Defining America’s Democrat

by

Gadfly

Announcing her candidacy for President of the United States on Sunday, United States Senator Kamala Harris (Democrat, California) claimed, "We are here because the American dream and our American democracy are under attack and on the line like never before. And we are here at this moment in time because we must answer a fundamental question: Who are we, who are we as Americans?" she said. "So, let’s answer that question to the world. To each other. Right here. Right now. America, we are better than this."

Harris’s assertions are slogans, reminiscent of the slogans heaped upon a non-discerning public by communist propagandists in the early part of the 20th century.  While these slogans emphasize a political enemy to justify a class struggle (oppressed identity groups versus a greedy 1%), Harris and her leftist cohort also employ euphemisms to disguise ugliness (same sex unions instead of mutual sodomy, reproductive rights instead of genocide of unwanted children).

What is the American dream?  How is the American dream under attack?  What is American democracy?  What is an American Democrat?

 

Despite her sloganeering, Harris is right that we must answer these questions.  Unfortunately, the “truth” can be debatable.  After all, when Jesus was handed over for crucifixion by members of the Sanhedrin, even Pontius Pilate pondered, “Quid est veritas?” (“What is truth?”; John 18:38).  The significance of this biblical passage is that Jesus was the witness to truth and was rejected.  This behavior reflects the current progressive lens that focuses on the frame (i.e., the narrative) and only acknowledges facts if they fit the frame.  Modern Pilates still believe the “hands up, don’t shoot” meme from the Ferguson, Missouri episode; and more recently, that Justice Kavanaugh remains guilty despite an uncorroborated allegation against actual evidence to the contrary.  To progressives, like their Marxist cohort and Sanhedrin, facts don’t matter when the frame is more important.

 

Douglas Hyde even admitted this framing imperative in his autobiography, I Believed:  The Autobiography of a Former British Communist:

But invariably when I tried to get people actually into the Party I came up against the deeply-entrenched nonconformity of the North Wales workers.  I searched for ways of “breaking through,” believing that its hold was mainly an emotional one and calculating that if I could once get recruitment to the Party started it would quickly grow.

Then, in line with Lenin’s words, “morality is subordinate to the class struggle,” I thought of a way of getting them on their own ground.  I was, in theory at least, still a lay preacher.  I would exercise my right to preach, so paving the way for Party recruitment and at the same time obtaining an audience for the message which I burned to get across” (1952, pp. 46-47).

How is Hyde’s experience similar to Senator Harris’ tactic?  Without defining the American dream and how it is under attack, Senator Harris employed a “virtue signal” when she said: “America, we are better than this.”  Douglas Hyde attempted a “virtue signal” through his “preaching experience” to convince Brits that they were better than their capitalist counterparts. Here is another excerpt:

  As I looked down on row upon row of well-fed, smug faces, I felt that the ragged, desperate men marching on the capital might have belonged to a land a thousand miles away.  I felt angry and contemptuous, and made no attempt to conceal my feelings.  On the spur of the moment I recited to them some verses of Joe Corry, the rebel poet, which compared the unemployed agitator with “one named Christ two thousand years ago,” and which had some harsh things to say about the bankers, parsons and police who were His enemies.

As I recited the poem the faces before me became less blank.  But at its end a number of people got up and went out.  I announced the last hymn.  By the time it was finished the chapel was almost empty” (p. 47).

Unlike Hyde, Senator Harris obviously made her presidential announcement to a friendly group:  that is, Americans who agree with her that the American dream is under attack.  How do we know if it is under attack?

What is the American Dream?

 

            The American dream has evolved over time.  Some historians might position the first iteration on November 11, 1620 when the Mayflower Compact was signed aboard the Mayflower while anchored in Provincetown Harbor near Cape Cod, Massachusetts.  The intent was very clear:

Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the first Colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; Do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually, in the Presence of God and one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof do enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions, and Officers, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general Good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due Submission and Obedience.

In other words, the dream included advancing the glory of God and the Christian faith for a unified, civil body politic defined by a system of laws and for the general good of the colony.  Subsequent founding documents such as the Articles of Confederation, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution reinforce this original intent.

A second iteration of the American dream had its political philosophy seed planted in 1789.  The year 1789 witnessed two major political philosophies.  In America, the Bill of Rights were ratified, culminating a political philosophy known as classical liberalism:  individual liberty, private property, limited government, and a free market grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.  The Constitution, ratified in 1787, combined with the Bill of Rights ratified in 1789, was designed to protect the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness endowed by a Creator.

