FDR and the Democrats’ Unmatched Undemocratic Ways

The founder of the modern Democrat party would be cynically proud of how undemocratically it swept Kamala Harris to power. 

 By Mary Grabar August 3, 2024

 

June 7th 2019 Bronze statue by Neil Estern of Franklin D Roosevelt sitting down in a cape and his (unshown) dog Fala (Stu Jones/Shutterstock) 

Commentators such as Victor Davis Hanson have called the “coronation” of Vice President Kamala Harris as presumptive Democrat presidential nominee a coup coming upon another coup: the 2020 primary when front-runner Bernie Sanders was pressured by shadowy party bosses to drop out in order to leave the “moderate” electable Joe Biden.

As David Samuels says, we do have a shadow government … with Obama’s people in the White House running the show.

Now the elected candidate has been forced out and replaced with Harris, who had “entered no primary,” won not a single delegate in 2024 — or in 2020, when “she dropped out of the race even before the first Iowa and New Hampshire balloting.” Delegates will be denied the ability to put forth nominees, as Harris is nominated virtually.

Many wonder how the Democrat Party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt could come to such high-handedness, where such party bosses as Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama subvert the democratic process. The editorial board of the New York Post asked what happened to the party of “‘Lunch Bucket Joe,’” who “always aimed to identify with … the working class — the party’s base from the days of FDR and Harry Truman.” Democrats were now embracing “hyper progressive” and elitist Kamala Harris.

David Samuels presents a similar, commonly held view of American political history, of five American Republics with the last one founded by Barack Obama, who had toppled the Fourth Republic, which had been founded by Franklin Roosevelt.

FDR, presumably, “excised the New England elites in favor of the ‘New Deal alliance’ of Southerners and northern urban immigrant voters.” But then Bill Clinton embraced “global trade treaties like NAFTA and GATT, and China’s entry into the WTO, which blew up the broad middle class that FDR’s party had spent decades building and turned the Democrats into the party of Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan.”

Today’s Obama-led Democrat Party is “college-educated, corporate-controlled,” an “alliance of civil rights, anti-imperialism, and identity politics.”

Such assumptions — which are making the “conservatives” at Compact agitate for another New Deal — are based on the false idea that Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a self-identified member of the Hudson River Valley landed gentry, became a “traitor to his class” and championed the cause of workers and the “common man,” thus instituting a “golden age” for the middle class.

This is a myth that FDR and his retinue promulgated and which I debunk in my book, Debunking FDR: The Man and the Myths (2024). While Roosevelt’s name and class brought him unequaled favorable publicity, the truth is that he lived off of his family’s riches, mostly handed down by his maternal grandfather, an opium-pusher in China. Other sources came from monopolizing coal mines (a company town in Pennsylvania was named Delano) and railroads.

But from the beginning, during his one-term stint (January 1911–January 1913) as a 29-year-old New York State Senator, FDR presented himself as a “reformer.” One of the headline-grabbing issues of the day was the direct primary in the election of United States Senators, to be wrested from the party “bosses.”

Roosevelt had his doubts that a direct primary bill would have much effect, but it was a good issue to support to elevate his reputation. Knowing that star-struck reporters would favorably record his words, he gave public speeches for the direct primary, supported direct primary bills that actually accrued more power to party bosses, and played to the press corps in Albany by precipitating a headline-grabbing angry three-hour debate that ultimately ended in a recess with nothing passed.

Roosevelt’s decision to appeal to Southerners and northern urban immigrants was similarly based on political calculation as demographics shifted. He cast himself as a “farmer,” even claiming to be nothing more than a “Georgia cracker farmer” after investing in the Warm Springs property.

But as a letter to fellow Hudson River Valley gentleman farmer Henry Morgenthau, Jr. revealed, Roosevelt thought a “large number” of Upstate farmers displayed “sheer, utter, and complete ignorance.” FDR actually did the bidding of Wall Street, where he worked for several years as a Wall Street lawyer (though not a very good one) and invested in dubious schemes involving German currency and selling stock in his various companies to gullible Americans who ended up losing most of their investments.

Nor was the New Deal, presumably instituted to end the Depression, designed by the Brain Trust, the Ph.D.s with new ideas about how to uplift the masses as commonly thought. It was a creation of the very elites — bankers, corporate heads, and Wall Street speculators — to make institutional changes to their own benefit.

John T. Flynn, one of FDR’s most consistent contemporary critics (who has now been memory-holed), in the June 1939 Yale Review, called the Brain Trusters “messenger boys” for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. Steel, other corporations, and Wall Street speculators and bankers. More recently, in 1989, scholar Thomas Ferguson presented them as providing “a transmission belt for the ideas of others, including, notably, investment bankers from Lehmann Brothers.”

FDR may have rejected J.P. Morgan but only to allow the advancement of rival Chase National Bank, on whose board sat FDR’s cousin Vincent Astor. The Agricultural Adjustment Act was not designed by farmers but by “messenger boys” funded by the Rockefellers and the Chamber of Commerce.

The National Recovery Administration, which fixed prices and set codes to benefit the six-hundred or so largest businesses in the country, was architected by Wall Street speculator Bernard Baruch. The AAA benefited large landowners and drove small farmers and tenant farmers from the land, and the NRA destroyed small businesses.

The poor got very little of the New Deal funding, which was largely a patronage scheme — Tammany Hall on a national scale, with taxpayer-supported New Deal funds going to party bosses and areas where votes were needed.

Social Security similarly exploits workers. As Flynn wrote in 1939, “the Social Security Act was made the excuse for laying upon the workers under the guise of creating a vast reserve a pay-roll tax to support ordinary expenses.” Taxpayer-supported deposit insurance has been used to bail out banks in the 1980s and in 2008/2009. Obamacare, as David Garrow has pointed out, is “a great achievement for the health insurance industry.”

The progressive policies were designed to benefit the wealthy. When conservative Democrats like Senator Walter George, of Georgia, opposed his policies, such as court-packing, FDR publicly, in their presence, ridiculed them during the 1938 midterm “purge.” Today, the purge has been completed, with Democrats voting in lock-step or as a bumper sticker says, “Vote Blue, No Matter Who.”

As David Samuels says, we do have a shadow government, a “spooky arrangement” with Obama’s people in the White House running the show. But contrary to Samuels’ view of history, the “shadow government” was in place during the FDR era. Baruch was the largest donor to the Democrats in 1932. He also reviewed all the speeches Roosevelt gave during the presidential campaign.

