What, exactly, is today’s Democrat Party?
President Trump, never one for subtlety, has made his issues clear and quite specific. Stop China from abusing the U.S. economy. Limit the ability of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran to commit aggression and threaten the U.S. homeland. Enforce America’s border laws. Grow middle class prosperity, particularly by reducing taxes and regulations that hinder job growth. Establish energy independence.
While very specific about their opposition to President Trump, Democrats generally speak mostly of broader strokes. They wish to establish a green agenda, with goals that seem more tied to traditional leftist economic policy than the environment. Provide vast new free programs, such as government-provided college tuition and medical care. (The details of how all this gets paid for are not provided.) Much of that direction appears tied to Barack Obama’s goal to “fundamentally transform” America.
Over the past ten years, America’s politics and culture have indeed undergone a drastic change. Issues and attitudes once thought unacceptable have become commonplace, at least on the left side of the political spectrum. Massive constitutional changes, including eliminating the current format of the United States Senate and the electoral college have been suggested. Giving voting rights to aliens has been actually accomplished in several Democrat-controlled jurisdictions, along with providing substantial public assistance to them, wholly changing the very nature and meaning of American citizenship.
Despite the extreme nature of these alterations, there has been little noted about what has been essentially a Progressive revolution in thought that has radically diverted the nations’ course of public discussion and thoroughly radicalized the Democratic Party. Positions once thought far outside of the mainstream are considered almost beyond debate by the party’s leaders, as well as the academic dons and mainstream media stalwarts that hold great sway within it. They have overshadowed bedrock values, including keeping the borders secure, holding the nation safe from hostile foes, maintaining an economic system that promotes opportunity, respecting property rights, observing due process in questions of law, and cherishing Constitutional freedoms and processes.
Fundamental attitudes, such as the rejection of religious discrimination, have been cavalierly tossed aside by key Democrats. Senators Kamala Harris, Mazie Hirono and Diane Feinstein have bluntly implied that practicing Catholics should not be allowed to serve on the bench. Anti-Semitism, occasionally masked as anti-Israel policies, have infected the party’s politics in ways not seen since before the Second World War.
Democrats, like all Americans, were once famous for their devotion to children, befitting a nation previously geared firmly to building a brighter future. Now, as seen in the increasing drive to legitimize infanticide under the guise of “late term abortion” there are those who condone murdering babies.
Amazingly, despite the utter failure of socialism for over a century in lands as diverse as Russia and Venezuela, the Democrats’ powerful left wing, ignoring the contrasting success of capitalism, seeks to bring that failed philosophy to Washington.
Even the practice of fact-based debate has been replaced, as political candidates with little or no command of history, economics, foreign affairs or the Bill of Rights have successfully captured the hearts and minds of Democrats. Both New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Beto O’Rourke of Texas, well known for their low font of knowledge, are touted as future presidential contenders.
Tactics that once seemed unthinkable are now a standard part of the Progressive Democrat playbook. Rioting because one’s presidential candidate lost? Of course. Make groundless accusations against a Supreme Court nominee you don’t like? Why not. Restrict the free speech rights of college students who reject leftist ideas? Sure. Question whether taxpayer dollars should subsidize those aliens who have broken federal law to enter the nation illegally? Yes, and let them vote too!
Despite the almost daily presentation of what were once considered aberrant actions and ideas, there is little acknowledgement of how vastly the Democratic Party has changed, and how dramatically that has affected America.
Photo: Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of The House and the highest elected Democratic Party Official (Official photo)