“It’s a free country!” How often have we heard people shout that! Usually as they do something wrong, something in no way protected by our actual laws or Constitution. So a nude neighbor prone on your lawn smoking a joint might say that when you complain. (I’ve lived in some colorful neighborhoods, FYI.)

Or a leftist on campus might say it as the pretext for ripping down pro-life fliers. Or Antifa members menacing a TV commentator like Tucker Carlson outside his home. That phrase is the last thing cops usually hear as they drag some felonious #FloridaMan into the paddy wagon and haul him off.

We all cite “freedom,” because individual rights are the only language we speak anymore in America. We can’t cite the “common good.” So even when we decide to override individual rights in pursuit of that common good, we have to pretend that we aren’t. Instead, we must claim that we are in fact defending some other, higher right. Even when that’s clearly nonsense.

Pulling New “Rights” Out of Thin Air

Let’s say we want to ban discrimination against African Americans (as we should). We don’t say old fashioned things like the following. “Given America’s centuries of slavery and legal persecution of blacks, we’ve decided that ending that legacy is more important than absolute freedom of contract and association.” Too complicated! It raises the dangerous prospect of “natural law,” and “human dignity.” Those in turn force us to ask where such things fit with the pop science picture of man as a freak of random mutation.

If we’re each just a meaningless match slowly circling Darwin’s toilet, such claims don’t make any sense. Instead, we pretend that the “rights” guaranteed us by the Constitution include … anything we think desirable.

We all have infinite rights, without any duties, and we gain them neither from Jesus nor from Darwin, but from absolute thin air. So lesbian couples have the “right” to teach at Catholic seminaries. Bruce Jenner has the “right” to legally force me to call him “Caitlyn.” And so on.

We don’t defend such “rights” by rational argument. (That’s impossible.) Instead, we do it by grouping together like alpha chimps and hooting down or pummeling anyone who dares dissent. Instead of accepting consciously the grim implications of evolutionary nihilism, we pretend we’re gods. Then defend our claim by pounding our chests like a troop of outraged apes.

Don’t Waste Arguments on Angry Naked Apes

Please take a moment to assimilate this information. It’s meant to help you. I hope to save you the time and tears you might waste on trying to deploy rational arguments in the face of such angry primates.

Whatever high-flown words and lofty phrases (“equality,” “justice,” etc.) or torn-out Bible verses leftists deploy, do not be fooled. These people no more believe or understand such language than a spider monkey who stole a Marine dress uniform intends to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” He just likes shiny medals and gold brocade.

Arthur Goldberg Must Be Destroyed

Do you have all this firmly in mind? Good. Now you’re ready for the story of Arthur Goldberg. A sometime Stream columnist, Mr. Goldberg is a faithful orthodox Jew. When he saw conservatives, Christians and other dissidents tossed off GoFundMe, he decided to set up an alternative. He founded Funding Morality.

The site helped Father Paul John Kalchik, whom Cardinal Blaise Cupich of Chicago tried to lock up in a loony bin for resisting the LGBT lobby. (GoFundMe yanked his account, refunding tens of thousands of dollars.) It also helped Mark Judge, the drive-by victim of Democrat smears aimed at derailing the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

It proved very useful to have such a site. A place where religious believers could pitch in and help each other, without the Woke tyrants of GoFundMe watching over us, threatening to pull the plug.

So of course, the Left went after FundingMorality, as it seeks to destroy any institution, public or private, which it cannot micromanage. That’s no big surprise. What is a little shocking is the pretext leftists used, and the willingness of U.S. courts to play along with the silencing. (For the grim details of this case, which reads like something from the records of Communist Poland or Hungary in the 50s, see Church Militant’s excellent reporting.)

Put briefly, the Southern Poverty Law Center sued in New Jersey court. It pointed out that Mr. Goldberg had once run a ministry for gay men who wanted help with undesired temptations. They sought to escape a sinful lifestyle, and to heal a sexual orientation that made them unhappy. But that’s illegal in New Jersey, thanks to the pressure of gay advocates. You can change your physical sex, no problem (even before puberty). That’s fluid and arbitrary. But your sexual orientation? That’s fixed in stone and sacred. And any therapist who offers to help you is in trouble with the law.

Since Mr. Goldberg’s old ministry is now a thought crime, the SPLC decided it could use that to close down his new one. And the judge went along with it. Because now Mr. Goldberg is a thought criminal, an unperson, whose every venture and action should be under permanent government scrutiny.

And why? Because this is such a “free country.”

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream, and co-author of several books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration.