Stealing Memorial Day: The Regressive Left Tries To Rob Us Of What They Died For

"I need no lectures in patriotism by Islamist shills like Rep. Ilhan Omar who has been in my country five minutes, thank you."

Memorial Day is when we as a nation pause to honor, remember and thank those brave men and women who died defending America. As Pete Hegseth said on Twitter, it’s not “just another three day weekend.”

Indeed not. Memorial Day is our feeble attempt to repay in some small measure what those soldiers did on our behalf, what those reading this and the one writing it likely never will do: die for America. Besides pray, the only lasting thing the living can do for the dead is to promise never to forget them. As a nation, Memorial Day is when we keep our promise.

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What then, did they die for? The question is almost impertinent, disrespectful, but in reality it is the opposite. Only by remembering with specificity in our own day can we understand and give honor to those who have died on our behalf. In this regard, clarity becomes an obligation to the dead in itself.

Freedom & liberty: we say those men and women died for that and they did. But what does this actually mean? The poisonous, rancid Regressive Left would sneer that it means nothing, means robotic consumers shopping in malls with jobs that are meaningless at best and with a thick veil over their eyes that keeps them from understanding their true plight in a terrible capitalist system. “False consciousness” is their concise phrase.

As with everything else they speak of, they’re wrong. The meaninglessness of lives is theirs, only projected onto others. If you listen closely enough, the hollow shrieking nothingness at their core is what is on parade. If they weren’t so dangerous, the Regressive Left would engender pity. But they are and so they shouldn’t.

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The dead we honor on Memorial Day died for freedom of speech. I realize that’s reductionist and yet I can’t falsify it. Without freedom of speech, all of our other precious rights cannot be defended, cannot be exercised. Freedom of speech is the sine qua non of freedom. They died so that in our times, someone, somewhere, somehow, could be offended. This is profoundly civilized, almost transcendent.

It’s also trite, which is why I think we often overlook it.

Yet the stakes could not be higher and we see it so often we have become inured to them. If everything is at stake, nothing is. That’s why I focus on freedom of speech this Memorial Day. It’s the headwaters from which all of our other freedoms flow.

We think automatically that we have freedom of speech because until recently we did, without thinking. That is no longer the case. Look at issues that would have been uncontroversial just a few years back:

  • There are only two genders
  • Marriage is between one man and one woman
  • Transgenderism is a mental illness, with compassion toward those suffering from it
  • The traditional family is the bedrock of society
  • Children are to be protected, loved and cherished, not exploited by politics or a sexual agenda
  • Pornography degrades the human person
  • People are responsible for their actions
  • Pride in one’s country and flag is normal
  • Borders exist to keep a nation’s citizens safe and their culture intact
  • Illegal immigrants are illegal and per se have no place here
  • Islam by its own terms is incompatible with the free and open societies of the West

Try using your freedom of speech now to defend any of these obviously true propositions. You can but only at an increasingly high cost at an individual level and it’s the individual they want to make an example of in order to silence others. Of this, I know something.

For now, the goal of the Regressive Left is to exact a personal societal cost for the exercise of your speech rights, rights which by definition should have no costs attached to them. Their long term goal is to make them literally illegal, criminal. It’s happening faster than you realize.

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In the United Kingdom this week, Tommy Robinson was jailed for thirteen months for filming on a public street the court trial of Muslims accused of being part of a grooming and rape gang. Google “Rotherham” to see how a society commits cultural suicide through the perfidy of its ruling elites. Worse, the judge in his case ordered British media not  to report on the matter. Yes, they can do that there, this in the land of Magna Carta. Don’t blame royalty, despite the downmarket marriage of Harry & Meghan, blame those elected to so call serve the people. The word you’re looking for is treason, one I instinctively shy away from but which is appropriate here. Cultural treason.

Those under fascist censorship in the UK turned to Gateway Pundit who covered the story exhaustively. Ezra Levant of Rebel TV has a well done fifteen minute video that gets you up to speed. You’ll learn alot about the details of Tommy’s arrest and imprisonment, along with the state sanctioned media blackout, but you won’t feel much better. Nor should you.

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“Mohammed” was the third most popular baby name in Saint Cloud in 2016. Who voted for that? Who was Mohammed? Do you think our local media will tell you anything about him? Mohammed was a butcher and a pedophile. Did you know “Allah” was a moon god before Mohammed? Again, who voted for the total transformation of their neighborhoods, their way of life before those who show no sign of sharing our values or wanting to assimilate were forced into their neighborhoods? And all the adjustment to that is on those who live there and none on the newcomers? The Minnesotans who objected are the ones the Gov. Dayton told to find another state. But why can’t they object to becoming the UK in miniature? Despite the lies our corrupt and dishonest media tell you, both sharia courts and no go zones exist there, as well as in other parts of Europe. If you can bear it, read “The Strange Death Of Europe.”

Intense pressure by local media, among others, is brought to bear on these citizens who peacefully exercise their right to free speech. The concern is that their views don’t align with the narrative that any group of people can wholesale be transplanted into American communities without enormous negative disruptions to the citizens already living there.

Minnesota media just this week shamefully branded Citizens For The St. Croix Valley as a hate group. See how that’s done? If you have legitimate concerns about the Islamization of America you are attacked and derided. MinnStar provides the same vital function for those living in the Saint Cloud area and is similarly attacked. But their concerns are prima facie legitimate because they are concerns of citizens who have the right to freedom of speech.

Citizenship itself is under assault, with Minnesota State Auditor and DFL gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Otto just this week calling for illegals to be able to vote in local elections. Daily we see illegals celebrated over and above regular hard working Americans who built this country and keep it going. They want to replace you and are brazen about it while at the same time they attempt to shut you down. I need no lectures in patriotism by Islamist shills like Rep. Ilhan Omar who has been in my country five minutes, thank you.

When it comes to resisting the Islamization of your culture, the late Christopher Hitchens early on saw how the far left elites and media would attempt to silence us. “This is very urgent business, ladies and gentlemen, I beseech you. Resist it while you can and before the right to complain is taken away from you, which will be the next thing. You will be told you can’t complain because you’re “Islamophobic.” The term is already being introduced into the culture, as if it were an accusation of race hatred, for example, or bigotry, where it’s only the objection to the preaching of a very extreme and absolutist religion.”

Hitchen spoke those words in 2009. Requiescat in pace.

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The dead we rightly remember this Memorial Day died not to surrender but to win. They nobly lost their lives for all of our freedoms but speech is the right that comes first in our Bill of Rights for a reason. On Memorial Day we remember those who are now silent so that we may not be.

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In addition to Alpha News, John Gilmore is also a contributor to The Hill. He is the founder and executive director of Minnesota Media Monitor.™ He blogs at MinnesotaConservatives.org and is on Twitter under @Shabbosgoy. He can be reached at Wbua@nycunarjfza.pbz

Photo credit: AP/Richard Vogel

John Gilmore

John Gilmore is an author, freelance writer & former opinion columnist for Alpha News. He blogs at minnesotaconservatives.org & is @Shabbosgoy on Twitter