 

But, one might say equality is one of those inalienable rights.  Equality is a condition, a given.  Once created, all men (and women) are then endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.  Conditions of inequality are then created by humankind, either through personal choice or through coercion.  Justice allows inequality based on personal choice.  Injustice results from coercion.  The left’s weapon of social justice is a euphemism for coercion.  Unfortunately, even Christian denominations have been coopted into this practice because they conflate charity with social justice.  This discussion in equality and inequality is an important segue to the other political philosophy spawned in 1789.

The other political philosophy, socialism, was spawned by the French Revolution. As societies were evolving from agrarian to industrial economies, concepts such as labor and property became central to an emerging construct called capitalism.  Socialist theories began to suggest that the proletariat (laborers) were oppressed by the bourgeoisie (capitalists:  owners of factories, banks, etc.).  They called this a class struggle.  It was in 1848 that Marx and Engels published their Manifesto of the Communist Party, which was all about “liberating the oppressed” in a revolution by the proletariat to transfer ownership of capital (private property, factories, banks, etc.) to common ownership of the people or to the state (similar to what recently happened in Venezuela).  Marx and Engels preached socialism was the mere transition from capitalism to communism and religion was a threat to this development.  In the 20^th century, atheistic communism led to brutal regimes in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, North Korea, and other countries.  Millions died.  Do Americans who claim to be socialists really understand what socialism is all about?

How did socialism infiltrate America?  One possibility is that it was advanced by different names: “liberalism” and “progressivism.”  Liberalism in this case was a different form from classical liberalism.  Modern liberalism swung to the left and delved into the social dimension.  Conversions to this political ideology can be seductive.  As Bella Dodd (a former American communist and member of the National Committee) explains in her book, School of Darkness, it emphasized “love of humanity, a vision of a better society, and wider social justice” (a quote from the back cover of School of Darkness).  When Dodd discovered how vacuous its promises were and how brutal and immoral its tactics, she tried to leave the Party but was refused.  On June 17, 1949, the Associated Press called her, saying “We have received a statement from the Communist Party announcing your expulsion from membership.  It says here that you are anti-Negro, anti-Puerto Rican, anti-Semitic, anti-labor, and defender of a landlord.  Have you any statement to make?” (p. 220). Stunned, she had no comment.  The next day the story was printed in all the New York papers.  The recent New York Times article “outing” Representative Steve King (he should have known he was walking into an ambush) had a similar fragrance and has apparently gotten away with it.  While Democrats were totally silent on the blatant propaganda about the Covington High School episode, Republicans were quick to throw King under the bus and in the process further embolden the left’s future propaganda.

Progressivism has been more seductive and insidious.  The father of American progressivism is Herbert Croly, whose book The Promise of American Life, even impressed Theodore Roosevelt as evidenced by his “Square Deal” legislative program.

 

Most “progressives” I know claim they are for progress.  What they will not admit, possibly because they ignore or are oblivious to this notion, is that the progressive movement is coercive in advancing values toward a future undefined utopia:  hope and change is an example.  Progressive elites tell a sovereign American people that life can and must be better, even though they live in the most prosperous nation in the history of humankind. And change?  From what to what?  Answers here are irrelevant.  What matters is that the non-discerning take their word for it.  So, for progressives, such as Kamala Harris, their idea of the America dream is some future utopian state that they, the political elite, guide us toward.  In their mind, the effort to get us there is being blocked, or in their mind, attacked by conservatives or Republicans.  In their mind, Republicans are “unAmerican” and “unpatriotic” because they still respect the thinking and foundational documents that created America’s Constitutional Republic.

 

Interestingly, Douglas Hyde explained how he indoctrinated Brits to become members of the Communist Party. Here is an excerpt:

The third lesson was entitled: “England, whose England?”

The aim of the lesson was to show that although men, women and children were being called on at the moment to die for Britain, it was not their Britain in any case.  I examined the distribution of wealth and gave a long explanation of the Marxist definition of the State as an instrument of coercion on behalf of the ruling class.  From this the lesson was drawn that the first thing a revolutionary working-class must do is to seize that instrument and use it for the coercion of the erstwhile rulers” (I Believed; pp. 76-77).

Unless the left-wing socialists (progressives, modern liberals) are successful in imposing their version of the American dream, in today’s America the rulers are the citizens, as in the first three words to the Preamble to our Constitution: “We the People.”  Today’s American dream still believes in the rule of law, not the rule of men.

         

How Is the American Dream under Attack?

