A shrill refrain from the reliably hyperbolic Democrats is that Donald Trump and the Republicans are a “threat to democracy” and that Democrats are fighting to save it. Let’s examine who really threatens democracy and what rights are under threat.
The right to vote? The Democrats are working hard to eliminate left-leaning minor party candidates from the ballot. They have filed litigation to knock Jill Stein of the Green Party and Cornell West off of the ballots in several states and were engaged in litigation to eliminate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. before his withdrawal. They obviously fear that many Democrats, resentful over the “bait and switch” installation of Kamala Harris instead of the candidate they voted for, will make protest votes for third-party candidates.
And, of course, the Democrats filed unsuccessful suits to knock Trump off of the ballot, charging him with supposed “insurrection.”
The right to vote for the candidate of your choice is the bedrock principle of democracy. What could be more anti-democratic than limiting opposition candidates to only those you wish to run against? We used to mock the meaningless, predetermined one-party votes in the old Soviet Union, but now the Democrats are adopting them.
We saw democratic principles cynically manipulated during the Democratic nomination process. The party powers must have long realized that Biden was too feeble for another term, despite their public assurances otherwise, but delayed forcing him out until after the primaries. This allowed them to install their own choice without the messy “democracy” thing in which competing candidates state their case and the voters choose between them.
This direct installation allowed Harris to escape having to explain and justify her positions to other Democrats.
Be honest. If Harris is as popular a candidate as you claim, why did less than 5 percent of you Democrats support her in 2020, when she ran last in a field of six candidates? She wouldn’t be the candidate if you had been allowed to choose.
Free speech? It was only a few decades ago that the Democratic Party championed free expression and were uncompromising supporters of the First Amendment. The idea that they would attack someone like Elon Musk for being a crazed “free speech absolutist” would have been laughable. But his belief that even offensive statements by the American president shouldn’t be censored really got Democratic hackles up. Can you imagine 1968 Democrats demanding that the media censor the provocative pronouncements of Richard Nixon or Spiro Agnew? Today, they find it preferable to only acknowledge an enshrined principle when it is politically useful to them.
The liberal attack on free speech has been underway for a couple of decades now, starting with college “speech codes,” and the prohibition of “hate speech,” a subjective term which is impossible to objectively define and usually just means whatever those in power really hate. The preposterous premise behind speech codes, “trigger warnings,” safe spaces, and the like, is that exposure to opposing ideas can actually hurt you.
The media once could be relied upon to fiercely guard their freedom of expression and ability to print or broadcast whatever they deemed newsworthy. Sadly, we recently heard an admission by Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook that he allowed the Biden administration to dictate content on Facebook, an act which would have horrified earlier publishers. Previously, we saw factual accounts on Hunter Biden’s laptop suppressed as supposed “Russian disinformation” and the possible origins of the COVID virus misrepresented to divert attention from the fact that the National Institutes of Health had funded the research which may have caused the epidemic.
Can you imagine The Washington Post ignoring Watergate because Nixon had insisted that it was all just a Soviet plot?
Constitutional protections? The Democrats, frustrated by a Supreme Court that is currently refusing to rubber-stamp all of their progressive agenda, are proposing to “pack” the court with additional justices to out-vote the current majority. Their favored philosophy of a “living Constitution,” which can be flexibly interpreted as needed to achieve a political goal, makes the control of the justices especially attractive.
A distinguishing characteristic of any dictatorship is ruling by executive decree. Recently, despite a Constitution that requires that law be made by the legislative branch, we have seen the use of executive orders to make policy. Biden ignored Congress’ sole right to direct spending by attempting to spend nearly $500 billion in forgiving student loans, and Obama attempted to rewrite our immigration laws to legalize the “Dreamers.” Both efforts were struck down as unconstitutional by a Supreme Court which, at least for the moment, remains independent.
If you Democrats want to see what the true threat to our democracy looks like, try looking in the mirror. Δ
John Donegan is a retired attorney in Pismo Beach who hopes that victorious Democrats will sentence him to a re-education camp with wireless internet. Send a response for publication to letters@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Pet Issue 2024.
I mean if you asked me, the bigger threat to democracy would probably be the guy who was asked by Sean Hannity: “You’re not going to be a dictator, are you” to which he responded: “No, no, no, other than day one.” Or the guy who expressed that he wished our US military generals would be more like those back in Germany who took blind orders against their oath to their nation. Or the guy who says his political opponents “live like vermin;” another anti-democracy person in history also used to say that about his political enemies. Or the guy who says immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” says immigrants are “not humans, they’re animals,” and says immigrants “have bad genes.” Or the guy who referred to people who rioted at and looted our Capitol in an effort to halt the certification of the election as “hostages” instead of the lowly criminals they are.
Wait, these are all the same guy….
I think we should all refrain from this type of discussion. It’s an election, not the apocalypse. These outlandish words by both sides are ill conceived and should not receive the attention that they do.
The real threat to democracy? The demented Hitler fan who wants to deport millions of people or throw them into concentration camps, terminate the Constitution and imprison anyone who will not bow to him. He’s a rapist, a convicted felon and a raving psychopath with the IQ of a grasshopper.
“This is late stage capitalism”
Sounds like Shanti Harris swallowed a Richard Wolff book.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq41hyEtnm…
Shanti Harris, Your favorite book must be Mein Kampf. Just own it.