When a small mob goes off and shuts up the rest of the population, that’s when you have real problems.
By Frank McCaffrey
Americans for Limited Government (ALG) has noticed one thing since the current administration took power. Many people are shying away from speaking out against the government. ALG President Rick Manning is not thrilled to see this.
ALG President Rick Manning said “freedom isn’t free. Freedom has a cost. The signers of the Declaration of Independence, or basically wealthy people who put everything on the line for freedom. Their lives and their fortunes on the line for freedom. And, you know, I never thought in my lifetime that I would be put in that position, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to let a bunch of pimply faced Silicon Valley creeps define for me what I can say what I can believe and try to change America through intimidation.”
Manning denounced the “Twitter mobs” and refuses to let others dictate what he can and cannot say in his exercise of free speech.
“When a small mob, a small percentage of the mob goes off and shuts up the rest of the population, that’s when you have real problems. That’s when you have Hitler rise in Germany, is when a small mob intimidate the rest of people. It is the answer to the question that everybody always asked, ‘How can a civilized country like Germany and fallen into Hitler’s hands?’ It’s because the people were intimidated and didn’t want to lose their stuff. And as a result, they were not willing to speak up and say no, you cannot do that here. I’m saying right now. No, you can’t do that here.”
Manning is also not thrilled to hear how Donald Trump is being treated.
“The impeachment trial of Donald Trump is an attack on political speech. Nothing more, nothing less. And anybody who bows to that attack on political speech is effectively saying we want we will only allow discourse between people where there’s no discussion of anything that might at all want to change the administrative states. It is plummeting towards full federal government control. That’s about shutting people up.”
Should people be afraid to exercise their first amendment rights in America?
Manning said, “I think it’s pretty clear that there’s been an intimidation campaign run by the left. The whole cancel culture campaign was designed as attack on corporations. It is pretty obvious that there’s an attempt by the left to make it so if you speak out on politics, if you say anything that’s not on the approved list of things to say that they will go after you and jump to cancel you. We apologize for saying ‘all lives matter.’ A lot of a lot of people pretty high profile and so obviously people who are lower profile and feeling more vulnerable are beginning to say, ‘No, maybe I don’t need to speak out I still think the same way. But I don’t need to put myself in the crosshairs ‘“
Will there be consequences for speaking your mind? Some have experienced them.
The answer, according to Manning, is, yes. “There is a group of people who are aggressively seeking to shut up, anybody who doesn’t mean just kneel to them. And that group of people will you know they’ll attack, you know local barber and they’ll attack somebody who’s just trying to bake cakes. We saw that in a masterpiece cake case which, you know, one, cake, cake baker in Colorado, ended up having his entire life turned upside down because he didn’t want to bake a cake for a gay wedding. Similarly, we’ve seen florists and others, and that occurred in the last, you know, five to six years have been kind of building, and now they now the left is becoming even more emboldened and they want to stop anybody from talking having any kind of speech. And if you want to know if it’s effective, all you have to do is look at the Newsmax interview with Michael Lindell a couple days ago, when Lindell was talking about the elections and Newsmax, the anchor got to their state their statement out saying, ‘we believe Joe Biden won.’ And we’re worried. And that was strictly driven by federal lawsuit, and you know so people are being shut up and people aren’t choosing not to speak because, for one of the first times in American history. It’s almost state sponsored terrorism. Or there’s a war. There’s a group of people who in fact do attack the for your point of view, and not attack you with a just verbally but they attempt to ruin you. And people make those choices.”
Manning believes the courts will be very busy fighting for those who want to fight for their rights.
“We’re entering a new era in America and what’s really going to depend upon is whether the courts work or not, you know, because here’s what we know. The Left, through the bill called HR 1, wants to make it so if you give money to a group like Americans for Limited Government that that money will have to be reported. As a result, there’s anonymity as there shouldn’t be under law, the left is going to try to force reporting because they want to do. They want to basically intimidate people away from being able to give money to groups like Americans for Limited Government.
“So here’s what that means. They view what we’re doing here on this camera, having an honest conversation about what’s happening in America as to be such a threat to their ability to control this country that they want to shut down the ability to do that. And you know that’s kind of antithetical to the concept of free speech. In fact, it is antithetical, but you know they don’t care about that because it’s about power and control. When the good news is in the courts. The courts have come down repeatedly saying they can’t do that.
“And so there’s a case Alabama the NAACP, which, you know, the state of Alabama was trying to get the, the membership list and the importance of people giving money to the local NAACP. NAACP said no, and the courts agreed that the NAACP didn’t have to. And the reason for that protection was because of politically it was an attempt to intimidate people from giving money to the NAACP. That that case which was from the early 1960s late 1950s is every bit as applicable today on the other side. And so the courts are honest the courts are real, you don’t have anything to worry about. And if they aren’t, then you got a lot more to worry about than way to get your money.”
We will have to see what people will feel free to do in the coming months and years.
Frank McCaffrey is Director of Americans for Limited Government News and a contributing editor to the Daily Torch.
