by Victor Davis Hanson
The present-day Left bears little resemblance to the old civil-libertarian, integrationist Democratic Party that existed from the 1960s through 2000.
The antecedents to its current madness were once previewed in the old party’s extremist wing of campus radicals of the 1960s and 1970s. They were accentuated by Black Lives Matter and Antifa during the Obama years, forged during the COVID lockdown and George Floyd riots, and polished during the era of Trump derangement syndrome.
On almost every issue, Democrats have repudiated their prior reverence for the Supreme Court.
They distrust individual liberty and free expression.
They now worship the money and clout of corporate America.
Racial ecumenicalism and integration are seen as passé.
There is little need for borders to protect vulnerable American workers, given the advantages of inviting in millions of poor illegal immigrants without audits.
Democrats have transmogrified into a Soviet-style socialist binary of rich and poor, run by an elite nomenklatura that dictates its orders to its foot soldiers of the underclass. An entire new left-wing vocabulary — clingers, deplorables, irredeemables, dregs, chumps, ultra-MAGA, semi-fascists — has come to express their hatred of the middle class.
On the Supreme Court
The Left has adopted Franklin Roosevelt’s once infamous (but now sanctified) 1937 approach to destroying the autonomy of the Supreme Court by threatening to pack it.
Note how any means necessary are justified in their attacks. Swarm the conservative justices’ private homes to leverage future opinions, with the assurance that an ethically bankrupt Justice Department will never enforce existing laws prohibiting such intimidation of the justices.
Have the Democrat Senate minority leader scream threats to justices by name at the very doors of the court and at the head of a mob — promising to individual justices a whirlwind to reap and unrecognizable forces that will soon hit them.
Wage ad hominem attacks on traditional justices in the media. Allege they are corrupt, on the theory that they are limited in their means of defense and any rebuttal will lack the wherewithal of the original unfounded smears.
Talk nonstop about changing the number of the court justices in order to intimidate conservative justices to move leftward. Move left or be packed!
Argue for nullifying Supreme Court decisions if they lack legal sanction, given the conservative majority of the Court.
Drive down the Court’s approval ratings in polls by nonstop screams that the justices cruelly hurt left-wing constituencies.
Claim that the presidency and the Senate, both in leftist hands, are the true voices of the people, rather than ossified edicts of heartless conservative justices.
Note the current attack has no principle other than neutering a conservative-leaning court until it can be rebooted left-wing, after which it will return to its former sacrosanct status.
Individual Liberty and Free Speech
In our Animal Farm left-wing world, free speech is “hate speech” and “individual liberty” is selfish privilege.
The ACLU transmogrified into an activist group targeting conservative expression deemed “hateful.”
Universities’ “hate speech” codes and “free speech” zones are Orwellian. They are subtexts for ensuring that any prominent conservative speaker should expect to be shouted down, threatened, slandered, and run off campus — sometimes violently — for infringing on the “safety” of the marginalized and vulnerable.
Social media, Google searches, and internet access are warped by corporate efforts to alter the flow of information. Once dangerous censorship has become a noble effort to silence “misinformation” and more dangerous “disinformation” — as adjudicated by ignorant 20-somethings at computer screens in Silicon Valley and obsequious 30-somethings in government cartels.
Corporate Grandees
Corporate America and its financial power are now left-wing approved.
CEOs now, in politically correct or woke ways, put their gains (once deemed ill-gotten) to the service of the people. Disney, Target, Anheuser-Busch, the airlines, and sports franchises all “get it.”
The Left has co-opted corporate America. So it says to them, “Use your money and clout to fast track our woke agenda, and in return, we will reinvent you, erasing from memory our past slurs of “bloodsucking leeches” and “running-dog capitalists,” and welcoming you into the pantheon of community-minded guardians of our culture. And you will make untold money from our globalized endorsement as never before.”
By absorbing the MBA programs at the major universities, the Left ensures that the new corporate credentialed elite has never gotten its hands grubby or stained in the lower echelons of business, or worked its way up the long, grimy corporate ladder. Instead, unpolluted the new execs transition from their MBA courses in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and in environmental, social, and governance to the activist corporate boardroom.
Remember, only mega-wealth is good. It is a revolutionary force that can bury wannabe capitalists, whose parochial right-wing millions stand no chance against enlightened left-wing globalized billions. Just ask George Soros, Bill Gates, Mike Bloomberg, and Mark Zuckerberg.
From Class to Race and Sex
Class no longer matters to the new Left, except as a force multiplier lever if the supposedly marginalized are the nonwhite or nonbinary.
Otherwise, the poor of East Palestine, Ohio or the recruits who join the military from upstate New York or rural Texas are to be written off as the most dangerous demographic in America, full of white “rage,” “supremacy,” and “privilege.”
Segregation and separatism are noble ideas that perpetuate proper racial distinctions on the necessary pathway to massive transfers of reparatory wealth. Tribalism is a good word now. Superficial appearance alone can be reliable proof of exploitation.
