Article by E. Jeffrey Ludwig in The American Thinker
Do Democrats Want to Build Back Better, or Do They Want a Coup?
In a recent article, the brilliant commentator Victor David Hanson asks, "What is behind recent pessimistic appraisals of democracy's future from Hillary Clinton, Adam Schiff, Brian Williams, and other elite intellectuals and media personalities?" His answer to this question is "that the left expects to lose power over the next two years[.]"
Perhaps — but on the other hand, maybe the leftists' "pessimistic appraisals" are more of a verbal ploy to suggest they are concerned about democracy when in actuality they are participating in an attempt to enact a coup against democracy, against our beloved republic. Declining poll numbers will affect only those old-fashioned Democrats who still believe in the relevance of the vote.
Today, sadly and horrendously, we seem to be on a different trajectory. Through a number of pressure points, the left is trying to overwhelm and subvert constitutional checks and balances, basic ideas of fairness, historical understandings of things like voter rights and equality of opportunity (which is not and should never be equality of outcomes), law and order, the public weal in protecting against theft and bodily harm, and responsible conduct as the sign of a good citizen. Now massive mail-in schemes, elimination of voter ID, federal control of even local elections, extended periods of time for voting, and ballot-harvesting are high on the list of Democommie priorities. Their priorities are clearly not about fairness, but about corrupt manipulation of our nation's voting priorities as a free society.
For the first time in my lifetime, the military leadership has publicly shown partisanship toward the Democrats. General Milly, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), apologized after walking with President Trump following rioting in Washington, D.C. and later said he wants to look at his own "white rage." Is it appropriate for the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to make comments like these? Those comments themselves are suggestive of a coup.
In the so-called Build Back Better (BBB) legislation, the leftist cult now in power (albeit marginally) wants to double the size of the IRS by adding 86,000 agents. The net result of this incredible increase is not to increase oversight, but to weaponize the IRS as an instrument of public intimidation. Just as conservative political organizations were targeted by the IRS during the Obama administration, the present desired expansion will allow for more harassment and fines of individuals in our new surveillance society. Does anyone really think surveillance of individuals in our society and world is just paranoia? Haven't we seen, if we message a friend on Facebook or in an email about looking for insurance, that, suddenly, ads for insurance start appearing on our Facebook accounts? The surveillance society is already here. It's just a question of the extent to which that expertise will be applied to monitoring our daily lives. The doubling of the IRS, I propose, is a giant step toward extending the surveillance state.
Even certain conservative voices that oppose this expansion of the IRS fail to perceive the coup implications of this legislation. Instead, they project a cost-benefit analysis of the increased size. In doing so, they (rightly) conclude that the increase in size is unwise because of the excessive costs to taxpayers in terms of dollars spent on tax professionals and time spent filling out taxes and the burdensome additional layers of tax complexity that will be established. However, the cost-benefit objectors do not understand the more extreme implications of such an expansion.
About two months ago, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) went farther in his critique of this provision of BBB and pointed out that more stringent oversight by IRS would overwhelmingly impact those who earn $100,000 a year or less. He called this oppression a "shakedown." But worse, this provision is an important instrument of a coup, as it would extend the police power of the federal government exponentially. The trajectory and momentum of this administration are to take over our lives with unprecedented loss of freedom.
A cautious reader of this analysis might think, "Why would expansion of the federal government by the Democrats necessarily be a coup? There are regular shifts in power between the two parties in the three branches of government, so expanding or over-reaching with federal authority and power should not be discerned as a Democrat coup." In one sense, this is accurate, and it would explain why there is not more vigorous resistance to and denunciation of the Democrats by the Republicans. As Democrats push hard for moving to ever more tyrannical extensions of federal power, the Republicans in political office will also enjoy some of that excess power over the citizens. However, since the vast expansion of federal authority began with Pres. Woodrow Wilson and Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt, the federal agencies and bureaucracies attract generations of people who see their jobs as more beholden to Democrats than to Republicans. Thus, being the basis of their livelihoods, our administrative state — the federal bureaucracy — remains an entrenched bastion of Democratic support despite changes in legislative or executive authority. Whether we call it the bureaucratic state or the Deep State, common sense would dictate that its inherent allegiance is to the Democrat party, which spawned this ever growing, ever more entrenched apparatus that has become a "branch" of our government.
The Dept. of Justice now alerts us to the threat of domestic terrorism that may be operating or at least burgeoning in the expression of parents at school board meetings protesting Critical Race Theory and anti-family sexual agendas across the land. This attempt to, at the very least, stigmatize those parents who speak out is more than a nuisance and unwanted presentation. It is belligerent and harassing of parents and a denigration of the First Amendment. New laws to extend free pre-K and pre-pre-K (three- and four-year-olds) are on the table, financed by and thereby controlled by the federal government. The opportunity to advance secular humanism and cultural Marxism even more (we are already in a radical moral decline) will clearly be advanced if these "helpful" pieces of legislation are passed.
The intrusions of federal power and authority in our lives are being pushed forward to a degree that can only be characterized as a coup. The Dems are no longer willing to live with a tension between big government and the rights of states and individuals; rather, they want to enforce federal power as decisive in that tension and thereby sabotage the idea of individual responsibility as an end in itself, which understanding is the basis of a free society based on natural rights.
