Muzzled: Democrat Toscano calls for ban on tea party free speech

From the top down, America’s political left has coordinated a new national pastime. Desperate Democrats—in federal, state and local elected offices—brashly are vilifying the tea party in hopes of derailing that group’s political popularity and legislative successes.

Recently:

• Vice President Joe Biden reportedly referred to Congressional tea party negotiators as “terrorists.”
• U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) said the tea party “can go straight to hell.”
• U.S. Representative Andre Carson (D-IN) said some congressional tea party members “would love to see you and me…hanging on a tree.”
• Charlottesville Mayor Dave “Norrishood” Norris characterized the tea party movement as solely interested in promoting personal wealth.
• Albemarle County Supervisor Dennis Rooker demeaned the tea party by accusing them of “infiltrating” local government and celebrating another “notch on the gun” in the tea party’s fight against institutionalized globalism.

And now Delegate David Toscano (D-57 VA) has entered the fray, advising circumstantial interdiction for contrarian tea party speech. The elitist Democrat—certain that climate change science is settled—accused Jefferson Area Tea Party members of “distortions of the truth” in recent statements they offered on the topics of global warming and sustainability.

But, unlike his fellow traducers, Toscano stepped beyond ignominy. Emboldened by a demographically statist district, Delegate Dave contrived a sinister proposition: a government-enforced suspension of First Amendment rights for tea party climate change “deniers.”

From a June 20 “General Assembly Update” on Toscano’s web site:

…Similar claims about the United Nations, property rights, and climate science were made during the Albemarle public hearing on the planning grant. In the view of those who argued against accepting the grant, the threat of climate change, as a human-made and highly threatening phenomenon, is at best an exaggeration and, at worst, an utter hoax. Fortunately, the County Board rejected the climate change deniers and reaffirmed its support for efforts to jointly plan with the City and University, though they voted to withdraw from ICLEI.

Allowing these claims into these local policy debates is counterproductive. There is broad scientific consensus, both in this country and around the world, that climate change is real and is enhanced by human activities. [emphasis added]

And who could disallow such “objectionable” speech? Conceivably, Toscano is asking Albemarle County Board of Supervisors Chair, Ann Mallek, to silence people with whom the Delegate disagrees—a thinly veiled request for prohibition of tea party members’ free expression at public meetings of local governing bodies.

An ardent, political opponent of Fifth Amendment private property rights, Democrat Toscano surreptitiously has found a new Amendment to abridge. But unlike eminent domain abuse, which presumably targets left and right alike, Toscano’s new bullseye is placed squarely on the backs of constitutional patriots with an overtly pro-liberty (and anti-internationalist) political agenda—one which threatens Toscano’s career-long efforts to empower and enlarge government at the expense of individual liberty.

Local media—complicit in advancing Toscano’s brand of statism—predictably has remained silent on this outrageous call to abrogate First Amendment rights of so-called “skeptics” and “conspiracy theorists.”

While Toscano despises conservatives’ use of terms like Marxist and socialist in describing America’s political left, in word and in deed, he is advocating for a ruling class that operates free from inconvenient constraints of the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution. Government subjugation of private property rights and government-imposed speech-limits are derived straight from the totalitarian playbook as embraced by contemporary Marxists and socialists worldwide. Denials of such are without merit. If the muzzle fits, Delegate Toscano, wear it.