Singer songwriter, Paul Simon wrote in, The Boxer, that “a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest”. This is human nature, and we are all guilty, as charged. But if we know we are guilty, then we know we must learn to hear what we do not want to hear.
The possibility of the United States again being headed by Donald Trump, the world’s most well known narcissist, is something to look forward to, on the order of root canal surgery. But is Trump the worst option? Those absolutely committed to voting against Trump are like passengers on an airplane who would reject a trained pilot, because he is a Nazi, in favor of a saccharine Episcopalian priest who, when he looks at the altimeter, thinks it is a thermometer. The priest may effectively calm his passengers, but this is small consolation when he flies the plane into a mountainside.
Metaphors are not the same as exposés, of course. They can be funny and still be utterly wrong. Honest, informed analysis is never easily had. Our heads are all ajumble with fuzzy recollections from our habituated echo chambers. One person may say, “Oh, he did X, which is terrible!” while another says, “He did X, which is marvelous!” Even the selection of issues to consider is an uncertain art. There’s no avoiding subjectivity; it can only be limited by drawing on a wide circle of facts. Still, there’s value in the effort. If we don’t at least try to grapple with the facts and issues, the likelihood of us making good decisions is slim.
The objective of this essay is not to argue that Donald Trump is a Nazi pilot; the objective is to show that the Democratic Party is an Episcopal priest impersonating a pilot. Maybe you would still choose the latter. But perhaps a review of the facts (I believe) below will give you reason to reconsider.
Afghanistan
Afghanistan was a quagmire, and has been for every country that has tried to occupy it. President Biden deserves credit for finally removing the U.S. from that country in August of 2021. On the other hand, Afghanistan is now in the hands of a violent, extremist Muslim sect. The women there are oppressed which, ironically, has not seemed to bother Democrats. The unnecessarily hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops was a disaster. The U.S. abandoned many Afghans who had aided U.S. efforts, leaving them in great danger. Many of them were killed. Also left behind was more than $7 billion of military equipment and weaponry. The Taliban has subsequently used much of this hardware as a cash crop, selling it to various nefarious characters who like to keep the Middle East in a stir. As Barak Obama famously remarked, “Never underestimate Joe Biden’s ability to eff things up.”
Kamala Harris dodged the question about the quality of the Afghanistan withdrawal in the September 10, 2024 debate with Donald Trump, though she stood by the decision to withdraw. She has boasted in the past about being the “last person in the room” when Biden ordered the withdrawal. Whether she had any real say in the action is not clear, but her own words are a confession of responsibility for the withdrawal fiasco.
Israel/Ukraine
The Biden administration has often confirmed its support for Israel, but it has also swerved on several occasions, hoping to calm left wing elements in the U.S. and around the world. Biden has held up some weaponry shipments and has continuously called on Israel to bring an end to hostilities. While peace is always good policy, the extreme left seems oblivious to the likelihood that an Israeli ceasefire would favor Hamas and ensure the continuation of hostilities. History, including recent Russian/Ukrainian history, has made clear the hazards of appeasement.
The Biden administration’s efforts to mollify leftist Democratic elements have not worked. Recent demonstrations have featured the chant: “Killer Kamala, you can’t hide; we charge you with genocide!” The Iranian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei joined the chorus: “Dear university students in the United States of America, this message is an expression of our empathy and solidarity with you. As the page of history is turning, you are standing on the right side of it.” (I assume Khamenei’s writer didn’t grasp English well enough to notice that standing on a page precludes the possibility of turning it. Or maybe he is trying to say that American students are helping to maintain the intractable Arab/Israeli feud.)
Leftists have brushed aside the slaughter of 1139 Israelis by Hamas on October 7, 2023, convincing themselves the action was justified. So much for Democratic tender hearts. The attack was authorized by Iran, which props up Hamas with funding, weaponry, and training. This is the same Iran that the Biden administration has kept on a very loose leash. In November of 2023, Biden released $16 billion of Iranian funds that had been held up by U.S. sanctions. The timing is difficult to understand.
Prior to the Hamas invasion, the Biden administration had been actively seeking a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia, with hopes of signing it before the end of 2023. The invasion of Israel was not in reaction to Israel’s oppression of Palestinians; it was a calculated measure by Iran to disrupt Israeli-Saudi detente. From this perspective the Palestinian invasion accomplished its goal.
Iran and Hamas knew very well that Israel would react swiftly and violently, but they were willing to let Palestinian civilians die in the rubble of the expected destruction, assuming that world opinion would quickly put a stop to Israel’s response. What neither Hamas nor Iran expected was the determined effort by Israel to eradicate Hamas.
Leftists are understandably sympathetic with the suffering Palestinian people. But their disinclination to hold Hamas accountable is inexcusable. The Hamas Constitution proclaims: “Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.” That is, the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Many college students have taken up the phrase as a protest chant. Whether they understand they are calling for the end of of Israel, as Hamas is, is anyone’s guess.
Nor has much anger been directed toward Iran. R.R.Reno noted, “On October 7, 2023, an Iranian proxy slaughtered more than one thousand Israelis. Another proxy fired missiles into northern Israel. Yet another proxy shut down the Suez Canal.” Nor is there much discussion about how Egypt has kept the Palestinians bottled up in their “open air prison”. Israel is slow to process Palestinians through its borders, due to security concerns. Egypt won’t let the Palestinians out because they’re afraid they won’t go back.
Jews are hated by Muslims or, if they don’t hate them, they had better not say it out loud. The Muslim Middle Eastern countries, while unwilling to allow Palestinians to emigrate to their countries, are happy to have Palestinians serve as a thorn in Israel’s side. There is so much talk about Israel being the bully in their neighborhood, but there are 9.5 million Israelis (7 million of whom are Jewish), while Israel is surrounded by 20 Muslim countries with a total population of 315 million. Israel has been invaded by its neighbors numerous times. It is Israel that lives in fear of being extinguished. It is Israel that has experienced genocide, and it is Israel that has reason to fear it still.
Gerard Leval remarked, “For so many of us, it seemed inconceivable that America, our home and a beacon of freedom, would ever be other than a safe haven for Jews. Suddenly, we can’t be so sure. So it is that those in the forefront of the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrations are giving full credence and impetus to the Zionist dream. Even in the most welcoming nation on earth, Jews feel at risk. Only in a secure Israel, a nation of and for the Jewish people, can Jews be certain that they won’t be persecuted by reason of who they are.”
The war in Ukraine carries on. Russia invaded Ukraine in February of 2022, and there is good reason to draw a causal line between the invasion and the Afghanistan withdrawal. Putin saw a timid U.S. as a kind of permission. He believed he would dash into Ukraine, shattering any resistance. He overestimated the fighting fitness of his own army but Russia has many more resources than Ukraine, and it seems to be winning a war of attrition. The U.S. has diddled, sending enough support to keep Russia in check, but not enough support to enable Ukraine to win back its own territories. So here we are again, trying to be measured and hoping for peace. But time ticks on while Ukraine loses its ability to defend itself. Trump thinks he can make a deal, but this is highly unlikely. The Democrats, on the other hand, seem content to diddle until Ukraine collapses.
U.S. Border/Illegal Immigrants
Our country has been irresponsible in the management of its borders for decades, so the larger problem cannot be laid at the feet of the Democrats. However, border apprehensions ran fairly high in the 80s and the 90s. They dropped lower in the 2000s and then lower in the 2010s, but then skyrocketed in the Biden administration years to roughly 2 million each year (’21, ’22, ’23). Less than half of immigrants encountered in that period have been expelled from the country. Kamala Harris was officially tasked by President Biden on March 24, 2021, “to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle…in stemming the movement of…migration to our southern border.” In September 2022, Harris falsely claimed on national television, “The border is secure. We have a secure border in that that is a priority for any nation, including ours and our administration.”
