In a recent article, Victor David Hanson asks: “Why is the left suddenly worried about the end of Democracy? What is behind the recent pessimistic appraisals of democracy’s future from Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Brian Williams, and other elite intellectuals and media personalities?”
His answer is “that the left expects to lose power over the next two years….” Is he right or is the left’s pessimistic appraisals more of a verbal ploy to suggest they are concerned about our nation when in actuality they are participating in an attempt to enact a coup against our beloved Republic?
I think my answer is more realistic. The Left is trying to overwhelm and subvert Constitutional checks and balances, basic ideas of fairness, historical understandings of things like voter rights and equality of opportunity (which is not and should never be equality of outcomes), law and order, the public will in protecting against theft and bodily harm, and responsible conduct as the sign of a good citizen.
In the so-called Build Back Better (“BBB”) legislation, the Leftist wants to double the size of the IRS by adding 86,000 agents to weaponize the agency as an instrument of public intimidation such as used during Obama’s reign. The doubling of the IRS I would propose is a giant step towards enacting the surveillance state.
Even certain conservative voices that oppose this expansion fail to perceive the agenda behind this legislation, choosing instead to focus on the cost, which in itself will be devastating to our economy. However, the cost-benefit objectors do not understand the more extreme implications of such an expansion.
In October of last year, Senator John Thune of South Dekota pointed out that more stringent oversight by IRS would overwhelmingly impact those who earned $100,000 a year or less, calling it an oppressive shakedown. And shakedown is right. This provision in the BBB would extend police power of the federal government exponentially.
Since the vast expansion of federal authority began with Pres. Woodrow Wilson and FDR, federal agencies and bureaucracies attract generations of people who see their very jobs as more beholden to Democrats than to Republicans. Thus, being the basis of their livelihoods, the federal bureaucracy remains an entrenched bastion of Democratic support despite changes in legislative or executive authority. Whether we call it the bureaucratic state or the deep state, common sense would dictate that its inherent allegiance is to the Democratic Party which spawned this ever-growing, ever-more entrenched apparatus that has become a “branch” of our government.
The Dept. of Justice now alerts us to the threat of domestic terrorism that may be operating or at least burgeoning in the expression of parents at school board meetings protesting critical race theory and anti-family sexual agendas across the land. This attempt to, at the very least, stigmatize those parents who speak out is more than a nuisance and unwanted presentation. It is belligerent and harassing of parents and a denigration of the First Amendment.
Democrats are no longer willing to live with a tension between big government and the rights of states and individuals, but to enforce federal power as decisive in that tension and thereby sabotage the very idea of individual responsibility as an end in itself, which understanding is the basis of a free society based on natural rights.
Sources: Do Democrats Want to Build Back Better or Do They Want a Coup” by Jeffrey Ludwig; Why is the Left Suddenly Worried About End of Democracy? by Victor David Hanson, MSN News; Build Back Better Would Build a Bigger, But Not Better, IRS Bureaucracy by Preston Brashaw, Heritage Foundation; Democrats Propose an Unprecedented IRS Shakedown of Americans’ Financial Transactions by Senator John Thune, Press Release; Universal PreSchool and Affordable Child Care: What Survives in Biden’s spending Bill by Karen D’Souza, EdSource
