The Left’s dreadful fear of mockery of its grandiose pretensions.
FrontPage Mag, by Bruce Thornton — April 23, 2019
Excerpt:
At the Freedom Center’s recent West Coast Retreat, I made some remarks on a panel about one-party rule and free speech. By chance, my comments about the role of comedy in reinforcing political freedom and equality were perfectly illustrated that evening by Milo Yiannopoulos’ scathing impersonation of Rep. Ilhan Omar. An identity-politics hustler, vulgar anti-Semite, and master of jihadist taqiyya, Omar represents the totalitarian virus that democratic comedy and free speech have for 2500 years been the vaccines.
Indeed, the idea of free speech was born in ancient Athens at the same time political comedy was. Both followed the world-transforming creation of political freedom and equality for the masses, including the poor. The masses were more diverse in their interests, mores, and education, compared to the more uniform aristocratic or oligarchic elite. For the mass of citizens to exercise its right to contribute to public deliberations over policy, then, they had to be free to openly speak their minds in their own ways and by their own standards. As Sophocles said, “Free men have free tongues.”
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