The House, on January 17 of 2024, passed a resolution condemning the Biden-Harris administration’s open-borders policies. This was a Republican bill, but 14 Democrats joined the Republicans. It begins: “Whereas the United States is in the midst of the worst border security crisis in the Nation’s history…” and concludes, “denounces the Biden administration’s open-borders policies; and condemns the national security and public safety crisis that President Joe Biden, ‘Border Czar’ Vice President Kamala Harris, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and other Biden administration officials have created along the southwest border…”
Who stands to gain by the presence of so many illegal immigrants? The answer is, most Americans, especially the most wealthy 40%. All of us benefit from the cheap labor that harvests crops and makes our food more affordable. The wealthier benefit from cheap gardeners, landscapers, arborists, painters, nannies, and so on.
Immigrants must also benefit since they keep entering and, mostly, staying. This is difficult to understand, given that the vast majority end up working physically demanding jobs, and it’s hard to understand, given that they live as second-class citizens, always in fear of being deported. Their fear makes them vulnerable to all sorts of exploitation. Seventeen thousand incidents of human trafficking were discovered in 2023, for example. Most of the trafficking is sex-related, though more than 20% of trafficking is labor-related.
In late August of 2024, a Department of Homeland Security watchdog warned Congress that Immigration and Customs Enforcement may have lost track of thousands of unaccompanied immigrant children. More than 448,000 children crossed the border alone between 2019 and 2023. Unaccompanied children are transferred to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Once they are released into the United States, ICE issues the children notice to appear in immigration court, and is to ensure they show up. But the report maintained that more than 32,000 children did not appear in court, and only 10% of the ICE field offices the watchdog visited even attempted to locate the missing children. The ICE offices did not always alert HHS about this, either. There are more than 291,000 children for which ICE has yet to schedule court hearings. “Without an ability to monitor the location and status of [unaccompanied children], ICE has no assurance [ability to know whether they] are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” the watchdog warned.
Immigrants tend to be religious and conservative. This is bad for Democrats but, as long as they remain disenfranchised, they cannot threaten Democrats politically.
But America’s middle class is being harmed. Americans seem to have grown averse to hard physical labor. Why would anyone subject himself to it when he can receive more through government hand-outs than he can at the wages illegals are earning? Illegal aliens earn roughly 2/3 of what American citizens are paid for equivalent work. Ads running during the August, 2024 Olympics featured Kamala Harris voicing her concern for blue collar workers. It’s hard to tell how she intends to support them, but it’s easy to see how she has not.
A porous border exacerbates the severe problem the U.S. is having with drugs. There are many causes for drug addiction, of course, including such things as identity confusion; diminishing commitment to family; social media addiction; irresponsible management of opioids by medical practitioners; and, certainly, the easy availability of hard drugs, many of which have been laced with poisons. One hundred eleven thousand Americans died of drug overdoses in 2022 (a record); 108,000 died in 2023. Democratic border inaction is killing Americans, it is expanding a population of exploited foreigners, and it is negatively impacting America’s middle class.
Covid / Inflation
Democrats cannot be blamed for the terror and harm brought on by this novel strain of disease. It’s commendable that there was a strong governmental reaction to the covid threat. Vaccines and safety protocols made sense, given the information available. Did the government overreact? Data suggests that it did. Isolating the elderly was clearly necessary; isolating and keeping children out of schools, not so much.
The Democratic-lead government also acted strongly to support the American economy, which was hit hard by the closing of businesses and schools. This meant borrowing money. Most economists believe government stimulus money protected Americans from the negative economic impact of covid. But the Biden administration seemed to have difficulty pulling on the reins. “People are happy with this; let’s do it some more.”
The economy in January 2021 was recovering from the pandemic as vaccines rolled out and state lockdowns eased. GDP grew 3.8% in the third quarter of 2020, 4.2% in the fourth, and 5.2% in the first quarter of 2021. By the end of that first quarter, real GDP had returned to its pre-pandemic high. Instead of letting the recovery unfold, the Democrats in March, 2021, used Covid relief as a pretext to pass $1.9 trillion in new spending. State and local governments received $350 billion in direct aid, $122 billion for K-12 schools and $30 billion for mass transit. Insolvent union pension funds received an $86 billion rescue. The rest was mostly transfer payments to individuals, including a five-month extension of enhanced unemployment benefits, a $3,600 fully refundable child tax credit, $1,400 stimulus payments per person, sweetened Affordable Care Act subsidies, an increased earned income tax credit, even for those who didn’t work, housing subsidies and so on. The handouts discouraged the unemployed from returning to work. By mid-2021, Americans had $2.3 trillion more in savings than prior to pandemic levels—equivalent to roughly 12.5% of disposable income.
All this money chasing too few goods fueled inflation. Historically low mortgage rates drove up housing prices. Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, but the spending party in Washington continued. In November 2021, Congress passed a $1 trillion bill full of green pork and more money for states. Then came the $280 billion Chips Act and Mr. Biden’s Green New Deal—aka the Inflation Reduction Act—which Goldman Sachs estimates will cost $1.2 trillion over a decade.
Kevin Warsh, former Federal Reserve board member, commented: “In my view, irresponsible government spending and excessive money printing are largely to blame for triggering inflation in the first place. Had the Fed recognized the inflation problem sooner, it wouldn’t have been forced to raise rates so high. Had the Fed’s asset holdings stayed smaller or shrunk faster, inflation wouldn’t have risen so high. Hardworking Americans wouldn’t now be suffering the twin indignities of high prices and higher credit costs.”
Who pays for inflation? Mostly those in the middle of the economy. The poor get COL adjustments to their government grants and supplements. People with investments and property ride the wave of inflation as their investments and properties also rise in value. Very hard hit are the young who are interested in purchasing their first homes. But homes have not been available. Their costs have risen faster than inflation. And people who have mortgages are not inclined to abandon their 3% mortgage, knowing that interest on current mortgages, while easing, is still near 7%.
But borrowing has another effect. When the government borrows money, it feels like nothing bad is happening. But something bad is happening: the government has initiated a hidden tax. The Biden administration has run severe budget deficits every year it has been in office. The problem with deficits (which continue to pile on top of each other) is that budgets going forward are increasingly gobbled up by interest payments. The tax we all pay is that our government is less and less able to provide services because all its discretionary money is tied up in paying interest. In recent years Republicans have been weak in voicing concerns about budget deficits. But Democrats have been worse, making it part of their platform to provide bread and circuses for the masses. The Democratic habit of using tax money to buy votes is costing all of us dearly.
Student Loan Forgiveness
Forgiving student loans is popular with students who have borrowed money. No surprise there, but who pays for those loans when those who borrow money do not? Everybody else. People who decided to not go to college pay. People who went to college but scrimped, saved, and satisfied their loans, pay. The general public pays. College debt forgiveness is not forgiveness; it is a debt transfer initiated by the administrative branch of the U.S. government. It is a kind of taxation, which is, according to the Constitution, the responsibility of Congress. This is why the courts continue to knock down the Biden administration’s efforts to forgive student loans. In short, these efforts are illegal in terms of how our government functions, and they are patently unfair, as they lay the burden of payments on people who had nothing to do with the loans. Handing out money makes the impression that Democrats are generous, but no one should miss the fact that it is generosity with other people’s money.
