When my children were still quite young, we regularly\nspent a week of our annual vacation with our families in St. Louis. Needless to say, the 16-hour drive from our\nhome on the Philadelphia Main Line was a long and tedious experience for our two\nyoung sons, who shared the back seat with their little sister. Invariably, when we had covered only about\nhalf the distance between Philadelphia and St. Louis, we began to hear the\nplaintive question, \u201cAre we there yet?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
What brought that experience rushing back to mind was\na July 12, 2016 column by David Brooks of the New York Times<\/em>, titled,\n\u201cAre We on the Path to National Ruin?\u201d \nIn his column, Brooks wrote, \u201cI never really understood how fascism\ncould have come to Europe, but I think I understand better now. You start with some fundamental historical\ntransformation, like the Great Depression or the shift to an information\neconomy. A certain number of people are\ndispossessed. They lose identity,\nself-respect and hope.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey begin to\nbase their sense of self-worth on their tribe, not their behavior. They become mired in their resentments,\nspiraling deeper into the addiction of their own victimology. They fall for politicians who lie about the\nsource of their problems and about how they can surmount them. Facts lose their meaning\u2026\u201d Brooks concludes, \u201cOnce facts are unmoored,\neverything else is unmoored, too. People\nwho value humility and kindness in private life abandon those traits when they\nselect leaders in the common sphere. Hardened\nby a corrosive cynicism, they fall for morally deranged little showmen. And then perhaps there\u2019s a catalyzing event.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I read those words I couldn\u2019t help but think that I\nhave never read a more apt or a more devastating description of the Democratic\nParty, the wretched legacy it has created for itself, and the cancerous impact\nit has had on our American culture. And\nwhat, I asked myself, could be the fearsome \u201ccatalyzing event\u201d that Brooks\nforesaw? <\/p>\n\n\n\n What Brooks foresaw in 2016 is now happening in\nWashington, DC, planned and implemented by truly evil men and women such as former\nCIA Director John Brennan, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Intelligence\nCommittee Chairman Adam Schiff, and hundreds of other co-conspirators and their\nsocialist\/communist fellow travelers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Writing for The Jewish Voice<\/em> in their October\n30, 2019, edition, Caroline Glick describes the vast transformation that has\noccurred in the Democrat Party during the past two decades\u2026 a transformation\nthat has made us a vastly different country than we were prior to the year 2000. She writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cUntil 2000, the peaceful transition of power in the\nwake of elections was a feature of American democracy that everyone took for\ngranted. In 2000, the Democrats\nshifted. They refused to accept the\nelection results in Florida that gave Bush his victory in the state\u2026 and\nthrough it, in the Electoral College\u2026 until the Supreme Court ruled that the\nresults were legitimate. Even\nafterwards, many Democrats considered Bush\u2019s victory and his presidency illegitimate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a member of the 2000 U.S. Electoral College, having\nbeen elected by Republican leaders in a statewide election, I was very much\ninterested in the outcome of the electoral dilemma created by the extralegal\ninterference of the Democrat-dominated Florida Supreme Court. <\/p>\n\n\n\n As I watched the angry mob of Gore-Lieberman demonstrators\nas they filled the streets outside the U.S. Supreme Court, demanding that the\ncourt allow the recount to proceed, I had just one thought: Did those mindless demonstrators not\nunderstand that, when all is said and done, the only thing that stands between\nus and the barrel of a gun is the U.S. Supreme Court? And when the court ruled in the only way they\ncould\u2026 that to recount the votes in only the four most heavily Democrat\ncounties in Florida was a clear violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the\nU.S. Constitution\u2026 Democrats charged that the Court majority was acting along\npartisan lines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n However, in the sixteen-year period that followed, the\nDemocrat Party underwent a major radicalization. As Glick describes it, \u201cThe day after the\n(2016) election, Democrats coined a new term in American politics: \u2018resistance.\u2019 Until then, the side that lost a presidential\nelection was the \u2018opposition.\u2019 But the\nDemocrats don\u2019t simply \u2018oppose\u2019 Trump, they \u2018resist\u2019 him.