Since at least the regime of FDR, the Democratic Party has been un-democratic. “Lunch Bucket Joe” was as unreal as “Georgia Cracker Farmer” FDR. We need to understand that as hyper-progressive Kamala Harris is refashioned into another working-class icon and the party bosses start playing “Nine to Five” as her theme song.

Who Is The Greater "Threat To Democracy"? -- Part II

July 08, 2024 Francis Menton @ Manhattan Contrarian 

A reader has reported that he tried to share my July 5 post, “Who Is The Greater ‘Threat To Democracy’?” on Facebook, and Facebook took it down. If any other readers have had a comparable experience with Facebook or other social media entities, I would appreciate it if you would share the experience with me. Use the “CONTACT” link at the top of the blog page.

Meanwhile, as I have thought about that post, I have realized that I barely scratched the surface as to both candidates, and therefore a second post with further elaboration would be appropriate. Bottom line: the deeper you go into this, the more it is definitive that Biden is by far the worse “threat to democracy.”

Trump

In the July 5 post, I put forth my own view as to the worst things that Trump had done that might be argued to be a “threat to democracy.” But how about giving a serious Trump hater the stage? Let them make their own best case in their own words.

Granted there are many to choose from. But here is a classic of the genre, just out on July 3 from Rebecca Solnit at The Guardian, headline “The US supreme court just completed Trump’s January 6 coup attempt.” OK, she doesn’t use the epithet “threat to democracy.” Instead she repeats multiple times that what Trump did on January 6, 2021, and what others supporting him subsequently did (notably the Supreme Court) was a “coup attempt.” That’s even more over the top than “threat to democracy.” The article as a whole has the tone of a primal scream. A few key excerpts:

The violent attack on Congress on 6 January 2021, and all the ancillary attempts to steal the 2020 election, were a coup attempt led from the executive branch of the federal government with support from Republicans in the legislative branch. 1 July 2024 – this Thursday [sic - it was Monday] – was a more successful coup attempt orchestrated by six judges of the judicial branch. . . .

They could not have picked a more outrageous man to throw their weight and reputations behind – a psychotic clown who’s also an indicted felon found liable in civil court for sexual assault, barred from doing business in New York, a stealer of state secrets, a would-be thief of an election and the instigator of a violent attack on the legislative branch of government and the constitutionally mandated transition of power after an election. A grifter who in 2016 won a minority victory in a corrupted election – his conviction earlier this year was on charges for one small part of that corruption. A man who has gloated about seizing dictatorial powers and never letting go and a worshiper of tyrants denounced by dozens of his former cabinet members and senior staffers.

Whew! But basically almost nothing here is about anything that Trump did during four years in office, and almost all of it is an assertion that Trump is a bad man. He is “outrageous,” “psychotic,” a “clown,” an “indicted felon,” a “stealer of state secrets,” a “thief,” a “grifter,” and so on and on. It’s classic ad hominem argument. None of that is evidence from acts that Trump is a unique “threat to democracy.”

The sole assertion that relates to something Trump did as President that would be evidence that he is a “threat” is that he was “instigator of a violent attack on the legislative branch” on January 6, 2021. This is one of those things that gets repeated so often that it takes on the aura of something that can’t be questioned. Well, I question it. Here is the transcript of Trump’s speech on January 6. Go ahead and read it and see if you can find the words that constitute the “instigation of a violent attack.” If you can find them, let me know what they are. I can’t find them.

The core of the speech is this paragraph that contains words you have no doubt seen:

Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated. I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.

After that paragraph there follows a long and detailed rant about many allegations of fraud and other election irregularities in the swing states. Some of these allegations had solid factual basis, and others not so much. I would say that, with the election certification about to take place, this was not the right time and place for such a rant. But there is nothing about it not clearly protected by the First Amendment. Trump many times urges the crowd to be “strong” and to “fight.” OK, every politician urges his supporters to “fight.” In the context of a political rally, that cannot be considered a call to violence. And other than that, there is nothing in this speech that can be considered a call to violence. Moreover, I’m not aware of any accusation or evidence that Trump participated in planning the demonstration/riot that followed on that day, or that he used the governmental powers that he controlled as President to support or advance the protests. And as far as I am aware, there were no arms of any kind involved on the part of the demonstrators/rioters — which makes calling the riot a “coup attempt” absurd.

Anyway, that would appear to be the best case against Trump as a “threat to democracy.”

Biden

The previous post contained a good list of some of Biden’s worst offenses against democracy: siccing the Justice Department on his political adversary on bogus charges; co-ordinating with the main social media companies to suppress speech of the opposition; the vast extra-constitutional expansion of the regulatory state. Here are a couple more, each very significant:

• Hundreds of billions of dollars of annual government funding for the institutions of the left. Statista here puts the annual funding just for post-secondary education in 2021 at $174 billion — and that is likely only a portion. As just one example, the entire climate change scam is mostly driven by government funding of academia. Biden is not personally responsible for all of this enormous support for left-wing politics, but he provides no push-back against the level of funding, and large annual increases.
• The several student loan forgiveness plans that Biden has put forth are naked vote-buying with taxpayer funds. These are entirely Biden’s unilateral acts. The fact that the President would attempt such an act without congressional authorization makes the threat to democracy even greater.
• Opening the southern border and letting millions in illegally. Again, this was basically a unilateral act of Biden. How many will vote illegally? Indeed, isn’t generating large numbers of illegal votes the main reason for opening the border?

I’m sure there are many more that could be added. The comparison is not close.

 

Biden "Must" Be The Democrat Nominee Now!

By Rich Kozlovich 

 

This article is predicated on three articles that appeared at American Thinker, starting with, Another C-dissection of Democrats, outlining claims about how great Biden's SOTU speech was from the propaganda wing of the Democrat party starting with articles at the Washington Post entitled:

“Fiery Biden takes on GOP, makes case for second term”
“An amped-up Biden plays the age-old hits”
“‘The Biden campaign staff is probably doing cartwheels’: Nine columnists on the State of the Union”
“Biden delivers the message for the moment: Wake up, America”.

Biden's staff is doing cartwheels.  Really? Imagine that!  There's more:

Abby Phillip at CNN saying: “He had a lot of moments where he was kind of trolling them” — “them” being the Republicans.
Nicolle Wallace at MSNBC said, “It was like a punch in the face to every Republican in the room.”
Ed O’Keefe at CBS proclaiming, “it’s the speech Democrats have been desperately waiting for him to give.”