Why are colleges so expensive, anyway? Let’s start with the Biden administration’s managing of Fafsa. As college students return to campus, the sad saga of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (Fafsa) continues. The Education Department announced the form would be delayed again this year, due to more revisions. Congress in December 2020 enacted a revision for a supposedly simpler Fafsa. While the form is usually available by Oct. 1 for the following school year, the department didn’t launch the new form until late December, 2023. The rollout was then beset by technical and bureaucratic mishaps, resulting in many students not getting financial aid offers until the summer. This bungling by the federal government added more pressure on colleges, especially harming small private schools that were already struggling against inflation and a decreasing numbers of college age kids. Many students, unable to line up their college loans, are opting to delay going to college, or opting to skip college altogether. At least 62 colleges have closed in the U.S. since 2020, impacting nearly 46,000 students, the majority of whom have chosen not to return to school. Government bungling has added administrative costs to schools, and the loss of students has threatened the existence of many of them.
According to U.S. News & World Report, the steady growth in administrative and non-teaching staff positions is largely due to broader student support, often referred to as “wraparound services,” in areas such as mental health, entertainment, intramural sports, academic support, workforce preparedness and initiatives focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. In 2010 at public schools, academic support was 74% of instructor costs; in 2021 it was 84%. Things were worse in private schools where in 2020 academic support was 92% of instructor costs but in 2021 was 102%. School costs have gone up because of helicoptering parents, but also because of helicoptering government. If we want to provide relief to college students, colleges will need to be seen as schools, not nurseries. Similarly, students need to start thinking as adults when it comes to borrowing money. What they don’t need is to think about borrowing money the way the U.S. Federal Government thinks about it.
Vouchers
Public education in the United States is breaking down. There are two primary reasons for this. The first is that unions have a stranglehold on it. The NEA (National Education Association) has over 3 million members and is the country’s largest union. In 2024 98% if its donations have gone to Democrats.
There is a reason the largest unions in the country are government workers. When unions push businesses too far, the businesses automate or build factories overseas, or fold. Not so with unions in government jobs—their demands can be addressed through increased taxes, which Democrats are only too willing to provide.
Schools are in desperate need of reform. Many have tried. Perhaps, most famously, Michelle Rhee was given considerable latitude to overhaul the public schools in Washington D.C. from 2007 through 2010. She initiated many changes and student scores improved significantly. But Rhee moved fast and stepped on toes. When the mayor who appointed her was defeated in an election, Rhee resigned. Unions can play important roles in assuring employee safety, fair pay, and fair treatment, but American unions are not noted for being reasonable or fair. It is the unions that are arbitrary and capricious. Their practice of protecting incompetent employees does great harm. When this happens in schools, it is students who suffer. Many of our country’s poorest students have no option but to go through the motions of education while their real experience is a kind of warehousing/prison prep.
Phil Gramm, Robert Ekelund, and John Early, in their book, The Myth of American Inequality, wrote, “The test results are a stark indictment of the failure of America’s public schools. Only one-quarter of high school seniors are proficient in mathematics and only on-third in reading. Even more startling is that the proficiency in mathematics actually declines the longer the child is in school. On average, attending school longer appears to increase the gap between what is actually being learned and the standard expected by grade level.”
The other reason public education is breaking down is ideological. The U.S. in recent years has removed religion from education. This is understandable, given that public education is aimed at a pluralistic society. However, public schools continue to function on the false assumption that it is possible to remove ideology from education. Public schools teach humanism, which is to say, children are taught that humans are accidents of the material universe, and that morality is ultimately the decision of each individual. At the same time, students are taught trending moralities, many of which are foolish and harmful. David Hicks, in his book, Norms and Nobility: A Treatise on Education, gave this warning: “Without normative learning, the democratic citizen will doubt his ability to decide the issues shaping his life, and will put himself at the mercy of a few experts.” The government has no idea what truth is and, yet, through public education it assumes a pastoral role. The consequences of the blind leading the blind are, as we are seeing, brutal.
Education is always indoctrination. This is not a complaint; it is a logical necessity. Government education, then, contradicts the idea of separation of church and state. If the United States government wants education for its citizens, well and good, but it does not have the right to impose its dogma (which changes with every shifting breeze).
Funding for education, then, must be made equally available to all families, so they can educate their children in competent schools, and in schools that are, at least, tolerable to parents. The current public education system unfairly charges a double tax on all those who can afford private education, and on those who cannot afford it but who are willing to live sacrificially in order to protect their children from the public school’s severe faults.
The voucher system would certainly improve education in America, and it would disconnect education from centralized dogma. But Democrats, beholden to union interests, stand in the way of quality education. Democratic policy is stunting the development of the majority of young people in America today, severely damaging their prospects and hopes for meaningful, fulfilling lives. This is a theft from America’s future.
Environment
All people want to live in healthy environments, want to curb pollution and waste, want to have clean air and water, want to have pleasant weather, and want to have the glaciers remain in Glacier National Park. But the Democratic green plans have mostly been about virtue-signaling, have pressed hard for action, but have not pursued investigation, testing, or given appropriate consideration to the ripple effects of the actions taken.
A great deal of tax money has been transferred, mostly to the well-to-do, enticing them to purchase electric vehicles. Perhaps electric vehicles will some day become the norm but, at present, their sale is stalling. Most Americans, when faced with their own budgets, are choosing cars that are more affordable and more reliable.
California is physically on the left of the U.S., and it is ideologically there, as well. It continues to pass laws driving the reduction of the use of fossil fuels, but it also is failing to grasp the importance of maintaining dependable infrastructure. Electric bills have increased 130% in California over the past 10 years, which is more than four times the increase nation-wide. This is a cautionary tale for the rest of the country.
An evaluation of more than 1,500 climate policies in 41 countries found that only 63 actually worked to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The study, published August, 22, 2024, in the journal, Science, used an AI algorithm to sift through a database of environmental prescriptions compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based economic agency, between 1998 and 2020. These policies ranged from energy-efficiency standards for household appliances to a carbon tax on fossil fuels like oil and gas. The Wall Street Journal’s opinion of this was, “Press accounts strained to muddy the study’s simple lesson so let’s spell it out: Taxing carbon reduces emissions. Subsidizing ‘green energy’ doesn’t.” Virtue-signaling does not benefit our environment. Careful decision-making can, but the Democratic Party consistently prefers the former to the latter.
Trump
Democrats like to complain about Trump, which is why they like Trump. At the end of his Presidential term Democrats attempted to impeach him. This was a cynical display, given that the Constitution is clear that impeachment is for removing officials who have been treasonous, have accepted bribes, or have committed other high crimes. Perhaps Trump deserved to be impeached but because his term had come to an end, impeachment was not the appropriate action. You can’t fire someone who has already lost his job.
Democrats could have censured Trump for his influence in the January 6 riot at the Capitol. There was a good chance at the time that moderate Republicans would have joined in on the measure. Though censure has no real teeth, the action from a bi-partisan congress would probably have ended Trump’s political career. But the Democrats did not want to end Trump’s political career—he was and remains the strongest bond holding the fractious Democratic party together, while he has continued to divide the Republican party between classic conservatives and MAGAites. It’s painful to listen when Donald Trump opens his mouth, but it is more painful to countenance the high-pitched reactions to him from the Left. Trump is comic theater but Democratic reaction is canned laughter.
Barton Swaim sees the Democrats as the Dr. Frankenstein that created Donald Trump. “This leads me back to a basic and, I’m sure, not entirely original observation. Mr. Trump’s popularity among lower- and middle-income Americans is largely the product of progressive insanity. Mr. Trump briefly ran for president in 2000 to no effect and hinted in 2011 that he would run, also to no effect. Only in 2016, when modern liberalism had blossomed into a coterie of what we now call “woke” ideologies—the obsession with racial and sexual identity, the hatred of America and the West, the loathing of law enforcement—did Mr. Trump’s candidacy electrify the country’s wage earners and shopkeepers. If his popularity is, as I think, a product of the Democrats’ leftward lurch, Republicans can take solace in Ms. Harris’s likely ascension. The Democrats have traded an intellectually weakened liberal who acquiesced to everything progressives wanted for a full-on progressive who can be counted on to promote everything progressives want. Left-wing officeholders purport to hate Donald Trump above all things. To stop his rise, all they would have to do is moderate. Or exercise a bit of common sense.”
