Donald Trump and Republicans Are a Threat to Democracy. Really?

Donald Trump and Republicans Are a Threat to Democracy. Really?

– By Tom Garrison –

Any treatise involving the Left in America needs to begin with a discussion of terms. The Left, and their Democratic partners, constantly try to redefine or obfuscate the meaning of words. For example, Democrats, Leftists, and their media allies have a several years long campaign to convince Americans that, “Donald Trump and Republicans are a threat to democracy.”

The phrase itself is odd, since the United States is not a democracy. The founding fathers were steeped in history and knew the dangers of democracy. Unrestrained majority rule was a threat to any minority. Instead, they established a constitutional federal republic. There was a strong emphasis on individual liberty, the ability of people to do what they wanted as long as it did not infringe upon the rights of others; minority rights; and the sanctity of private property.

The essence is a system of checks and balances within a separation of powers framework coupled with a federal system where states have considerable autonomy to run their own affairs. A democracy, in contrast, typically allows the majority to do pretty much whatever they want.

For example, a check on executive power occurs if a president abuses power through executive orders and Congress can override those orders or cut funding so they cannot proceed. A balance would be the president nominating Supreme Court justices, but they have to be approved by the Senate. Another check is the ability of the Supreme Court to rule laws passed by Congress as unconstitutional. In short, no one branch of government has unfettered power.

Let’s start with a look at rhetoric, what people say. How about Maxine Waters, a long serving Democrat from California in the House of Representatives. In June 2018 Waters, in referring to members of the  Trump administration said, “If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.” This came days after several Trump administration officials were accosted at restaurants.

In March 2020, the Democrat leader of the Senate from New York, Senator Chuck Schumer, bellowed to a crowd of angry protestors on the Supreme Court’s front steps, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch; I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Slightly more than two years later, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested a man at Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s house. The man was attempting to assassinate Justice Kavanaugh.

Just a few days before former President Trump was shot at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, President Joe Biden told a group of donors, “We’re done talking about the debate, it’s time to put Trump in the bull’s-eye.”

This is only a tiny sample of the vile rhetoric used by the Left and Democrats for years. Do these people, leftist Democrats, call for rational discussion? Or call for a discussion that searches for the truth? Or a discussion of the value/truth of assumptions underlying each opinion? Nope, they call for harassment and violence. That is certainly a threat to our constitutional republic.

A free press and free speech, both guaranteed in the First Amendment, are essential for a constitutional republic. It is the duty of the press to truthfully describe events so citizens can make informed decisions. What the majority of the press has morphed into the last couple of decades is the propaganda arm of the Democrat Party. Can anyone doubt the Left’s repeated attempts to censor anti-Left/Democrat criticism and label everything not leftist as misinformation.

In February 2021 two Democrat members of congress, both from California, sent letters to chief executive officers of several cable providers, satellite providers, and other platforms to voice their concerns over the few remaining conservative news outlets. The letters pointedly asked if the providers planned on carrying conservative networks beyond, “contract renewal date.” Hint. Hint.

In March 2023 all 206 Democrats present in the House of Representatives unanimously voted against legislation that would prohibit federal officials from taking any action to squelch the sharing of views and opinions online, a bill Republicans called up after Twitter’s internal files showed the FBI was constantly pressuring that company to suppress certain stories—including stories related to Hunter Biden. The legislation, named the Protecting Speech from Government Interference Act, passed in a narrow 219-206 vote.

Could there be a more insidious threat to free speech and democracy than allowing government officials and bureaucrats to determine what is proper online speech?

Under the Biden Administration a Department of Homeland Security “Homeland Intelligence Experts Group” was formed. The group thought that “quietly making democracy work” was the solution to crushing political dissent. In their September 2023 meeting the group discussed the best way to get people to accept their partisan message that the threat of domestic extremism only comes from Trump supporters. Members suggested various ways to use the government to launder their political messaging through other channels, including co-opting political leaders, social media companies, and media outlets. When they are in power, Democrats clearly want to determine what information the public reads, sees, and hears.

I guess they forgot the extremism on public display during the Antifa and Black Lives Matter riots of 2020, resulting in at least 25 deaths and up to $2 billion in property damage. Or the property damage and vile antisemitism of leftist protests/riots in the last nine months.

How about another set of examples, the weaponization of government bureaucracies. This is often referred to as the administrative state.

The Obama presidency produced a good model of the administrative state in action. Around 2010 the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) vastly stepped up its scrutiny of hundreds of conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status. In one case the IRS wanted every communication that an organization had made about Obamacare as the Affordable Care Act is commonly called. The conservative organizations discovered what was going on, sued the IRS, and won. In a legal settlement, the IRS apologized for mistreating conservative organizations. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, “There is no excuse for this conduct. . . . this abuse of power will not be tolerated.” The judgement in another IRS case declared it is wrong to apply federal tax laws based only on an entity’s name, positions on issues, or political viewpoint. It also noted that politically based discrimination in administering the tax codes “violates fundamental First amendment rights.”

