LA County for Trump is not hiding their love for our President. Sure, our votes didn’t swing the election in his favor last year, but his electoral win has turned into political, moral, and cultural victories which even conservative refugees in blue states can relish and celebrate.

We have not rested since Election 2016, when the real estate/media mogul took the political establishment by storm. This past weekend, we celebrated President Trump and his successes in Palisades Park, right along the Santa Monica coastline. “The People’s Republic of Santa Monica” is one of the most elite yet entrenched hubs for the anti-Trump resistance in California. FYI, Santa Monica used to be reliably red, including such conservative firebrands as Robert “B-1 Bob” Dornan as Congressman.

Yet even along the deep Blue coast (where students married the ocean in creepy yet benign ceremonies), there are Trump supporters, and they gathered to us right there along the coastline of a beautiful, breezy, if slightly warm, weekend afternoon.

What makes us want to come out for freedom of speech, especially when we could have taken a nice swim or walk along the Santa Monica pier? Why do LA County Trump supporters make their case for the President in a deep blue area? Isn’t freedom of speech well-protected already?

Sure, we love free speech, but we want to celebrate and exercise our right to speak our minds without fear, and engage others who do not agree with us to share their thoughts too. After all, the restoration of this sacred right is one of the reasons I love our President. He freed this country’s citizenry from the PC chokehold which had shamed and silenced conservatives for nearly 30 years. This deafening incapacity to punch back hamstrung Republican activists from making gains. Why? Much of the time Republican lawmakers, whether in Washington or among the 50 states, were obsessed with how the media would portray them. They didn’t know how to play the media, and even individual Americans and conservative interest groups played cautious and limited their own First Amendment capacities.

This kabuki theater of fawning moderation from the grassroots and the conservative political class came to end with street fighter Donald Trump. He thrived on the media attention, for better or for worse. The media had to cover him, especially because they wanted to smear him, and he in turn thrived off the negative coverage as it prospered his profile.

For the longest time, Americans had been tired of and frustrated with a lying, fawning media telling them what to think and which facts to pay attention to. Shouldn’t the media simply report the facts, paying attention to the evidence rather their bias and ideological bent? Americans were particularly furious with the political correctness cult that suppressed sensitive yet necessary information, like the murder of American citizens by illegal aliens or the destructive nature of trangenderism. Beyond that, 95 million Americans out of work were not just tired, but irritated by the chronic reports of a strong economy, when they couldn’t scratch two dimes together or find a stable, full-time job.

The culture wars agitated Americans even more. Do I want transgender bathrooms in a local restaurant, when everyone with two eyes in their head knows that there are two genders, two parents—and very likely two terms for Trump? If they were so angry, why weren’t Americans speaking out? Shame and the fear of widespread smears. The Democratic Party, with Barack Obama at the helm, worked hard to impose this cultural Marxist sentiment of silencing dissent—without force of law or violence. Shame is an effective tool for demolishing one’s opponents. Alinksy understood the power of condemnation all too well. With this psychological warfare in the hands of our leftist opponents, freedom of speech posed no threat to their powerful, tyrannical ambitions. Furthermore, they could rely on the complicit media, a corrupted education system, and the funding of liberal corporations to induce average Americans to shut up and say nothing.

But illegal immigration carried a cost which exceeds the potential shame that follows from speaking out. More importantly, Candidate Trump was not afraid to speak his mind, as vulgar as it may have sounded to others. He touched the latent anger of Middle America, and he gave them a voice which they had been shamed into not using. He understood the Art of the Deal, but recognized that negotiation with the totalitarian left would end in failure. Playing along had already failed. Being nice simply does not work. Trump understood that, and he knew that all of us had known that for a long time, but didn’t want to say it. What his successful campaign has done for this country is incalculable. But one tangible feature is the resurgence of free speech as an essential aspect for our culture.

For the greater part of my life, I never gave a second thought to my First Amendment rights, whether they would be in danger or not. After seeing bakers losing their businesses and civil servants losing their liberties over their First Amendment rights, I finally how endangered the First Amendment was becoming. Donald Trump’s victory showed that the assault on our freedom of speech would not end in inevitable tyranny.

But the battle has only begun. The Democratic caucus in Washington attempted to gut the First Amendment. They still want to cut the funding from free speech exercise, i.e. repeal the Citizens United decision with a constitutional amendment. Since those efforts have failed, now the Left resorts to violence. From the Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists to the Antifa thugs shutting down free speech rallies—to the attempted massacre of House Republicans on a baseball diamond in Alexandria, Virginia—the Left and their Democratic Party puppets are determined to stop freedom of speech from flourishing in the heart of every American.

And that is why I will continue to stump for Trump and attend free speech rallies in the most liberal sections of Los Angeles County.