If you take the time to read the entire speech by Senator McConnell continued at the link at the end of this preview, you can't help but see an incredibly disturbing pattern of suppression coming from the White House and in leftist groups. We have to do something to stop this. ---- This will be an unusual column--both to write and to read. It's difficult because in the last several years so great has the political polarization become that we're jeopardizing our sense of nation, as in a collection of united people, and become more of a mere country. Once upon a time, election campaigns were about dividing voters into one camp or another through the campaign season and election day. Using fear, economics, self-interest, ethnicity, language, half-truths, untruths, family and regional allegiances, parties herded voters to the polls, instilling voter discipline by drawing lines among groups. After the election, and a finite period of mourning by losers, we re-assembled as a people. And moved forward. But now, largely because it serves the ongoing self-interest of certain pols who once vowed to unify us, we have a perpetual campaign, a non-stop effort to assemble supporters for various political causes month after month, including but not confined to elections. So, we're always being divided. The healing time is gone. We lose sight of what we have in common. This has changed the way Washington works--or fails to. It's changed friendships, the media, news consumption and so much more. In reading this seminal speech Friday by a U.S. senator, try your best to ignore party labels and your allegiance and all the superficial left-right nonsense that comes from this permanent election mentality of contemporary American politics. This senator assembles an impressive array of incidents concerning free speech in America, one of our most hallowed traditions. We remember most of these incident individually. You might too. Think of a government, a government of any party, and a vast governmental complex united in a common goal not of responding to opposition in the marketplace of ideas, but of silencing it. Individually, these incidents seem minor, instigated by an array of groups. However, woven together over time, they present a powerfully convincing pattern of attempted suppression of expression that should be disturbing--even frightening--for anyone who holds free speech sacred. And now, given the investigations into reporters and intimidation of some groups by the Internal Revenue Service, the culprits have moved inside the government too. As usual, we print the entire speech text below. And if you scroll down farther you'll find the complete C-SPAN video of these remarks. Here's a sampling of what's below: "Last June, I stood here and warned of a grave and growing threat to the First Amendment. That threat has not let up. Our ability to freely engage in civic life and to organize in defense of our beliefs is still under coordinated assault from groups on the Left that donât like the idea of anyone criticizing their aims, and from a White House that appears determined to shut up anybody who challenges it...." "The IRS scandal helps explain a lot of the things this administration has done...." "Now we have an administration thatâs desperately trying to prove that nobody at the top was involved in any of this stuff, even as they hope that the media loses interest in this scandal and moves on. But we canât move on. "Because as serious as the IRS scandal is, what weâre dealing with here is larger than the actions of one agency or any group of employees. This administration has institutionalized the practice of pitting bureaucrats against the very people theyâre supposed to be serving, and it needs to stop...." "Thatâs why we need to be vigilant about every one of these assaults. They may seem small and isolated in the particular, but together they reflect a culture of intimidation that extends throughout the government â a culture abetted by a bureaucracy that stands to benefit from it. "The moment a gang of U.S. Senators started writing letters last year demanding the IRS step in and force more disclosure upon conservative groups, we all should have cried foul. "The moment the White House proposed a draft order requiring applicants for government contracts to disclose their political affiliations, we all should have called them out. "When the HHS Secretary told insurance companies they couldnât tell their customers how ObamaCare would impact them, we all should have pulled the alarm...." Scroll down to the beginning of the speech or listen to the video at: http://news.investors.com/politics-...h-mcconnell-free-speech-threatened.htm?p=full