Totalitarian horrors

As the campaign to remove statutes of Confederate soldiers, colonial heroes, and pre-colonial explorers moves inextricably along, accompanied by parallel campaigns to rewrite American history along the lines advocated by The New York Times, and to criticize, demonize, and intimidate anyone in politics, academia, or private life who dares to differ from the gospel of the radical left, which, by its own admission, seeks to rewrite the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and eliminate its implicit right of freedom of association, consider this: We have been forewarned.

In George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984,” the mission of the powerful Ministry of Truth and its Thought Police was to rewrite history, bring it up to date, and ensure that all newspapers, books, educational mandates, memorials, and thought that had been superseded by Big Brother’s totalitarian regime were either suppressed or destroyed, or both.

For the moment we do not have a totalitarian regime in charge of the U.S. government, but, as Ronald Reagan said in his gubernatorial inaugural address, “Freedom is a fragile thing and never more than one generation from extinction.”

The radical left’s current members of Congress, its left-leaning governors, its flag-waving leftist university elites, and their designated mouthpiece, The New York Times, have made their intentions clear: Do as we say and hold onto your socks, because we will use our best efforts to eliminate capitalism, free enterprise, free speech, the free press, and usher in an age of guaranteed wages, revisionist history, socialism, speech police, reparation payments, and rampant welfare whose excesses history has never known.

Indeed, if the radical left has its way, we will shamefully leave a legacy of a totalitarian nightmare that Orwell only speculated about.

CHARLES MATTHEWS Hot Springs