The cancel culture created by Democrats to suppress the free flow of ideas surpasses what dictators do because it is more broadly effective, it covers more topics and pushes Americans toward national suicide. I learned as a young adult what it meant to live without our precious Bill of Rights. Since then, I have watched decade after decade of Democrats increasingly beg for government oppression.
“Oh, you can’t say that, Mrs. Gruber! You will disappear!” said Dorcas in her broken English. This writer & hubby were teaching English in Taiwan, Republic Of China, in the 1970s, at a girls’ college established by British nuns. The entire population was brutally ruled by the dictator Chiang Kai Shek^ who arrived in 1949 and declared martial law. During our time there, the population consisted of about 90% Taiwanese people and 10% Chinese, virtually all being Chiang’s soldiers & families who had escaped from China as Mao’s Communist thugs took over.
Freedom of Speech? Oh, please, what a quaint American notion! By the time we arrived, generations of Taiwanese had learned that even mentioning the government or the dictator’s name could get you “disappeared.” They knew that citizens who came to the attention of the government “disappeared” to Green Island where political prisoners were incarcerated, or worse. There was no “right to a lawyer” and no “due process.” The masses had no rights and “the law” was whatever the Ruling Elite (that is, Chiang & his lieutenants) said it was.
As Americans, we knew that we would not be “disappeared” for speaking freely. At that time, the United States had diplomatic relations with the government of Taiwan. [The Carter Administration canceled diplomatic relations January 1, 1979.] The worst the dictatorship could do to us, would be to deport us back to America. Our US Passports protected us from imprisonment & execution. THAT would give me a great story to tell my grandkids.
Putting together lesson plans for the college English classes I taught, sometimes there would be references to human rights or civil rights. My Taiwanese students and friends repeatedly told me; “oh, don’t talk about that” or “you can’t say that” or “please don’t discuss Freedom of Speech.” Fiercely proud to be an American, I saw no need to modify my behavior to please the dictatorial authorities in Taiwan. After all, I was AN AMERICAN.
I will never understand the stupidity of voters who knowingly vote for a Socialist/Communist who increasingly populate the Democrat Party.
Do you hear that sound? That is the sound of U-Haul engines revving up all over the city as New Yorkers flee while they still own their property. Slightly over one million residents voted to put 8.5 million people “behind enemy lines.”
Seattle Elected Two Communists, Not One
There was a lot of excitement and fear over the election of Katie Wilson as mayor of Seattle this last November. Like Zohran Mamdani in New York City, she is a Communist who advocates confiscation of private property. But, she is not the first Communist elected by Seattle voters. At the same time that Donald J. Trump won in a landslide, Shaun Scott, age…
^Taiwan became a democracy in 1989 shortly after Chiang’s son died.
The author, Diane L. Gruber, is a First Amendment advocate who writes for Substack. She calls her Substack newsletter America First Re-Ignited. Follow me on X @DianeLGruber.
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