Reblogged from nationalreview.com
by Kevin D. Williamson December 20, 2015 2:00 AM
At the beginning of December, Rolling Stone writer Jeff Goodell asked
Secretary of State John Kerry whether Charles and David Koch, two
libertarian political activists, should be considered — his remarkable
words — “an enemy of the state.” He posed the same question about Exxon,
and John Kerry, who could have been president of these United States,
said that he looked forward to the seizure of Exxon’s assets for the
crime of “proselytizing” impermissibly about the question of global
warming.
An enemy of the state? That’s the Democrats’ theme for the New Year:
totalitarianism.
Donald Trump may talk like a brownshirt, but the Democrats mean
business. For those of you keeping track, the Democrats and their allies
on the left have now: voted in the Senate to repeal the First
Amendment, proposed imprisoning people for holding the wrong views on
global warming, sought to prohibit the showing of a film critical of
Hillary Rodham Clinton, proposed banning politically unpopular academic
research, demanded that funding politically unpopular organizations and
causes be made a crime and that the RICO organized-crime statute be used
as a weapon against targeted political groups. They have filed felony
charges against a Republican governor for vetoing a piece of
legislation, engaged in naked political persecutions of members of
Congress, and used the IRS and the ATF as weapons against political
critics.
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On the college campuses, they shout down unpopular ideas or simply
forbid nonconforming views from being heard there in the first place.
They have declared academic freedom an “outdated concept” and have gone
the full Orwell, declaring that freedom is oppressive and that they
should not be expected to tolerate ideas that they do not share. They
are demanding mandatory ideological indoctrination sessions for
nonconforming students. They have violently assaulted students studying
in libraries and assaulted student journalists documenting their
activities. They have staged dozens of phony hate crimes and sexual
assaults as a pretext for persecuting unpopular organizations and
people.
What they cannot achieve by legislation or litigation, they seek to
achieve by simple violence, left-wing activists having smashed, looted,
and burned portions of Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, where Koreans and
other Asian minorities were specifically targeted. As on college
campuses, they have made a point of assaulting journalists documenting
their violence. They have rioted in Philadelphia and in other cities
They are not backing away from that. Hillary Rodham Clinton may do her
vice-principal shtick, but Bernie Sanders is calling for “revolution,”
and by “revolution” he means crushing the economic and political rights
of opponents in order to prevent them from having a say in political
debate. Sounding oddly like Henry Ford, he seethes as he talks about
scheming foreigners and international bankers working nefariously behind
the scenes to undermine American interests, while his admirers brandish
such traditional symbols of totalitarianism as the hammer-and-sickle
flag.
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They have sought to use the FCC to revoke the broadcast licenses of
Rupert Murdoch and other political hate totems, and have long dreamt of
using federal regulation to shut down conservative talk radio. They have
gone to the Supreme Court to argue that they should be empowered to ban
books, films, magazines, and newspapers when they desire to do so for
political reasons. They are energetic suppressors of free speech.
The Right cannot be indifferent to this: It is our speech that they
intend to prohibit first, and it is us that they are attempting to
imprison for our political views.
It is possible to have a robust, energetic political discourse within
the parameters of American liberalism, which cherishes freedom of speech
and of inquiry, which distinguishes between public and private spheres,
which relies upon the rule of law and the Bill of Rights while placing
limits on the reach of the state. But if you reject that, as our
so-called liberals have, then you cannot have genuine political
discourse, or genuine democracy. When he was asked about having
fabricated a story about Mitt Romney’s not paying taxes, Democratic
Senate leader Harry Reid made a straight-up might-makes-right argument:
“Romney didn’t win, did he?” You cannot have much of an argument without
some level of honesty, which is a problem for a country that probably
is going to be subjected to yet another Clinton campaign. You cannot
have much of an argument without freedom of speech, and you cannot have
democracy if political activism is criminalized. The Democrats are
seeking to restrict speech, and they already have criminalized politics:
Ask Rick Perry about that, or Tom Delay.
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Democrat
The Right cannot be indifferent to this, because we simply do not have
that option: It is our speech that they intend to prohibit first, and it
is us that they are attempting to imprison for our political views. But
the Left should not be indifferent to this, either. There are at least a
few (and, one suspects, more than that) liberals of the old-fashioned
variety in the Democratic party, and it is not at all clear that they
are going to wish to remain part of a political organization that is
seriously attempting to create a class of political prisoners, to ban
books, and to drive people from their jobs and communities for their
political beliefs.
John Kerry cannot quite answer the question of whether one of his
political rivals should be declared “an enemy of the state.” Between now
and November 2016, Americans might want to think a bit about whether
they wish to invest an openly totalitarian political party with the
power of the presidency.
— Kevin D. Williamson is roving correspondent at National Review.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428793/democrats-and-totalitarianism-2016?5OJcwA893b4XyDYy.01
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/428793/democrats-and-totalitarianism-2016?5OJcwA893b4XyDYy.01
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