To me, freedom is essential to a good life, the oxygen that, if missing or taken away, renders our world "weary, flat, [and] stale," as Shakespeare's Hamlet says.  To really breathe at all, we must be free to wander off the reservation of received and approved opinion.

What are the enemies of freedom?  There are many:  poverty, poor health, social chaos, despotic governments, the lack of avenues to express freedom.  But a particularly offensive and insidious kind is one that purports to advance the public good when in reality its primary aims are to enrich itself while destroying its political adversaries.  This describes perfectly what the Southern Poverty Law Center has become today.  Drawing on a massive surveillance model reminiscent of a Communist regime,  motivated by lucrative fundraising aims, and employing fundraising techniques decried across the political spectrum as deceptive, the SPLC's avowed goal, under the leadership of Heidi Beirich, Mark Potok, and others, is to destroy, through public shaming, loss of employment, and harm to reputation those groups and persons the SPLC broadly defines as political enemies of its leftist agenda.