Why Free Speech Matters

Kirsten Powers is a self-declared liberal. She became alarmed by what she saw and responded by writing The Silencing: How the Left Is Killing Free Speech. Another liberal, Juan Williams, describes the book this way: “Kirsten Powers explodes and skewers ‘The Silencing’—the demonizing and repression of different views, especially conservative views. Here is a liberal calling out other supposedly liberal people who claim to believe in free speech but tell all who disagree with them to shut up.” Powers calls these speech censors illiberal, to distinguish them from true liberals.

Earlier this year, Dennis Prager explained to attendees at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Nashville, Tennessee, the difference between liberal and leftist—pointing out that liberals promote open-mindedness and compassion, while leftists preach tolerance, but only for their causes. Left and right are often political terms, but extreme leftists—who have taken over many universities—are totalitarians who suppress opposition by whatever means are at their disposal. It is important for all of us to understand these differences. Whether we speak of leftists or illiberals, we are not attacking liberals or promoting conservatives. Leftists, Marxists and anarchists are making huge inroads into our culture. This is a dangerous turn for Western nations and a frightening attempt at totalitarian thought control.

University of Toronto psychology professor Jordan Peterson burst onto the public square by refusing to use so-called “alternative pronouns” or refer to a single individual as they, as some gender-confused individuals demand. “‘I’ve been watching the rise of political correctness on campuses basically since the early 1990s’…. It seemed to go away for a while, he said, then ‘over the last five years, it has come roaring back’” (Tom Spears. “How controversial U of T prof Jordan Peterson became a lightning rod.” Ottawa Citizen, March 10, 2017).

When Britain’s former mental health tsar Natasha Devon told the head teachers of the country’s leading girls’ schools that they should no longer refer to students as girls or ladies but should address them with gender-neutral terms, liberal-leaning Piers Morgan came unglued on Good Morning Britain: “‘It’s preposterous. Utterly preposterous. It’s over. No more boys, no more girls. No more men, no more women. The world is over,’ Morgan said. He added that People who ‘agree with this garbage’ were ‘virtue signalling clowns’” (Luke Kinsella. “UK teachers told to use gender-neutral pronouns.” News.com.au, November 23, 2017).

Ben Shapiro is a conservative voice decrying authoritarian thought control. The titles of three of his seven books explain why the most leftist universities attempt to shut him up: Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America’s Youth; Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans; and Primetime Propaganda: The True Hollywood Story of How the Left Took Over Your TV.

Articulate voices—both liberal and conservative—are pushing back, but biased media and courts seem to be, at this time, on the side of advancing behaviors and lifestyles contrary to biblical values and suppressing free speech.

A Dangerous Impact

Some erroneously think we at Tomorrow’s World spend too much time talking about political correctness, LGBT issues, “bathroom bills” and the like—that we should only focus on the Gospel as they view it. They are naive. The Gospel of the Kingdom of God calls for people to repent of behaviors that are contrary to God’s ways.

These issues should concern every morally sound person, and they affect our ability to preach the truth of the Bible to a chaotic world. Without freedom of speech, we cannot sound the alarm and call on people to repent. How right and wrong are defined is at the core of repentance.

The prophet Isaiah was instructed, “Cry aloud, spare not; lift up your voice like a trumpet; tell My people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins” (Isaiah 58:1). God told Ezekiel, “I am sending you to the children of Israel, to a rebellious nation that has rebelled against Me… I am sending you to them and you shall say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God.’ As for them, whether they hear or whether they refuse… yet they will know that a prophet has been among them” (Ezekiel 2:3–5).

Jonah told Nineveh that destruction was on the way in 40 days. Their king called for a city-wide fast and commanded everyone to “turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands” (Jonah 3:8). God responded to such heart-felt repentance.

The gospel of Mark reveals the beginning of Jesus’ message. “Now after John was put in prison, Jesus came to Galilee, preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God, and saying… ‘Repent, and believe in the gospel’” (Mark 1:14–15). Yes, Jesus commanded repentance—and people must know what sin is to be able to repent of it! Matthew 23 is a red-hot scolding of the religious leaders of His day for their hypocritical practices. In Matthew 5, He magnified the law of God, showing the spiritual intent: Hatred is the spirit of murder and lustfully looking at a woman is the spirit of adultery.

The Truth Is Not Politically Correct

The Apostle Paul told the Corinthians that many of the sexual sins and perversions that our Western world is embracing would keep them out of the Kingdom of God: “Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, not thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Corinthians 6:9–10). See Galatians 5:19–21 as well as Revelation 21:8 for two more examples out of many in God’s word in which behaviors that will keep you out of God’s Kingdom are explicitly listed.

The point is that behaviors that God calls abominations are promoted and leftist activists strive to silence any who disagree with their agenda. Dr. James Dobson laid bare their plan in his 2002 book, Bringing Up Boys, pointing out that “feminists and homosexual activists want to dissolve the traditional roles of mothers and fathers and, in time, eliminate such terms as wife, husband, son, daughter, sister, brother, manhood, womanhood, boy, girl, masculine, and feminine. These references to sexual identity are being replaced with gender-neutral terms, such as significant other, spouse, parent, child, and sibling” (p. 17). Dr. Miriam Grossman explains their agenda this way: “Their goal is an androgynous culture, where the differences between male and female are discounted or denied, and the bond between them robbed of singularity” (Unprotected, p. xxi).

Their ultimate goal is to destroy the family! Any informed and thinking person can see this. They are out to destroy the very purpose for which God created mankind—a vain attempt to defeat God!

We are not the result of blind chance. We are part of a plan designed by a Being whose intelligence, power and love far surpasses ours. The difference is literally night and day.

I am amazed at how disinterested people are in discovering the very purpose of life—the reason why they were born. If you are interested, please call or write to the regional office nearest you, found on page 4, to receive a free copy of the booklet Your Ultimate Destiny. It tells you straight from the pages of the Bible what that purpose is, and it is likely not what you have assumed.