Trump is guilty of inciting the horn-headed Shaman to cavort in the Capitol, but Trump’s excesses are sponsored by large numbers of people who are actually afraid of the excesses of the Democrats, who don’t seem aware of anything strange in their own behavior.
George Floyd
George Floyd’s murder, May 25, 2020, was a shameful act by an out-of-control cop, and permitted by several irresponsible cops. It is possible that their combined effort and non-efforts revealed something dark about police culture in this country. What also bears mentioning, though, is that George Floyd came to the scene with his own history. Floyd had a long rap sheet related to selling and using drugs; he had been convicted of armed robbery. He was high on fentanyl, and the police were called because a store clerk believed Floyd had passed him a counterfeit $20 bill. George Floyd was one of those belligerent, scary people the police have to deal with every day.
The backlash against George Floyd’s murder was immediate and fierce, little doubt because its brutality was captured on video. Apparently the murder was viewed 1.4 billion times. Protesters made police a target. Democrats hopped on the “de-fund” the police bandwagon, and rode it with the country…for a few weeks. Then reality asserted itself.
Corey Brooks, pastor of New Beginnings Church and leader of Project H.O.O.D. on the south side of Chicago, put it this way, “George Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer in Minneapolis sparked understandable outrage. How could another black man have died because of police brutality? The protests began as a natural outpouring of grief, as white and black Americans were united in their horror at this senseless act. But these protests turned violent, and the victims of this widespread looting are often the black community leaders and business owners. How does it advance our cause of racial harmony to wreck the black communities?
“Violence is rampant in Chicago, and it has nothing to do with isolated incidents of police brutality. Over Memorial Day weekend, ten African Americans were shot and killed in drive-by shootings. We need justice in the George Floyd case, and we need assurances that these hateful acts will not take place again. At the same time, we need partnerships with the police so they will help us re-establish law and order in our neighborhoods.”
In 2018 7407 black Americans were murdered, 89% by black civilians. For every black person killed by a cop, 28 were killed by a black civilian. According to Heather MacDonald, author of War On Cops, a police officer is 18 1/2 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer. There is a profound disconnect between the media narrative and what is actually happening in America’s neighborhoods.
Governor Walz is taking some heat over how he handled the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis. Minneapolis Mayor, Jacob Frey, implored Governor Walz to send the Minnesota National Guard at 6:30 PM, May 27, due to the serious rioting and destruction that was happening there. After receiving no response, Mayor Frey sent a request again at 9:11 PM. Walz waited until the following day at 4:00 PM to sign an order authorizing 500 guardsmen to restore order. At 10:00 that evening, Mayor Frey ordered the abandonment of the Third Precinct Police station, which was immediately overrun and torched. On May 30, 5000 more guardsman were sent in and order was finally restored. More than 1500 buildings had been burned down during that timeframe, at an estimated cost of $500 million. Two people were killed.
Why did Governor Walz dillydally? On May 27, he patronizingly opined, “We all know that these types of incidents [police killings] disproportionately affect our black and brown community members,” effectively fanning the flames. In 2021 in the city of Minneapolis, 309 black people were shot. One of them was shot by a policemen, who was returning fire.
If we’re going to talk about disproportionate police treatment or disproportionate jail sentencing, we had also better talk about disproportionate mob reactions. Across the nation the “George Floyd Protests” resulted in 19 deaths. Property damages are estimated to be somewhere between $1 billion and $2 billion dollars, making the protest the most damaging act of civil disorder in American history.
Governor Walz has subsequently declared May 25, “George Floyd Remembrance Day”. He peppered his Remembrance Day speech with references to “systemic racism”.
The three neighborhoods in Minneapolis that suffered the most damage, Longfellow, Powderhorn, and Phillips, were occupied more than 80% by blacks and people of other minority races. Which was more representative of systemic racism, one out of control cop who killed one person, or one out of control governor who allowed the destruction of largely minority neighborhoods. I don’t impute any racial ill-will to Tim Walz. What I do propose is that the projection of sensitivity is often performance, which is much different from real leadership, which often must make unpopular decisions because they are the right decisions. “Coach” Walz seems better qualified as a cheerleader.
The hard fact that most of the country has learned (for the time being) is that policing is absolutely necessary, and policing is more necessary in inner-city, minority neighborhoods than anywhere else in America.
At bottom, the riots for George Floyd were not really about George Floyd; they were about black Americans who feel they are treated like second-class citizens. For many black Americans this is far from the truth, but blacks as a whole are doing worse financially than all ethnicities other than native Americans. Why are they being left behind? Major causes include disastrous public education in America’s largest cities (entrenched as such by Democrats); the break-down of the traditional family (encouraged by Democrat policies); habituated welfare (pushed by Democrats); and a victim/entitlement mentality (enflamed by Democrats). The George Floyd murder was a crisis that should have called America to look seriously at the changes needed to help black Americans flourish and feel like they belong. Instead, the Democrats and the leftist press jumped on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon of grievance. After the dust settled from all the damages, the country found itself in virtually the same place as before the protests (and with many neighborhoods in considerably worse condition).
Internal Contradictions
The Democratic Party is currently in a scramble, trying to hold together people, many of whom actually hate each other. The Democrats’ primary strategy for doing this is to keep Donald Trump in the news, where he is good for an outrageous statement every day. But while Trump provides a helpful distraction, he is not removing the real internal inconsistencies, animosities, and ideological contradictions of the Democratic Party.
Vice President Harris could have chosen Josh Shapiro as her running mate. As Governor of a large swing state, Pennsylvania, he would have been a smart choice. But she did not choose Josh Shapiro, for two reasons. The first is that Shapiro is Jewish. Vice President Harris is married to a Jewish man, so it is hard to imagine she has hatred towards Jews. But there is a vocal element (see protests on college campuses and at the Democratic convention in Chicago) at the left end of the leftish Democratic party that is very angry with Israel for its invasion of Gaza. Avoiding Shapiro was an olive branch extended to this group. The second reason for avoiding Shapiro is that he is an advocate of educational vouchers. This would would have displeased the unions so, out you go, Josh.
Jewish loyalty to the Democratic party is a bit of a mystery. Jewish people have flourished in this country. They largely live in the land of the “haves”. Part of their Democratic affinity can be explained through Jewish immigration. Many who arrived here were poor and were greatly helped by Democratic social supports. Back in the 1950s, Jewish essayist Milton Himmelfarb remarked that “Jews earn like Episcopalians, but vote like Puerto Ricans.” In more recent history there has been apprehension about linkages between Republicans and nationalist Christians. Jews have flourished in the United States like no other country because of its Constitutional separation of church and state. Jewish people are nervous about the possibility of the U.S. becoming a Christian nation (even though this is less likely today than at any time in U.S. history). Jews are also less than comfortable with Trump’s racist tendencies. But hatred for Jews is currently coming mostly from the Left. It should be interesting in the coming election to see how the Jewish community sorts through these various concerns.
Unions seem like an odd fixture in today’s Democratic Party. Unions can’t claim they are powerless or victims, they are not minority entities, nor are their members living on the financial fringes. But unions are often at odds with the management side of big business and, more importantly, most union positions today are government jobs. Both unions and Democrats like big government. Unions like earning more money, while Democrats like centralized government with massive bureaucracies providing invasive oversight.