So, let me understand this.  This SOTU address was a political rally instead of an outline of America's national health, and Joe Biden is actually a political Joe Palooka standing toe to toe dukeing it out with the evil Republications in order to preserve "our democracy".  

Did I get that right?  

After that kind of "heroic", albeit idiotic rhetoric from the leftist media how can the Democrats replace Biden for the 2024 election?  They can't now, which brings us to the second article, They won’t replace Biden, saying:

"The good news is that after his SOTU, it appears Biden is solidly on the ticket for 2024. Breitbart reports that “President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign raised a record-breaking $10 million in the day following his State of the Union speech on Thursday, his team told NBC News.”

The author notes this bloviating by the leftist media, none of which was refuted by anyone from the Democrat party or the left in general, means this pretty much puts an end to any talk about "Newsom, Whitmer, or Michelle Obama", or anyone else being the nominee, and Michelle has made it clear she's not interested, especially when raising so much money after this really nutty speech.   

The author goes on to say:

The Left often underestimates the effects of their own actions............... if they had planned on replacing the doddering old fool before the election, maybe they shouldn’t have pumped him up on Adderall, because he delivered a feisty, fiery speech during the SOTU that was obviously aimed toward, and ignited the hatred of, the far Left and their 113,000 recent contributors to his campaign. Failing any personal disasters that would seal the deal against Biden making it thru to the election, their hatred is so intense that any attempt to just push him aside and replace him now would likely backfire once more.

 

The battle lines are now clearly drawn, Biden vs Trump, and the theme for the Democrats is two fold. The legal right to murder the innocent unborn, and claims Trump is a fascist and will destroy "our" democracy.  That brings me to article number three, Trump is a threat to Democrats, not democracy, saying:

There you go again with all of the talk about Trump turning into a dictator. In fact, what the Democrats are worried about is that the former President is blowing up some of their alliances. ...........It's a fascinating change happening in front of our eyes. It looks like the Democrats are engaging in conflicting concerns. In one corner, the self-appointed smart ones are talking about climate change, gender equity and reproductive rights, but the talk on the other side of the room is about paying their electricity rates or losing their jobs at the South Texas refinery if we go green.

The left knows the only ones who are threatened by Trump are the Democrats, their RINO co-conspirators, and the world order billionaire lunatics and their myrmidons.  He threatens "their democracy" and does so in order to preserve "our republic", since what the left is calling "our democracy" is in reality "their fascist tyranny". 

 

That's called projection, where you accuse someone of doing the very things you're doing yourself.  And in this case that's the fascist tyranny they're imposing on the nation, all of which they're claiming Trump will initiate.   And the Democrats are suffering some very real panic attacks, as now their solid support among minorities and blue collar workers is swirling down the drain, and they're stuck with this puppet who's responsible for so much of this, along his puppeteer, Obama. 

Schadenfreude!

Orwell Exposed the Cowardice of Journalists and Intellectuals

Barry Brownstein

George Orwell had little hope that the lies of totalitarians would be exposed by a free press. His essay “The Freedom of the Press” was intended as the preface to Animal Farm, but was not published until 1972. Orwell revealed that the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Information (MOI) (created during the Second World War) advised Orwell’s publisher not to publish Animal Farm since it would be offensive to “Russian Soviets.”

Orwell’s thesis was that journalists, not the government, are the biggest censors:

[T]he chief danger to freedom of thought and speech at this moment is not the direct interference of the MOI or any official body. If publishers and editors exert themselves to keep certain topics out of print, it is not because they are frightened of prosecution but because they are frightened of public opinion. In this country intellectual cowardice is the worst enemy a writer or journalist has to face.

Today’s cowardly journalists have suppressed stories of Hunter Biden’s laptop, doubts about the efficiency of masks and lockdowns, questionable safety profiles of vaccines, concerns that vaccines didn’t prevent transmission, questions about U.S. policy in Ukraine, and challenges to the global warming orthodoxy. 

While the Biden administration did twist the arms of social media companies to censor ordinary people, it didn’t have to censor journalists. Orwell wrote: “Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.” He explained, 

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it… Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

In the following paragraph, Orwell painted a portrait of our time. As you read, substitute vaccines, gender reassignment surgery for teens, green energy, etc., for “Soviet Russia”: 

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia. Everyone knows this, nearly everyone acts on it. Any serious criticism of the Soviet régime, any disclosure of facts which the Soviet government would prefer to keep hidden, is next door to unprintable. And this nation-wide conspiracy to flatter our ally takes place, curiously enough, against a background of genuine intellectual tolerance. For though you are not allowed to criticise the Soviet government, at least you are reasonably free to criticise our own.

Orwell was not surprised by “the servility with which the greater part of the English intelligentsia have swallowed and repeated Russian propaganda,” even though they had “no direct pressure to falsify their opinions.”

Big Pharma’s power was already an issue almost eighty years ago. Orwell observed, “Notoriously, certain topics cannot be discussed because of ‘vested interests’. The best-known case is the patent medicine racket.”

Unfortunately, despite raising the alarm, Orwell adds a qualifier to his support for freedom of speech:

If the intellectual liberty which without a doubt has been one of the distinguishing marks of western civilisation means anything at all, it means that everyone shall have the right to say and to print what he believes to be the truth, provided only that it does not harm the rest of the community in some quite unmistakable way.

Today, of course, the harm to the community qualifier is used by Google and others to censor legitimate differences of opinion. 

Just as Hayek warned in The Road to Serfdom, Orwell warned, “It is only, or at any rate it is chiefly, the literary and scientific intelligentsia, the very people who ought to be the guardians of liberty, who are beginning to despise it, in theory as well as in practice.”

Today, authoritarians claim they are defending democracy yet do so by illiberal means. Orwell observed these tactics and reported “a widespread tendency to argue that one can only defend democracy by totalitarian methods. If one loves democracy, the argument runs, one must crush its enemies by no matter what means.” 

The enemies to be crushed included “those who ‘objectively’ endanger it by spreading mistaken doctrines.” Today’s censors also use this misinformation argument. 

Worse, Orwell explains intellectuals justified Stalin’s purges by claiming the victims’ “heretical opinions … ‘objectively’ harmed the régime, and therefore it was quite right not only to massacre them but to discredit them by false accusations.” 

