America Faces No Greater Threat Than Joe Biden and the Democrat Party. Their Assault to Our Borders Is As Great As Their Assault to Free Speech and Free Elections
Saturday, June 13, 2020
DEMOCRAT PARTY MAYHEM IN AMERICA
Stereotyping for Thee, But Not for Me: The Lawless States of America
Mad Max was a movie franchise set in post-apocalyptic Australia. The survivors, in the outback, were terrorized by a psychotic, violent bunch of motorcycle gangs. The protagonist, a cop named Max, and his loosely formed force of police, called the Bronze, tried to stop them. In the process, Max’s partner was burned alive and his wife and child murdered. It is not a pleasant place or time to be alive.
Are we there yet?
Finally, police chiefs and calmer heads are attempting a discussion on race relations that doesn’t instantaneously elicit cries of “racism.” Almost unanimously, the reactions to the police involved in the George Floyd death have been of revulsion and condemnation. But voices are now being raised that fairly assert that the rogue actions of a few police thugs do not represent the vast numbers of honorable police officers comprising the thin blue line. These are the men and women who daily risk their lives with courage and dignity, often for scant pay. Some are also finally addressing the fact that Officer Derek Chauvin and George Floyd knew each other, meaning, a factor other than race might have been motive.
What other group would accept this type of stereotypical scorn. Most blacks do not riot and loot; they respect the police and appreciate their protection. Most immigrants, legal or otherwise, seek America as a haven and a chance for a better life; they do not drive while under the influence and they don’t rape and murder.
Regardless of revisionist historians, and the madness and mayhem we have witnessed over the past dreadful days, America was born to defy royalty and state-mandated religion. Our forefathers, imperfect as they may have been, fought with their lives to avoid kneeling to royalty. No bowing and bending one’s body and head before Samurai warriors, who might or might not have chopped it off. No fearful bowing or curtseying before kings and queens. No subservient raising of arms to a dictator who rules by personal fiat and private armed security guards, reinforced by a national police force.
What athletes, actors, educators, most press and celebrities mouthing off about this don’t get is that the rest of us don’t want to pay to attend a sporting event, or spend time watching an awards show whose participants hijack it to make a political statement or gesture. Find another platform and do it on your own time. Kneel all you want, but not when the audience is captive. The orchestrated show of Democrat-elected representatives, culturally misappropriating African tribal garb and kneeling, looked like a Saturday Night Live skit.
Between the pandemic shutdowns and the mass looting and arson, the rest of us, for the past three months have had many legal rights ripped from our arms, mostly in Democrat-run cities and states. The protests have erupted in foreign cities; friendly and enemy states tsk-tsk or mock us. And, it was all too easy. Are we not better than this?
The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” In an irony of all ironies, American colleges and universities have shut down conservative free speech and any voice that objects to their culture of microaggressions and victimology. If a conservative speaker isn’t cancelled, students with impunity shout them off stage. Unfortunately, this thuggish behavior has spilled over like a cancer into the arts and press. Political pundits, news editors and celebrities who oppose the extreme left are subject to job loss, electronic trolling, and public shaming. The mass looting, arson, violence, and mayhem we have just witnessed, most of which has gone unpunished, gives lie to right to peaceable assembly, or any protection when protest is not peaceable.
The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides: “… the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Countless cities and governors postponed acceptance of applications for a permit to buy a gun, banned certain sales of guns and ammunition, somehow relating their mandates as pertinent to flattening the curve of the Wuhan virus – during a time when lawful citizens felt unprotected and feared for their safety and lives. Concomitantly, the elected officials unilaterally eliminated this right had their own armed security guards.
The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States provides that: “In all criminal prosecutions an accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury in the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed…” With certain court systems closed by government edict for three to six months, this right is not being abided.
The Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Section 1 provides “…nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of the law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The lawful residents in many states, during the looting, arson and physical attacks that elected officials allowed to continue without much pushback, saw their property seized and destroyed and their lives and livelihood threatened. Are the thugs who committed the mass destruction going to be apprehended and punished? Will the harm to their victims be compensated? While many localities had inflicted severe business shutdowns, judicial system closures, primary election changes, and stay-at-home mandates, thousands upon thousands of rioters roamed the streets without protective gear, social distancing, or fear of recourse. Clearly the banal #AloneTogether meme didn’t apply to them, and the laws were not evenly enforced.
Socialism is having its moment. In Washington, the Seattle police have removed barriers in an area set up during the worst of the riots, and the affected street closures repurposed into an “autonomous zone.” What was once the Seattle Police Department is now the Seattle People Department – with all public services including garbage removal run by the people. In D.C., there are calls for the removal of the statues of Washington, Jefferson, and Columbus – the latter of whose statues have been beheaded and defaced in certain cities. We have seen this movie before – usually, it doesn’t end well.
‘1. How does the city sit solitary that was full of people! How she is become as a widow! She that was
great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how she is become tributary.
2. She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks; she hath none to comfort her
among all her lovers; all her friends have dealt treacherously with her they are become her enemies…
Book of Lamentations – poetic laments for the destruction
casually refused, in an article about police killings, to place the blame anywhere), and we know it wasn't, because the police killedabout 19 unarmed black males in 2017, and black people killed about 2,627 — a difference of over a hundred times. In fact, in 2018, black people killed about 2,600 black people, and whites in general — all of us, despite being 60% of the populace — killed only 234, more than ten times fewer. The greatest danger to black people in America today is always other black people. Black lives matter to Black Lives Matter only when it gives them an excuse to attack white people.
Black Lives Matter Anti-Cop Protests Part of Agenda Seeking Socialist Revolution
The nationwide push led by Black Lives Matter to defund the police is part of a larger radical agenda spelled out on the group’s own manifesto that openly seeks no less than a revolution to topple the U.S. capitalist system and its replacement with a socialist-style government replete with universal income, collective ownership, and the redistribution of wealth.
Amid BLM’s role in the protest movement spotlighting serious and legitimate questions about George Floyd’s death, it is instructive to review the BLM umbrella charter, which also demands the abolishment of Voter ID laws that protect against voter fraud and supports the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement targeting Israel. It wants a lifetime of free education for “all Black people (including undocumented and currently and formerly incarcerated people).”
“Black people will never achieve liberation under the current racialized capitalist system. … The white supremacist, imperialistic, patriarchal systems needs not reform but radical transformation. … We must remake the current U.S. political system in order to create a real democracy where Black people and all marginalized people can effectively exercise full political power.” reads the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL) Vision for Black Lives Policy Platform
After a year-long process of convening local and national groups and only three months before the 2016 elections, the M4BL group released its radical platform which states: “We recognize that some of the demands in this document will not happen today. But we also recognize that they are necessary for our liberation.”
The platform lays out “six core planks” concerning criminal justice, reparations, investment and divestment, economic justice, community control, and political power. Arguing that “Black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system,” some of the platform’s radical demands include (below are exact quotes):
Remaking of the current U.S. political system in order to create a real democracy where Black people and all marginalized people can effectively exercise full political power
An end to white supremacy, imperialism and capitalism
Democratic control over how resources are preserved, used and distributed and do so while honoring and respecting the rights of our Indigenous family
Direct democratic community control of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, ensuring that communities most harmed by destructive policing have the power to hire and fire officers, determine disciplinary action, control budgets and policies, and subpoena relevant agency information
The platformadvocates including the immediate release of “all political prisoners,” eliminating the bail system, and restoration of voting capabilities for not only released convicted felons by criminals who are inside prison.
On the economy, the charter reads like a communist treatise, calling for a “Universal Basic Income,” universal healthcare, collective ownership of property, reparations for slavery, and a “progressive restructuring of tax codes ensure a radical and sustainable redistribution of wealth.”