In late June 2024, the Supreme Court overturned the “Chevron Deference” in the Loper Bright v. Raimondo decision. This case grew out a lawsuit by four small fishing companies. For more than 40 years, federal courts were bound by the Chevron doctrine to abdicate their constitutional role and defer to agency interpretations of the law, at least whenever a statute was silent or ambiguous. The Chevron Deference gave federal agencies and unelected bureaucrats unchecked authority to create regulations without clear approval from Congress. If an agency’s action was “reasonable” a court reviewing the agency’s disputed action should defer to the agency. In practice that kind of deference permitted agencies to engage in egregious overreach, often at the expense of ordinary citizens.

For the past 30 years, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had the authority to require monitors on most commercial fishing boats. These monitors are intended to ensure that the fishermen adhere to ethical fishing practices, as mandated by NOAA.

NOAA suddenly decided, without consulting Congress, that herring fishermen must now pay, they were previously exempt, for the cost of third-party monitors. These monitors are paid more than $700 per day per ship, which can be as much as 20% of a ship’s daily take home pay and is frequently more than the ships’ captains make. The cost for the monitors presents a huge burden that could easily drive these fishermen out of the herring business. The fishermen sued.

The Left and Democrats, the heirs to Woodrow Wilson’s progressivism, hate this ruling. It diminishes the power of the administrative state they worship. One of the greatest threats to liberty and the Constitution is the unelected government bureaucrat who comes to believe his or her proper role is to be master of the people and not their servant.

On the other hand, soon after taking office in 2017, President Trump signed an executive order requiring that for every new federal regulation implemented, two must be rescinded. That certainly strengthens the administrative state—not.

The Left uses fear, emotions, and outright lies to influence politics. As the presidential campaign heats up, the Left and many Democrats often repeated their talking point that Donald Trump is another Hitler and Republicans are Nazis—clear threats to “democracy.”

Has the Left forgotten that Trump already served four years as president. Did I miss the concentration camps in his first term? The vile antisemitism? (That is now owned by the Left.) The leftist ideological takeover of most news outlets? (Another major institution the Left totally dominates.)

So, tell me who represents the real threat to our constitutional republic (leftists read democracy)? Trump and the Republicans who certainly make mistakes, or the Left and Democrats with their long-term plan to subvert our republic and institute a central administrative state with absolute primacy over our private lives. Our republic was founded on, and has prospered under, the idea of individual freedom, equality (not equity), and the sanctity of private property. Take that freedom away and we degenerate into a collectivist dystopia.

References

America First Legal. “Exclusive—Brennan-Clapper Group Pushed DHS to Adopt Covert Influence Campaigns to Crush Political Opposition.” July 9, 2024. https://aflegal.org/exclusive-brennan-clapper-group-pushed-dhs-to-adopt-covert-influence-campaigns-to-crush-political-opposition/

Editorial Board. “Sen. Chuck  Schumer’s Threatening Rhetoric to Supreme Court Justices Crosses a Line.” USA Today. March 5, 2020. https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/todaysdebate/2020/03/05/chuck-schumer-threatening-rhetoric-gorsuch-kavanaugh-crosses-line-editorials-debates/4964578002/

Kasperowicz, Peter. “206 Democrats Vote Against Bill Banning Federal Officials from Policing Online Speech” Fox News. March 9, 2023. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/democrats-vote-against-bill-banning-federal-officials-policing-online-speech

Knox, Olivier. “Biden Backs Away From ‘Bulls-Eye—Not from Calling Trump a Threat.” US News. July 16, 2024. https://www.usnews.com/news/u-s-news-decision-points/articles/2024-07-16/biden-backs-away-from-bulls-eye-not-from-calling-trump-a-threat

Loper Bright Supreme Court Case. “Loper Bright Enterprises, Inc. v. Gina Raimondo.” July 2024. https://loperbrightcase.com/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=search&utm_campaign=M2024555&utm_content=loper&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw2Je1BhAgEiwAp3KY73L-6LghiBGrg6TWBO40Qyi64z16b1eZlwHaFndjtylNsonLLPayWhoCXIEQAvD_BwE

Lybrand, Holmes and Tierney Sneed. “FBI Says Man Accused of Attempting to Kill Brett Kavanaugh said the was ‘Shooting for 3’ Justices.” CNN. July 27, 2022. https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/27/politics/kavanaugh-roske-arrest-warrant/index.html

McCaskill, Nolan D. “Trump Signs Executive Order Requiring that for Every One New Regulation, Two Must be Revoked.” Politico. January 30, 2017. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-signs-executive-order-requiring-that-for-every-one-new-regulation-two-must-be-revoked-234365

Overby, Peter. “IRS Apologizes for Aggressive Scrutiny of Conservative Groups.” National Public Radio. October 27, 2017. https://www.npr.org/2017/10/27/560308997/irs-apologizes-for-aggressive-scrutiny-of-conservative-groups

Saunders, Debra J. “House Democrats Against Free Speech.” Las Vegas Review-Journal. February 28, 2021. https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/debra-saunders/debra-j-saunders-house-democrats-against-free-speech-2290885/

Taylor, Jacob. “Rep. Waters calls for Harassing Admin Officials in Public, Trump Calls Her ‘Low IQ.’ “ NBC News. June 25, 2018. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/rep-waters-draws-criticism-saying-trump-officials-should-be-harassed-n886311

Will, George. “Whoops, the Progressive Road to Nirvana Ran into a Supreme Court Detour.” The Washington Post. July 10, 2024. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/07/10/supreme-court-progressive-executive-branch/