This is not an essay to consider the cancellation of health professionals, authors, and academics. But if you believe intellectuals oppose “false accusations” in service of their perceived good cause, Orwell would say you are wrong.

Orwell observed great enthusiasm for Stalinist Russia was “only a symptom of the general weakening of the western liberal tradition.” He warned, “If you encourage totalitarian methods, the time may come when they will be used against you instead of for you.” 

Any tribal adoption of an “orthodoxy” is problematic. Orwell observed, “The enemy is the gramophone mind, whether or not one agrees with the record that is being played at the moment.”

Can Western civilization survive the illiberalism Orwell observed? Orwell had his doubts:

[I]intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice. 

Orwell wrote, “If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” Today,  journalists and intellectuals tell us that freedom of expression is not essential; rather than being a condition by which civilization progresses, freedom of expression is a menace to “democracy.” With such beliefs, Orwell would warn, we are creating our own dystopia.

READ MORE

Barry Brownstein

Barry Brownstein is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore.  He is the author of The Inner-Work of Leadership, and his essays have appeared in publications such as the Foundation for Economic Education and Intellectual Takeout.  To receive Barry’s essays in your inbox, visit mindsetshifts.com  

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Bernie Sanders: To Protect Democracy, Democrats Can’t Afford Democracy

Democracy is too important to be left to the people. 

By Daniel Greenfield • August 28, 2023

Remember when Senator Bernie Sanders (I-DPPK) was the perennial fruit fly in every political salad, running doomed campaigns designed to divide the party he was temporarily claiming to be a part of? But all that is in the past. Bernie is all in on Biden which ought to tell you that Biden is really all in on Bernie’s agenda.  And, despite the fact that most Democrats, Americans, and oxygen-breathing lifeforms on the planet want another candidate who isn’t a senile 80-year-old with a propensity for corruption and hair-sniffing, the Democrats and Bernie Sanders don’t believe that there should be any competitive primaries.

Why? To protect democracy...........To Read More....

Enough of the Left's ‘Threats to Democracy’ Rhetoric

Allen West  |  Mar 13, 2023  

 

Most often when someone, or a group, consistently and incessantly refers to others with certain disparaging, demeaning, and destructive accusations it is because they are projecting their own behavior upon others. This is the case with the repeated "threats to democracy" narrative that the progressive socialist left has been firing against anyone opposing their totalitarianism. It began after that abhorrent speech by Joe Biden last year in front of the disturbing backdrop of Independence Hall. This empty assertion continues to be used by the left because, in their minds, it worked for them in the 2022 midterm elections. However, a precise and bold analysis will show that those on the left are the actual threats to our representative democracy in America . . . and remember, America is a Constitutional Republic.

Let's begin our walk down this hypocritical lane..........To Read More....

 

Democracy is a Threat to Democracy

Daniel Greenfield January 27, 2023 @ Sultan Knish Blog  (Emphasis added by me.  RK)

Democracy, like the polar bears, the bald eagle and the 99-cent pizza slice, is threatened.

We know that’s true because the media, the least democratic body outside of North Korea, tells us this all the time. And we know that it must be true because apart from its daily panics over some political, medical, environmental or economic crisis that will later turn out to be imaginary or overblown, the media has an unbroken track record of honesty and truth that almost equals that of Bill Clinton.

So who better to warn us about the threat to democracy than an undemocratic body whose membership disproportionately tilts toward a handful of elite schools and who get their marching orders from major corporations, who have been caught making up stuff so many times that they make George Santos seem like the soul of integrity. (This hasn’t stopped the media from outraged posturing that a member of Congress who is not named Joe Biden would dare to build his career on a pack of crazy lies.)

America isn’t a democracy, but if we were the media would be in the running for the gold medal of democracy threats. The media ruthlessly interferes in elections by acting as the attack dogs of a partisan political party, without ever officially registering their platforms as PACs, spewing the most nakedly brazen lies while calling for the censorship of their political opponents for spreading “disinformation”.

Between its pre-election hit jobs and rigged polls, the media grotesquely distorts elections in a way that no amount of “disinformation” on social media could possibly hope to compete with in a century.

The vox populi, in the form of surveys, regularly ranks the media’s trust rating below that of the love child of Richard Nixon and Hillary Clinton. The media might have tried to rig them, but even Chicago doesn’t have a single dead ballot harvester who would say a single good thing about the media.

But it’s always the least democratic forces that warn of threats to democracy.

The media brings on experts, a group even less representative than the media, to explain that Republicans and anyone who isn’t a leftist, pose a serious threat to democracy. Especially if people elect them to public office. Then radical billionaires like George Soros of Pierre Omidyar convene sessions at the think tanks that breed those experts on how to fight “populist” threats to democracy.

And those threats usually involve people democratically voting for candidates who aren’t Democrats.

That’s also known as populism, which the media portrays as the next worst thing to organized religion.

But if there’s anything less democratic than a Nazi-collaborating billionaire convening Ivy League grads to discuss how to stop people from voting for candidates they disapprove of, it would have to involve the Castro family. It’s always the people and institutions who are the real threat to democracy who bluster about the threat to democracy. But how better to threaten democracy than in the name of democracy?

After generations of elites declaring class warfare on behalf of the poor by advocating for the elimination of the middle class, the elites switched to calling for the elimination of free elections in order to protect and fortify democracy from the people going to the polls. The exciting new version of democracy involves elites paying ballot harvesters to find the votes to elect the politicians they support.

This twisted version of privately-funded elections has the same relationship to democracy as Doordash and UbetEats do to home-cooked meals. Or to the other elite project of replacing women with men in the name of feminism. Just think of the new privately funded and publicly manipulated elections as the democratic equivalent of Steve showing up to the female swim team with a pink bow in his hair.

Just because it ‘identifies’ as democracy doesn’t mean it’s anything more that oligarchy in drag.

Threats to democracy don’t just happen in America. Every time a conservative party wins an election in Europe, Australia, Canada or even Pitcairn Island, it’s a threat to democracy. In Israel, the media is warning that the plans of the new democratically elected conservative government to allow democratically elected legislatures to occasionally overrule the decisions of a high court whose members are democratically chosen by the court is a threat to democracy.

