Yesterday I talked about the leftist impulse to censor. But you might wonder why the left so frequently promotes censorship. Dennis Prager recently provided some insights into “Why the Left Has to Suppress Free Speech.”

He begins by stating a fact from history. The left always suppresses speech going all the way back to Vladimir Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. He explains that is an important difference between liberals and the left. Liberals and conservatives believe in free speech. The left does not.

Think of some of our major institutions. The left controls universities and allows no dissent. The left controls nearly every news medium. There is little or no dissent in the mainstream media. The left controls Hollywood. No dissent is allowed there. In these and other venues, we see the cancel culture at work.

Prager argues that the left fears debate and dissent because it is a threat to their ideas. He describes leftism as a big balloon that can be broken with a mere pin prick. He has seen how one articulate conservative on a college campus can undo years of left-wing indoctrination.

I have seen this as well because I have participated or moderated several forums with Christian ministries in which lectures or debates take place. Students are often surprised to hear good reasons to believe in the Bible and a Christian perspective. They discover that their professors and the media have presented a caricature of Christianity and presented history and information in a very biased way.

Nearly a century ago, one Supreme Court justice argued that the best way to counter “falsehoods and fallacies” was “more speech, not enforced silence.” Those were wise words then and are wise words now.

All factions, at some time, can succumb to the impulse to censor, but liberals have almost made it a religion. That’s the argument Glenn Greenwald makes as he talks about the attempt by the left to remove podcaster Joe Rogan from Spotify. Greenwald would likely describe himself as a liberal, but he is talking about people on the left that don’t believe in free speech.

He says they “are obsessed with finding ways to silence and censor adversaries. Every week, if not every day, they have new targets they want de-platformed, banned, silenced, and otherwise prevented from speaking or being heard.”

The picture that accompanies his commentary is of Joe Rogan interviewing Senator Bernie Sanders a few months before he endorsed the Vermont independent for president. Now the left is attacking a podcaster who endorsed the socialist for president. As I say so often on my radio program, you can never be liberal enough for the left.

In the past, the left’s “preferred censorship tactic was to expand and distort the concept of ‘hate speech’ to mean views that make us uncomfortable.” They even falsely claimed that the First Amendment doesn’t protect “hate speech.” But the “hate speech” argument isn’t broad enough, so now they want to also censor “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

That is apparently Joe Rogan’s supposed “crime” for allowing a doctor to present some unpopular information about Covid. But if you think the information presented is erroneous, criticize it. Don’t censor it.

Lest you think that the censorship impulse only affects leaders on the left, Greenwald mentions that polls of Democratic voters show they overwhelmingly favor censorship of the Internet by Big Tech but even by the government itself.

It’s time to acknowledge that the censorship impulse infects large parts of the American electorate.

Stacey Lance has been a teacher in the Canadian public school system for the past 15 years. Her recent essay laments that “the kids aren’t alright.” She begins by saying that she isn’t a doctor or expert in virology. But she does know her students, and she is very sad about what they have experienced these last two years.

Of course, there is the students’ loss of learning and their mental issues. But what is overlooked, she says, “has been the deep shame young people feel: Our students were taught to think of their schools as hubs for infection and themselves as vectors of disease.”

Initially her school went fully remote and there was the inevitable loss of human connection so important to her students’ development. But even when they were back in school, there was no life in the building. “Maybe it was the masks that made it so no one wanted to engage in lessons, or even talk about how they spent their weekend.”

The students she teaches are anxious and depressed. Even the outgoing students “are now terrified at the prospect of being singled out to stand in front of the class and speak. And many of my students seem to have found comfort behind their masks. They feel exposed when their peers can see their whole face.”

Her heartbreaking description of what the lockdowns have done to her students goes on for pages. In fact, columnist Kyle Smith cites large sections of her essay but alters one important fact. Stacey Lance says, “We betrayed our children.” Kyle Smith changes the verb tense: “We are betraying our children every day, all across this country. To be blunt, we are abusing our children, on a mass scale.”

This essay is a poignant reminder of the damage done and the damage being done to the next generation.

No doubt you have heard discussions about “herd immunity,” but now some doctors are talking about “super immunity.” Vaccine immunity and immunity from infection don’t seem to provide lasting protection for the Omicron variant. But it may be possible that the variant may give many of us “super immunity.”

A study from the Oregon Health and Science University published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, documents that a breakthrough infection generates robust immune response against the Delta variant. The study also found that antibodies measured in blood samples through breakthrough cases were more effective. In fact, they were measured as 1,000% more effective than antibodies generated two weeks following the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine.

One of the authors of the study suggested that this might mean there is “an eventual end game” to the pandemic. He didn’t mean an end to the pandemic, but a “tapering-off of the severity of the worldwide epidemic.”

Our immune system depends on two types of white blood cells: T-cells and B-cells. The T-cells circulate in the lymph nodes and bloodstream. One type of T-cells infects the cells, while another type of T-cells signals B-cells that enhance the immune response. Those B-cells increase the ability of the body to produce antibodies that can block new variants.

This study parallels other studies. A study from South Africa found that anyone infected with Omicron variant produces antibodies that were much more effective at neutralizing the Delta variant.

These studies provide some encouraging news. We are all weary of this pandemic and wonder if all the precautions and government policies will ever end. These studies suggest that a tapering is in the future.

