David McElroy

Donald Trump’s obscene efforts to shut up the speech of people he disagrees with have a lot of people talking about free speech. Democrats are acting angry and sanctimonious about the issue. Republicans are mostly defending their Dear Leader.

But it wasn’t that long ago when the roles were reversed. During the Biden administration, Democrats put pressure on tech companies to shut up speech they didn’t like. Because they went about it in a more pragmatic way — by putting behind-the-scenes pressure on companies such as Meta and Google to remove speech they didn’t like from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and more, they were more successful than Trump has been.

The left wingers of the Biden administration and the right wing populists of the Trump administration share this in common. They both want to shut up speech that offends them — for one reason or another — and they want to complain when speech from their own allies is shut down.

In other words, they’re both hypocrites, even though each side pretends the other is the anti-speech monster. They’ve been lying to themselves for so long that they believe this. And they can’t see that they are mirror images of one another on this issue.

But let’s put aside their partisan idiocy for now and look at the broader issue of free speech. There are some things that every rational person should understand about free speech — no matter which side of the political mainstream you love and which side you hate.

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I don’t know how to love you — or anyone else.

Loving others has never come naturally to me. The people around me seemed stupid, irritating, foolish and irrational. They hurt me and angered me. But I kept reminding myself that Jesus taught me to love them anyway, even the ones I might consider enemies.

But I struggle with this more than I like to admit, because my selfish and unloving heart naturally wants to be angry and strike out at the people around me who frustrate me and leave me feeling as though there’s no hope for the human race.

And the failure of my unloving heart to love these people who seem so unlovable drives home a truth that I sometimes forget. Without the loving spirit who I know as God, it’s impossible for me to truly love anyone. Without God, I am incapable of moving beyond my selfishness, my unloving spirit and my foolish pride.

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My life has been a lot less stressful since I found the humility to admit that I’m often a fool.

There was a time when I was afraid of what other people might think. I wouldn’t have put it that way, but if you look at the way I acted, it’s pretty clear. What if people didn’t recognize how smart I am? What if people saw me change my mind about something and realized that I’d been wrong before?

I wanted people to believe I was completely consistent. If I had once said something, I felt obligated to defend it, because admitting I’d been wrong might imply I could still be wrong about other things.

So I pretended I had things figured out, even when I felt foolish inside.

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