He will have given you your opinion.

Welcome to the world of progressive thought, the mindset that holds the upper hand in next week's election.

On October 21, Lewis Diuguid, Kansas City Star Editorial Page columnist made the following comment:

The "socialist" label that Sen. John McCain and his GOP presidential running mate Sarah Palin are trying to attach to Sen. Barack Obama actually has long and very ugly historical roots.

J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI from 1924 to 1972, used the term liberally to describe African Americans who spent their lives fighting for equality.

Those freedom fighters included the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who led the Civil Rights Movement; W.E.B. Du Bois, who in 1909 helped found the NAACP which is still the nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization; Paul Robeson, a famous singer, actor and political activist who in the 1930s became involved in national and international movements for better labor relations, peace and racial justice; and A. Philip Randolph, who founded and was the longtime head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a leading advocate for civil rights for African Americans.

McCain and Palin have simply reached back in history to use an old code word for black. It set whites apart from those deemed unAmerican and those who could not be trusted during the communism scare.

Never mind that De Bois, Robeson, and Randolph were actually self acclaimed socialists. De Bois of the communist variety. In Diuguid's application, the actual truth of any of McCain's or Palin's statements are dismissed through an intentionally applied mischaracterization of the motivations behind the comments. By dismissing the speakers as falsely motivated, the truth can also be easily discarded.

In effect the argument becomes, "don't listen to them, they are racists!"

Diuguid, conveniently, is able to refuse an opportunity to defend Obama's socialist opinions. He doesn't want to have to do it for he has no plausible defense, and identity politics provides him the cover.

On October 9, James T. Harris made the following comments at a town hall meeting in Waukesha, Wis:

"I doubt that anyone in this room has taken, pardon me, the ass-whuppin' that I have taken for supporting you. Sir, I believe that in the next coming debate it is absolutely vital that you take it to Obama and that you hit him where it hurts. ACORN is out there, we have Reverend Wright, all of these shady characters that surrounded him. I am begging you, sir."

No where is the viciousness of identity politics more on display than in the feminist attacks against Sarah Palin who has displayed the audacity to not only declare that she is pro-life, but has actually proven it. Rochelle Riley wrote this on September 30:

Palin is setting the gender back by decades. The next time a woman runs for any national office, her opponents will have sound bites galore from the Palin ditz reel, the last time a woman ran.

Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It's about making life more fair for women everywhere. It's not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It's about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters. Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with [Hillary] Clinton.

The Fairness Doctrine is already being brushed off. Google is hinting at an internet framework where blogs could be filtered for their quality and content. On several occasions the UN has suggested that it should take over the administration of the internet. Advocacy groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations are advancing thought and hate crime litigation as a way to intimidate or silence comments that they feel could be critical or offensive to Islam. While there has been no serious overture that I am aware of, there have been some discussions that may lead to proposals that would require that journalists and boring bloggers receive a license to jabber on about politics.

All of these types of initiatives are designed to control the public conversation in such a way that only the proper and accepted discourse, the one that is approved by those in power, will be available.

The best defense any of us can mount against this tyranny is to remain diligent and protective of our free speech--the right of which was granted to us by God and not by government. The battle may very well end in the chambers of the Supreme Court, but it must start at home and at school and at work, in our letters and our blogs, while shopping, singing and rolling the dice.

We own our words. They are the property of no one else.

Better we bored to silence by someone's free speech, than be forcibly silenced by those that refuse to be crossed.

cross posted at The Rougblog