A left-wing liberal boxing student of mine, Irene, complained to me that her health insurance went up from eighty dollars a month to three hundred dollars.

I told her, "What did you expect with ObamaCare?" 

"Let's not discuss it," she said.  We had previously made an agreement that we wouldn't discuss politics.  She was obviously embarrassed by her naïve support of Obama.  Obama's costing her more money caused her to have a reaction formation and hate my conservative views more.

She was not the first person with whom I refused to discuss politics.  I had made the same agreement with another student, Jason.  He was a dyed-in- the-wool liberal, the kind who thinks he is superior to every conservative.  Our relationship went smoothly for about two years until he saw one of my articles in Tea Party Nation about difficulties with homosexual pride.  He called me and said, "I have gay friends.  I can't take lessons from a bigot."

I didn't try to persuade him to stay.  I didn't even realize that I wasn't allowed free speech among the liberals.  I asked one of my black friends, Don, if he felt that gays experienced bigotry and prejudice.

He said, "Who are they kidding?  They ain't experienced nothing like the blacks."  

Irene said, "The system was broken so Obama had to fix it."

"Fix it," I said.  "He broke it further.  And who said it was broken in the first place?  We have always had one of the best health care systems in the world." 

"I don't want to discuss it."

"That's because you can only reiterate your side.  Just because a politician says something is broken doesn't mean that it is broken.  It means that he is trying to score a political point.  Obama, tossing B... S.... at the hoop."

She looked angry.  I didn't want to be judged by her.

"I'm sorry," I said.  I didn't mean it.  I thought of Jason dumping me.  I'm in Brooklyn, the borough of mushy, liberal thought.  I didn't want to be dropped by another student because of her prejudice.  I liked Irene.  I just didn't agree with her typical liberal views.

There is no free speech among liberals.  Remember that Governor Cuomo said that extreme conservatives have no place in New York State.

Intellect has tumbled down the steps of progressivism.  It is fractured by its own insistence that liberalism is a given rather than a guess at naïve utopianism.

I didn't blame Irene for failing to recognize that the politicians she had supported had hurt her.  She was only twenty-six and had been corrupted by a society that had swallowed Obama's speeches whole rather than vomited them into a paper bag.

David Lawrence has a Ph.D. in literature.  He has published over 300 blogs in American Thinker, the Daily Caller, Intellectual Conservative, etc. and political letters in USA Today, The New York Post, The Washington Times, and others.  He has published  a memoir, The King of White-Collar Boxing, and several books of poems, including Lane Changes.  He was a professional boxer and a CEO.  Last year he was listed in New York Magazine as the 41^st reason to love New York.