By Richard Billies of AllThingsPoliticalToday.com

Americans on all sides love political discussion and debate. Ever since before the founding of the Republic, the citizens of this land have engaged in political arguments. Americans will argue and debate most anything. Tempers have waxed and waned over the several hundred years since Europeans arrived in Virginia in 1609.

In the period leading up to the American Civil War, sectional divisions over the question of slavery were the rule rather than the exception. The firing on Fort Sumter in April of 1861 put a stop to the verbal battle and inaugurated the physical battle. It would not end until four years had passed and millions of lives were changed.

During the years between the world wars, the question of isolationism was the hottest topic of the day. Well, that and the devastated U.S. economy were in the news on a daily basis. Over the last century, Americans have gradually seen not a sectional divide but a philosophical one.

We have seen a continual tug of war between those who believe that the state has all of the answers, let’s call them statists, and those who belive in smaller, limited government. The voters seem to allow one or the other philosophy to approach  dominance, then they pull back by voting for the other side.

We have seen this phenomenon with the election of Jimmy Carter , who believed that our best day’s were behind us. Four short years later, he was crushed by Ronald Reagan, who promised that it would be morning in America again with his strong leadership. In 1984, he reprised his winning slogan again.

Over the years since Ronald Reagan, four Presidents and the Congresses have moved us closer to the statist’s most cherished goals. With the election of Barack Obama and his subsequent actions, such as Obamacare and the stimulus bill, we stand at the abyss of financial ruin as a nation.

Two short years after the Democrat victory in 2008 a grass-roots movement spontaneously sprang up in America. Stamped out of the ground, so to speak, and called themselves the Tea Party Movement. Many have forgotten that the name is an acronym for “Taxed Enough Already”. The loosely-organized tea parties followed a timeless tradition of American patriots and voted in vast numbers in the 2010 mid-term elections.

Their votes were a tsunami that flooded the Democrats out of control of the House of Representatives. The statists have since responded with daily attacks on the limited government adherents, predicting “the end of the world as we know it” if the right is triumphant in 2012. The battle for the hearts and votes of America has reached a key juncture.

Those on the right are willing to argue and discuss our ideas in the public arena. It seems that elements on the left have a different approach.

Patrick J. Buchanan, an avowed and vociferous conservative, has been employed by the National Broadcasting Company for ten years. Most recently, he was a regular political commentator on MSNBC. Buchanan has well-known conservative views and he is outspoken with them. In January of this year, he was suspended indefinitely by the network. The minority advocacy group Color of Change had urged MSNBC to fire him over alleged racist slurs. MSNBC permanently parted ways with Buchanan on February 16, 2012.

Buchanan in an eloquent commentary accused the forces of the left, among them Color of Change and Media Matters For America of trying to blacklist him into silence. They were immediately followed by Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group, and the Anti-Defamation League, a decades-long critic of Buchanan.

In one full sweep, Buchanan was accused of racism, homophobia, antisemitism and assorted other political crimes. In his response, Buchanan said, “They are saying that a respected publisher, St. Martin’s, colluded with me to produce a racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic book, and CNN, Fox News, C-SPAN, Fox Business News and the 150 radio shows on which I appeared failed to detect its evil and helped to promote a moral atrocity.

If my book is racist and anti-Semitic, how did Sean Hannity, Erin Burnett, Judge Andrew Napolitano, Megyn Kelly, Lou Dobbs and Ralph Nader miss that? How did Charles Payne, African-American host on Fox radio, who has interviewed me three times, fail to detect its racism?”

The President of MSNBC Phil Griffin said it all, when he told reporters, “I don’t think the ideas that (Buchanan) put forth (in his book) are appropriate for the national dialogue, much less on MSNBC.”

So now we are seeing the eradication and the very death of political discussion in the country that was once famous for enshrining “Freedom of Speech” as the most preeminent amendment in the Bill of Rights. Aided and abetted by the forces of the far left, America’s once proud media empires have begun to silence any voices that they are uncomfortable hearing. What’s next, inquisition-style political trials? Don’t they understand that what you sow, you shall reap?