This is the United States of America. You are totally free to express your political views.

No one is going to tell you what you can say or how you can say it, right?

But what if you thought you'd be audited by the IRS or have your business boy caught it or even lose your job?

Would you speak freely then?

This isn't a hypothetical question. It's happening to Americans right now.

It's what I call the intimidation game.

The object of this very real game is to make political opponents pay a high price for expressing their opinions.

It was a standard technique in the Jim Crow South in the 1950s.

It was used by racist Southern Democrats to shut up black civil rights groups like the NAACP.

And now these tactics have been revived and improved upon by today's Democratic Party

and their allies on the progressive left.

They want to shut up conservatives just like racist once wanted to shut up blacks and their liberal supporters.

They do it in three ways. First, they harass. Second, they investigate and prosecute.

And third, they blackmail.

Tactic number one, harass. They sick federal and state agencies and bureaucrats on their

political enemies. Remember the IRS targeting scandal? The began in 2010?

That's when the IRS systematically denied or delayed non-profit status to more than 400

citizen activist groups, almost all conservative. These groups, representing tens of thousands of

Americans, clearly met the IRS's tax exempt standards. But the IRS delay and denial made it impossible

for these groups to raise or spend money during the 2012 presidential election.

Had they been able to, would the election have turned out differently?

We'll never know. Some of these groups are still waiting for their non-profit approval.

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