I Am a Victim of Cancel Culture

Guest Columnist

James D. Veltmeyer

I Am a Victim of Cancel Culture

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I am a victim of Cancel Culture. And, so is my new book,?Physician on a Mission.?Let me explain:

Recently, an independent bookstore in Orange County offered to host a book signing for me. We paid the fee and the bookstore laid out an impressive program, complete with publicity and flyers. Shortly after they e-mailed a newsletter announcing the book signing – along with other upcoming events – we were informed by the manager that it had been cancelled due to a “community backlash.” What exactly was this “community backlash” was not revealed, but it is indicative of the indisputable fact that one of America’s most cherished freedoms, freedom of speech, is rapidly dying.

Of course, in recent years, we have seen this all around us. Giant corporations that masquerade as private entities while enjoying government protection and subsidy, ruthlessly suppress, ban, censor, and de-platform any individual or expression that disagrees with their left-wing ideology. This applies to someone who voted for President Trump ( even to the President himself ) or is unvaccinated, it applies to those who criticize Critical Race Theory or the COVID cult, it applies to Moms and Dads who speak out at school board meetings. It applies to elected officials as well as ordinary citizens. We have come a long way from the days when the so-called American Civil Liberties Union defended the right of hateful American Nazis to march through Jewish communities while today the ACLU remains silent as conservatives and patriots are shouted down and shut down.

Colleges and universities fire instructors who disagree with the political agenda of the radical left. Courses are cancelled. Students are expelled and silenced. Physicians who question the COVID lies are terminated. Voters who attend a rally at the Capitol are now set up in sting operations by the FBI and thrown into solitary confinement without charge. The Justice Department is weaponized to treat parents as “domestic terrorists.” Polls now show fewer and fewer individuals feel free to share their political or religious views for fear of losing their jobs or being ostracized and persecuted in their communities. The Thought Police are everywhere now, monitoring our social media accounts, our phone calls, and our text messages as databases are built by government and Big Tech to monitor and control our ideas and our thoughts. Refugees from the Soviet Union and Communist China say they are reliving the Red past with what they see happening in America today and they are warning us of the terrifying end-game if it isn’t stopped.?

It is indeed terrifying, grotesque and Orwellian. It is completely incompatible with the very nature of a free society, where the liberty of political discourse is the fundamental pillar. There is a reason why freedom of speech is listed in the First Amendment to the Constitution, not the Seventh, Eighth or Ninth. There is a reason why – in the First Amendment—it ranks second only to freedom of religion in the minds of the Founding Fathers whose statues and symbols are now stripped from the public square. The radical left must erase our history in order to erase our freedoms in order to erase our nation. It’s as simple as that.

Conversely, the attacks by BLM and Antifa on police officers, police stations, courthouses, the looting of stores and businesses, and even the assaults on Republican Senators and their families are defended as valid expressions of righteous rage against a racist culture. It’s doubtful the Founders would have agreed that the First Amendment applies to political violence of this sort. Yet, this political violence goes unpunished and unprosecuted to this day by a Merrick Garland and Chris Wray who are too busying seeking new ways to persecute innocent Americans attempting to protect their Constitututional rights.

At this point, it’s instructive to look back to what America’s greatest historical figures wrote and said about the importance of freedom of speech to society:

Benjamin Franklin?wrote in?The Pennsylvania Gazette:?“Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government: When this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved, and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”

Benjamin Franklin?also opined: “Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such thing as Wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty, without Freedom of Speech.”

Thomas Jefferson?stated: “Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.”

Again, from the Sage of Monticello: “[T]he opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction; that to suffer the civil magistrate to intrude his powers into the field of opinion and to restrain the profession or propagation of principles on supposition of their ill tendency is a dangerous fallacy…”

George Washington?told us: “For if Men are to be precluded from offering their Sentiments on a matter, which may involve the most serious and alarming consequences, that can invite the consideration of Mankind, reason is of no use to us; the freedom of Speech may be taken away, and, dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter.”

The great Supreme Court Justice?Oliver Wendell Holmes?added: “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought – not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.”

Justice?Benjamin Cardozo?went a bit further: “Of that freedom of thought and speech one may say that it is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom.”

And, of course, Justice Cardozo was correct as we know the unhinged Left despises all the other freedoms in the Constitution as much as they despise freedom of speech and will get to the others in due time. They are obviously against freedom of religion as they favor closing churches. They are opposed to freedom of the press, except for journals that propagate their own lies. They are against freedom of assembly as they build walls around the Capitol and seek to expel parents from school board meetings. We certainly know what their plans are for the Second Amendment. Even the Fourth Amendment is not safe with these contemporary Bolsheviks. They seek to abolish our medical privacy, force vaccines on people, spy on us, and prohibit free movement through vaccine passports. And, what of the Tenth Amendment which reserves most powers to the states or to the people? It must be nullified to pave the way for an all-powerful central government based in Washington, D.C.

These American Bolsheviks are out for blood, as much as their bloodthirsty forebears from 1917 in Russia or 1949 in China. First, they will destroy our liberties through Cancel Culture, then they will destroy the republic itself, and then they will come for us, our families, and friends.?

Does America still have the will to defend its history, culture, values and liberties from the barbarians at the gate? Or, as the world-renowned Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn observed forty years ago, has the West simply lost its moral courage completely as it sought to substitute the needs of Man for the Word of God?

Dr. James Veltmeyer is a prominent La Jolla physician and author of “Physician on a Mission: Dr. Veltmeyer’s RX to Save America.”He was voted "Top Doctor" in San Diego?County in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2019.