... the conservative does not object to coercion or arbitrary power so long as it is used for what he regards the right purpose .... Like the socialist, he regards himself as entitled to force the value he holds on other people.
For the Left, tolerance does not mean tolerance. It means first, acceptance. And second, celebration. That is totalitarianism: You not only have to live with what you may differ with, dear citizen, you have to celebrate it or pay a steep price.
Most activists on the Left believe that they, not only their values, are morally superior to their adversaries. Therefore, coercing people to adhere to 'progressive' values is morally acceptable, even demanded.
I can think of few plainer, more direct abridgments of the freedoms of the 1st Amendment than to compel persons to support candidates, parties, ideologies or causes that they are against.
This is ideological colonization. They colonize people with ideas that try to change mentalities or structures, but this is not new. This was done by the dictatorships of the last century.
The psychological peer pressure that the left has employed - and deployed, actually - on young people has been overwhelmingly successful. It has created droves and droves of people that vote against what they know is right, vote against their own self-interest, in exchange for feeling good about themselves and also being immune from criticism.
One of the greatest advantages of the totalitarian elites of the twenties and thirties was to turn any statement of fact into a question of motive.
So-called Individualism is the social and economic laissez-faire: the exploitation of the masses by the classes by means of legal trickery, spiritual debasement and systematic indoctrination of the servile spirit, which process is known as 'education'.
If liberty of speech is to be untrammeled from the grosser forms of constraint, the uniformity of opinion will be secured by a moral terrorism to which the respectability of society will give its thorough approval.
