hurling insults. That might be true, but he never gets at the heart of the issue: Steve has no REAL DATA to back up any of his serious claims, because there is none. Folks can’t be bothered to research what others say, understandably we are all busy, so they just agree with whoever sounds like they have done research and is aligned with what they already believe.

  10. Steve, As you suggested, I perused the comments on your last article. Wow!
    They include:
    – mentally unstable right-wing firebreather
    – The sky is always falling and we need always be in fear of the “non-conformists” ( anyone other than white, straight, upper income, deeply religious zealots… and the old men of government who care more about their pocketbooks, celebrity and jobs than the citizens who elected them to office.)
    – hypocritical evangelicals who sold out millennial-old ethics and morality for raw power and hatred.
    – local “Nattering Nabob of Negativity.” He is quick with criticism, but he never has a solution
    – With “Christian” spokesmen like Mr. Brown cluttering the public square is it any wonder younger citizens are avoiding Christian churches?

    Is there any name they won’t throw on that pile? They’re blaming you for everything including dwindling church attendance. None offer a legitimate fact based rebuttal.
    My suggestion is they should read the Constitution, Bill of Rights and all Amendments.
    There is a dispute about the identity of the originator of this old adage, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

    If you consider yourself good. Please do something to stop what is happening to our freedom.
    The silent majority cannot afford to remain silent.
    There is too much at stake that threatens our core values and our Republic.
    We need more conservative activists to say and do something.
    Steve, keep writing!