The Left Doesn’t Care About ‘Democracy,’ They Just Want Their Way – The Federalist
Watch the video for the monologue, plus an interview with Washington Free Beacon Senior Editor Billy McMorris on the corruption in our system, and why hes optimistic.
Canada held an election a few weeks ago. Dont worry that you missed it; you wouldnt have heard much of anything in American media. Why not? Because it all went to plan, thats why.
To catch up on the northern contest, the Conservative Party got the most votes, 5.7 million, compared to just 5.5 million for Justin Trudeaus ruling Liberal Party but Trudeaus Party got more seats in the House of Commons. A lot more, in fact: 159 seats to just 119. Why? Canada uses the same system as the United Kingdom, or our own House of Representatives: Its first-past-the-post in 338 single-member districts.
By the way, thats the second time in a row this has happened. The Liberal Party lost the popular vote last time too, and still they got the most seats.
The point here isnt to complain. This is the system Canada uses; every party understands it, and there isnt anything innately unfair about using single-member districts and the regional representation they bring.
But notice something that hasnt happened: Nobody has gone on TV, either in Canada or here in the United States, to moan about Justin Trudeau being a threat to democracy. There arent any left-wing non-profits producing reports about Canada being a flawed democracy or a failing democracy or partly democratic or a democratic dictatorship.
By the way, there are countries they say that about. Countries like this one. Remember all the wailing when Donald Trump won in 2016? People were literally screeching in the streets. Trump isnt the president hes illegitimate!
They kept this lie up for four whole years. They made that lie the focal point of their mission to paralyze actual democratic government, using any means necessary from unelected judges to unelected spies to get their way, and all in the name of democracy.
In 2020, Foreign Policy magazine ran an article with 10 reasons President Trump was becoming a dictator. Reason number 3? Politicizing the civil service, military, National Guard, or the domestic security agencies. Author Stephen Walts example of Trump doing that was that he held a photo-op in a church that rioters set on fire, and that he appointed William Barr, a former attorney general, as his attorney general.
Reason number 4 was, Using government surveillance against domestic political opponents. His evidence was that Trump wanted to call Antifa a terrorist organization, which might have caused the FBI to monitor them.
Reason 6? Appointing justices to the Supreme Court when there were vacancies.
Now, if you go and check Walts Foreign Policy articles this year, youll notice there havent been any about the looming Biden dictatorship even though hes actually politicizing the military by using it to teach critical race theory and conducting an ideological witch hunt for extremists.
And if its bad for Trump to appoint justices to the Supreme Court for normal vacancies, what does it mean that Democrats are loudly calling to pack the Supreme Court and the Biden administration has openly considered the possibility?
If you want answers to those questions, you wont get them from Professor Walt hes back to writing about U.S. foreign policy debacles. No shortage of material there, professor.
But you know whats really going on here. You know why Professor Walt and so many others were freaking out about democracy last year and every year since 2016, but dont seem to care about it this year, be it in Canada or the United States: Its because they dont care about democracy. At least not the way you might.
To most Americans throughout most of American history, democracy meant a system of government where we hold elections, cast votes, and choose lawmakers and leaders. For the left, however, democracy means something different. To them, democracy just means the Democratic Party.
Remember when Gov. Scott Walker survived a recall attempt back in 2012? The night that happened, a Democratic voter appeared on CNN and said, This is the end of democracy. The end of the U.S. as we know it just happened. This is it. Democracys dead. At the time, he meant it: A Republican was governor of Wisconsin and might do Republican things instead of Democrat things. We all know thats not democracy.
When Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin decide to represent their own constituents and say theyre not happy with a three-and-a-half trillion-dollar spending bill to remake the American social contract, thats not democracy either, because true democracy is just Joe Biden doing whatever he wants when he wants to. To many on the left, democracy simply means neoliberalism. Right now, democracy also means the Deep State so long as the Deep State is on their side; the side of democracy.
In the Arizona Republic, op-ed writer E.J. Montini complained Sinema is going to squander her chance to save democracy. After Democratic activists stalked Sinema into a bathroom to harass her, one climate activist remarked, Not being able to pee in peace is a reasonable consequence for betraying democracy.I suppose it beats tarring and feathering.
Id note, MSNBCs Medhi Hassan bravely tweeted, that democracy continues to hang in the balance while we argue over the rights and wrongs of bathroom protests. So brave, Medhi; so meta.
Or how about this: They call themselves Democrats and they will be the ruination of this nation, The Views Joy Behar declared. Manchin and Sinema must be brought to task; they are the enemies right now of the democracy.
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Arizona Democrats unfathomable opposition to progress is a win for her hedge-fund, Big Pharma donors, and a huge loss for democracy.Oh, and she and Manchin are essentially political suicide bombers waging a jihad for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.Not demented at all.
According to someone named John of the Young Turks, the minimum bars for a functioning democracy include 1) not electing Donald Trump, and 2) not electing someone like Kyrsten Sinema. He could have added 3) Doing what John says to do.
Of course, nothing Sinema is doing is betraying democracy in any way whatsoever; what shes doing is betraying the Democratic Partys priorities. But of course thats enough, isnt it?
Sinema and Manchin join a long and distinguished line of enemies of democracy, stretching from President John Adams to Sen. Barry Goldwater, and of course stopping over President George W. Bush (who now opposes Trump so is once again a friend of democracy).
Theyre joined on this list by every single person who ever attended a Tea Party rally, and the 74 million Americans who voted against democracy in the last election. In fact, it might be that a majority of Americans voted against democracy last year, but good luck finding the full truth: Its only OK to question elections when the democracy loses.
But its not just democracy, of course; for the left, its any system. Take schools: Our generation churns out multiple generations of graduates unprepared for work and incapable of functional literacy. So is the system broken? Not at all. That system is only broken if the students come out conservative or religious, or if parents are given any semblance of choice about what their children learn. If any of those things happened, that would be un-American. Probably anti-democratic too.
Democracy means parents dont get a say in what schools teach. Them theres the rules.
Or how about the courts? The courts are great when theyre used to paralyze a White House simply trying to defend its borders and control who enters the country. Those are working courts; very democratic. But what if the courts rule against the left?
What if the Supreme Court says that we have a border? What if they say that affirmative action is illegal racial discrimination? What if the Supreme Court finally notices that, wait a minute, abortion is never mentioned in the Bill of Rights and calling it a constitutional right is absurd? Well, that would mean the system is broken and disgustingly undemocratic. Court-packing is back on the menu, boys!
Lets not forget the Electoral College or its northern kin, Canadas system of parliamentary representation. Prime Minister Trudeau is the result of a beautiful system; a fully functioning democracy. President Donald Trump? Well, then you get into another area.
Know this: Your role in this democracy is not actual opposition, but managed opposition. Most professional D.C. Republicans get that. If the Democrats, for example, want to pass a bill that completely remakes the governments involvement with the citizenry from before birth until death, the GOP just asks them to cut back on the cost a little; make it cheaper. Managed opposition. Know your role, sort of thing.
Ronald Reagan didnt know his place; Trump certainly wouldnt play his part either and they hated them for it. Dont let any historic revisionism ever hide that: They treated Reagan with contempt, and called him a dangerous and psychotic dullard too.
We can go on and on, but you get the point: The system works when it works for the left, and only when it works for the left. You get the point and so do they. Now its just time to stop playing the part youve been assigned.
Here is the original post:
The Left Doesn't Care About 'Democracy,' They Just Want Their Way - The Federalist
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