Scratch a Progressive and a Totalitarian Bleeds

Leftist or Democrat could have been substituted for progressive in the title, but since President Obama prides himself on being a progressive it seemed the appropriate term. Whatever the appellation, this president and his party have demonstrated that despotism is in their political DNA. The president’s resort to executive orders when Congress won’t do his bidding is an ideal solution for a politician who finds the separation of powers irksome.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-N) wants to amend the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to control political speech. He would give Congress and state governments the right to regulate raising and spending money in political campaigns. Reid’s justification is that the Koch brothers and other conservative donors exert too much influence on the political process. The millions donated to Democrats by George Soros and big labor are not his concern.

Reid is simply continuing the IRS effort to curb political speech by targeting conservative organizations. But in this scandal du jour administration that is yesterday’s news. Harry Reid also demonstrated that in his universe truth is an outdated concept as in, “If you like your health insurance you can keep your health insurance.” Thus when asked if he regretted falsely claiming that Mitt Romney had not paid taxes for 10 years Reid’s reply was: “They lost the election didn’t they?”

But the attempt to silence political adversaries is not limited to Washington, D.C.

In Milwaukee, the Democrat city administration launched a series of secret investigations of Republican Governor Scott Walker’s supporters that culminated in October 3, 2013 raids by armed police on the homes of innocent citizens. Computers and other personal possessions were confiscated. They were ordered to stay silent about the raids and forbidden to contact their lawyers. But they did not stay silent and now, five years later, the whole disgraceful episode is getting the exposure it deserves. (See National Review, May 4, 2015.)

In Oregon, the Christian owners of “Sweet Cakes by Melissa” have been fined and their business shuttered after a same-sex couple filed a complaint against the proprietors for declining to bake a wedding cake. Anyone who follows the news knows this is not an isolated incident of prosecuting believers for denying services that are easily purchased elsewhere. Those who dare to dissent or criticize the pernicious social ideology of the Democrat Party must not only be silenced, they must be demonized and punished.

Should gay marriage be deemed constitutionally protected (now before the Supreme Court), attacks on religious liberty would intensify. When asked by Justice Alito whether a religious school that believed marriage was the union of husband and wife would lose their non-profit tax status, Obama’s Solicitor General answered: “It’s certainly going to be an issue. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that, Justice Alito. It is it is going to be an issue.”

At American Universities, almost totally subsidiaries of the far left, a rigidly enforced ideology replaces free exchange of information and ideas. Nonconforming speakers are barred from campuses; “trigger warnings” are required for any statements, films, books, or other communications that might upset students’ tender sensibilities; “free speech zones” are erected and regulated to confine suspect ideas; and “speech codes” are enforced.

According to Wikipedia, in the 1980s and 1990s, more than 350 public universities adopted “speech codes” regulating “discriminatory” speech by faculty and students. These codes have not fared well in the courts, where they are frequently overturned as violations of the First Amendment. But that hasn’t stopped academic totalitarians who, ironically, often claim the shield of academic freedom for their classrooms.

Then there is the Arizona State University course entitled “U.S. Race Theory & the Problem of Whiteness.” You didn’t know whiteness was a problem? Well, shame on you.

Political parties like corporations or other organizations have a culture. And the culture of the Democrat Party requires that its ideology and political goals by imposed on the rest of us. All of which brings up the events in Baltimore, Ferguson and other jurisdictions.

Our first black president came to office promising to unite the nation and improve life for poor blacks. Instead the nation is more divided, both politically and along racial lines, than at any time in recent history and economic conditions have deteriorated most for blacks. In the fourth quarter of 2014, the national white and Hispanic unemployment rates were each within 1 percentage point of pre-recession levels while the black unemployment rate was 2.4 percentage points higher than it was at the end of 2007. Further, the millions spent on social programs, before and since Obama, to help poor urban communities have had the opposite effect. Assistant Secretary of Labor and later U.S. Senator Daniel Moynihan warned in a 1965 report that federal “help” destroyed the black family and encouraged generational dependency.*

Today the Obama administration promulgates the rhetoric of victimization verbalized by the rioting black youths’ chants of “No justice, no peace” recorded on national television. President Obama’s buddy, Al Sharpton, coined the phrase.

As Daniel Henninger observed in a recent WSJ column:

…It was unmistakably clear that “no peace” was an implicit threat of civil unrest … Whenever groups gathered in large numbers to start the “no justice, no peace” demonstrations and listen to incitements against “the police” we would hear mayors, politicians, college presidents and American presidents say “they understood the anger.”

Henninger also observed:

“Al Sharpton never missed a beat Monday. With heavy rocks bouncing off the anti-riot gear shields of retreating police, he announced a May march from New York to Washington to publicize police violence against minorities. Naturally, he criticized the looters.”

Certainly police should not be immune from criticism or punishment for abusing the citizenry they are supposed to protect and serve. And if such is the case in Baltimore the guilty should be prosecuted. But the statistics do not match the furor. According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, the proportion of black suspects arrested by the police tends to match closely the proportion of offenders identified as black by victims. That doesn’t support the claim that the police are unfairly discriminating against the black population when they make arrests.

However, the narrative promulgated by men like Sharpton and supported by President Obama and Eric Holder, among others, could well result in a spreading conflagration. One does not have to wear tin foil headgear to be concerned about the possibility of an agenda.

Obama may have inadvertently signaled what lies ahead when, speaking about the Baltimore riots, he complained, “I can’t federalize every police force in the country and force them to retrain.” That remark, ominously, was followed by Al Sharpton’s demand: “The Justice Department needs to take over policing in this country….In the 20th century, they had to fight states’ rights to get the right to vote. We’re going to have to fight states’ rights in terms of closing down police cases.” Did Sharpton just enunciate the argument that will be echoed by the Obama administration and its acolytes in the not too distant future?

To complete Obama’s transformation of America in the two years left in his term will require an accelerated effort beyond amending constitutional protections and weakening the separation of powers. Some will recall that Obama denied multiple times that he had the authority to take executive action on immigration and then he did exactly that in November of 2014. Others may remember the advice proffered by Obama’s former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel:

“You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that is it is an opportunity to do things you couldn’t do before.”

*”The Negro Family: The Case For National Action.”