If you speak to anybody planning to vote for Joe Biden — for instance, a sibling or someone else at a family function — here are some questions you ought to pose. But you need to do it soon, while you still have the right to dissent in America. As the news items and explanations below tell us, that right is currently in serious danger.

• Do you think powerful companies, tax-exempt foundations, or unelected governmental officials should be able to stifle people’s political and religious speech?

A few years back, before the voters stabbed our country’s elites in the back by voting “wrongly” in the 2016 election, that question probably would probably have invited scoffing. “Of course I believe in free speech!” your liberal sibling would have said. “You people are the ones who want to censor and expurgate, ban books, and oppress dissenters.”

But you’re not that likely to get such an answer these days. Instead, you’ll hear some weasely-sounding squeaks about why certain kinds of speech should be censored in the name of “avoiding harm,” “protecting the vulnerable from violence” or “throttling dangerous misinformation.”

They Never Believed in Freedom

The religion of secular humanism that currently rules over us has let its mask slip off. It never really believed in freedom, anyway, except as a useful tool for wresting power from the many for the few. Instead, we face a theocracy as stifling and self-righteous as the one that rules in Iran, and ours is just as intent on micromanaging and reeducating huge swathes of the population here.

For instance, the half of Americans whom Joe Biden called “quasi-fascists” during his “Darth Vader” speech. (Remember that creepy spectacle in September 2022?) Those who didn’t vote for him would be prime candidates for “formal deprogramming,” as Hillary Clinton suggested. Those people can’t be trusted with free speech or free religion, and certainly not with guns. They’re a pack of “Christian Nationalists” and “white supremacists” who recklessly misgender and mislead people through “Russian propaganda.” We can’t have them disseminating “election denial,” “climate denial,” or “vaccine misinformation,” turning the public square into a “wild West.”

After your sibling has finished rattling off all these soundbites, you should politely sum up his comments with, “Okay, so your answer is ‘No.’ Got it. Let’s get rid of the First Amendment, then.” And move on to your next question.

Life Sentences for Online “Hate Speech”?

• Should the government imprison people for saying things that others find hurtful, or even “hateful”? Should such offenses include quoting Bible passages that LGBTQ people don’t like? Should life sentences be imposed for really serious hate speech? How about house arrest for people whom the government thinks are even likely to commit hate speech in the future?

You might get some pushback on this. “That’s crazy!” your sibling might say. “Nobody’s saying that. See what I mean about disinformation? You’re spreading some hysterical conspiracy theory.”

At that point you need to clarify:

• Not at all. I’m simply talking about an actual bill that people who think the way you do are likely to pass in the very near future. Not in Iran or Russia — in Canada.

Then cite this report from the mainstream news source The National Post:

Among other things, Bill C-63 proposes to target “online harms,” including hate speech, with the establishment of a “digital safety” commission, a digital safety ombudsperson, and a digital safety office. The commission would be vested with the authority to investigate social media platforms that allegedly aren’t compliant with the law, levy fines and carry out their proceedings in closed hearings. All these officials will be appointed by the federal cabinet.

Under the proposed act, hate speech complaints against individuals would be directed to the Canadian Human Rights Commission which, unlike the courts, would be exempt from the ordinary rules of evidence. No proof beyond a reasonable doubt will be required for a tribunal to find that the subject of a complaint before them constitutes “hate.” All that’s necessary is the “balance of probabilities” that a violation of the law has occurred. Bill C-63 would also establish new Criminal Code penalties: to advocate or promote genocide is to be liable for imprisonment for life.

Remember that the left tends to define “genocide” pretty loosely. For instance, they don’t consider Hamas genocidal, although it calls for Jews in Israel to be exterminated, and have no problem with Ivy League students on American campuses agreeing with them by chanting terrorist slogans while chasing Jewish students into literal hiding places. And the Canadian government has already prosecuted Christians for “hate speech” for citing Biblical teachings on sexuality.

Pre-Emptive House Arrest on Suspicion of Future Hate Crime

Lifesitenews cited legal scholars in Canada (the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms) who warned of the threat of preemptive punishment for citizens before they even broke this new, restrictive law:

As the JCCF explained, “If the judge believes that there are ‘reasonable grounds’ to justify the fear [that someone might engage in ‘hate speech’] the court can violate the liberty interests of the accused citizen by requiring her or him to do any or all of the following:

• wear an ankle bracelet (electronic monitoring device)
• obey a curfew and stay at home, as determined by the judge
• abstain from alcohol, drugs, or both
• provide bodily substances (e.g. blood, urine) to confirm abstinence from drugs or alcohol
• not communicate with certain designated persons
• not go to certain places, as determined by the judge
• surrender her or his legally owned and legally required firearms.”

After bringing all this up, just shrug:

• So you’re okay with all of this, right? If not, where would you draw the line? How much ‘hate’ (as you define it) are you willing to tolerate? Who decides what’s ‘hateful’? Who decides what’s ‘misinformation’? If your answer is “the government,” then you’ve just given up on freedom.

Why Did Trump Persecute Reporters and Quash Free Speech? (Oops, He Didn’t)

Assuming your sibling hasn’t stormed away in a huff or thrown a hissy fit by now, follow up with this curve ball:

• Was it right when Donald Trump had the FBI arrest journalists for covering news stories in ways he didn’t approve of, and on secret charges that weren’t even shared with their defense lawyers? Was it right for his Justice Department to have the reporters shackled in their court appearances, as if they were violent felons? Was it un-American for Donald Trump to do all that to reporters he considered his political opponents?

Of course Donald Trump never did anything remotely like any of that. But that’s what Joe Biden’s Justice Department just did in Texas to Blaze reporter Steve Baker for covering the January 6 election integrity protest.

.@TPC4USA speaks after FBI arrest: “I don’t like the deliberate humiliation they put me through. There was no reason to do that. There was no reason to march me into a courtroom in leg chains today.” pic.twitter.com/d5LSEwde29

— TheBlaze (@theblaze) March 1, 2024

So you should probably point that last fact out, before posing your final question:

So What Part of Fascism Don’t You Like, the Uniforms?

• Is there any part of freedom you actually support, apart from sexual freedom? Or does liberty begin and end at the bedroom door?

And then just sit quietly, and wait to see what tiny scraps of American liberty the person you’re speaking with actually still clings to.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His upcoming book is No Second Amendment, No First.