By Dr. Jerome Huyler

Con men and crooks seek to separate men from their money. They take what they want by force or make commitments and promises they’ll never keep. It happens. Such is human nature. Today’s progressives seek to do something far more costly. They seek to separate men from the truth. They are not honest and don’t care to be.

Honest individuals rely on rational persuasion. They point to shared empirical experience and the laws of logic to bring their discoveries to the world. They understand that if “nature to be commanded, must be obeyed,” it needs to be studied and understood. To deal with the world successfully we must see it for what it is, not pretend that what is isn’t, or that what isn’t is. Good men seek to control nature so as to improve the conditions of daily life. They are our scientists, inventors, engineers, mathematicians, architects, tinkerers, and the many businessmen who bring the technological applications of science, the life-saving, labor-saving goods on which we rely, to market.

A very different kind of individual seeks to control not nature but other men. It is what Nietzsche famously called the “will to power.” Look around the world and see how much of the human race crouches under the yoke of violent political oppression and merciless tyrants. Why should America be immune to the proclivity?

The road to serfdom is overrun with actors who would wrest power from the people and place it in their own duplicitous hands. Such ambitions are powered by an endless repetition of falsehoods and gratuitous smears. Control people’s minds and their bodies will surely follow. Truth will not stand in their way.  It is not reality with which today’s progressive left is concerned. Its claims don’t have to be true. They merely have to be spread. The people don’t need to be persuaded, they just need to believe. To that end, media propaganda, classroom indoctrination, and censorship — time-tested tools of tyranny powered by guilt and fear — are pressed into service.

Instill guilt in a people and they will silently surrender to a ruler’s absolute will. Guilt-ridden wretches have no right to protest anything? Again, the accusations need not be true. The idea that systemic racism and white supremacy are all-dominating cultural staples of modern American life is not backed by even a smidgen of empirical evidence. On-the-ground, flesh-and-blood minorities succeed daily in every imaginable walk of life. And they will tell you so. It wasn’t Jim Crow who elected an African-American commander-in-chief and gave him two full terms in office. Any activist who tries to equate America’s abominable past with the morally reformed and remarkably improved nation America became cannot possibly have the country’s best interests at heart.

America is not filled with institutionalized racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, white privilege, toxic masculinity, hate speech, or rampant police brutality. And no part of the planet is growing less and less inhabitable. Besides, if the ecological danger was real, the Greenies would be protesting in front of every Chinese and Indian embassy in the world. These are now the world’s worst “polluters.”

The lies roll on. Donald Trump did not, as we were told for over two years, collude with Vladimir Putin to win the 2016 election or refer to the redneck supremacists of Charlottesville as “good people.” Racism is far from the only reason Trump had to build a tall wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and asking for voter ID is not “code” for voter suppression or “Jim Crow 2.0.”

To control public opinion, dissent must be suppressed. No part of the truth can get out. But this means more than silencing conservative voices on so many social media platforms. It means punishing any who dares defend capitalism or Trump, or questions the need to save the planet by banning fossil fuels and forcing the life-giving wheels of industry to grind to a halt.

How does media propaganda suppress free thought and expression? Sound judgment demands consideration of all relevant details. And that is what today’s mainstream media outlets systemically prevent. A biased, liberal slant on every covered story and the routine burying of stories that undercut that editorial bias make it impossible to arrive at truly informed opinions and judgments. A dishonest press hinders honest consideration of critical issues and events, and so rational thought and objective judgment are quietly suppressed. The indoctrination taking place in our kids’ classrooms even more effectively silences free thought and expression. Instead of teaching children how to think, our educators are busy telling them what to think. And most teachers don’t think much of a capitalist culture they, themselves, were taught by their college professors to revile.

Then there is the censorship that takes the form of political correctness and cancel culture. They run on fear and intimidation. Defy the views the “woke” invoke and “deniers” will be abandoned and/or boycotted. Who longs to be abandoned by friends, spouses, or peers? What businessman wants to go broke for an off-the-cuff comment shared with an inquiring reporter? The message is clear. Believe and submit, or pay the price.

It is of no concern to the progressives that their policies will cause fuel shortages and energy blackouts to appear, good-paying jobs to disappear, street crime and living costs to climb, and life to grow ever harsher. It is not the country’s well-being that concerns them. They learned long ago that crisis is the catalyst of change. Take the great transformation FDR was able to engineer with the country helplessly mired in a Great Depression.

The majority can no longer afford to remain silent. And it is no longer enough to do one’s civic duty and vote, not having a clue as to who or what one has voted for. The only remedy to the pandemic of ignorance the left is fostering is free and open dialogue. Wake your friends, relatives, neighbors, and coworkers and we’ll put the “woke” to sleep, for good.