Americans are no longer a free people, if debate on major public-policy issues is effectively criminalized, which is what the Democrats and their allies are attempting to do with regard to our immigration policy. We are now being told in effect that it is “hate speech” to express opposition to the open-borders agenda of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and such of their billionaire donors as George Soros. Democrats and their media allies have recently taken to declaring that it is a “dog whistle” of racism and anti-Semitism for any Republican even to mention the name of Soros in connection with the immigration issue. If you don’t think the United States should throw open its borders to welcome the caravan of Honduran migrants now headed north through Mexico, and if you call attention to how Democrats are cheering on this horde of would-be foreign invaders, well, you must be some kind of Nazi who wants to kill Jews. Or at least that’s the general drift of liberal rhetoric in the final week of the midterm election campaign.

CNN has spent the past few days insinuating that the gunman who murdered 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue was incited to this act by President Trump. Republicans are not allowed to object to CNN’s one-sided coverage, however, because Florida madman Cesar Sayoc also hated CNN, and therefore anyone who criticizes the network is deemed a potential threat to public safety. Between the Pittsburgh shooter and the Florida bomber, basically anything said in favor of Republicans (or against Democrats) is now considered “hate speech” in the eyes of liberals. This is especially the case when it comes to immigration. Ever since the migrant caravan set off from Honduras, announcing their intention to march all the way to the United States, Democrats have been accusing the GOP of “exploiting” the issue. What are Republicans supposed to do? Pretend they don’t notice the lawless intentions of these so-called “refugees”?

After Mexican officials tried to stop the migrants by blocking a bridge across the Suchiate River at the Mexico-Guatemala border, they crossed the river illegally on rafts. “No one will stop us, only God,” a migrant named Olivin Castellano told an Associated Press reporter. “We knocked down the door and we continue walking.” Perhaps God will not stop this invasion, but the U.S. Army has a duty to defend the country, and Trump has ordered so many troops to the border that the deployment for “Operation Faithful Patriot” will exceed the U.S. force serving in Syria. And while these troops prepare to defend our border, CNN continues an around-the-clock propaganda campaign that accuses the Commander-in-Chief of inciting criminal violence.

Phrases like “hateful rhetoric” and “white nationalist” are part of the CNN script, conveying to the network’s viewers the idea that President Trump is responsible for the acts of deranged kooks like Sayoc, the steroid-addled Florida mail-bomber, and Robert Bowers, the high-school dropout who committed the Pittsburgh massacre. Never mind that Bowers denounced Trump by name in one of his anti-Semitic online screeds, and never mind that Sayoc is a mentally ill former male stripper whose bombs never exploded — no, these two lunatics must have acted on coded signals from Trump, the CNN viewer is led to believe. And then there is the problem of Soros, who was among the intended recipients of one of Sayoc’s non-exploding bombs.

George Soros has been a major funder of much of the institutional infrastructure the Left has built during the past 20 years. David Horowitz’s site Discover the Networks says that “a strong case can be made for the claim that Soros today affects American politics and culture more profoundly that any other living person.” Such organizations as Media Matters for America are beneficiaries of Soros’s vast wealth. While the total of his political expenditures over the years is perhaps beyond calculation, it is known that between 2003 and 2011, for example, Soros spent more than $48 million to fund media properties. Given his enormous influence on the Left, it is understandable that conservatives suspect that Soros is behind every allegedly “grassroots” left-wing activist group. It’s not a paranoid conspiracy, but a documented fact that, for example, the Black Lives Movement received more than $30 million from Soros’s tax-exempt organizations. Likewise, it has been documented that so-called “Antifa” groups, implicated in riots in Berkeley and elsewhere, got money from Soros-funded foundations. And it should surprise no one that Soros has spent many millions in support of an open-borders immigration agenda.