Vice President Harris chose Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota, a bonafide liberal. He got his name on the V.P. short list when he commented, in reference to Donald Trump and JD Vance, “These guys are creepy and yes, just weird as hell.” That was a little funny…and a little true, and it showed that Walz was willing to play rough. It’s hard to leave the quote, though, without considering people with tattoos up their necks, cringe-inducing piercings, nuclear waste green hair, sexual dysphorias, body part reconfigurations, and who sashay about in public as females caricatures. Let’s be real, Tim, the Democratic Party encourages people to be creepy and weird as hell. Maybe we should understand Walz’ jab as an endorsement.
Governor Walz is unashamed of his liberal vision. “Don’t ever shy away from our progressive values. One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness,” he said. Ken Katona, hearing the remark, thought Governor Walz ended his sentence too soon, and that he needed to add “. . . with another neighbor’s money.” Walz also famously said (referring to reproductive rights), “Mind your own damn business”. Of course, this directly contradicts socialism. Nor does “mind your own damn business” make any sense in the world of politics. Politics is the venue in which citizens are minding the shared business of the country. His love of clever soundbites reveals that he’s fond of jingles but doesn’t take time to think about what he is saying.
It’s a temptation to accept hand-outs. I remember when the government sent me a couple of stimulus checks during the covid lock-downs. “Why are they sending me this money?” I asked myself. My financial situation at the time was stable. I wondered whether I should send the money back, as a matter of principle. But I thought, a few people sending money back is not going to have a meaningful impact and, besides, I’m pretty sure I’ll spend the money more responsibly than the government. Later I thought, “The government didn’t really give me anything. It simply borrowed from the future and juiced up inflation. I had better invest that money so I’ll be able to manage my share when the payments are due.
When it comes to hand-outs, tempting as they are, people don’t really want them. Babies are dependent, but as they turn into children they begin to tell grown-ups, “I can do it”. When we get old and decrepit, we slowly lose our abilities. Old people are thankful for help but, again, they are much happier when they can manage by themselves. (Try to take the car keys away from an older person.) Parents who do their children’s homework are not helping their children—they are hating them. Similarly, it is a good thing to help people who need help but it is a bad thing to do for those who are capable of doing for themselves. If government must involve itself in the minutia of people’s lives, it should be helping people to self-sufficiency, not to dependency.
It’s pretty clear that the Democratic patronizing of the black community is bad for the black community. Thomas Sowell has debunked the belief that social welfare has been the cause of black economic lift. “Despite the grand myth that black economic progress began or accelerated with the passage of the civil rights laws and ‘war on poverty’ programs of the 1960s, the cold fact is that the poverty rate among blacks fell from 87 percent in 1940 to 47 percent by 1960. This was before any of those programs began.
Over the next 20 years, the poverty rate among blacks fell another 18 percentage points, compared to the 40-point drop in the previous 20 years. This was the continuation of a previous economic trend, at a slower rate of progress, not the economic grand deliverance proclaimed by liberals and self-serving black ‘leaders’.”
Since the war on poverty ramped up in 1967, the average welfare payments to work-age households in the bottom quintile have risen 9.2 times the rise in earnings of the average household. In 2022 this worked out to $64,700. This level of hand-outs disincentivizes people from working, which only adds to the country’s budget deficit. But, in spite of the largesse, the payments also harm those in the bottom quintile. Hand-outs cannot be saved the way earnings can. People who earn this same level of money, tend to earn more money as their careers progress. They also tend to invest some of their earnings in home ownership or in the stock market. Thus, those who are enticed by government hand-outs are duped into remaining in dependency and poverty.
Raj Chetty of Harvard University tracked the economic mobility of 57 million children born between 1978 and 1992. They found that children made the greatest economic strides when raised in neighborhoods in which there was a high level of employment. These children tended to earn more money as adults, achieve higher SAT and ACT scores, were more likely to be employed, and pursued more education. Anthony Bradley, from the Acton Institute commented: “When that aspiration, that encouragement is embodied in another human being, that’s when it becomes a real possibility. Otherwise, it’s just fiction.”
Is the “progressive” push for abortion rights beneficial to blacks? In the United States the abortion rate is nearly five times as high among blacks as it is among whites. Is this help, or is it eugenics?
Is the sexual revolution helping black families? According to Delano Squires, “We need to introduce children to the success sequence: finish high school, get a job, and get married before having children. The success sequence is by far the simplest, most staightforward way to both promote marriage and an intact family structure and to promote a surefire, time-tested anti-poverty strategy that allows young people to have a sense of agency over their lives. And that to me is far more preferable than telling them that someone else is responsible for the things that they do and what they receive in life.”
Is public education helping black America? Thomas Sowell doesn’t think so. “If racists cannot prevent today’s minority young people from becoming pilots, the teachers unions can—by denying them a decent education, in schools whose top priorities are iron-clad job security for teachers, and billions of dollars in union dues for teachers unions.”
Minorities are waking up to the fact that public schools, particularly in the inner cities, are crippling their children. Democrats are trying to make themselves out as friends to both the unions and minorities, but in this case the unions are being treated as highly favored, while minority kids are damaged by a systemic injustice. According to Joshua C. Robertson, “Black voters have repeatedly expressed support for school choice, with nearly 80% endorsing policies like education savings accounts and vouchers, according to Morning Consult. Polling by RealClear Opinion Research also shows that black voters support school choice more than any other race.” President Biden, on the other hand, is not only pro-public schools, he is anti-charter schools!
Frederick Douglass said, “What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simple justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what to do with us. I have but one answer…Do nothing with us!…And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!…Your interference is doing him positive injury.”
Another internal contradiction in the Democratic Party is between women and those who are promoting sexual transitioning. Sexual transition is not actually possible, of course. Superficial changes are possible but they only go far enough to leave “patients” in physical limbo. These changes are harmful but are being pushed on young people, most of whom have multiple psychological stressors that are left unaddressed by the transitioning “solution”.
Josh Payne is a lawyer, currently representing a number of individuals who regret the harms done to them through transitioning therapy and operations. They are angry at those who guided them into the transitioning procedures. Mr. Payne was asked what was at stake for these people. “You’re talking about individuals who have been deeply harmed. They’ve lost body parts; their body has not been allowed to develop naturally. They have chronic pain. Their bodily frame is often abnormal because of growth irregularity, which is affected by cross-sex hormone therapy. But equally important, the psychological and emotional impacts: Our clients have to cope with what was done to them for the rest of their lives. The proponents of so-called gender-affirming care—a horrible misnomer—so far have been very hesitant to engage in robust scientific discussion of the evidence, or really the lack of evidence.”
Gender-altering ideology has funneled thousands of children and young adults into becoming lifetime patients of the medical industrial complex. Recently, a high-profile review commissioned by the English National Health Service found that “the evidence does not support the claim that gender-affirming treatment reduces suicide risk.” The same review echoed warnings that puberty blockers pose “potential risks to neurocognitive development, psychosexual development, and longer-term bone health” among children. These findings were published in the full Cass Review. In response, the British government placed an emergency ban on puberty blockers for minors. The editor of the Boston Medical Journal concluded, “Offering treatments without an adequate understanding of benefits and harms is unethical.”
Gender-altering policies are bulldozing family rights, too. Mary and Jeremy Cox have asked the Supreme Court to rule against actions taken by the Indiana Department of Child Services. The state removed their 16-year-old son from their home because the Coxes refused to support his desire for gender transitioning. They were charged with abuse and neglect, though those charges were subsequently dropped. Nevertheless, the Department kept the boy from his parents, and banned them from having discussions with him about gender. Two years have passed and the son is now considered an adult. This is the sort of freedom Democratic policies are leading to.