“Crime” is a social construct, fabricated by wealthy white men whose manipulation of the economy is reflected in the laws they make to oppress and further victimize.
Segregated dorms, graduations, and safe spaces are necessary to fight integrationists and assimilationists who would culturally appropriate or rob the identities of the Other. There is a good racism necessary to fight bad racism, once experts like Ibram X. Kendi can instruct us which is which. Racism is “systemic” like air, but only trained DEI czars can detect it everywhere.
Poverty is now to be redefined. White poverty is the deserved fate of the stupid who never caught on to globalization and mindlessly try to convince us that ossified farming, the drudgery of mining, icky construction, the stink of fracking, or the monotony of assembly work remain vital industries.
Nonwhite poverty is the fault of the exploitative middle class, which lacks the romance of the distant poor and power and good taste of the rich corporate elite.
The Left’s once disliked intelligence and investigatory agencies, the despised Department of Justice, and the loathed Pentagon hierarchy are now deified on the principle that 1) by fiat, they can implement overdue cultural changes by bypassing the messing right-wing roadblocks of an archaic legislature, and 2) their extralegal powers can ferret out counterrevolutionaries and destroy them in a way impossible by others bound by a calcified and counterrevolutionary Constitution.
The value of these weaponized bureaucracies is endless. FBI directors can lie if the cause is deemed good, and with impunity under oath. Compliant FISA courts that are willingly deluded by false writs can help to spy on right-wingers.
Noble ex-CIA directors can round up “authorities” to issue false manifestos to influence elections. Enlightened attorney generals can overlook corruption and money laundering like that of the Biden family to emasculate any looming political rival.
Whistleblowers are neutral characters: deified when useful to the Left, to be despised as quislings when they disclose left-wing crimes.
The Border
The southern border is a mere construct created by fascists to exclude the Other.
Its removal fast tracks a new demography, dependent on leftist largess and eager to reciprocate with loyalty at the polls.
The triumphalism of the slogans touting a “New Democratic Majority” and “Demography is Destiny” sanctifies the reality that citizenship is defunct and mere residency has replaced it with all its former rights, but none of its erstwhile responsibilities.
Any who object to the cynicism inherent in the new demographic realities are racist adherents to the Great Replacement Theory, who are not wrong in deciphering leftist agendas, but to be damned as enemies of the people for exposing them.
How and Why?
Finally, how did the Left reinvent itself as a revolutionary Jacobin party and so easily stage its revolution?
First, it claimed that there is no Republican Party when in fact there has never been a more viable one that is racially inclusive and representative of the beleaguered middle class. Instead it is to be smeared as “ultra-MAGA” and “semi-fascist” and supposedly as “unrecognizable” as the new Left is demonstrably recognizable as militant socialist.
Second, the Left destroys people.
Cancel culture, doxxing, deplatforming, and shadow banning are all synonyms for left-wing character destruction, an updated electronic form of Trostkyization and Lavrentiy Beria-style “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” persecutions.
Anyone who strays — a Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Matt Taibbi, or an Elon Musk — will be targeted by the woke bureaucracies, libeled in the media, and ostracized by the popular culture.
The message is one of deterrence: stay properly left and you are accorded the James Comey/Andrew McCabe/James Clapper/John Brennan/Anthony Fauci/Hunter Biden/2020 rioters exemptions from legal accountability for lying under oath, rank profiteering, or abject violent rioting.
Swerve improperly rightward, and you will be vaporized by the long arm of the politicized law.
A final note. The Left’s only problem is that it has bequeathed a new legacy that has the potential to boomerang should it ever lose power.
So what has the Left conferred on America?
Impeachment once, twice, and more still is a good thing. Better still, it is to try a president even as a private citizen.
Special counsels are wonderful — all the more so if they have nearly two years and $40 million to hire a dream team of partisan lawyers.
A good attorney general is a president’s “wingman” who uses the law to go after enemies and exempt friends and families from the law, while using indictments to pave the way for reelection.
Lawfare is a legitimate tool of the president, especially when targeting a rival threat to his reelection.
High office is a path to riches. Selling your name for tens of millions of dollars is not only legitimate, but a necessary perk of the vice presidency and presidency.
The FBI, the Pentagon, the CIA, the Justice Department, and the IRS are underused assets. With the right mindset and willpower, all are vital tools in neutering your political enemies.
The media is utterly corrupt. What it covers and what it omits are entirely political decisions and thus can be warped accordingly by government rewards and punishments.
What the Left now fears most is the revolutionary model it has bequeathed to America — and what might happen if its monstrous creation falls into politically incorrect hands.
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Victor Davis Hanson is a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness and the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He is an American military historian, columnist, a former classics professor, and scholar of ancient warfare. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004.
Photo “George Floyd Riots” by Lorie Shaull CC2.0.
