There was a time when being a member of the ACLU meant defending the speech of people you despised—not because you endorsed them, but because the principle of liberty mattered more than comfort. I joined for that reason. I wasn’t virtue signaling. I was pledging allegiance to the Constitution, the real one—not the cosplay version people wave when it suits them.

Now? The ACLU defends speech selectively. The Human Rights Campaign operates more like a branding arm of one political party. And free speech? Somehow that’s been redefined as violence. Ironically, actual violence is often written off as passion or protest.

I’m not saying this in a red hat. I’m saying this as someone who remembers when progressives stood for open discourse. I grew up in Hawai‘i surrounded by every possible kind of person—different skin, different languages, different politics. They were still mine. I worked with Frank Burns, the general who wrote “Be All You Can Be.” I was close to his son, Scott. I loved Hope O’Keeffe, a brilliant constitutional lawyer. These people weren’t footnotes. They shaped my beliefs.

Someone once said I was trying to get myself on the SPLC watchlist. It hurt because it felt a little true. I’ve been next to too many counternarratives for too long—from New Media Strategies to memes.org to spelunking rabbit holes on forums nobody talks about in polite company. I don’t think I’m flagged. But I’m filtered—soft-shadowbanned, algorithmically sidelined, quietly removed from the conversation without anyone needing to tell me so.

And the language—God, the language. I watched “racist” morph from describing segregationists to being tossed like a beer can at people like me: 55, white, straight, Christian, gun-owning, ex-ACLU donor. “Fascist” now applies to suburban parents who speak up at school board meetings. These words used to be magic spells. Now they’re wallpaper.

And when every act is fascism, when every opinion is white supremacy, the terms lose meaning. The public square becomes a theater of accusation. And many of us? We quietly walked away. The left won the culture war, sure. The right didn’t argue. They built something else.

While the activist class raged on TikTok and MSNBC, the right unplugged. They stopped donating. They stopped attending. They didn’t march. They starved the beast. Defund NPR? You don’t need a vote—just stop the grants that trickle in through CPB, NEA, USAID, and other soft-funding channels. NPR says it only receives 2% of its budget from the federal government. But insiders know better—those streams run deep.

Same for universities. You can’t shut them down outright—it would look authoritarian. But redefine their worst excesses (and many now qualify) as violations of civil rights law—like antisemitism—and you can cut off Title VI funding. You don’t need bayonets. You need bean counters.

The left made everything sacred: identity, language, tone, even silence. The right made nothing sacred except autonomy. The right didn’t want to control cities. They wanted to starve them—cut off food, fuel, infrastructure—and watch the bloated coastlines retreat. The right doesn’t dream of invading blue cities. They plan to outlast them.

And still, the same spells are being cast: bigot, fascist, hater, Hitler. But the spell is broken. Because I see the restaurant going dark. I see the check left unpaid. I see the waiter backing away. And I see the activists arguing about the pronouns on the dessert menu.

I’m not here to storm anything. I’m not calling for a new party, a movement, or revolt. I’m just the watcher. I was here when speech was sacred. I was here when dissent wasn’t pathology. And I’ll still be here when the lights go out and the last credit card gets declined.