The Sound Of Silence

That's what the Left wants--all dissenting voices silenced. That's pretty much the bottom line of a thoughtful piece by Paul Mirengoff today: The Silenced Majority. The title, of course, is a riff off the Nixonian concept of a "silent majority," that Nixon rode to victory:

The silent majority consisted of normal people who were disgusted by the behavior of rioters and radicals (like John and me). 

Today in America, we have the “silenced majority.” It consists of normal people who are disgusted by the behavior of rioters and radicals. 

Members of the silent majority kept quiet because they lacked social media and, more importantly, because they belonged to a generation that didn’t like to talk a lot. Members of the silenced majority keep quiet because they would rather not be hounded by leftists or maybe lose their jobs.

And he has examples. Mirengoff expresses only cautious optimism for Election 2020:

The silent majority carried Richard Nixon to a landslide victory in 1972. Will the silenced majority carry Trump to victory this year? 

Maybe not. The current majority is thinner than that of the early 1970s, and the country is having a worse year than in 1972.

But resentment over attempts to stifle the expression of truisms like Napear’s and patriotism like Brees’s will give fuel to the Trump campaign, as the demands of political correctness did in 2016, and will undermine Joe Biden’s effort to govern America, in the unfortunate event that he becomes president.

I look at polls that show large majorities of Americans of every ethnic persuasion in favor of calling in the National Guard to restore order, I look at the overwhelming disgust for PC enforcers, for nagging Karens, and so forth, and I'm more optimistic.


A second article today gives a rather pointed example of the animus the Left has toward Wrongthink in the area of religion, especially. As Daniel Greenfield points out--God is Dead': Leftist Rioters Vandalize Churches and Synagogues--this is an underreported (of course) but important part of the Left's attempt to enforce anarchy across the nation in the last days:

... the sheer number of incidents from New York City to Los Angeles make it clear that the Black Lives Matter and Antifa riots displayed a nationwide pattern of targeting houses of worship.

These attacks tried to destroy the physical symbols of faith and to demoralize people of faith.

That is what the Left has always done.

The Left infiltrates churches and synagogues, but it is its own religion. Its faith is not directed toward any power higher than government, its prayers are uttered in regulations and academic papers, its theology is practiced by smashing glass and shattering doors, and churches and synagogues have always been its targets. When its stormtroopers are loosed in the streets, they go to war against those who believe.

What happened in Washington D.C., in Los Angeles, in New York City, in Minneapolis, and in cities across America, was the latest expression of the hatred of the radicals and racists for any other belief system.

There is an inquisition in America today. And it punishes heresies, such as proclaiming that all lives matter, or believing in anything other than social justice, with social pressure, loss of work, and force.

What the theorists who would be gods hate above all else is those who reject them and believe in God.

Trump rallied large majorities of the traditionally religious to his side in 2016 based on revulsion at PC excesses. I expect him to double down on that--or to continue to double down, because any observer of Trump knows that he never misses an opportunity to reach out to people of faith. To raise his voice against efforts at enforced silence.