It's no longer okay to have a difference of opinion in politics and academia. Not so long 
ago, it was possible to have a polite discussion and ask Socratic questions to determine what's right or wrong. Not anymore.
Free speech is one of Western Civilization's most important contributions to the world. Throughout history, of all the world's cultures and civilizations, only the West has made free speech and free thought into cultural icons. Free speech is a major reason why the West —with all its flaws— has always been not only different from but objectively better than any other. Incidentally, just saying that can now get you canceled or even prosecuted in some places.
Without free speech, it's very hard to have free thought because if you're forced to keep concepts within the confines of your own mind, it's very hard to explicate, expand, and concretize them. What's going on now is extremely dangerous. It amounts to putting tariffs on others' ideas so they can't enter your brain.
Europe and the Anglophone world—Australia, New Zealand, England, the US, and Canada—are turning into police states where thought crime is a real thing that can be prosecuted. It's not 1984 yet, but things are rapidly moving in that direction.
One of the most perverse aspects of the trend is that universities have become the center of this anti-freedom groupthink. They once were— and should be—centers of discussion, debate, and free thought. That's no longer true. They've become institutionally corrupt. They're no longer even places to hang out, party, and pick up a few idle facts while delaying the onset of maturity. They've mutated into something destructive and dangerous, as illustrated by the recent scandals at Columbia, Harvard, and Penn.
95% of American universities have become indoctrination centers. It's quite amazing. 
Most of the teachers and administrators are Woke or Marxist and actively destructive to young minds. The schools are scams, losing money even with tuitions crowding $100,000 per nine-month year. They've become self-licking ice cream cones, mainly benefiting the staff.
Now, under the new Trump administration, those left-leaning agendas seem to have fallen out of favor. Has the pendulum swung the other way?
I can only say that as bad as things look today, they would have been much, much worse if Kamala Harris had been installed as the US President. But we should take a moment to comment on Trump, who currently bestrides the world like a colossus.
As I've been saying for years, Trump has no philosophical center. He doesn't have any core beliefs. The good thing about him, and the reason why he's popular, is that he's a cultural conservative who wants to preserve many aspects of what was good in America. But he doesn't have any consistent view of the world. He just does whatever seems like a good idea at the time, flying by the seat of his pants. I fear that he suffers from megalomania. Things could get out of control because he lacks a philosophical core. His military threats and his use of tariffs as weapons could lead to a genuine catastrophe.
That said, what Elon Musk is doing with DOGE is absolutely great. As is Trump's anti-Wokeism. Wokeism has become an ideological force. It's a set of memes, beliefs, and feelings—psychological aberrations, really—that have captured the West.
Wokism is defined by things like LGBTQ, DEI, intersectionality, safe spaces, trigger warnings, irrational pandering to minorities, identity politics, guilt about being white, abolishing traditional norms and culture, and disavowing Western values in particular. It's actually a spiritual illness. Throughout history, there have been lots of similar episodes—the Inquisition, witch hunts, Jacobinism, Leninism, Hitlerism, Maoism, and many, many more.
It's fine that Trump reacts against what amounts to a mass psychosis. But you can't win a battle of ideas just by reacting against them. It's good to destroy the foundations of Woke. They're evil —a word rarely used since it was inadvertently discredited by religious fanatics. The problem is that, at best, Trump will just create a vacuum, and that vacuum can be filled by almost anything in today's world. It seems unlikely, in the resulting chaos, that it will be filled by the things which actually made America great—free speech, free thought, free markets, individualism, rationality, the rule of law, and a half dozen other things I outlined in the article here.
We're also seeing the political right suppress certain kinds of speech. The Trump administration has cracked down on campus protests and issued an executive order targeting anti-Semitism. The real question, the important question, is: What's the government doing on campuses in the first place?
The State and its minions have absolutely no place on campuses. Injecting force and politics into academia is poisonous. Entirely apart from that, the US university system has outlived its usefulness. Almost all of them are intellectually dead. They're essentially indoctrination centers attached to hedge funds. They're no longer centers of free thought and critical thinking to help you find a direction in life, determine what's right or wrong, and build your character. If you take STEM courses, you'll pick up some facts at best. But that's not what education is about.
Worse, looking at Trump's statement, he's looking to defend one group, the Jews, and particularly Israel. It's none of the government's business. And it's not about promoting freedom. It's about taking sides in a dispute between two antagonistic groups—the Muslims against the Jews, or the Palestinians against the Israelis. Trump isn't solving the problem. He's making it worse by choosing sides. Local police and the University itself are responsible for preventing violence.
The US Constitution was intended to defend citizens from the government. But unfortunately, the Constitution is now a dead letter. It's been completely interpreted out of existence. It's become a meaningless sham. I don't think that's likely to change because the people it governs no longer have any philosophical or moral grounding.
Unfortunately, the government has become the source of all solutions, funding, and everything else. Since the government is pure force, it should do nothing but protect you from force. Force from abroad with the military, and force inside the country with the police and the court system.
The point is that when you have 350 million people compressed into a political aggregation that no longer shares a common culture, religious values, economic interests, or political beliefs, and no longer has any internal cohesion, it can only be held together by force. And that's the way the US is headed.
| Economically, politically, and socially, the United States seems to be headed down a path that’s not only inconsistent with the founding principles of the country but accelerating quickly toward boundless decay. |
** Doug Casey is a best-selling author, world-renowned speculator, and libertarian philosopher who advocates free trade. He is a provider of subscription financial analysis about markets. His International Man blog is accessible here → https://internationalman.com/