Inflation may not be good for most Americans, but it certainly helps the federal government. The editors of the Wall Street Journal put it this way: “The country may be upset with inflation, but in many ways political Washington has never had it better.”

The pandemic has been an “excuse for record government spending and the abuse of regulatory power such as vaccine mandates and an eviction moratorium.” But there is another reason. Increasing income tax revenues have been pouring into the federal treasury.

Federal receipts from the first fiscal quarter (October to December) have increased by a remarkable 31 percent. In other words, that is an increase of $248 billion to $1.05 trillion for the quarter. Much of the increase comes from individual income taxes, while much of the rest comes from an increase in corporate income taxes.

The reason for those increases is easy to explain. Inflation increases the nominal GDP. In fact, the seven percent increase in inflation led to an increase in the nominal GDP by double digits. That leads to higher nominal profits, wages, and salaries.

With such an increase in income to the federal treasury, you might expect that we would be closer to balancing the federal budget. But you probably already know the answer to that assumption. The federal government still had a $377 billion budget deficit in the first fiscal quarter because federal expenses increased.

That fact should be enough to explain why the federal government doesn’t need a tax increase. We can’t even balance the budget when an unexpected $248 billion comes into the federal treasury.

This fact should also explain why government officials aren’t rushing out to deal with inflation. Inflation may not be good for you and your family, but it has been very good to political Washington.

Yesterday I talked about a coming tsunami in our culture. Today, I would like to talk about a red tsunami that may crash upon the 2022 midterm elections.

Dr. Merrill Matthews was on my radio program recently to suggest that the coming red wave election may become a red tsunami. We began by talking about Professor Larry Sabato (Center for Politics at the University of Virginia) who has been looking at elections for decades and has made many accurate predictions. He reminds us that the president’s party usually loses seats in the first midterm elections. That is why he predicts that Republicans could win a majority in the House that may be the biggest in nearly a century.

In the recent past, there have been two red waves. In 1994, Republicans won 54 more House seats than they had won in the previous election. In 2010, they won 64 more Republican House seats. In case you have forgotten, both of those red waves were due to attempts at changing America’s health care system. The first time it was referred to as ClintonCare, and the second time it was called ObamaCare.

Health care reform is not an issue in 2022, so why does Merrill Matthews suggest that a red wave could become a red tsunami? The key difference is who is in the Oval Office. Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were popular and great communicators. Those traits (and others we could mention) are not found in the 79-year-old Joe Biden.

The president’s critics can point to lots of disasters ranging from the botched withdrawal of Afghanistan to rising inflation. Candidates for Congress can also remind the voting public that the House and Senate have accomplished very little. A red wave this November seems likely, but it also possible that it may end up being a red tsunami.

Years ago, I was near a beach when a tsunami warning was issued. An earthquake miles away under the ocean threatened to send a wall of water in my direction. It turned out to be nothing, but that didn’t keep me from going to higher ground.

Dr. Jim Denison warns us in his new book, of a cultural tsunami brought about by four cultural earthquakes. The philosophy of postmodernism has created a post-truth culture where the truth becomes “your truth.” The sexual revolution has changed sexual mores. Racial identity is forged through critical race theory and other associated isms and ideologies. Attacks on Christians are encouraged and celebrated as a secular religion grows stronger every day.

He explains how these secular forces also show up in the desire to pass the misnamed Equality Act and how major businesses have become “woke.” He even describes how these secular waves influence how we think about genetics and designer babies.

The response to a physical tsunami is to retreat to safer ground. But Jim Denison is not calling for us to run away from these waves but to defend biblical truth, to defend biblical sexuality, to defend biblical equality, and to defend biblical Christians.

I would encourage you to buy a copy of his book, The Coming Tsunami: Why Christians Are Labeled Intolerant, Irrelevant, Oppressive, and Dangerous�”and How We Can Turn the Tide. He not only is able to warn us of the danger, but he offers a prescription of proactive, biblical steps to redeem the challenges we face today.

This is a book all of us need to read and apply to our current cultural situation so that we can turn the tide.

The current “progressive” agenda may push this nation back to a more primitive past. That is the conclusion of Glenn Ellmers who wonders if the current assault on reason and nature can last. He provides many examples.

“Reinstituting racial segregation and replacing individual rights with group rights. Abandoning poor and minority neighborhoods to lawlessness by defunding the police and decriminalizing many offenses. Eliminating opportunities for women in sports by forcing them to compete against men. Impoverishing working-class American citizens by enriching a global oligarchy while flooding the labor market with illegal aliens. Eliminating due process and the rule of law by resurrecting pre-trial detention, extra-legal punishment, and the presumption of guilt for political enemies.”

It’s a long list that demonstrates that this agenda will return us to a less civilized past. In fact, you sometimes have to go way back into history to find some examples of such ideas being promoted.

The irony is that these ideas are being promoted by critics that believe their solutions will help us overcome some of the injustices in the past. Glenn Ellmers reminds us that it took two millennia for Western civilization to implement important principles like limited constitutional government, equal nature rights, and an impartial administration of justice.

Leaders of the progressive movement are convinced of their own moral superiority but also seem unwilling to learn from the mistakes in our past. This seems like yet another example of the oft-quoted phrase, that the only thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history.