“John,” a teammate of mine in college, always struck me as a decent enough guy even though he had two significant flaws: He was a dim bulb who had never had an original thought in his life, and he was a bigot. “John” was the most openly and comprehensively racist person I had ever encountered. His ability to avert his eyes from reality was astonishing.

According to him, every white person wished we were back in the days of slavery, and every black person was a tower of virtue who struggled against the impossible odds of white racism every day. The fact that “John” grew up in a wealthy white neighborhood and went to a wealthy white school for which he would never have qualified without affirmative action seemed odd to me at the time, but in retrospect that probably exaggerated his racist tendencies. In the ’80s, “John’s” visceral and open hatred of whites was somewhat unusual. On a college campus today, his views would be mainstream – even moderate.

Anyway, I ran across “John” on the internet today. He blogs. In one of his pieces, he discussed the rebel flag. He made a genuine effort to acknowledge that the “supporters” of the Confederate flag may sincerely view it as simply a non-racist symbol with a complex historical background, but then he pointed out that he takes a different view. He explained that if you showed a Jew a Swastika, the Jew would have a strong emotional response, and understandably so. Likewise, as a black American, he had a strong emotional response to the Confederate flag, whether other people find it racist or not. It was a fairly well-reasoned essay, I thought. And it got me to thinking about free speech.

Let’s suppose that Ben Shapiro gets dis-invited from a college campus because something he might say might be offensive to somebody. Now remember “John’s” point – his speech may not be offensive to everybody, but it will probably offend someone. So the rioting fourth-year sophomore Sociology majors wisely deduce that the only way to be sure that Mr. Shapiro doesn’t offend anyone is to see to it that he doesn’t say anything to anyone. Which means that if I’m not allowed to engage in offensive speech, I’m not allowed to talk at all. This reinforces the common argument that you don’t need to protect popular speech. We only need Constitutional protections for unpopular speech. Because if unpopular speech is not allowed, then really no speech is allowed whatsoever.

Oddly, “John” often proudly proclaims that “the man” is never going to shut him up. He will continue to speak truth to power. He is not the only voice on the left to voice such sentiments. Hillary Clinton said that protest is the highest form of patriotism. This is the part I don’t understand.

Are these people listening to what they are saying? I’m not pointing out hypocrisy on the left – that’s almost no fun anymore. I’m simply wondering what these people think is going to happen when we finally agree that speech should be regulated. They will be the first to be confined in the prison that they built. This is not just hypocrisy. This is intellectual suicide. And it’s blindingly obvious – you don’t need to be George Orwell to see what is happening here.

People have a natural fear of the unfamiliar. We even sometimes vote for tyrants because they offer security. Conservative speech in media, entertainment, and academia has become so rare as to become startling, and unfamiliar. It is natural for people to try to protect themselves from the unfamiliar – this is a recurring theme in human history.

This is why the concept of God-given, inalienable rights is important. This is why the Bill of Rights is important. Our Founders set certain things beyond debate. They knew that at some point, government would try to take the right to free speech, the right to bear arms, and so on. Why else would they have specifically forbidden government from restricting those rights? They knew what was coming. They declared that those rights are granted by God, and not by government, and thus government has no authority to restrict those rights in the first place. There are some things that we will not debate in Congress, that we will make no law to restrict. They had read the great philosophers. They had read Shakespeare. They had lived full lives outside of politics. They understood people. They knew.

This, to me, is one of the glaring differences between the right and left today. If you listen to the left, it would seem that they have never met an actual person. While it is true that many conservatives, including myself, tend to take a dim view of human nature, I think even our critics would grudgingly acknowledge that we have at least considered human nature.

So the left calls for bans on offensive speech. And then they wear pussy hats and call white people Nazis. And next, they will pretend to be surprised when they are jailed for exceeding “reasonable” limits on free speech. “John” will wonder (or pretend to wonder) what on earth happened from his jail cell in his new, free, and open society which protects him from offensive speech.

Somewhere, George Orwell is laughing.

I’m not.