Once again, a leading Leftist has displayed a taste for authoritarianism and the silencing of dissent. Speaking at Georgetown University on Thursday, Hillary “Don’t Count Me Out for 2024” Clinton gave what seemed at first glance to be an impassioned plea for the free exchange of ideas, as she decried the fact that in “today’s environment,” people “don’t even want to hear things we disagree with.” On closer inspection, however, it is clear that what Hillary was really advocating was blind trust in the authorities, one of the chief foundations of any authoritarian regime.
At an event on the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that largely ended the strife in Northern Ireland, Hillary opined that “the information ecosystem in which we live demands so much quick response, often totally unthought. It creates so much insulting, threatening rhetoric aimed at people who are trying to do hard things.” She was speaking about her hubby’s widely criticized decision to authorize a visa for Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. “You do not make peace with your friends,” the would-be president declared.
That was fair enough, but Hillary went on to issue a cleverly worded call for what amounted to blind trust in our Leftist moral superiors. What we need to do, you see, is just get out of our comfort zones and stop being so intolerant of views that differ from our own: ”
You do not negotiate with people you already agree with. It is sometimes difficult in today’s environment for people to want to make the effort, let alone take the risk, to get out of their own comfort zones,” she said. “We don’t even want to hear things we disagree with. We don’t want to hear different opinions from people who we have already concluded are outside the pale of our comfort zone.”
See, when our leaders are people we have “already concluded” that we disagree with, and they offer “different opinions,” we should just accept them. Trust the Dear Leader!
Hillary added: “You cannot run a society, let alone make peace for long, if that is your ongoing attitude. ‘I have nothing to learn from this person. I do not see him/her as a fellow human being. There is no reason for us to talk.’”
The irony here is that it is the dominant Left in America today that regards patriots in exactly the manner that Hillary describes, but Leftists are not those she had in mind. She claimed to be talking about Vladimir Putin, saying: “That is what we see happening in Ukraine today.” She asserted that “Russian aggression” is “aimed at dehumanizing the Ukrainian people: They are not worthy of existing so why should anybody care whether they are bombed into oblivion?”
That is wildly exaggerated, but since Clinton wasn’t really talking about Ukraine and Russia at all, it hardly matters. She continued: “So we all have to do some serious soul-searching about how we relate to one another in this much more complicated information environment where demonizing and scapegoating are just accepted strategies.”
No one in her Georgetown audience was going around dehumanizing Ukrainians. She was clearly referring to the situation in the United States today. She was talking about criticism that Bill Clinton received for letting Gerry Adams into the country, and arguing that instead of being so quick to criticize, we should be more understanding of the hard choices our selfless leaders sometimes have to make, and give them the benefit of the doubt.
Related: The Left Doesn’t Value Free Speech, and That’s a Problem
Hillary’s words would appear to be much more innocuous were it not for the Left’s ever-increasing thirst for authoritarianism. When Old Joe Biden and his henchmen tried to establish a “Disinformation Governance Board” that was ominously situated within the Department of Homeland Security, Hillary didn’t say a word about seeing people who disagree with us as fellow human beings we need to engage with understanding and tolerance. When Old Joe’s regime conspired with Twitter (and no doubt the other social media giants as well) in order to shut down dissent from its mad COVID policies, Hillary didn’t say anything about the “dehumanization” of those with opposing views.
By couching her plea for tolerance and openness within the context of trusting leaders when they make tough decisions, Hillary was making yet another case for the authoritarian foreclosure of the freedom of speech. Who are you, after all, to question Big Brother or Big Sister?
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