The charter wants to slash military spending by 50%, end all U.S. aid to Israel and support legislation promoting the BDS Movement against the Jewish state.
Implementation
The platform is expected to be implemented over a five-year span called Project 2024: Black Power Rising, which the group claims it can achieve through strategies such as capturing clear electoral victories; recruiting electoral strategists; challenging the existence of the electoral college; engaging in local races that position them to govern; targeting congressional races to shift the balance of power federally; advising key elected officials to advance their agenda; and identifying, recruiting, and training candidates.
The group also claims it intends to align the political left across issues centered on racism and become its leading force using such Saul Alinsky-style community organizing tactics “building and engaging majorities ready to organize, resist, vote, and build alternatives.”
The charter platform ideas have been gaining momentum relatively quickly in recent days.
In a recent op-ed in USA Today, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden echoed some of the movement’s demands despite claiming to be against completely defunding the police.
Under the title “We must urgently root out systemic racism, from policing to housing to opportunity,” Biden claims that “racism has been a fixture in our society for hundreds of years,” and states his intention to undo systemic economic racism.
He proclaimed:
“From the moment I launched my campaign, I have said that we are in the battle for the soul of this nation. We know the nation we want to be. Now we have to deliver on this moment to achieve fundamental changes that address racial inequalities and white supremacy in our country. We need to root out systemic racism across our laws and institutions, and we need to make sure black Americans have a real shot to get ahead.”
Biden spoke of institutional violence and daily injustices warranting the directing of resources to actively undo the negative effect systemic racism has had on opportunities for black Americans. He goes on to support investing in historically underfunded and historically black colleges and universities, tribal colleges and universities and minority-serving institutions. He also states that the abuse of police power must be addressed (though he does not support defunding police). “I’m ready to do that work, starting on Day One,” he concluded.
Biden & Sanders unity task forces
Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders recently unveiled Unity Task Forces in an attempt to bridge policy divides and seek agreements between the two Democratic camps. The task forces, which were first announced last month as Sanders endorsed Biden, are to serve as a symbol of unity between Sanders and Biden and an attempt to avoid a replay of the 2016 general election, when divisions in the party were on full display.
The task forces intend to meet in advance of August’s Democratic convention to create recommendations for the Democratic National Committee’s Platform Committee as well as for the Biden campaign.
The panels will explore possible policy initiatives in six areas: climate change, criminal justice reform, economy, education, healthcare, and immigration. Many of the policy initiatives closely resemble M4BL’s demands.
Sanders commended Biden for working together and unifying the party “in a transformational and progressive direction.” Sanders also stressed that “the Democratic Party must think big, act boldly, and fight to change the direction of this country….”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive firebrand , was named as a co-chair on the climate change panel. Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday addressed the controversy over the widespread call to defund the police, warning the message should not be repackaged “to make it palatable for largely affluent, white suburban ‘swing’ voters.”
She also claimed that “to defund means that Black & Brown communities are asking for the same budget priorities that White communities have already created for themselves.”
Reuters spoke with members of the unity task force. Several people serving on “unity” task forces set up by Biden and Sanders told Reuters that they support shifting funding from policing to community services. “Everyone recognizes the centuries of systemic oppression and white supremacy and the fundamental failure of the criminal justice system,” said Linn County, Iowa, Supervisor Stacey Walker, a member of Biden’s criminal justice policy task force though not claiming to speak on its behalf. “If that doesn’t open up a new political opportunity for sweeping reform, then I don’t know what will.”
Varshini Prakash, executive director of the environmental group Sunrise Movement and a member of Biden’s task force on climate change said it was less important for Biden to carry a “cardboard sign saying ‘Defund the Police'” and more important for him to “articulate a real transformational vision.. .beyond policing and incarceration.”