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Glick continues, \u201cThe distinction is profound. An opponent recognizes the basic legitimacy\nof the person he opposes. A resister\ndoes not. The purpose of the anti-Trump\nresistance is not to offer an alternative path for governing. It is to nullify Trump\u2019s presidency by, among\nother things, delegitimizing and dehumanizing Trump, his family, his associates\nand supporters. The resistance seeks to\nparalyze Trump\u2019s presidency, to prevent him from wielding the power of office,\nand (to) oust him from that office as quickly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n With\neach new day producing yet another sordid chapter in the seemingly endless saga\nof Democratic Party criminality\u2026 best typified by the countless crimes of Bill\nand Hillary Clinton\u2026 the party that was\nfounded by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1791 has become a lawless enterprise. Jefferson and Madison could never have\nvisualized the evolution of their party into a criminal conspiracy that\nconsistently attacks constitutional principles and uses fraud, violence, and\nintimidation in order to win elections and maintain themselves in power. Faced with the alternative of doing what is\nbest for the country or doing what is best for their party, Democrats invariably\nchoose to do what is best for their party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In\nterms of ethics and morality, the Democratic Party has been in decline since\nthe day it was founded. As the party of\nslavery, secession, and segregation, Democrats supported the denial of basic\nhuman rights to an entire ethnic minority. \nFollowing the Civil War and throughout the entire period of\nreconstruction, Democrats continued the denial of basic human rights through\nthe enactment of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then,\nwhen the Brown v. Board of Education<\/em> decision ushered in the civil\nrights era and Democrats found they could no longer lynch African Americans and\nwhite Republicans with impunity, they turned their attention to such things as plundering\nthe rich, dumbing-down our children, murdering post-partum infants, desecrating\nthe American flag, and promoting marriage between same-sex partners. And when delegates to the 2000 Democratic\nNational Convention booed a color guard of Eagle Scouts carrying the American\nflag, it was clear that they had sunk to an all-time low.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So,\nwhat is it that has caused Democrats to become so loathsome that they would\nseek to remove a sitting president by engaging in bold-faced lies and outright\ndeception, denying the president and his Republican supporters the ability to\ncross examine his accusers and to subpoena their own witnesses\u2026 the most basic legal\nrights available in any court in the land? \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n The answer may lie in the results of an October 2019 Pew Research survey which tells us that, in 2009, when Barack Obama entered the White House, 68% of white Democrats described themselves as Christians, 24% claimed no religious affiliation, and 7%\u00a0 claimed to be members of other religious groups. \u00a0However, just ten years later, in 2019, after nearly a decade-long Muslim-friendly administration in the White House, only 47% of Democrats call themselves Christians, 42% claim no religious affiliation, and 10% are members of other religions. \u00a0Conversely, the same survey showed significantly different numbers among Republicans.\u00a0 According to the Pew survey, 81% of white Republicans now describe themselves as Christians, 14% are unaffiliated, and just 4% are affiliated with non-Christian religious groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As Patrick Henry once said, “Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants\nforge their chains. A vitiated state of\nmorals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of\nliberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice,\nmoderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to\nfundamental principles.” (A.K.A. Conservatism)<\/p>\n\n\n\n So, when David Brooks\nasks, rhetorically, \u201cAre we on the path to national ruin,\u201d the answer is an\nunequivocal \u201cyes.\u201d But Brooks goes on to\nsuggest that this long and painful decline is followed by a \u201ccatalyzing\nevent.\u201d Democrats have attempted to\ndestroy Donald Trump by financing the preparation of a dossier <\/em>of\nfalsehoods; they\u2019ve attempted to link his electoral success to a false charge\nof \u201cRussian collusion;\u201d and they\u2019ve twisted a totally appropriate conversation\nwith a foreign leader into grounds for impeachment. In doing so, they have developed a level of\nhatred and discord among the American people such as we\u2019ve not experienced\nsince the Civil War. Has fascism finally\ncome to full bloom in America? Could it\nbe that history will judge the unjustified impeachment of Donald Trump to be the\nAmerican version of Kristallnacht? \nOccurring as it is on the 81st<\/sup> anniversary of Germany\u2019s\ndescent into fascism, is it too farfetched to ask, \u201cAre we there yet?\u201d And are\nthe tyrants hard at work forging our chains? Paul\nR. Hollrah is a retired government relations executive and a two-time member of\nthe U.S. Electoral College. He currently\nlives and writes among the hills and lakes of northeast Oklahoma\u2019s Green\nCountry<\/em>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my children were still quite young, we regularly spent a week of our annual vacation with our families in St. Louis. Needless to say, the 16-hour drive from our home on the Philadelphia Main Line was a long and … Continue reading
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