“To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one’s lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available.”  

From 1984, by George Orwell

On the first day of the second term of his presidency, President Donald J. Trump signed into law an executive order known as “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship.”

The gist of the executive order was a criticism against the Biden administration, for whom the executive order claimed, “trampled free speech rights” and put pressure on efforts to moderate social media content. The Biden administration’s actions, the executive order asserted, was infringing on the rights of Americans in order to serve the Biden administration’s narrative. 

Executive Order 14149 stated that it was now the policy of the United States to:  secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech; ensure that no federal government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; ensure that no taxpayer resources are used to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; and identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the federal government related to censorship of protected speech.

In theory, the executive would become a well-placed dagger in the heart of censorship, one that promised to protect First Amendment rights, eliminate restricted speech and clean up the inconsistencies of Biden’s policies and restore order to freedom of Americans to speak their minds.

In practice and in irony, those freedoms contained within the executive order have not yet seen the turn of a new calendar year, and they are already under severe assault.

There have been attempts to remove diversity, equity and inclusion – DEI – content from government communications under the argument that it creates “radical gender ideology.” The White House now restricts hand-picked media organizations from access to meetings, purely on the basis of their editorial differences with the policies of the new administration. It has become the early-morning custom of Americans to wake up to the roar of criticism levied against anyone who disagrees with the administration’s policies: the media, Ivy League institutions, elected officials, our nation’s most respected military officers and even TV talk show hosts. 

Yes, the federal judges tell us, these actions have attempted to bludgeon free speech rights, but Americans - on every possible side of the political and ideological aisle – are waiting for a substantive repudiation of these actions that may not come. 

We, the American people – conservatives, liberals, moderates, Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and those on every specter of our continuing conversation – are seeing our most precious constitutional freedom manipulated beyond all reproach. Our actions, whether typed, handwritten, spoken or expressed in other forms, are being slowly and systematically whittled away by an administration who believes that the best form of leadership is to demand and receive absolute and faithful compliance. 

Released in 1949, author George Orwell’s novel 1984 revealed the horrors of a dystopian society that revealed an unimaginable world of totalitarianism, oppression of the individual, rampant surveillance of what people say, government control and the manipulation of truth. In the book, the Party has invented “Newspeak,” a mechanism that reduces vocabulary and subsequently, the power of one’s voice and thoughts. Slowly, we are being manipulated into believing that our own beliefs are poison to those with whom we disagree. Slowly, the power of our vocabulary is on the brink of vanishing, and with it, so is the soul of our nation.