In a related problem, and in line with the Democratic agenda of de-valuing the nuclear family, we have new “progressive” legislation in California. In July of 2024, Governor Gavin Newsom, (D), signed a law that prohibits educational entities in California from enacting or enforcing policies that mandate parental notification if a student desires to change genders or adopt nonstandard pronouns in the classroom. Activists have promoted the bill as banning “forced outings”. But the greater significance here is that California has decided that, not only does its bureaucracy know better than parents what is best for their children, but that it has the right to leave parents out of the “education” of their children, altogether. (Chalk up one more reason for the voucher system).
The transitioning question is raising its head in fights over bathroom use and, more notably, in sports. The Biden administration interpreted sex discrimination, in reference to Title IX, to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. The interpretation prohibits, for instance, schools from forcing transgender students to use bathrooms and locker rooms that do not align with their gender identity.
But the more controversial difficulty is the demand to accommodate transitioners so that boys are now eligible to play in girls’ sports. The science is clear that the developmental process for boys is different than the process in girls, giving boys a significant athletic advantage. A number of highly publicized cases have illustrated how transitioned boys who were average athletes became outstanding athletes as girls. The advocacy for such transitions in sports has resulted in serious negative consequences for girls. The effect is a reversal of the primary intent of Title IX, which was to require athletic benefits for girls on a par with such benefits for boys. Women, supposedly favored by Democratic views on abortion, should not miss how the Democratic embrace of identity politics is harmful to them.
Leftists argue that children should have the right to determine for themselves whether they want to be boys or girls. Never mind that research has shown that the vast majority of young children who experience gender dysphoria grow out of those feelings once they go through puberty, while hormonal treatments and sex-altering surgeries are, for the most part, irreversible. Never mind that the children making these decisions are making them under the care and advice of adult professionals. Never mind that adults are charged with statutory rape, even when children are compliant. We don’t let children vote, or drive cars, or fly planes. For the most part, we don’t allow them to work for wages. Democratic support for sexual transitioning of the young is, frankly, child abuse.
Transitioning is not necessarily embraced in the LGBTQ community. There is a significant camp in the lesbian community that contends that transsexuals (who are living as females) are not all that female. They are pushing back against the transsexuals who seem to have retained their male “entitlement and abusive” natures. This push-back by lesbians has upset the LGBTQ community, as well as inclusive liberals who, in turn, are giving lesbians a hard time for their lack of charity. They are labeled: “TERFs”, which stands for trans-exclusionary radical feminists. “This new wave of bigots—misogynists thinly disguised as progressives–-are every bit as toxic as the old sexists that would beat us up on the street, or tell us that all we needed was a ‘good seeing to’. And what is particularly shameful is that many of the liberals that would have condemned such bullies in the past now seem to be supporting the very people that wish to drive us back into the closet,” says lesbian, Julie Bindel. Lesbians are also alarmed about the fact that interest in transitions is five times as high for girls wishing to be boys as it is in the other direction. Lesbians, like many in the medical field, are wondering if this phenomenon has more to do with out-of-control social pressures and medical practitioners with dollar signs in their heads, than with careful medical assessments.
All of these inconsistencies and regulations forced down people’s throats demonstrate the logical impossibility of the overarching Democratic vision of self-realization. This vision becomes doubly impossible as soon as they add, “the rest of society must tolerate, must approve, and must pay”. As William F. Buckley put it, “Liberals don’t care what you do so long as it’s compulsory.”
Abortion
This is a different sort of problem for Democrats, primarily because neither the Democrats nor a majority of Americans consider it a problem. But it is a problem: abortion is the greatest crime in human history. There were 3.6 million births in the U.S. in 2023. The Guttmacher Institute, which favors abortion rights, reports that there were more than one million abortions that same year—the most in more than a decade. There have been 60 million abortions in the U.S. since Roe v. Wade.
Congress passed the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act in 2002, which states that any child born alive, even after an attempted abortion, is to be considered a person. Moderator, Linsey Davis, “fact-checked” Trump in the Trump/Harris debate, stating, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born.” What she didn’t mention is that the act doesn’t mandate that medical personnel must strive to keep children alive. What can we expect doctors to do in this situation when the purpose of their operations is to abort children? Will they hand women the young babies they were expected to abort? The fact-check was more of a fact-suppression.
The Act does not explain how a being can be a “reproductive health issue” one moment, and a moment later a human being. By law, this human being is also a U.S. citizen. The hypocrisy of U.S. law and U.S. practice with regard to the unborn is intolerable, particularly in light of the unquestioned scientific evidence that humans come into being at conception. Many admit that conception creates humans, but then argue that humans are not persons until some other event, such as a heartbeat, brain activity, or birth. This is pure “doublespeak”, as featured in George Orwell’s 1984.
On August 7, 2024, the EPA suspended the sale and usage of the pesticide Dacthal out of fear of the damages it can cause to unborn children. The chemical is commonly used for weed control with crops such as broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and onions. So our country will take emergency measures to safeguard the unborn against chemicals that will damage them, but is comfortable with doctors ripping them to pieces and throwing out the parts with the medical waste. Donald Trump is wrong that the question of abortion should be left to the states. Kamala Harris is far more wrong when she insists that abortion should be a national right. It is not possible to make a national wrong into a national right.
The only subject on which Kamala Harris has been quite clear is abortion. She refers to it as, “women’s reproductive health”. She is the first Vice President to visit an abortion clinic, which she did in March of 2024. She endorsed television ads (ad nauseam) in which she called for an America, “where reproductive rights are not just protected by the Constitution of the United States, but are guaranteed in every state.”
Ms. Harris’ grinning call for “reproductive rights” comes in the context of a very strange present cultural assumption. How is it that reproductive rights are only a woman’s issue? Yes, woman bear the greater burden (and privilege) of pregnancy, but women are not the only ones involved in reproduction. How has it come to be that women have the only say in whether the children they carry live or die? Those children belong to their fathers just as much as they belong to their mothers. To tell men that they have no rights regarding their unborn children is the same as telling them they have no responsibility. Taking the responsibility of childbirth away from men only encourages them to be irresponsible. Then, when women get pregnant and they don’t want to be pregnant, guess who gets to bear the guilt of “eliminating” their own children? The answer to unwanted pregnancies is not to disenfranchise men but to establish laws that make men legally responsible for the lives of their children, from conception to adulthood. Men must have their reproductive rights, too, Ms. Harris, and men must have their reproductive responsibilities.
Women are harmed by abortion, too. The Charlotte Lozier Institute did a study in 2023 that found that only 33% of women who went through with abortions identified their abortions as “wanted or consistent with my values and preferences.” Ten percent of respondents said their abortions were coerced. Most women would not go through with their abortions if they felt more financial and personal support. (More than 90% of abortions are for unmarried women. That speaks loudly to the point that “free love” is anything but free.)
But, of course, the central crime of abortion is not against men or women, but against children. At what point should humans be given the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? The Constitution that Ms. Harris refers to says: “…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” My reading of the Constitution says that no child shall be eliminated as a class (unwanted children), but must be given an individual court trial to determine whether he or she shall be allowed to live. And what could the verdict be other than innocent? Certainly the abortion would be impossible if the defendant was given an opportunity to represent himself or herself in court.
And what of the reproductive rights of those who are slated for abortion? Who has the right to disallow them from reproducing? At twenty weeks, a female fetus bears all the eggs—six to seven million of them—that she will ever have.
