Democrats’ Celebration Of Coercive Government Policy Has Begun

I&I Editorial

The socialist hootenanny, also known as 2020’s virtual Democratic National Convention, is now one installment into its miserable four-day run. What have we learned so far?

While delegates and speakers are in remote locations, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez is in Milwaukee, the site he personally chose for the convention. It is wholly suitable for the event. The Wisconsin city might be the most socialist municipality in America. 

“Milwaukee is the only large American city to have elected socialist mayors – and kept them in power for almost 40 years,” says WTTW, a public (of course) television station in Chicago. Voters have even elected socialist “state and local legislators and one congressman.”

Right from the top, the socialist of Democrats’ socialists, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has made strong showings in the last two Democratic presidential primary seasons, held a featured spot among Monday’s speakers. As noted by the Associated Press, Sanders “has done as much as any losing presidential candidate to shape a major political party.”

That speaks loudly about where the Democratic Party is today.

Of course Joe Biden was supposed to be the centrist to overcome the hard shift to port forced by Sanders and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Even “Republican” John Kasich, who spoke to Democrats Monday night as one of them, said he isn’t convinced Biden will turn “sharp left” after being elected. To which the one of the sharp folks liveblogging the convention at PJ Media said:

“Well, yeah. Biden has ALREADY turned sharp left. He has embraced the radical Green New Deal, which would wreck the U.S. economy. His Bernie bro unity platform is all about bringing in the hard left. So Biden won’t turn left, he doesn’t have to. He’s already there.”

The Trump reelection campaign is playing its opportunity with brilliance, recapping nightly the convention’s socialist highlights. When Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn said the Democrats’ convention was going to be a “socialist meetup,” he was more accurate than most weathermen on the nightly news.

But then we knew long before the convention what was going to happen. “Democrats Committed to a Socialist Platform,” the headline on an op-ed by Conrad Black published Monday, could have been posted at any time in the last four, eight, or even 12 years. (Remember when Newsweek plastered the headline “We Are All Socialists Now” on its cover just after Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration?)

We’ve noted on several occasions, polls show Democrats are increasingly in favor of socialism. It’s an important point, but no more salient than former Democratic National Committee Chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz being unable to explain the difference between a Democrat and a socialist, or millennials’ failure to distinguish differences between the two.

The land of liberty has flirted with socialism before, and has in fact become more collectivist and less free over the decades. But we’ve never seen what we are watching now. As Black says, “the Democratic Party is now committed to a far more radical socialist platform than has ever been remotely hinted at by a serious American national party.”

This is not to be taken lightly. Socialism isn’t just an alternative way to govern, it is a system of government coercion. It robs us of freedom, independence, and our humanity. It is corrupt, tribal, and regressive. Heaven help us if the Democrats win the White House in November.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board