“Soros’s agenda is fundamentally about the destruction of national borders,” researchers David Galland and Stephen McBride wrote in a 2016 article titled “How George Soros Singlehandedly Created The European Refugee Crisis — And Why.” Galland and McBride documented the involvement of Soros’s Open Society Foundation in the crisis that flooded Europe with millions of Muslim migrants. When Hungary’s prime minister Viktor Orban took action to halt the influx of “refugees” into his country and named Soros as the sponsor of this invasion, Soros responded: “[Orban’s] plan treats the protection of national borders as the objective and the refugees as an obstacle. Our plan treats the protection of refugees as the objective and national borders as the obstacle.”

This was a startling admission, and it is clear that Soros also views America’s borders as an “obstacle” to his plans. In their book The Shadow Party, Horowitz and his co-author Richard Poe explained that a massive 2006 pro-amnesty rally in Los Angeles involved no fewer than eight groups funded by Soros, including the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the National Council of La Raza. As for the current migrant caravan from Honduras, it is being supported by the so-called “CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project,” a coalition of four organizations, three of which receive funding from — you guessed, didn’t you? — George Soros.

To identity Soros as the sponsor of this open-borders agenda, however, is to be guilty of hate, as explained last week in a Washington Post headline: “Conspiracy theories about Soros aren’t just false. They’re anti-Semitic.” You will not be surprised to learn that the author of that article, Talia Levin, works for Media Matters, which is funded by Soros. Levin previously worked at the New Yorker, but was fired in June after falsely accusing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent of having a Nazi tattoo (the agent, it turned out, is a Marine Corps combat veteran who lost both legs in Afghanistan). So here we have a Soros-funded writer declaring in the pages of the Washington Post that it is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory to say that Soros is doing what he’s actually doing.

In other words, telling the truth is now “hate speech.”

You could get banned from social media for mentioning Soros’s role in promoting left-wing causes, thanks to a new effort to pressure tech companies to “reduce hateful activities on their platforms.” Guess who’s funding that effort? Yes — George Soros.

It is not yet illegal to tell the truth, however, and Republicans trying to prevent a Democrat takeover of Congress are telling the truth while it’s still legal. An ad targeting a Minnesota Democrat begins: “Prima donna athletes protesting our anthem. Left-wing mobs paid to riot in the streets. Billionaire George Soros bankrolls the resistance — and Dan Feehan.” That ad was denounced by liberals as anti-Semitic, of course, but Feehan’s not Jewish and the ad says nothing about Soros being Jewish either. The Left keeps hearing dog whistles of hate that are inaudible to the rest of us, which makes you wonder who the dogs really are.

Last night on CNN, Chris Cuomo denounced Republicans as proponents of “xenophobia” and every other species of hate, while simultaneously accusing the GOP of “demonizing” its opponents. Who is demonizing whom? Cuomo and his media comrades have spent the past two years accusing Trump of being Hitler, thus implying that the nearly 63 million Americans who voted for Trump are Nazis. If that’s not demonization, what is? Is it wrong for Americans to expect that their President should protect them from an invasion of hostile foreigners? Do citizens have no right to complain about the billionaire who’s funding the horde from Honduras? Is it impermissible to debate our immigration policy?

Here’s some news from yesterday: “Mexican authorities arrested two Hondurans who allegedly shot at federal police officers escorting the migrant caravan across the southern state of Chiapas. The attack follows shortly after government warnings about Molotov cocktail attacks around a second caravan near the border with Guatemala.” CNN didn’t report that story, for some reason.

Two days ago, CNN’s Jim Acosta wrote on Twitter: “We are not the enemy of the people. I am not your enemy. You are not my enemy. It is wrong to call your fellow Americans the enemy. We are all on the same team. We are all Americans.” This was a lie, of course. If you vote Republican, you’re not on “the same team” as CNN. They consider you their enemy, because you refuse to acknowledge their authority to tell you what to think and how to vote. This is the real “hate” problem in America — the media elite’s hatred of anyone who disagrees with them.