To the left, their progressive vision of the American dream is under attack.  Consistent with Marxism, it is important to convince people that they are involved in a “class struggle.”  Who are the classes?  Blacks, women, the LGBTQ alphabet, illegal aliens, and so forth, against the greedy top 1%.  The left’s political elite promise to liberate the oppressed through redistribution of wealth as a form of social justice.  This was Marx and Engel’s promise in achieving communism.  This is the left’s vision of the American dream.  When an individual argues for legal immigration, he is accused of being anti-immigration or a xenophobe and thus an attacker of the American dream.  When an individual argues for the sacredness of life in a mother’s womb, he is a misogynist an oppressor of a woman’s reproductive rights, and thus an attacker of the American dream.  When one believes marriage is between a man and a woman, he’s a homophobe, and thus an attacker of the American dream.  When one expresses respect for the nation’s Founders and Framers, he’s a racist because they were white men, and thus an attacker of the American dream.

Today’s Democrat would consider President Kennedy’s aphorism (October 3, 1963), “a rising tide raises all boats,” as anathema to advancing the class struggle narrative.  If the old American dream was so ugly, then why is America the most peaceful and prosperous nation in the history of human kind?  Why do so many storm our borders to come to America?

A blatant example of the left’s obedience to Lenin’s maxim, “morality is subordinate to the class struggle,” is their passion for sanctuary cities (and now the sanctuary state of California) while also promoting “reproductive rights.”  The irony here is that people who chose to break the law are protected by the same individuals who support the murder of children who made no choice.  Talk about slogans.  Reproductive rights?  You mean the right to reproduce?  How does abortion fit into this notion?  And of all the sanctuaries that protect the human being, is not a mother’s womb the most sacred?

So, what is the left’s strategy to achieve their version of the American dream?  By updating Lenin’s maxim to “the class struggle is morality,” they are pushing for a popular democracy, where majority rule (shaped and guided by political elite) dictates the values for America.  This also explains how Speaker of the House Pelosi seems to get away with calling President Trump’s border wall immoral because it feeds into the left’s mantle of leadership in liberating the oppressed (except for the unborn).

 

Our old white male Framers wrote about the dangers of popular democracy (and its inevitable factions as currently manifested in the various identity groups celebrated by the left) in the Federalist Papers.  Tocqueville even wrote about the inevitable despotism and tyranny of democracy in his book Democracy in America.  Since the old white males were privileged, the left demands that the ideas and institutions they bequeathed upon us must be destroyed.

   

What is American Democracy?

Till around the 1960s, America was a classical liberal democracy, protected by a viable Constitutional Republic.  As noted political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote in The End of History and the Last Man, it was liberal democracy that defeated the threat of communism and fascism, two siblings of tyranny born of the same mother:  socialism.  His thesis was that the contest between competing political philosophies was over:  liberal democracy was a superior political philosophy in advancing peace and prosperity.  Of course, the critics of his thesis were predominantly Marxists.  Before Fukuyama, Nikita Khrushchev predicted Americans would become socialists because they did not understand how progressive socialism is.  This may explain the left’s preference now to be called “progressive” as opposed to “liberal.”

Ignoring for a moment that George Friedman is a white male, the reasoning in his article, “Nationalism and Liberal Democracy,” provides important clarity regarding the role of nationalism, classical liberal principles, and a constitution as the moderating instrument between the tensions of classical liberal principles and the human passions of a democracy.  Nationalism simply represents values held in common within a nation and thus the means for achieving the common good (as in the Mayflower Compact; and in the Constitution’s Preamble “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”).

 

Competing with Friedman’s explanation is clear obfuscation by people, such as British historian and Marxist E. J. Hobsbawn.  In his book, Nations and Nationalism since 1780:  Programme, Myth, Reality, Hobsbawn claims the concepts of nation and nationalism are modern concepts, even though a casual reading of the Bible reveals a common understanding of these concepts centuries before Christ.  As an apologist for Soviet communism, Hobsbawn essentially argued against the threat of German nationalism, manifested as National Socialists, or Nazism, or fascism.  As in typical family love-hate situations as far back as Cain and Able, the two siblings of socialism hated (and still do) each other.  Does this help to explain why American leftists are so inclined to call Trump a fascist, or to label Republicans in general with spin off slurs of fascism such as racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and so forth?  Leftists claim President Trump “manufactured” the southern border crisis; yet, they have no problem manufacturing America’s class struggle crisis.

We are now in a contest for a liberal democracy versus a popular democracy.  Popular democracy is the type of “new democracy” Tito boasted of when he said they, the political elite, “were imposing what amounted to the classical dictatorship of the proletariat on their peoples as a necessary precondition of communism . . . that under the peculiar conditions obtaining there it would be possible to go forward to communism by using the democratic forms of organization (sic)” (as reported by Douglas Hyde in his book, I Believed, p. 221).

