December 16, 2023
Democrats of all stripes have made a longstanding practice of challenging conservatives to “denounce” any hint of illiberalism, even if the charge is overhyped. So now that pro-Hamas Progressives have abandoned their charade of being über-cool liberals, will mainstream Democrats finally denounce harmful, hate-filled Progressive policies?
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While most moderate Democrats are professed liberals, most, albeit not all, conservatives are also liberal, as oxymoronic as that may sound. Indeed, conservatives overwhelmingly support Israel, a traditionally liberal stance in support of a long-oppressed population.
Our country was born as an Enlightenment-inspired liberal democracy. Free speech, free markets, concern for the common man, respect for individual autonomy, and toleration of belief are its hallmarks, embraced today most ardently by self-identified conservatives, who seek to conserve this true liberalism.
Democrats, however, have been skillful at exploiting chinks in conservative armor, one example being the remarks of President Trump, until recently a lifelong Democrat, regarding the 2017 altercation in Charlottesville. But in so doing, they engage in projection, giving the far more illiberal, authoritarian Progressives a hall pass.
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After Hamas slaughtered civilian Israelis, and by plan systemically raped helpless women, Progressives were forced to rip off their pseudo-liberal masks and openly support forces who subjugate women, kill gays, seek racist ethnic cleansing, and impose of sharia law.
Any intelligent, moderately liberal Democrat, thus awakened, should now re-examine the cancerous Progressive movement, taking serious measures to, yes, denounce Progressive policies. He should do so more fervently than he in the past denounced the slightest Trumpian dereliction, real or imagined, none of which ever sank to current Progressive depths.
Let us examine Progressive positions that are anything but liberal. Starting with climate alarmism, regardless of the amount of manmade warming that might exist as a result of carbon dioxide, what does not appear questionable is that the cost/benefit analysis of supposed remedies strongly suggests that our present technologies offer only debilitating costs with but slight benefit.
What is the Progressive response to this clear “science,” documented by Obama climate czar Steven Koonin and world-renowned Danish climate scientist Bjorn Lomborg? First, it is to abolish all fossil fuels, even though there is no viable substitute in sight. More significantly, Progressives seek to banish all discussion of the science underlying questions of remedy. Former Biden national climate adviser and Obama EPA administrator Gina McCarthy strenuously sought to ban any discussion of cost and benefits, on the apparent theory that such only delays climate progress. Nothing could be more unscientific and illiberal about this stance. Even climate scientists in authoritarian China engage in this important discussion, far more freely than any official in the Progressive Biden administration.
How do Progressives seek to educate the urban poor? By fighting any attempts to give poor urban minorities vouchers and charter schools. Again, under Progressive policy, liberalism gives way to authoritarian, big-union rule, harming the common person.
In a textbook case of projection, the current Progressive fad is to warn that a re-elected Donald Trump would be a “dictator.” Yet these same Progressives want to ban gas stoves, heating systems, and leaf-blowers; consumption of meat; internal combustion engines; and fuel-based fertilizers, the last of which triples crop yields for poor populations. Progressives seek these bans by Deep State regulation, without democratic input. So exactly who is it that is acting dictatorially?
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As Iran bans gays, subjugates women, and threatens nuclear annihilation, Progressives such as secretary of state Antony Blinken and his boyhood chum, special Iran envoy Rob Malley, have been feverishly working to help Iran achieve Mideast hegemony, a project only partially submerged during the current Hamas-Israel conflict.
Rhetorically, Progressives, while railing against “hate” speech, not only encourage antisemitism, but also demonize a broad swath of the middle-class white population, represented to be “MAGA” adherents, the eighty million of whom are claimed by Progressives to be not just wrong, but evil. Their electoral problem is that, increasingly, hardworking blacks and Hispanics see that attacks on striving white people are also attacks on their own striving improvement.
There has been no reported incident wherein conservatives sought to ban political speakers, violently or otherwise. But vehemently harassing and effectively banning conservative speakers, including violently, has been a proudly Progressive tactic in recent years.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a classic liberal, asked us to judge individuals by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Judging individuals by the color of their skin, however, is the essence of the modern Progressive project. All whites, including the long-beleaguered Jewish population, are now considered oppressors under Progressive doctrine. Meanwhile, Progressive policies have driven urban populations into a doom loop of crime, inflation, and poverty.
Progressive prosecutors do not prosecute. Most murder victims are inner-city residents. The Progressive Inflation Reduction Act was wildly inflationary, cruelly taxing those who can afford rising prices the least. Progressives rail against “millionaires and billionaires”, even though many have achieved that status themselves, while their policies harm the poor and the middle class.
In summary, Progressives are pushing society back into a pre-Enlightenment era, where liberal toleration is absent; tribal hatreds prevail; ideological authoritarians rule; and a select political class, as in all socialist-style arrangements, gets wealthy from taxes imposed on the unprivileged masses. Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders seem to have done well on government salaries.
Intelligent mainstream liberal Democrats realize this disturbing regression but also understand that Democrats cannot get elected without the support of Progressives. So the question is stark: will moderate Democrats choose their liberal principles or Progressive power? The fate of American society depends upon the answer.
John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism and The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened.
Image: Chris Dodds via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.
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