The Left Doesn’t Actually Care About ‘Democracy,’ They Just Want To Get Their Way
Canada held an election a few weeks ago. Don’t worry that you missed it; you wouldn’t have heard much of anything in American media. Why not? Because it all went to plan, that’s why.
To catch up on the northern contest, the Conservative Party got the most votes, 5.7 million, compared to just 5.5 million for Justin Trudeau’s ruling Liberal Party — but Trudeau’s Party got more seats in the House of Commons. A lot more, in fact: 159 seats to just 119. Why? Canada uses the same system as the United Kingdom, or our own House of Representatives: It’s first-past-the-post in 338 single-member districts.
By the way, that’s the second time in a row this has happened. The Liberal Party lost the popular vote last time too, and still they got the most seats.
The point here isn’t to complain. This is the system Canada uses; every party understands it, and there isn’t anything innately unfair about using single-member districts and the regional representation they bring.
But notice something that hasn’t happened: Nobody has gone on TV, either in Canada or here in the United States, to moan about Justin Trudeau being a threat to democracy. There aren’t any left-wing non-profits producing reports about Canada being a “flawed democracy” or a “failing democracy” or “partly democratic” or a “democratic dictatorship.”
By the way, there are countries they say that about. Countries like this one. Remember all the wailing when Donald Trump won in 2016? People were literally screeching in the streets. “Trump isn’t the president — he’s illegitimate!”
They kept this lie up for four whole years. They made that lie the focal point of their mission to paralyze actual democratic government, using any means necessary — from unelected judges to unelected spies — to get their way, and all in the name of democracy.
In 2020, Foreign Policy magazine ran an article with 10 reasons President Trump was becoming a “dictator.” Reason number 3? “Politicizing the civil service, military, National Guard, or the domestic security agencies.” Author Stephen Walt’s example of Trump doing that was that he held a photo-op in a church that rioters set on fire, and that he appointed William Barr, a former attorney general, as his attorney general.
Reason number 4 was, “Using government surveillance against domestic political opponents.” His evidence was that Trump wanted to call Antifa a terrorist organization, which might have caused the FBI to monitor them.
Reason 6? Appointing justices to the Supreme Court when there were vacancies.
Now, if you go and check Walt’s Foreign Policy articles this year, you’ll notice there haven’t been any about the looming Biden dictatorship even though he’s actually politicizing the military by using it to teach critical race theory and conducting an ideological witch hunt for “extremists.”
And if it’s bad for Trump to appoint justices to the Supreme Court for normal vacancies, what does it mean that Democrats are loudly calling to pack the Supreme Court — and the Biden administration has openly considered the possibility?
If you want answers to those questions, you won’t get them from Professor Walt — he’s back to writing about U.S. foreign policy debacles. No shortage of material there, professor.
But you know what’s really going on here. You know why Professor Walt and so many others were freaking out about “democracy” last year and every year since 2016, but don’t seem to care about it this year, be it in Canada or the United States: It’s because they don’t care about “democracy.” At least not the way you might.
To most Americans throughout most of American history, democracy meant a system of government where we hold elections, cast votes, and choose lawmakers and leaders. For the left, however, democracy means something different. To them, “democracy” just means “the Democratic Party.”
Remember when Gov. Scott Walker survived a recall attempt back in 2012? The night that happened, a Democratic voter appeared on CNN and said, “This is the end of democracy. The end of the U.S. as we know it just happened. This is it. Democracy’s dead.” At the time, he meant it: A Republican was governor of Wisconsin and might do Republican things instead of Democrat things. We all know that’s not democracy.
When Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin decide to represent their own constituents and say they’re not happy with a three-and-a-half trillion-dollar spending bill to remake the American social contract, that’s not “democracy” either, because true democracy is just Joe Biden doing whatever he wants when he wants to. To many on the left, “democracy” simply means neoliberalism. Right now, “democracy” also means the Deep State — so long as the Deep State is on their side; the side of “democracy.”
In the Arizona Republic, op-ed writer E.J. Montini complained Sinema is going to “squander her chance to save democracy.” After Democratic activists stalked Sinema into a bathroom to harass her, one climate activist remarked, “Not being able to pee in peace is a reasonable consequence for betraying democracy.” I suppose it beats tarring and feathering.
“I’d note,” MSNBC’s Medhi Hassan bravely tweeted, “that democracy continues to hang in the balance while we argue over the rights and wrongs of bathroom protests.” So brave, Medhi; so meta.
Or how about this: “They call themselves Democrats and they will be the ruination of this nation,” “The View’s” Joy Behar declared. “Manchin and Sinema must be brought to task; they are the enemies right now of the democracy.”
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the “Arizona Democrat’s unfathomable opposition to progress is a win for her hedge-fund, Big Pharma donors, and a huge loss for democracy.” Oh, and she and Manchin are “essentially political suicide bombers waging a jihad for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.” Not demented at all.
According to someone named John of the Young Turks, the “minimum bars for a functioning democracy include 1) not electing Donald Trump, and 2) not electing someone like Kyrsten Sinema.” He could have added “3) Doing what John says to do.”
Of course, nothing Sinema is doing is “betraying democracy” in any way whatsoever; what she’s doing is betraying the Democratic Party’s priorities. But of course that’s enough, isn’t it?
Sinema and Manchin join a long and distinguished line of enemies of democracy, stretching from President John Adams to Sen. Barry Goldwater, and of course stopping over President George W. Bush (who now opposes Trump so is once again a friend of democracy).
They’re joined on this list by every single person who ever attended a Tea Party rally, and the 74 million Americans who voted against democracy in the last election. In fact, it might be that a majority of Americans voted against democracy last year, but good luck finding the full truth: It’s only OK to question elections when the “democracy” loses.
But it’s not just democracy, of course; for the left, it’s any system. Take schools: Our generation churns out multiple generations of graduates unprepared for work and incapable of functional literacy. So is the system broken? Not at all. That system is only broken if the students come out conservative or religious, or if parents are given any semblance of choice about what their children learn. If any of those things happened, that would be un-American. Probably anti-democratic too.
Democracy means parents don’t get a say in what schools teach. Them there’s the rules.
Or how about the courts? The courts are great when they’re used to paralyze a White House simply trying to defend its borders and control who enters the country. Those are working courts; very democratic. But what if the courts rule against the left?
What if the Supreme Court says that we have a border? What if they say that affirmative action is illegal racial discrimination? What if the Supreme Court finally notices that, wait a minute, abortion is never mentioned in the Bill of Rights and calling it a constitutional right is absurd? Well, that would mean the system is broken and disgustingly undemocratic. Court-packing is back on the menu, boys!
Let’s not forget the Electoral College or its northern kin, Canada’s system of parliamentary representation. Prime Minister Trudeau is the result of a beautiful system; a fully functioning democracy. President Donald Trump? Well, then you get into another area.
Know this: Your role in this democracy is not actual opposition, but managed opposition. Most professional D.C. Republicans get that. If the Democrats, for example, want to pass a bill that completely remakes the government’s involvement with the citizenry from before birth until death, the GOP just asks them to cut back on the cost a little; make it cheaper. “Managed opposition.” Know your role, sort of thing.
Ronald Reagan didn’t know his place; Trump certainly wouldn’t play his part either — and they hated them for it. Don’t let any historic revisionism ever hide that: They treated Reagan with contempt, and called him a dangerous and psychotic dullard too.
We can go on and on, but you get the point: The system works when it works for the left, and only when it works for the left. You get the point — and so do they. Now it’s just time to stop playing the part you’ve been assigned.
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