While somewhat feckless in their convictions and courage to protect a liberal democracy, Republicans are clearly on the defensive against those who fight for popular democracy.  The 2018 midterm election results in the House of Representatives are evidence.  Of all those who might claim credit for the outcome, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA; www.cpusa.org) is one of them as in an article, “Lesson from Midterms:  A United People Can Win,” by John Bachtell (current Chairman of CPUSA) published on November 26, 2018.  Hiding in the open, the CPUSA even published a guide for its 50/3000 (50 states/3,000 counties) grassroots model in advance of the 2018 elections.

 

It is ironic that months before “anti-communist” President John F. Kennedy’s assassination (November 22, 1963), another Democrat, Congressman A.S. Herlong, Jr. read into the Congressional Record, on January 10, 1963, the goals of communism in America.  Goal number 15 of 45 reads: “Capture one or both political parties in the United States.”

       

What Is America’s Democrat?

At a recent social gathering, I was approached by a younger gentleman, a successful businessman, who began the conversation with “I understand you are a staunch Republican.”  I responded that while I generally lean toward Republican candidates, I would not say that I was a “staunch” Republican.  Avoiding the temptation to be “defined” by a complete stranger, I offered to explain how I would politically define myself.  I explained that I was in fact a “liberal,” but a “classical liberal” in its original meaning—a proponent for individual liberty, private property, limited government, a free market, and undeniably grounded in our Judeo-Christian tradition.  I vote for political candidates that more closely align with these principles, and they generally turn out to be Republican.  He patiently and politely listened to my explanation.  Then, I asked, inferring from the nature of his questioning, “are you a Democrat? Not that being one is good or bad; just asking.”  He was silent.  “What is it about the Democrat Party that attracts you?”  Again, silence.

 

This encounter, I want to believe, represents the vast majority of those who claim to be a Democrat. Many of my very well-educated friends are Democrat.  Do they really know what today’s American Democrat is?  Do they understand what Democrat political elite are advancing in the name of the Democrat Party?

Let us begin with the Democrat Party political platform: it emphasizes people and the environment while demeaning wealth creators.  The tagline at CPUSA’s website is “People and Planet before Profits.”  While I recall reading but cannot now locate a source, CPUSA claimed in 1984 (ironic since a book has the title Nineteen Eighty-Four) that they no longer needed to support their own presidential and vice-presidential candidates because the Democrat Party had completely integrated their own political platform.  Gus Hall and Angela Davis were their last official candidates in 1984.  Given Davis’ background, is it any surprise that she found a sanctuary in the American university system, an environment now producing an “educated new American” that significantly leans left and is more atheistic?

The Party for the People?  Let’s look at data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as depicted in the Figure below.  In 2006, Democrats, known to be very anti-business, took control of both Houses of Congress, and the labor participation rate began its descent.  Then, President Obama was elected bringing with him his signature campaign promise for healthcare for all, thanks to the pit bull tactics of Speaker of the House Pelosi (and not a single vote from Republicans; passed by simple majority vote unlike the super majority needed for Trump’s wall).  While reported unemployment rates have significantly improved under the Trump regime, mostly for minorities, the real economic impact is realized in the stagnant labor participation rate because this is made relatively stable by government subsidies that politically favor Democrats.  Is this not a form of slavery?

The Party for the Environment?  Presidential candidate Harris (and other political socialists) is now emphasizing “green new deals.”  So is CPUSA Chairman John Bachtell.  See his article, “Demand for Green New Deal Rocking the Nation.”  There are staunch political activists who push man-made causes for climate change, even though they do not understand the science behind it, let alone able to explain it.  Despite the ideal notion that reasonable people can disagree, those on the left consider skeptics to be climate change deniers and thus not as educated and immoral.  Yet, what is certain is that there is a clear political agenda that fuels the left’s climate change position.  Money is the driver.  For a well-investigated report on this dynamic, see Paul Driessen’s December 29, 2018 article, “Let’s Do Follow the Climate Change Money!”

   

Destroying institutions—the Electoral College.  Democrat-controlled states are now actively pursuing state legislation to eliminate the Electoral College.  Abraham Lincoln would not have been elected without the Electoral College.  Advocates (dare I say, Democrats) for the institution of slavery enjoyed the popular vote.  The Electoral College, as a critical institution of our Constitutional Republic, allowed the necessary reconciling, at the incredible cost of over 600,000 casualties, for the sin of slavery.

