Author, columnist, speaker

  Progressives Don't Really    Believe in Freedom

By Robert Knight

The left is all about freedom of choice unless you make a choice they don’t like.

Then they bring the full power of government down on you.

Try being parents in a progressive state who don’t want their son Johnny turned into Susie behind your backs. You just might lose custody, as has happened in some places.

Nearly half the states—those governed by Democratic quacks like Minnesota’s Tim Walz—have criminalized counseling aimed at helping minors overcome unwanted LGBTQ feelings.

On March 31, the U.S. Supreme Court restored some sanity, striking down Colorado’s “conversion therapy” ban as violating a Christian counselor’s First Amendment rights.

In California, the progressive state government ordered crisis pregnancy centers to place ads directing clients to abortion clinics. The Supreme Court stopped this assault in its Becerra ruling in 2022.

Another case in point is New Jersey’s attempt to bully a crisis pregnancy chain by forcing it to reveal its donors. Thankfully, the U.S. Supreme Court put the kibosh on the plan, ruling 9-0 on Wednesday that First Choice Women’s Resource Centers has a First Amendment right to sue the state.

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin, a progressive Democrat, had ordered First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, a chain of five crisis pregnancy centers, to turn over its donor list.

He demanded names, phone numbers and addresses of the people who had given money to the facilities, which provide ultrasounds, diapers, and other baby needs, along with counseling.

First Choice refused the demand, for good reason. When Democrats obtain lists, they use them to target and punish donors.

After California voters approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman in 2008, contributors to the Prop. 8 campaign were harassed after their names, addresses and donation amounts were posted on Google Maps.

Some people were vilely harangued and others lost their jobs.

Brendan Eich, founder of the internet browser Mozilla Firefox, was ousted by his own progressive board in 2014 after they learned that he had donated six years before to the Proposition 8 campaign.

This kind of retaliation is why the Supreme Court later ruled in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta in 2021 that charities and nonprofits have a First Amendment right to not disclose their donors to the government.

Even earlier, in 1958, the Supreme Court ruled in NAACP v. Alabama that people have the right to anonymously support and associate with organizations. Otherwise, the Democrat-spawned Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups could harass them.

The progressive urge to override individual rights in the name of centralized progress came into vogue in the early 20th century, along with the eugenics movement.

Anchored by atheism, progressivism is utterly incompatible with the Declaration of Independence, as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas explained in a clear-as-crystal essay recently in The Wall Street Journal.

The Declaration says that “unalienable rights” come from God, not flawed men. Progressivism is a steady march toward a Godless, collectivist future, wrapped in good intentions.

By rejecting God and relying instead on government as the source of all rights, progressivism paved the way for “the most awful century the world has ever seen,” Thomas wrote.

“Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism, and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our Declaration was based.”

In the 1910s, progressivism was embraced by Woodrow Wilson’s Democratic Party, which re-segregated the military, drafted Jim Crow laws and glorified the Klan.

After Republicans voted in higher percentages than Democrats to enact the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Democrats under President Lyndon Johnson concocted the “Great Society.”

This grand, progressive welfare scheme almost immediately reversed all the considerable gains made by black Americans.

Marriage-based families gave way to single-parent households dependent on the welfare state. Once-stable communities fell into urban decay, drug dealers, and gangs.

But progressives were fat and happy. They had hooked enough people in their free stuff army to guarantee generational voting success.

Today’s progressives are still at it, encouraging dependency and faith in government, not God. This includes wolves in sheep’s clothing like Texas U.S. Senate candidate James Talerico and Kentucky’s Gov. Andy Beshear.

Like former President Barack Obama, the two Democrats twist the Bible to justify abortion, LGBTQ activism, and redistribution of income.

Getting back to the New Jersey case, it exemplifies the cultural chasm in our country. One side sees life and marriage as sacred; the other, based on moral relativism, thinks it’s all negotiable.

Like other crisis pregnancy charities, New Jersey’s First Choice chain is an alternative to abortion. Mr. Platkin, a “rising star” in the Democratic Party according to NewJersey.com, implausibly insists that he just wants to make sure that women aren’t misled into believing that the centers also provide abortions. A gentleman, riding to the rescue.

Mr. Platkin hasn’t demanded donor lists from Planned Parenthood and other abortionists. But then, why should he? He worked with them to target First Choice. And, they’re making millions doing the devil’s work of killing unborn babies, donating some of it back to Democrats.

It’s the angels at First Choice whom Mr. Platkin was hoping to put out of business. Trying to save babies’ lives and help women avoid possible injuries and lifelong regret is their passion.

As Adam West in the old TV version of “Batman” would say, “What criminals!” 


 Illustration by Linas Garsys / The Washington Times.