In another move to utilize current events to make radical changes this coming election, Rev. Al Sharpton recently announced a Washington rally which is planned for Aug. 28, the anniversary of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. “It gives you a push into November, not in a partisan way [but in terms of] protecting the vote, because we’ve got to educate people on mail-in voting. We’ve got to educate people in terms of turnout,” Sharpton said. “In order to change laws, you’ve got to impact lawmakers and they get elected in November.” He claimed that George Floyd’s family members will lead the march.
When a movement says, “silence is violence,” it is no longer democratic, but a totalitarian movement that opposes the very essence of choice -- the right to be apolitical.
Mass movements with ostensible democratic goals start out toward benign change, but their successes only feed a hunger for greater political transformation.
Left to the streets, that hunger is attracted to the extremes as the extremists are attracted to it.
When the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, who has passionately sided with the opponents of police brutality, is heckled out of a demonstration because he refuses to commit to the mob’s demand to defund the police, that is shoving someone into the theater of the absurd.
In the world of realpolitik, you build coalitions where you can find them. In street theater, you ignore political reality to shove an important ally away.
The demonstrations over the horrific death of George Floyd at the hands of a police officer have descended into the absurd. Peaceful demonstrations, during the day, have been amplified by dysfunctional violence at night.
How is the quest for racial justice helped by looting a department store or burning out a black-owned restaurant already teetering on the verge of collapse, having been closed by the pandemic?
At some point, the rioters and looters will go home, leaving in their wake the burned-out rubble belonging to the lower black bourgeoise.
These black businesses will never reopen because the future insurance premiums will be too high. Already, there are complaints that the marauders on Chicago’s southside have created food deserts with vandalized groceries that no longer can operate.
Among the most important functions of breaking the barriers of de jure discrimination was the creation of a viable black middle class.
The proponents of civil rights legislation knew that social stability required the integration of the African-American community into America’s socioeconomic mainstream.
Now caught between the pandemic and the senseless violence and looting, some of that integration will be undone. The hard-fought victories of the 1960s that led to a growing black middle class are going up in flames.
Who benefits? Certainly not those who are peaceably assembling for equality under the law. Not the black communities! In this orgy of violence, the only possible beneficiaries are those who seek to destabilize society and bring down the social order around them.
The vulgar Marxists still see revolution as coming from a greater immiseration of people on the bottom.
Create economic misery and hardship and people will revolt is their belief. Uproot the struggling black bourgeoise, and you have more alienated fodder for the streets.
The struggle is no longer about George Floyd but about the destruction of society. George Floyd is the vehicle to reach a different outcome than one of social justice -- nothing less than a societal transformation, a totalitarian utopia where silence is violence, and all are told what not to be silent about.
When silence is violence, there is no room for dissent.
William Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell University, learned that. Jacobson’s blog, Legal Insurrection, is critical of Black Lives Matter, not the concept, but the organization.
Jacobson also dissects the false narrative about the shooting of Michael Brown that gave impetus to the goals of BLM.
Petitions have been circulated to get Jacobson fired because some people do not like the opinions he posts on his blog.
In a world where violence is silence, how do you say, I do not want to sign that petition? Few would manifest such courage.
So, Jacobson, like many who do not buy into the views of BLM, are being accused of having a different opinion, and their termination is being sought.
This is the mindset of totalitarian democracy, the imposition of values and opinions by those on a messianic quest that leaves no room for individual rights or individual deviation.
Silence is not violence. In a true democracy, with respect for individual rights, the minority is guaranteed the right to a different opinion and even no opinion.
In the emotional aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, it appears that some would sacrifice our tradition of liberty for a mindless conformity while destroying the black middle class.
This is a two-front war on economic integration and freedom of thought.
We let it continue at our own peril.
Abraham H. Miller is an emeritus professor of political science, University of Cincinnati, and a distinguished fellow with the Hyam Salomon Center. His work on the urban riots of the 1960s won a Pi Sigma Alpha Award from the Western Political Science Association.
The proponents of civil rights legislation knew that social stability required the integration of the African-American community into America’s socioeconomic mainstream.
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