Our media and theirs have sympathetically reported on “pro-democracy” protests by activists wearing the red shirts of Marxist organizations and waving the terrorist flags of the PLO whose leader, Mahmoud Abbas, was last elected almost two decades ago. Now that’s real democracy for you.

Much as the Left has redefined free speech to mean censorship, censorship to mean schools not handing graphic sex novels to 10-year-olds, feminism to mean denying the existence of women, and science to mean anti-technology cults convinced that technology is destroying the planet, it has redefined democracy to mean the elimination of elections, not to mention the political opposition.

Democracy as a practice is being forced to make way for democracy as a value. Like the difference between science as a value and as a practice, democracy as a value impersonates, hollows out and finally nullifies the practice of democracy as a threat to the value of democracy. Transforming a practice into a value identifies it with an ideology. And makes maintaining the power of that ideology becomes more important than the practice of science, democracy or anything else.

The purpose of power, as a dead white Englishman named Orwell once observed, is power.

Every system, no matter how authoritarian, claims to be rooted in the same noble ideals as democracy as a value: the welfare of the people, the stability of society and the upholding of our standards.

The “threat to democracy” agitprop is fundamentally no different than the agitprops that the USSR, Nazi Germany and Communist China justified their respective tyrannies. Suppressing democracy in the name of democracy, the freedom of mankind, the will of the people, or national greatness are just variations on the same excuse.

The easiest way to spot a real threat to democracy is to find the nearest expert warning of threats to democracy. His solution to those threats will invariably involve restrictions on speech, centralized control over elections, and targeted ballot harvesting to find enough votes to nullify actual voters.

According to him, just letting people speak their minds and vote is a threat to democracy because then people like him, who truly believe in democracy, won’t be able to maintain a monopoly on the marketplace of ideas and will occasionally run the risk of losing elections.

And then people might be able to democratically decide who is the real threat to democracy.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.  Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

Critically Thinking about the "Greater Good" Argument — Part 3

Are COVID-19 Injection Mandates Scientifically Sound? 

John Droz jr. January 5, 2023 @ Critical Thinking

The Greater Good (GG) argument is at the core of policies that mandate COVID-19 injections. GG three major parts: 1) Religion, 2) Freedom, and 3) Science.

It’s too much to cover all these in one commentary, so there are three separate pieces. (See below for links to the other two.) Let’s briefly discuss the third.

Like a lot of Left-wing ideology (wind energy, climate change, etc.), GG is a presented as having the blessing of Science. This strategy continues to be used as it has proven to be politically effective, as it’s like getting the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. But is the GG claim scientifically sound?

Before answering that, we need to be clear what the GG belief really says. In a nutshell it is: the individual must sacrifice for the benefit of the community.

In other words government agencies, schools, businesses, etc. that ascribe to GG are saying: if the general society may possibly benefit, the individual can be forced to give up their free will choice, their financial well being, their health, and even their life.

In America, those personal sacrifices are appreciated as being HUGE, so we better be sure that the benefits are commensurately enormous. We do this by seeing if any scientific assessment has been made that supports the societal benefits assertions.

But what is a “scientific assessment”? Briefly it is an evaluation of a technical matter that has four elements. Such an assessment is: a) comprehensive, b) objective, c) transparent, and d) empirical.

So the fundamental question is: has there been a Scientific Assessment that has concluded that: COVID-19 injection mandates are a net societal benefit? NO!

Not only that, but there have been numerous scientific studies that have concluded the opposite. Let’s briefly consider the underlying scientific claims utilized by those who insist that injection mandates are for the GG…

GG Argument #1: If you have the injection, you will be less likely to catch COVID-19. That will be a societal benefit as you won’t be taxing healthcare system (like doctors and hospitals) and you will not be a transmitter (also a healthcare system benefit).

Contradiction A: The current COVID-19 variant is XBB.1.5, and there are zero injections that have been formulated and thoroughly tested for XBB.1.5. Therefore there is no scientific evidence that an injection will materially reduce your likelihood of catching COVID-19.

Contradiction B: Experts have concluded that COVID-19 injections may well be increasing the number of COVID-19 variants, thereby not only quickly making formulated injections outdated, but also increasing the load on our health system.

Contradiction C: Experts have concluded (regarding prior versions of the COVID-19 injections) that there is no scientific basis for claiming that infected injected people will transmit COVID-19 less than non-injected infected people. Pfizer admitted that since it was in a hurry to bring its injections to market, that no scientific tests were made about transmissibility of injection recipients.

Contradiction D: If the GG proponents wanted to minimize the load on healthcare system, then they would be advocating legitimate prevention measures — like citizens’ optimizing their immune system. There is zero downside to doing this, yet nary a word about optimizing immune systems is said by public health officials. Optimizing would reduce chances of a COVID-19 infection, plus lower symptoms (and improving outcomes) if it does happen — all healthcare system benefits.

Contradiction E: If the GG proponents wanted to minimize the load on healthcare systems, then they would be advocating an aggressive, scientific early treatment protocol with Ivermectin [~100 studies], HCQ [375+ studies], Vitamin D [100+ studies], etc. As indicated, all of these have numerous scientific studies supporting their efficacy and safety. The fact that GG espousers do not advocate any of these scientifically legitimate options puts a harsh light on their hypocrisy.

GG Argument #2: If you have the injection, and subsequently get COVID-19, you will have less severe symptoms. That will be a societal benefit as you won’t be taxing the healthcare system as much.

Contradiction B: See above

Contradiction C: See above.

Contradiction D: See above.

Contradiction E: See above.

GG Argument #3: If you have the injection, and subsequently get COVID-19, you will less likely transmit COVID-19 to others. That will be a societal benefit as those others won’t be taxing the healthcare system as much.

Contradiction B: See above

Contradiction C: See above.

Contradiction D: See above.

Contradiction E: See above.

Additionally, if the GG proponents were truly pushing a Science narrative they would:

i) Not be calling the COVID-19 bio-chemical injections “vaccines,” as mRNA and vector injections are profoundly different from any other common type of vaccine the public is familiar with (e.g., shingles, polio, etc.). As an acknowledgement of this reality, CDC quietly changed is longtime definition of “vaccine.” It would have been more honest of them to instead use a different word.

ii) Publicly acknowledge that in the short studies of the COVID-19 injections, that there was not scientific testing about the injection effects on people with dozens of diseases (e.g., Parkinson’s, Cancer, Diabetes, etc.).

iii) Publicly acknowledge that there has been no long term studies of mRNA and vector COVID-19 injections.

iv) Publicly acknowledge that some COVID-19 injection recipients will get ADE, or VAED, which can result in more serious adverse consequences in future infections. Here is a good layperson explanation. And then there is this related study.

