Friends, although we Americans bat around alarming words like "fascism", "communism", and "dictatorship", the truth is that we have no direct experience of anything resembling these horrifying concepts. We compare the minor frustrations in our own lives to the agonies of people living under authoritarian and totalitarian systems because we're...myopic and infantile. There, I said it! The question remains, however: can dictatorship -- real dictatorship -- ever take root in American soil? I believe it can, and I believe we're flirting with the destruction of American democracy in the forseeable future. My latest article examines whether the Left might decide to pursue anti-democratic, extra-constitutional solutions to the "problem" of conservatism/Trumpism as early as 2022 or 2024. Some will scoff. I say: it's better to be prepared for the worst, even as we hope for the best... See what you think.
What
is the Next Step in the Evolution of Left-Wing Authoritarianism?
Conservatives
have watched, with varying degrees of horror, as leftists have, in
recent years, embraced radical ideas and schemes such as:
court-packing, abolishing the filibuster, lockdowns/mandates,
censorship on an industrial scale, cancel culture, critical race
theory, abolishing the police, open borders, runaway spending, the
stigmatization of dissent as “insurrection”, “white supremacy”,
“fascism”, and more. Left-wingers have talked openly, and
sometimes gleefully, about how richly we, their conservative enemies,
deserve slow and painful deaths – and, when in a feisty mood, how
they would quite like to be the agents of our demise.
Much
of the time, we on the right are inclined to scoff at such wild-eyed
pronouncements, but should we dismiss them so lightly? Consider the
apocalyptic, hectoring tone of so much political analysis on the Left
these days. This is a small sample of some of the recent articles
that left-wingers are gobbling up:
“How
to Tell When Your Country Is Past the Point of No Return”
“The
GOP is an Anti-America Party”
“Democrats
Need a Three-Year Plan to Save Democracy”
“We're
Edging Closer to Civil War”
“American
Democracy is Tottering. It's Not Clear Americans Care”
"The
GOP is a Grave Threat to American Democracy"
Such
breathless analysis expands on the line that Nancy Pelosi's January
6th Committee pushes on a daily basis: that Republicans,
conservatives, and Trump supporters are anything but a loyal,
honorable opposition in America. Instead, we are un-American,
unpatriotic, immoral, and indefensible. We seek, in fact, to negate
and destroy everything which this country stands for.
For
some on the Left, presumably this is hyperbole. For all too many, it
has become the substance of their (hateful) ideology, or, given the
fervency with which they hold such views, we might more accurately
call this virulent anti-Republicanism a dogma, to which leftists
practicing “true religion” invariably assent.
Many
have tried to describe, or trace the origins of, these leftist
delusions, but few have asked the more pressing and germane question:
where do they lead?
Conservatives
need to take this issue seriously, because, regardless of how most
Americans may vote in 2022 and 2024, increasingly, the majority of
our political, cultural, and economic elite devours incessant, toxic
propaganda that demonizes Republicans and conservatives in
horrifyingly stark terms. America's opinion leaders are thus being
primed, at least potentially, for extreme, extra-constitutional
measures designed to keep the insurrectionary, white-supremacist,
fascist horde at bay.
For
instance, suppose, just for a moment, that Republicans capture the
House majority in 2022 and a narrow majority in the Senate. They
proceed to obstruct the Biden Administration's legislative agenda and
most of its executive and judicial appointments to boot. Sensing that
his old adversary – emphasis on “old” – is stumbling, Donald
Trump makes the fateful decision to run again for the presidency. As
the campaign unfolds, it becomes painfully obvious to the Dems that
their worst case scenario, a second term for Donald J. Trump, is a
realistic possibility. As the election nears, in fact, that
possibility becomes a probability. The Left, and the entire
Democratic establishment, go into panic mode.
The
question we need to start asking is: how do Democrats, terrified of
an imminent revival of Trumpism, and absolutely contemptuous of the
intellectual, moral, and human worth of their political opponents,
react?
Does
President Biden deploy the military to intimidate Trump voters into
staying home on election day? Does he deploy thousands of rioters
across the country to accomplish more or less the same thing? Does he
detain Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans and
conservatives, to prevent them from campaigning effectively? Does he,
before the votes are even counted, declare the results from some
states preemptively void, because of alleged “voter suppression”
or other irregularities? Does he, à la 2020,
mobilize Democratic state legislators to send alternate slates of
electors to Washington, D.C., to obscure who the victor was or will
be in the electoral college? Does the FCC pull the rug out from under
the conservative media at a critical time in the campaign, perhaps in
combination with the coordinated suspension of all elected
Republicans' social media accounts? Does the Biden Administration
strong-arm corporate leaders into condemning Trump and Republicans as
far too “dangerous” to be allowed back into the halls of power?
Does Biden order the military or the federal bureaucracy to re-run
the election in the critical states where the Democratic candidate
fell short?
If
all these expedients fail to scratch the Left's anti-Republican itch,
why not simply ban the GOP as a terrorist organization or as a threat
to public health? Follow that up with an inspired economic stimulus
measure: the construction of thousands of reeducation camps across
the country, where Trumpers can be deprogrammed and liberated from
their cult of personality. Hard cases could be strapped to windmill
blades and left to rotate in the fresh air until they beg for green
energy... The possibilities for retribution are truly limitless!
The
obvious objection to all of these fanciful (?) suggestions is, of
course, that the American people, as faithful exponents of democracy,
would never allow such chicanery. They would rise with one voice to
condemn any effort to thwart the will of the people.
But
would they?
Does
anyone doubt that the same Democratic base which spent four long
years despising every second of the Trump presidency, and accepting
uncritically every anti-Trump narrative which arose, and supporting
unstintingly every act of “resistance”, would hesitate to endorse
any
stratagem, no matter how unconventional or controversial, in order to
deny Trump a second term? Does anyone think that the rights or
feelings of Trump supporters would weigh on the consciences of these
leftist true believers even for a moment?
A more serious objection is
that the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, would surely
step in to disallow extra-constitutional, authoritarian maneuvers
such as those contemplated above.
Indeed, for all of our
country's history, up to now, an adverse SCOTUS ruling would have
definitely shut down any attempt to impose a dictatorship. But can we
rely at this juncture in our history on the moral probity and
self-restraint of Democrats to prevent them from testing, or
exceeding, the legal and constitutional limits on their authority?
I don't have a definitive
answer to this question, but I do know that the leftist/Democratic
leaders who will make such calls in the years to come are the very
same people who, in their spare time, read articles such as:
“The
Case for Ending the Supreme Court As We Know It”
“The
Supreme Court is Drunk On Its Own Power”
“The
Courts Have Served As an Anti-Democratic Force For Much of U.S.
History”
“The
Supreme Court: Anti-Democratic, Anti-American, Immoral?”
“The
Supreme Court Does Not Deserve Our Trust”
Still think that defiance of
SCOTUS's authority is unthinkable? Guess again.
The sad fact is that
Democrats, as the party that currently wields executive authority,
have vast powers at their disposal that could allow them to obstruct
the democratic process in 2022 or 2024, and thus deny the American
people the chance to restore Republicans, conservatives, or Donald
Trump to political dominance. We would be foolish not to anticipate
some of these potential Democratic moves, and to contemplate how we,
as conservatives, could or should react to them.
Like it or not, in Biden's
America, just as in Trump's America, norms are not what they used to
be. To put it another way, in 2022, 2024, and beyond, all bets are
off.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred
and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
He appears on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480/106.9.
You can read a slightly shorter version here, at Townhall:
https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2021/12/19/what-is-the-next-step-in-the-evolution-of-leftwing-authoritarianism-n2600737
