I’m old enough to remember the Berkeley Free Speech Movement, a product of mostly leftist students on campus.

With the participation of thousands of students, the Free Speech Movement was the first mass act of civil disobedience on an American college campus in the 1960s. Students insisted that the university administration lift the ban of on-campus political activities and acknowledge the students’ right to free speech and academic freedom. The Free Speech Movement was influenced by the New Left, and was also related to the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement. To this day, the Movement’s legacy continues to shape American political dialogue both on college campuses and in broader society, influencing some political views and values of college students and the general public.

I’m not a leftist by any means, but I completely support the freedom of speech, and all of the rights enshrined in our great Constitution. Sadly, so many of today’s left do not support freedom of speech, at least not when they believe they have the power to restrain it.

Irish senator under fire for advocating bill to restrict free speech

One critic calls Ireland’s anti-hate law ‘draconian,’ adding it will have ‘severe implications’

By Brianna Herlihy, Fox News | First Sunday of Advent, December 3, 2023 | 4:00 AM EST

A speech delivered in June by an Irish lawmaker who said the work of legislatures is about “restricting freedoms” in the name of the “common good” has gone viral, with criticism on both sides of the Atlantic.

Senator Pauline O’Reilly of the Green Party, in defense of Ireland’s proposed Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences Bill 2022, spoke at the Houses of the Oireachtas in June, saying, “We are restricting freedom, but we’re doing it for the common good.

Well, of course she’s a member of the Green Party, of the hard left.

“You will see throughout our constitution, yes, you have rights, but they are restricted for the common good. If your views on other people’s identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”

If a right is “restricted for the common good,” is it a right at all?

Senator O’Reilly’s speech is embedded below the fold, since videos take up a lot of bandwidth on the front page.

This is the Republic of Ireland, not the United States, but pay attention to what the Senator says.

If your views on other people’s identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.

Under her definition, a website such as this one, which holds that transgenderism is both stupid and impossible to attain, regardless of how much surgery and medical intervention is attempted, would be illegal in Éire. Fortunately, our written Constitution protects us, but let’s tell the truth here: many on teh American left want to restrict our rights for the “common good.” We have liberals calling for hate speech laws, and the efforts of the left to restrict our Second Amendment rights are ongoing every day, as states and localities are seeking ways to pick at the edges of our right to keep and bear arms.

Because you cannot do and say whatever you like in our society, a society governed by laws.

Under the Senator’s bill, were I to be in Dublin — and we missed our planned vacation on the Emerald Isle due to the Covidiocy in 2020 — and to laugh at an obvious man male trying to pretend he’s a woman, I’d be breaking the law. One wonders how this would impact the Catholic Church, the dominant religion in Ireland, given that the Church states unequivocally that transgenderism and homosexuality are wrong, sinful, and unacceptable.

We already have a bit of that in New York City, where regulations can fine businesses if one of their employees refers to a customer by his real sex ‘misgenders’ a customer. And we’ve seen the efforts in Colorado in which the government has been trying to compel speech, trying to force businesses to engage in things which would support other people’s same-sex ‘weddings,’ in violation of their freedom of religion.

Don’t be lulled by our constitutional protections: the left have been trying, slowly but nevertheless steadily, to curtail your rights, with campaigns like “who needs an AR-15, as though our rights should be subject to other people’s decisions on whether we really “need” to exercise them.