Etc, etc.

The clear conclusion is that: a) GG proponents have not followed Scientific protocol, b) there is no legitimate scientific basis for the GG claims, and c) if the GG acolytes were sincere about their societal interests, they would be taking other scientifically sound actions, which they are not.

In other words: COVID-19 policies are based on political science, not real Science.

Critically Thinking about the "Greater Good" Argument — Part 2

Are COVID-19 Injection Mandates Consistent with American Democratic Principles? 

John Droz jr. January 5, 2023 @ Critical Thinking

The Greater Good (GG) argument is at the core of policies that mandate COVID-19 injections. GG three major parts: 1) Religion, 2) Freedom, and 3) Science.

It’s too much to cover all these in one commentary, so there are three separate pieces. (See below for links to the other two.) Let’s briefly discuss the second.

Like a lot of Left-wing ideology, GG is an anti-American political agenda presented in a superficially appealing package. Think Trojan Horse.

We need to be clear what the GG belief really says. In a nutshell it is: the individual must sacrifice for the benefit of the community.

Implicit in this argument is an acknowledgement that forcing citizens to get a COVID-19 injection is NOT about a net benefit derived by the injection recipient, but rather it is about a purported net societal benefit. This is a direct attack on personal rights. The underlying premise of this GG policy is that:

“We are not concerned about the adverse effects on you, the citizen, including death. We are only concerned about the net societal impact.”

In other words, government agencies, schools, businesses, etc. that ascribe to GG are saying: if the general society may possibly benefit, the individual can be forced to give up their free will choice, their financial well being, their health, and even their life.

But wait! America was founded on protecting the rights of individuals. Carefully read the Declaration of Independence, which (among other wonderful things) says:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Yet to many American citizens, being subjected to an unscientific (and immoral) vaccine is diametrically opposed to their unalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. What happened to those rights?

A hint as to how the extraction of those rights is “justified” is in linguistics. The idea is that the Left is trying to create a new subcategory of American Citizens: radical nitwits. Once certain people have been relegated to that low level caste construct, then it’s easier for the Left to then claim that they no longer are “real” American citizens, so they no longer deserve the inalienable rights of real citizens.

How is this done? One way is that those who are objecting to a mandated COVID-19 injection are derisively labelled as “anti-vaxxers.” This is clearly a sham as: a) there is no true “vaccine” involved, and b) most objectors are only resisting the COVID-19 injection (i.e., they are not against shingles vaccines, etc.).

This is a classic guilt by association tactic, as in trying to undermine the credence of those who have scientific arguments against climate change, by calling them “deniers” or “flat-earthers.”

When this linguistic strategy is employed, it is a dead giveaway that the users have weak arguments — so they resorting to ad hominem attacks, rather than providing scientific evidence.

So what is going on here? The answer is found in the description of GG. The whole GG idea is a Communist perspective: individuals are expendable when the collective benefits.

So that’s the critical thinking thought here: are citizens OK with US Government agencies, schools, businesses, organizations, churches, etc. promoting communist ideology? Of course, so far they haven’t come right out and said that.

However, they are moving in that direction, as many of our leaders do acknowledge their support of various socialism constructs. Be fully aware that Communism is just a short subway stop from Socialism.

 

Critically Thinking about the "Greater Good" Argument — Part 1

Are COVID-19 Injection Mandates Morally Right?  

John Droz jr. January 5, 2023 @ Critical Thinking

The Greater Good (GG) argument is at the core of policies that mandate COVID-19 injections. GG three major parts: 1) Religion, 2) Freedom, and 3) Science.

It’s too much to cover all these in one commentary, so there are three separate pieces. (See below for links to the other two.) Let’s briefly discuss the first.

Like a lot of Left-wing ideology (wokism, social justice, etc.), GG is a presented as a moral imperative. Just so we don’t miss the virtue signaling, the word “good” is in the GG phrase. But is GG consistent with our moral beliefs? Judeo-Christian standards are the underpinnings of America, so what do they say about the GG assertion?

Before answering that, we need to be clear what the GG belief really says. In a nutshell it is: the individual must sacrifice for the benefit of the community.

[This can also be called collectivism, which is similar to socialism and communism.]

In other words government agencies, schools, businesses, etc. that ascribe to GG are saying: if the general society may possibly benefit, the individual can be forced to give up their free will choice, their financial well being, their health, and even their life.

What is the moral basis for such a position? To begin with, both of the GG words (greater and good) are subjective, which means that their interpretation is a matter of personal opinion, which means that it is a subjective standard.

The question is: who has the authority and competence to make an official GG declaration?

Further, GG is a concept derived from Utilitarianism.  Basically, that is about making behavioral choices based on what will make the most people happy. Unfortunately, we again run into subjectivity about what “happy” is. Also an important and interesting moral question is: do we have an obligation to sacrifice our happiness to make others happy?

But let’s get back to America: is there a Judeo-Christian basis for such a GG position? I say no. Here are three simple Judeo-Christian rebuttals to GG thinking.

First, is that Judeo-Christian belief is that every person is made in the image of God. As such, every individual has enormous religious importance, so they cannot simply be trampled on and discarded for some supposed secular societal benefit.

Second, the Judeo-Christian belief of salvation is intrinsically connected with each person properly exercising their free will. Any extraction of a righteous exercise of free will is contrary to Judeo-Christian principles.

Third, consider the parable of the lost sheep in the New Testament. Christ tells the story of a shepherd tending a hundred sheep, and one wanders off. His story is that the good shepherd leaves the ninety-nine, to recover the one. His praise of the shepherd makes clear that He gives full endorsement to the value of the individual — even over that of the group! This parable is arguably the direct opposite of GG…

So, if GG is not consistent with Judeo-Christian standards, what moral standards are being promoted here? It’s not much of a stretch to conclude that GG is actually a communist perspective — which means that this is the moral perspective of atheists.

So here is the critical thinking thought here: are Americans OK with US Government agencies, schools, businesses, organizations, churches, etc. promoting atheistic standards? Of course, so far they haven’t come right out and said that.

However, unless Judeo-Christian Americans strenuously object, it won’t be long until that is exactly what they will say — and proudly.

