The New Thought Control Regime

Victor Davis Hanson today provides a must-read catalogue of the ways in which the left is moving increasingly toward a regime of Orwellian thought control, in which dissenting views on climate, gay marriage, Obamacare, Islam, etc., are deemed unacceptable, and thus suppressed in the name of "tolerance" or "diversity," often on college campuses expressly (and hypocritically) dedicated to the free exchange of ideas:

Hounding out people with different views is seen by the Left as a necessary means to achieve its supposedly noble goals — just like the Spanish Inquisitioners who claimed God was on their side as they went after religiously “incorrect” Jews, Muslims, and heretics. 

Unfortunately, the Obama administration has been part of the problem, not part of the solution. Its appointees used the once-impartial IRS against conservatives. They monitored Associated Press reporters. They denied that the NSA was eavesdropping on average citizens. They arbitrarily chose not to enforce laws they didn’t like. 

The president bragged of using “a pen and a phone” to circumvent the legislative branch, and urged his supporters to “punish our enemies.” The attorney general calls Americans who have different views from his own on matters of affirmative action “cowards.” 

All of that them/us rhetoric has given a top-down green light to radical thought police to harass anyone who is open-minded about man-caused global warming, or believes that gay marriage needs more debate, or that supporting Israel is a legitimate cause, or that breaking federal immigration law is still a crime and therefore “illegal.”