Ms. Harris, at the Democratic National Convention, speaking on the subject of abortion, commented,“Simply put, they are out of their minds. And one must ask: Why exactly is it that they don’t trust women?” The answer is the same as if she insisted that mothers should have the right to eliminate their five-year-olds. Ms. Harris seems to think that right and wrong are determined by individuals. Such a view breaks down and makes the very concept of law impossible…which makes the possibility of societies impossible. It certainly leaves no room for something like political parties. But this is the kind of ideological nonsense common to the Democratic Party.
Perhaps the root of her brain freeze comes from her theological background. She has active membership in the Third Baptist Church of San Francisco. The current pastor, the Rev. Amos Brown, has known Ms. Harris for 30 years. He defended her support for legal and broadly accessible abortion by saying, “No one else should rob you or me of the freedom to do what you wish with your own body, as long as you’re not bothering anyone else.” I suppose the good Reverend thinks being murdered does not bother the unborn.
Harris won’t be championing the elimination of the young on her own. Her chosen running mate, Tim Walz, signed a bill that essentially made abortion in Minnesota a right at any time throughout pregnancy.
Carelessness about human life has negative consequences beyond the loss of life. The disconnect between sexual activity and new life has already borne the fruit of untethered sexual identity confusion and all of its inherent pathologies. It has also borne the fruit of no fruit, as the American reproductive rate has plummeted to less than 1.8 births per woman, which is less than the replacement rate of 2.1. These negative consequences are only being accelerated by Democratic Party policies.
Definition of “Human”
Abortion is promoted by Democrats because it is seen as a political advantage. But it is also a logical consequence of the Democratic adoption of humanistic ideology. This ideology insists that humans have the authority to define what it means to be human. History shows that once humans grant themselves authority to define “human”, they begin to impose this meaning on other humans. The cruel irony of humanism is that it is dehumanizing.
Evidences are everywhere. Men having sex with men, women having sex with women, calling these relationships marriage, and then pressing legalization, normalizing their abnormalities at the expense of all who are confounded by it all. People are embracing sexual fluidity. People are attempting to change their bodies, while others are trying to change back. Divorce has become common, contributing greatly to the break-down of the traditional family, to the harm, especially, of children. Individual rights and identities have been exalted, while the idea of relational commitment has become contingent. People are covering their bodies with tattoos, piercing themselves with rings, pins and chains, and coloring their hair nuclear waste green.
Joseph Backholm described the political divergence: “A poll from Pew Research Center… found only 19 percent of Biden supporters agreed that ‘society is better off if people make marriage and having children a priority’ while 59 percent of Trump supports do. The general indifference on the left to the importance of the nuclear family has long been visible in their political priorities. No-fault divorce, abortion, the redefinition of marriage, the redefinition of sex, drag queens, and the effort to destigmatize prostitution are all consistent with the worldview that prioritizes self-expression and personal happiness above all else. So, it makes sense that so many of the left’s political priorities are not only indifferent to the impact on children but lead to having fewer of them in the first place. The most obvious example is abortion, which exists to remove babies from the world. While the redefinition of marriage and the mainstreaming of same-sex relationships may not be done for the purpose of creating genetic dead ends, that is the undeniable result. Similarly, the gender revolution is sterilizing a growing number of people—even children—and we’re supposed to applaud. Beyond that, young people are repeatedly told not to bring children into the world because the earth can’t handle their carbon footprint. When it comes to progressive values and social policy, all roads lead to fewer babies.”
Delano Squires thinks the abandonment of the nuclear family is particularly harmful to the young. “Children who grow up in two-parent homes, or with their married biological parents, do better on a whole host of outcome indicators. They certainly tend to grow up in more economically stable environments, tend to go to college more, go to prison less. And on the flip side, father absence is associated with all types of negative social outcomes. We don’t often think about family formation as a civil rights issue. But I would challenge anyone to rethink that. Children are the new group who can claim that their rights are being violated when all of our family policies today focus on what adults want.”
Amy Hamilton points to multiple studies that demonstrate that children who live with unrelated adults are 40 times more likely to be abused, and 8 times more likely to die of maltreatment than children living with two biological parents. “We want the freedom to self define, and to self express. And children are always the first victims when adult sexual interests are placed at the forefront.”
Timothy Desper sees a strong connection between unhinged humanism and death by drugs. “Portland’s attitude toward illicit drugs is part of a larger ethos of radical autonomy—the idea that a person should be allowed to define his or her own reality free from outside influences like the law, moral systems, or community standards. Radical autonomy or ‘left libertarianism’ in political science parlance, extends to areas like physician-assisted suicide, sexual identity, and other radical chic.” Desper made these remarks in the context of the rapidly growing crisis of opioid deaths in Oregon (2019:280; 2020:472; 2021:738; 2022:956; 2023:1049).
Redefinitions of what it means to be human have always ended in catastrophe. In the French Revolution, it was such an urgent matter to establish liberté, égalité, & fraternité, the liberators guillotined over 15,000 people. Adolph Hitler was certain of what it meant to be a superior human: Aryan. His ordered world resulted in 50 million dead. Josef Stalin was a humanist, too, defining humans as a collective—individually unimportant—but glorious in the collective. According to David Satter, “If we add to [those killed in the Bolshevik revolution], the deaths caused by communist regimes that the Soviet Union created and supported—including those in Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam and Cambodia—the total number of victims is close to 100 million. That makes communism the greatest catastrophe in human history.”
Democrats don’t appear to have the militant inclinations of these groups—at least, not the backbone—though they nod approvingly over the abortions of the past, and they fight on a thousand fronts to make abortion easily available and easily accomplished. It’s hard to put a count to the loss of lives caused by drug addiction, family break-down, and sexual reimaginings, but the dangers of Democratic polyhumanism are already more than apparent.
I don’t think there is a Democratic conspiracy to destroy the United States, but the U.S. has enemies who appreciate the Democratic message (as long as it is contained to the Western countries), and who are glad to help propagate it. The idol of the Democrats is autonomy. Autonomy is difficult to give up, but it is a poison. It is the recipe of death.
Kamala Harris
Who is Kamala Harris, anyway? The Democrat’s nominee for President has been a smiling and confident face in recent weeks, providing relief for Democrats everywhere. The party broke ranks and put the gun to Joe’s head. No, he was not a George Washington-like patriot, stepping away from power for the sake of the nation. Joe had dug in his heels: “If the Lord Almighty came down and said, ‘Joe, get out of the race,’ I’d get out of the race. The Lord Almighty’s not coming down.” Apparently, the lord did come down, and in the form of the holy trinity, too. In a dark room, the shimmering figures of Nancy Pelosi, Barak Obama, and George Clooney spoke in chorus: “Joe, get out of the race”. Joe spitting nails and shrieking at heaven, hobbled back to the White House palliative care unit. The Democrats finally gave up on the lie that Joe was fine. Harris, grinning in the shadows, was summoned to come forth. The Democratic embrace of identity politics meant that Kamala Harris, fumbler in residence, was the only option.
Most Democrats are happy with the change, in spite of the fact that Harris was chosen, contrary to their rejection of her when she ran for President, and in spite of the fact that it was Biden they had chosen to run in the upcoming election. Seth Taylor commented, “In 2019 she ran competitively for the privilege of representing the Democrats as our presidential candidate, and was soundly rejected by the voters of her own party. Now, after three-plus years of lampooning her way through the vice presidency, and lying to the public about Mr. Biden’s mental acuity, we are supposed to allow the political elite to preselect her to compete for the highest office?”
Vice President Harris has been slippery since she was endorsed by President Biden to be his successor. She has given multiple speeches but has repeatedly refused to answer questions. This is partly due to politicking, which means talking much while saying little; partly due to her limited knowledge of politics; and partly due to the need to keep her leftist ideas in the background. Like Biden before her, she is being sold as a moderate and will be until election day. To a greater extent, she is being peddled on the basis that she is not Donald Trump, the proof of which is that she has a broad smile and is filled with “joy”.