PS — IMO (as a non-lawyer) this religious argument is stronger than what is in the conventional lawsuit claiming that being forced to get a COVID-19 injection violates someone’s religious beliefs. Typically, those cases object to things like fetal tissue used in the manufacture of the injections.

PPS — What are the moral implications for citizens to choose to get injected (or their loved ones to get injected? It comes down to the Science: is there a net benefit for getting the injection, vs optimizing your immune system and then taking scientifically supported early-treatment therapies if you or loved ones do get the virus. See Part 3 for some additional details.

 Parts 2 and 3 will follow over the next two days.  RK

Seeing the World As It Is, And It Isn't America

By Rich Kozlovich

One of the things I never cease to be fascinated with is why so many smart people who write about international affairs miss the most important component in understanding international affairs.   And that is:  Most of the world has no concept of capitalism or democracy as we know it.  It is not part of their foundational social and cultural paradigm.  And when we make economic or political decisions based on our concept of how the world should work – it usually fails to produce the desired results. 

In Muslim controlled countries democratic institutions are impossible because Islam requires all to obey those at the top, and we have to remember, the real violence is mostly going on in these countries because of two factors.  Tribalism and Muslim sectarianism - both tribal issues.  When you scratch the surface of those who took sides in Libya and Syria you find they were tribes fighting the dominant tribe, just as they have always done.  These are medieval societies with modern transportation, weapons, and communication trappings imposing tyranny on those from a different tribe. Capitalism and democracy cannot exist in that kind of political drama.

 

In most African countries it is all about tribes.  It isn’t about capitalism versus socialism - it’s about tribal culture - even in South Africa.  White South Africa was at one time was one of the world’s most stable economies.  It’s now a third world nation due to the black South African leaders thinking that had been molded by the socialists of the ANC, and their foundational tribal social paradigm.  And now they are a third world country needing financial aid. 

 

Tribalism is a form of socialism just as Islam is a socialist concept in its practical application, or perhaps we should be calling it “central planning collectivist tyranny” as a more instructive term.  Those at the top make all the rules and everyone else obeys.....or else!   Until all that changes, it doesn’t matter what outsiders do.  They will always be a mess, preventing solid investments from anyone - inside or outside of Africa, or the Middle East.  

 

As for those on the outside - they will merely take advantage of whatever opportunities arise and then walk away when those opportunities end, leaving Africa with less than they started with - and it’s fault of tribal culture mentalities. 

 

And let’s try and get this once and for all - giving untold billions and crying a river of tears won’t change that!  In fact, it exacerbates the problem since those billions go into the pockets of corrupt petty dictators and their corrupt myrmidons, allowing them to stay in power and abuse those not in power.  Remember, whether it’s in the nations of Africa or the Middle East – if you’re not part of the ruling tribe, you’re not a real citizen.  They treat those of other tribes as a conquering army would treat those conquered, and it's interesting how outraged the world was at the apartheid governments of Rhodesia and South Africa yet remain totally silent at the  atrocities perpetrated by these now totally corrupt murderous black governments, and it started early in their rule.

 

In this 2012 article by Alex Newman, Genocide looms for white farmers, he notes:

 

South Africa's black president sings killing songs as thousands massacred - The eyes of the world were on South Africa two decades ago as the apartheid era came to an end and Western governments helped bring the communist-backed African National Congress to power. Last month, however, when Genocide Watch chief Gregory Stanton declare that white South African farmers were facing a genocidal onslaught and that communist forces were taking over the nation, virtually nobody noticed. Few outside of South Africa paid attention either when, earlier this year, the president of South Africa began publicly singing songs advocating the murder of whites.............Disemboweled, drowned in boiling water - Many more victims have been savagely tortured, raped, disemboweled, drowned in boiling water or worse. The horrifying evidence is available for the world to see on countless sites throughout the Internet: pictures of brutalized dead women and children – even babies. 

 

End Apartheid Now! Wasn't that the sign that Bill Cosby demanded the show’s producers put up on the set of The Cosby Show, insisting on the importance to black Americans, and that every black home would have one, or something of that nature.   And the media blasted anyone who disagreed! Who knows, he might have been right, but in all my years as an exterminator I serviced a lot of apartments and homes occupied by black folks in those days, and I don’t remember seeing one. There may have been some, but the numbers would have been so small as to not make it a noticeable situation. 

 

The problem with Americans is that we only see their world through binoculars in reverse and in irrational ways. We think that because we live the way we do that's the way everyone should live, and everyone should have the same privileges we have, and as a result we foolishly think the results will be ‘little Americas' all over the world.  After all, we explained it to them so, we will all think alike, act alike, and then we'll all see the world in the same ways.  Horsepucky!

 

And this goes to both sides of the philosophical spectrum. Bush’s drive to bring democracy to the Muslim world worked so well the minute they had the right to vote they promptly voted in a radical Islamist groups who promptly worked to take away their right to vote.  Voting and individual rights is antithetical to the Muslim faith. What does the word Islam mean?  In Arabic usage Islam implies “absolute submission, surrender and obedience that is obeying the injunctions of the ruler without objection.”  No matter what anyone says to the contrary --we need to be true observers of reality-- and that's what really goes on in the real world. 

 

As for South Africa; they have the same problem that all of Africa has; corruption of leadership on a massive scale that is foundational to the African experience. In days before the European colonization of Africa, they were ruled by tyrannical kings, many of whom enslaved blacks from other tribes, and those who opposed them, then sold them to Muslim and European slave traders.  That kind of corrupt tyranny is their social foundation. They have merely returned to that which is foundational to their societies, and slavery is still going on in Africa. 

 

America is unique in the world today, and for that matter, in all of world history. Until recently we really believed we shouldn't be told what to do, what to eat, what to wear, what we are taught or what we will believe. Why? Because for the first time in human history we were a society created from the bottom up. Demanding that black Africa be just like black America was irrational, because South Africa, much like the rest of the world, is a very complex society, without any national standard as to language, religion or societal structural philosophy.

 

In 1948, “National Party leaders argued that South Africa did not comprise a single nation, but was made up of four distinct racial groups: white, black, coloured, and Indian. These groups were split further into thirteen nations or racial federations. White people encompassed the English and Afrikaans language groups; the black populace was divided into ten such groups.”

 

If there was ever a good reason to abandon this insanity called ‘multiculturalism’, South Africa is a perfect example.

