Yet, we cannot speak freely, can we? Say the wrong thing and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) will label you a hatemonger. The nation’s founders envisioned free speech as a guardrail against the republic veering down an embankment, thinking that if speech were free, someone would be there to call BS when the nation went places not intended or imagined.

Twitter cofounder Evan Williams has said: “I thought once everybody could speak freely and exchange information and ideas, the world is automatically going to be a better place, I was wrong about that.”

Yet, today, every progressive (read Democrat, liberal, or leftist) has his nose pressed into everybody else’s business lest someone think or say something that might melt a snowflake. We can’t have anyone ever offended, or embarrassed, or in any way made uncomfortable by unapproved thought.

It is in this way, the language has changed. Whereas the word “violence” has always meant actions that include actual physical violence, progressives have transmogrified “unapproved thought” from a mere difference of opinion into an integral component of the definition of violence.

Therefore, the violence of unapproved thought can now be met with actual violence because actual violence is not really violence if it is committed against someone with the wrong ideas and the gall to speak those ideas aloud.

It’s amazing how diversity is not really all that diverse in a world composed of safe spaces and resegregation under a unitary set of acceptable ideas where words no longer mean what we thought they meant. Antifa, which is modern-speak for anti-fascist, is probably the most fascist organization in America today and the same goes for the SPLC and Black Lives Matter (BLM). All lives matter, but saying that is now hate-speech and thus violence, which can be justifiably met with actual violence.

Throughout the eight years of Barack Obama, I was afraid to speak out against the man whom I thought was not who he purported to be. I thought he was a horrible president without an ounce of honesty or humility, pushing policies that were detrimental to every man, woman, and child in America. To say so aloud, however, was not permitted, and when I started writing about him, the windows in my house were broken, not once, but twice. That was then; I wonder what’s in store now.

Today you can say anything you want about the current president -- talk about killing him in the vilest of ways and it’s not a problem. I seem to recall that a rodeo clown not only lost his job and livelihood but also received a visit from the Secret Service, all because he wore an Obama mask -- and that was before It killed the clown business, making them into monsters that scare little children (and a surprising number of grown men as well).

The progressive plan is to restrict what people can say. They have always controlled the conversation, but that is not enough when you want to rule the world. They need to make sure no one ever disagrees with them. That’s the deal with the statues.

According to a recent NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist poll, 62% thought the Confederate statues should remain, while only 27% wanted them removed, and even among African-Americans, a 44% plurality of those polled said they should remain.

You see, it has nothing to do with statues of dead Democrats erected by dead Democrats a hundred years ago to reinforce the Democratic Party’s white supremacist governance in the southern states. It is about making a point. Don’t you dare oppose us no matter how ridiculous our demands, or we will not only destroy you publicly and politically but physically as well. Violence has always been an excellent tool for behavior modification.

Democrats have staked their future on this strategy, along with the media, their most loyal ally, Antifa, and BLM. They think that people will be terrified by the two thousand or so white supremacists currently active in the country, and not the very violent, very bloody and much better organized hundred thousand Antifa, BLM, and sundry other anti-white, anti-Trump, anti-Republican groups. Yet, didn’t the media claim they were anti-racist and anti-fascist? That’s the story they try to sell one broken head at a time, and Antifa/BLM loves them some broken heads.

There are no more moderate Democrats; the entire party consists of progressives who have bought into the whole thought is violence that must be met with violence strategy. It remains to be seen how successful this will be in the end; the mere fact that they are successful now does not transfer into success tomorrow.

Screaming the loudest often doesn’t make you the most popular, but it does get you the most attention -- and it is surely a sign the nation is in deep trouble.

Now, in a delusionary quest for eternal electoral supremacy, the Democrats are in an onanistic frenzy, eating their future one statue and one Antifa riot at a time. They are treating their future as a party as if it was another comestible to be thrown into the gaping maw of identity politics.

Respectful opposition to Democratic Party policies is no longer accepted; it is reviled. Should one disagree with the Democrats even the slightest on their latest progressive decree, you will be met with paroxysmal fits of rage from spokesmen spewing spittle from their mouths while making scatological charges of all manner of evil against that person. Paramount among the accusations will inevitably be their favorite, racism.

Moreover, it’s no longer only their political opposition. In the regnum that is the Democratic Party, there is no room for moderates, because the Democrats have long stopped being a political party and have become a movement. Welcome into that movement is both Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM). Agree with their tactics and motives or else.

For the sake of America, and indeed, humanity as well, I have to believe the populace at large will not buy into this version of Orwell’s 1984 the Democrats are peddling as the future of the nation, but today, there is real risk inherent in such unapproved thought.