I’ve been reading Gregg Jarrett’s book, The Trial of the Century, about the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial.  Nearly 100 years ago, the State of Tennessee passed a law making it a crime for a teacher in a public school “to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals,” in other words, the theory of evolution championed by Charles Darwin.  The trial was the subject of the movie, Inherit the Wind, with Spencer Tracy portraying John Scope’s attorney, Clarence Darrow.  Darrow was the most famous defense attorney in America in the 1920’s; a classical liberal, dedicated to the preservation of the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.  Reading the book, I was reminded of the words attributed to  Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”  A hundred years ago, government took up the cause of fundamentalist religious fanatics to suppress free thought and free expression.  Today, the government is in league with fundamentalist anti-religious fanatics to do precisely the same things.  And the issues faced by Clarence Darrow in his defense of John Scopes are no less pertinent today.  Here are some Darrow quotes from the trial transcript.  “Every bit of knowledge that the mind has must now be submitted to a religious test … If men are not tolerant, if men cannot respect each other’s opinions, if men cannot live and let live, then no man’s life is safe.”  “There is not a single line of any constitution that can withstand bigotry and ignorance when it seeks to destroy the right of the individual; and bigotry and ignorance are ever active.”  “They are after everybody that dares to think.” “The government is not equipped to tell its people what to believe and what not to believe.  Individuals have an indefeasible right to decide for themselves.”  As I said, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  100 years ago, as now, so-called Progressives were obsessed with controlling the education of children, in order to indoctrinate them with the notion that the government knows best what may be said and what may be thought, and to stifle any attempt at the free expression of ideas and opinions that conflict with Progressive orthodoxy.  Clarence Darrow was right in 1925.  The government is not equipped to tell its people what to believe and what not to believe.  Individuals do have an indefeasible right to decide for themselves.  The problem for the Left, however, is that individuals who make up their own minds, and who dare to challenge their Leftist masters, are a threat.  They threaten to expose the false premises and outright lies of the Progressive imbeciles, who can maintain control only by kindling the bigotry and ignorance upon which the Left relies.  100 years removed from 1925 Tennessee, the last thing the Left can permit is a populace, and therefore an electorate, which thinks for itself, and which is willing to consider that what it’s being told simply doesn’t make sense.  Clarence Darrow lived by the maxim that, “The beginning of wisdom is doubt.”  But the Left can’t maintain its control in the face of a wise populace.  The Left doesn’t want people who doubt the veracity of its pronouncements.  It’s wants only compliance.  The proof of this fact is palpable.  Control education, and you teach only that which supports your position.  Produce generations of students and graduates who, through no fault of their own, know nothing of history, are ignorant of the truth, and are ill equipped to discover when they’re being lied to.  To quote Darrow once more, “Ignorance and fanaticism is forever busy and needs feeding.  Always it is feeding and gloating for more.”  That neatly sums up today’s Left.  And 100 years after the Scopes trial, Progressives remain hard at work in their quest to spread ignorance and bigotry.  Think about it.  Today’s Democrats have denounced all Republicans as deplorable, irredeemable, extremist, insurrectionists, who are unworthy of holding any office.  Have you ever noticed that the election of any non-Leftist is denounced as illegitimate, while at the same time the Left condemns any conservative who suggests his election loss was unfair as an “election denier?”  And it’s not just a Republican vs. Democrat battle.  This week, the government got social media outlets to cancel the accounts of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  RFK dares think for himself.  Today’s Leftist quest to spread ignorance is done in the guise of a need to avoid “misinformation.”  That’s a neat term that means we should permit Leftist politicians to decide what’s true and what’s not true, and permit them to cancel, suppress, and remove all speech, opinions, or statements that they consider to be dangerous “to our democracy” by labeling it “misinformation.”  They did just that in 2020, having FBI agents warning social media outlets about postings (speech) which they claimed was untrue, and thus unworthy of being seen or heard.  That conduct has caused a number of State Attorneys General to sue the Biden Administration.  One pending lawsuit, in Louisiana, seeks a preliminary injunction to bar the government from “demanding, urging, encouraging, pressuring, deceiving, colluding, or otherwise inducing social media companies to censor disfavored speakers or opinions.”  A federal judge will soon rule on that suit.  Hopefully, the judge will look no further than the opening clause of the First Amendment to grant the requested relief.  “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” But the work of the Left continues.  Il Duce Barack Obama is pushing government censorship to stamp out “misinformation.”  He laments the fact that there’s too much access to differing points of view.  “You have the sheer proliferation of content, and the splintering of information and audiences … that’s made democracy more complicated.”  “Search and social media platforms are our primary source of news and information …  No one tells us that the window is blurred, subject to unseen distortions, and subtle manipulations.”  All this from the president who once said “it would be easier to be the leader of China, because no one’s scrutinizing his words.”  But as with most things Obama, this is pure bullshit.  Separating the truth from what is reported is not a new problem.  When Clarence Darrow was trying the Scopes case, newspapers were famous for simply making stories up.  Sadly, that practice still exists.  Obama and his henchmen aren’t worried about democracy.  They’re worried about their ability to continue to deceive the public.  Once upon a time Ronald Reagan said we should trust, but verify.  Recent actions by the Left constrain me to amend that proposition.  Don’t trust.  Doubt and verify.