 

The French Revolution was such a failure for the very reason that the American Revolution as such a success. Minimal government with every man making his own decisions about life versus the French concept of central planning run by an elite, which promptly started murdering untold numbers that had done nothing to deserve having their heads cut off. There is a reason the current French government is the Fifth Republic and may be on it's  way to a Sixth, versus America with it's original republic in tact, but now under serious attack by the left and especially the Biden administration, and that's central planning!

 

As for Africa, as bad as some things were under the colonial powers, it can be argued that it couldn’t have been as bad as it is now. No one in America, at least among normal people, likes the idea of anyone being declared officially inferior. It is antithetical to our very concept of existence. However, that is what goes on in much of the rest of the world all the time, especially in Africa. 

 

They do not view members of other tribes as equals. They view them as inferiors to be exploited. In the Muslim world the public is finally becoming aware that these leaders and their governments are nothing more than tribal societies with one tribe in charge, made up of one of the sects of Islam, and consider the other sects, who may be members of other tribes, as infidels and heretics, and therefore can subsequently exploited and even killed.

 

Where are the media and Hollywood now? Where are the protestors now? Where is the Federal government now? Where are the embargoes now? Most importantly, where was Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu? They, like Hillary Clinton, when she was Secretary of State while in South Africa  had no time to notice the atrocities against whites in South Africa.

 

Remembering that this was a country that abolished slavery in 1833.  I would like to ask; did the white government of South Africa perform the atrocities that the black South African government is either perpetrating, promoting or allowing to happen now? If so, I don’t remember it on the news of them main stream media at the time; so I think we can assume it wasn’t normal or ongoing. Remember, the current black population of South Africa were not indigenous to South Africa, they migrated there.

 

Multiculturalism is antithetical to Americanism. We really need to start seeing the world as it is and the consequences of adopting insane policies. Multiculturalism is based on the mistaken idea that all cultures are equal, only the Church of Wokeness crowd wants us to think that all cultures are equal except the American culture.

 

I have a question. If the American culture is so bad why are so many trying to get here...even illegally...and with the support of those who decry our culture! And if the American culture is so bad why is it Americans aren't flocking to get passports to live in every other country in the world?

 

Democracy and Progressivism: A Contradiction in Terms

Leftists’ claim to be protectors of our way of life is a cruel joke.

By: Tim Donner October 03, 2022 - 7:29 am Articles, Opinion, Politics @ Liberty Nation News

It’s hard to believe we have to explain this one more time, but here goes. The United States is not a democracy. It is a constitutional republic. However, the fearmongers on the left, once again driven to distraction by Donald Trump, have apparently developed a sudden fondness for the form of government first introduced by the Greeks some 2,500 years ago – even though, in reality, it runs counter to their every political instinct.

  Indeed, the word democracy, and their self-appointed role as its protector, has now risen to the top of the progressive lexicon these days – a classic signaling of non-existent virtue. And one look at their long history of projection – casting blame on their opponents for transgressions of which they themselves are guilty – provides the likely explanation. It seems they have decided their own patently anti-democratic worldview can be projected onto Trump.

So, how can we best characterize the difference between a democracy and our constitutional republic? Put simply, we the people don’t decide things directly. We elect others to represent us, to decide for us. If we were to adopt a referendum-based mindset inherent in direct, winner-take-all democracy, the rights of the political minority would not be constitutionally protected. That is a recipe for single party rule – and tyranny.

Democracy vs. Progressivism

Let us count the ways in which the left has become anti-democratic. Confiscatory rates of taxation enforced against the will of the people by the central state cannot coexist with genuine democracy. But that is just for starters. Is proposing to spend six trillion dollars on yet more new pie-in-the-sky social programs in the midst of the most rampant inflation in 40 years and a mind-bending $30 trillion national debt, something that would happen in a true democracy? Is silencing, canceling, and stigmatizing people who hold contrary opinions to their own the act of small-d democrats? Does it sound like a democracy to call for defunding the police despite the overwhelming opposition of the very people whose safety would be severely compromised?

How about a Congress barely controlled by one party attempting to re-jigger the entire system to turn left-leaning territories into new states, creating a virtually permanent big-d Democratic majority? Or packing the Supreme Court with new progressive justices to assure their desired ideological composition? Then there are the catch-and-release policies of woke prosecutors which so obviously compromise public safety. And don’t forget Joe Biden’s ill-fated disinformation board. These and so many other progressive initiatives are no longer the wild-eyed notions they were until just the last couple of years, but rather foundational and anti-democratic reform seriously pursued by the left.

In an actual democracy, consider what would happen the first time 50% plus one of citizens choose a path unacceptable to the autocrats on the left. Does anyone believe that if leftists don’t get their way, they will gladly bow to the majority and embrace the role of loyal opposition? As Joe Biden would say, that question is not a joke. But neither is the answer. In the type of democracy envisioned by the left, extremists and full-time activists would rule the day, while the disinterested mass of citizens in apolitical occupations will see their voices buried.

 

Now, we have seen the rise of so-called social democracies, especially throughout western Europe, but that does not represent true democracy as first enacted and defined – allowing everyone a voice. In fact, it is antithetical to the modern notion of a government that decides how best to spend as much of the citizens’ hard-earned money as it can possibly impound. A social democracy is neither fish nor fowl. It does not control the media, imprison its people for daring to challenge government hegemony, or declare all things mandatory or forbidden, as in a true socialist paradise like Cuba or North Korea. And yet the high rates of taxation in most European countries also make democracy an impossibility. When the central government is your nanny from cradle to grave, one man-one vote becomes little more than a matter of not whether, but how much, of your money the state will require to bolster an all-encompassing social safety so wide and deep that gainful employment in some countries actually becomes unnecessary.

Perhaps what frightens progressives most is that Trump’s populism – roughly defined as giving people what they desire, instead of relying on a giant, paternalistic bureaucracy to decide for them – actually comes closer to pure democracy than that of any president in memory. So, true to form, leftists employ their favorite weapon, projection, to lay on Trump and his supporters the very things of which they can so easily be accused. That is why they say he is a threat to democracy.

Don’t let progressives, driven by their top-down worldview, fool you with their talk of how our form of government is so threatened by the right. The hard reality is that these people represent the polar opposite of a system where the majority rules. Their statist worldview pivots on command and control, and is thus entirely incompatible with any definition of democracy – except of course their own.

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