Destroying institutions—the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Beginning in 1948, the Gallup Poll has annually surveyed the American population on its religious affiliations. In 1956, 99% of those surveyed affiliated with the Judeo-Christian tradition (96% Christian; 3% Jewish).  Today, that number is at 69% and appears to be on a downward trend.  Atheism is a necessary element of socialism (and communism or fascism).  The left even now experiments with a secular inquisition in their attack of religion and religious institutions.  The left now makes it a “hate crime” to even disagree with behaviors that are contrary to the Judeo-Christian tradition.

In Jonathan Cahn’s The Harbinger:  The Ancient Mystery that Holds the Secret of America’s Future, protagonist journalist Nouriel Kaplan had this exchange with a prophet:

“On 9/11 people were asking, ‘Where was God?’”

“Where was God?” he said, as if surprised by the question.”  We drove Him out of our schools, out of our government, out of our media, out of our culture, out of our public square.  We drove Him out of our national life, and then we ask, ‘Where is God?’”

“Then He wasn’t there?”

“Still, He was there.  He was there with those who lost their loved ones and is still there to heal the broken and comfort those who mourn.  He was there with those who gave their lives so others could live, shadows of Him.  And He was there, as well, with all the countless others who would have perished that day if not for the countless turns of the details and events that saved them.  And for those who perished . . . those who were with God in life are now with Him in eternity.  For these, it was not a day of national calamity but of release.  He was with them and is with them.”

The lesson being taught by the prophet is that America’s 9/11 was similar to the attack of Israel in 732 B.C.  The Israelites had drifted away from their Covenant with God that involved, among other acts, the sacrifice of children to pagan gods.  In America millions have been sacrificed to the pagan god of “reproductive rights.”

  

Who defines today’s American Democrat?  In the public narrative, the left has defined Republicans and Democrats.  The left defines Republicans as bigots, labels them with the whole set of related slurs; and thus are to be hated and held in high contempt.  Republicans are the enemy: not for their conservative (classical liberal) political philosophy but because they are in the way of the left imposing its political philosophy of socialism.  This is how the left turned Colorado into a blue state.  The left’s mission and strategy are now in the public domain.  They openly recruit through their website.  Just yesterday I saw an elderly white woman get into a car with bumper stickers: “resist,” “Green New Deal,” “Corporations are evil.”

America’s Democrat has only been defined by the radical left.  The non-radical left has been intimidated into silence.  Moderate Democrats have been taken hostage and there can be no compromise with the Republican Party, as we saw with the recent government shutdown.  To the radical left, negotiation can have only two outcomes:  win-lose, or lose-lose.  They are patient.  This is why they can accept a lose-lose outcome until they recruit (agitate) more people that subscribe to their slogans and euphemisms.  The radical left’s secular humanist prophet, Professor George Lakoff, is proud of his success.  His prolific writing has served as the left’s bible for advancing their vision of the American dream.  His book, Moral Politics:  How Liberals and Conservatives Think, pretty much sums up how the left thinks:  the left’s position on political issues is based on truth (even though it has been created in most cases); therefore, conservative views are not only wrong, they are immoral.  Like the border wall.

Lakoff takes personal credit for influencing the political shift going into the 2006 elections.  In his introduction to Jeffrey Feldman’s book, Framing the Debate, Lakoff wrote:

 

For most of the past 40 years, conservatives have had a clear field, as progressives did little or nothing to counter the ongoing conservative framing of issues.  That began to turn around in 2004, with the work of the Rockridge Institute and the publication of Don’t Think of an Elephant! and has continued with the publication of Thinking Points, Rockridge’s handbook for progressives.  Progressives throughout America have begun the reframing process and it showed in the 2006 election” (p. xii).

Lakoff founded the Rockridge Institute and authored both books mentioned above.  The 2006 election brought Speaker of the House, and master framer, Nancy Pelosi to power.  She brought America Obamacare with all of its coercive mandates and a stimulus bill that was nearly a trillion dollars—an amount exponentially greater than a $5.7 billion request for border security.  Both legislative actions became essentially permanent, adding nearly a trillion dollars, a 25% increase from 2008 funding levels, to subsequent annual government spending bills.  The vast majority of this additional spending went (and still goes) to programs that provide government subsidies to Americans (many who are not here legally).

What Next?

We have just answered questions about the American dream, how it is under attack, the nature of America’s democracy, and what today’s leftist Democrat promises.  Americans are faced with a choice:  two different American dreams.  One led to the greatest peace and prosperity of any nation in the history of humankind.  The other is an imagined utopia.  If today’s leftist Democrats are successful in advancing their utopian dream, many will win, but many will lose.  In the end, as other socialist experiments have proven, all would lose.  Ask your Venezuelan neighbors.

I look forward to many more conversations with “Democrats.” Perhaps some or many will take steps to purify their political party and apologize to those who have been slandered and maligned by its malevolent ideology.