Harris’ recent hints about moving towards the middle, such as her turnabout on fracking, cannot be believed. Her career has revealed her to be on the left side of a Democratic party that has, itself, veered sharply left over the past fifty years. Are we supposed to believe her slogan, “A New Way Forward,” when the most pressing problems the country is now experiencing are due to the Democratic Party that she has been at the center of? This is the woman who appeared on Ru Paul’s Drag Race Allstars, saying, “America’s freedoms are under attack, including the right to love whomever one chooses.” This is the woman who has decided that national economics will be righted for the ordinary citizen if we assign price controls. Economists of every stripe are throwing up their hands in dismay.
Kamala Harris has been a stooge for the leftish power brokers of the Democratic party for the past 3 1/2 years. She has shown clearly that she is willing to continue as the Democratic Party’s Chief Stooge. We do not need Kamala Harris; we do not need Tim Walz; and the country cannot afford the mindless policies of the Democratic Party.
What Happened to the Democrats?
There was a time when the fundamental divide between Republicans and Democrats was that Republicans championed discipline, achievement, individual responsibility, and property rights. Democrats emphasized human frailties, accounting for the fact that some people have poor health; some lose their jobs, due to market circumstances; some are not raised well; some are not given educational opportunities, etc. There was truth on both sides, and the result was the development of a system that attempted to address the concerns of both.
But then the 50s came along. Let’s just blame James Dean…then Elvis…then Timothy Leary…then the Vietnam War and the general revolt against all things “establishment”. Then came “Free love.” And then the Baby Boomers, the most entitled generation in American history, became the establishment, and the establishment began to look a lot like the anti-establishment Mark Slackmeyers of the 60s, with a serious case of arrested development.
America came to embrace the logic of the freedom implied in the Declaration of Independence. (Let’s pause at the Declaration for a moment.) This is the declaration that ignited the colonies, inspired a revolution, and claimed the establishment of the United States of America. After a short preamble the famous nonsense began: “We hold these truths to be self-evident…” The fact that the colonialist were writing in complaint against the king of Great Britain, and all who served at his command, makes it logically certain that the truths were not self-evident. The declaration continued, saying, “that all men are created equal”. Even assuming the signers consciously meant men, not women, they still did not believe what they wrote. One fifth of the population of the colonies was enslaved, and one third of the signers were slave holders, including the primary author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson. The writing continued, “…that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Most Americans still believe they are entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, even if they don’t believe in such a thing as a Creator. Removing the Creator from one’s assumptions only adds doubt to the Declaration’s dubious claims. The typical American’s idea of freedom is neither self-evident nor true. Freedom, even in a secular, pluralistic country, must recognize that the interests of the individual are important and the interests of society are important.
Toss a bunch of psychologically troubled, chemically addled philosophers and Darwinian scientific materialists into a hat, shake for a couple centuries, and you come up with the worldview of humanity that is prevalent today. It is a humanism that claims the right of individuals to divine truth for themselves. In other words, there are billions of truths, which is to say that truth never extends beyond one’s own skin. (This makes all the anger coming from the Left a great puzzle. If all are to make their own truths, there can be no objection to any truth others may devise. All truths, whether contrary or impossible, must be applauded.)
One implication of this humanist fairy tale is that people can also decide what they themselves are. A re-designing process has ignited in which people are covering themselves with tattoos, and piercing themselves in ways that make others cringe. They are setting aside natural sexual attractions for unnatural…or they are choosing both…or they are changing their minds from day-to-day. They are deciding that their bodies do not reflect their “authentic” selves and they are undergoing mutilations in hopes of correcting their bodies’ errors. This has left many, many in physical states that give the appearance of sexual change but are pseudo changes. Self-designing has also contributed to drug and alcohol abuse, as many find that drug-induced semi-consciousness is preferable to their real lives. Sadly, such escape strategies only diminish the quality of life for practitioners, and for those they love. The humanist encouragement of discontent has only lead to misery, mutilations, and death.
The new humanism is not only embraced, it is lobbied for in militant fashion. New humanists demand that their freedoms be affirmed, not only by governments, but by all individuals, and they demand that their freedoms be paid for by others. The applications of this thinking have largely been confined to “benefits” for minorities and emerging fringes but the impossibility of it becomes apparent when the entitlements for the few are made entitlements for the many. If it is my true fulfillment to marry a sow and to become sole owner of the Kansas City Chiefs, it is society’s responsibility to make it so.
The new humanism depends on humanism being of a benevolent sort. But this is not the nature of humanism. Soviet humanism, Nazi humanism, and Maoist humanism were particularly brutal against the kind of “rainbow” humanism that has sprung up in 21st century West. History has shown that humanism, by definition, is morally untethered, and the result has always been destruction, death, and totalitarianism. We’re not quite at the point of social disintegration in the West, but Democratic adoption of these extreme humanist concepts presents a clear threat to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Why have the Democrats adopted these strange, degenerative ideas? It appears to be nothing but a strategy to collect enough people to outnumber the Republicans. It is a means to power. If Republicanism is about free enterprise, property rights, hard work, and moral conservatism, Democrats, to have power, have seen the need to represent those who don’t fit the Republican model. The Democratic Party has become the grievance coalition. It is the party of the marginalized, the disenfranchised, the decidedly peculiar, the offended, the exploited, the victimized. Well, it’s not actually important to be any of these—it is only necessary to imagine one’s self as one of these, and the country has no shortage of people with self-serving imaginations. Nor is it necessary for any grievance to be current. People feel entitled to take offense for those with whom they identify, even if it means looking backwards hundreds of years. Who will pay for all these grievances? Everyone but the aggrieved, of course.
Democrats have come to imagine the federal government as the Robin Hood on the Hill. That is, it sees its role as taking from the unworthy rich and giving to the worthy poor. This is a good strategy come election time. But P.J.O’Rourke observed a few years ago that government spending looks better in speeches than it does in reality. “The American government will spend $4 trillion this year. There are an estimated 308.6 million Americans. We each get $12,956. Sure we mostly get it in the form of Sacramento light rail projects that don’t go anywhere except Sacramento, sugar beet price supports, contributions to the charity known as GM, Afghanistan troop surges, and interest payments on Chinese-owned T bills. We’d rather have cash. But, still, $12,956 isn’t bad.” Democrats have a way of stealing from the rich but losing the cash on the way to the distribution center.
The Democratic Party used to be liberal, which meant it believed in free speech and a free press and the free exchange of ideas. Those days are in the past. The Democratic Party likes to address itself as “progressive,” but its progress is in the wrong direction. They are the digressives, or the regressives. Democrats have no vision other than to be the party of Bread and Circuses, bribing the populace for votes. Words coming from Harris and Walz cannot be believed. Believe what they have done; see what they are doing. The Republican party is not as principled as it has been, and caving to the populist charismatic, Donald Trump, is evidence of the party’s weakness. But the Democratic Party is the party that’s all about virtue-signaling, even as it denies the possibility that virtue exists. It is a party with a plan: to get elected. After that it has no plan. It has no idea how to run a country; it just likes meddling. It will keep meddling in order to give the impression of progress.
Donald Trump is a nerve-wracking choice and, even though Kamala Harris is a more pleasant, normal human being, she is more of a cheerleader than a person of insight. In any case, she will be following orders, not leading. It will be the Democratic Party staying its course of running the country into the ground. To choose Donald Trump is to choose to have your ears assaulted on a regular basis. To choose the Democratic Party is to choose the degeneration of American society, to the great harm of the entire world.
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