When I teach my Kennesaw
State University students why America is a democracy, I begin by explaining our
political culture. This account starts
with our tradition of allowing the winners of elections to take over from the losers. Rather than cancel the results of unfavorable
balloting, those formerly in office step aside.
This happened when John
Adams went home to Massachusetts so that Thomas Jefferson could assume the
presidency. He did so even though an antagonistic
campaign had so alienated the two that they were no longer on speaking
terms. A peaceful transfer also occurred
when John Quinsy Adams made way for Andrew Jackson. These two hated each other, but the out-going
president did not seek to undo the in-coming.
How different things were in
Iraq. The Bush administration thought it
could engage in nation building, but found it was plowing infertile soil. The Sunnis and the Shia so detested each
other that they refused to cooperate in developing democratic institutions. This was never part of their heritage.
Sadly democracy seems to be
eroding here as well. Barack Obama made
a show of presiding over a peaceful transition of power, but that turned out to
be a public relations gambit. Behind the
scenes his people were laying traps for Trump.
They arranged it so that the new president would have to cope with a
string of legal and intelligence landmines.
The Congressional Democrats
participated in this insurrection as well.
They have slow walked Trump’s cabinet nominees so that he has difficulty
organizing his programs. They have also
made accusation after unsubstantiated accusation. The idea was to create a debilitating scandal
before anything got done.
The assault on Attorney
General Sessions is a case in point. He
has been accused of conspiring with the Russians and lying about this to a
Senate Committee. Yet all he apparently
did was to meet the Russian ambassador once at a public event and speak to him
another time in his own office.
Wow! Evidently it is now considered scandalous for
a sitting Senator to conduct senatorial business. Initially Democrats insisted they had never
done any such thing, but subsequent revelations demonstrated otherwise. Manifestly there are crimes of which only
Republicans can be guilty.
Perhaps the saddest aspect
of this Ruritania style debacle is that Democrats are said to be playing to
their base. They are stoking up their
partisans to later assist in bringing down a conservative government. In the meantime, the radicals among them keep
the pot boiling by protesting everything in sight.
Polls show that whereas
Republican and moderate voters approve of most of Trump’s actions Democrats
reflexively do not. Indeed, they applaud
the disruptive and disingenuous tactics of their party leaders. What makes this chilling is that it reveals a
disinclination to support democracy itself.
The mask has today fallen
and even ordinary liberals have exposed their totalitarian tendencies. Republicans behaved in no such way when Obama
won a second term. They too were deeply
disappointed, yet they did not try to bring down the Temple.
What I therefore recommend
is a counter-attack. If Democrats are
keen to appoint a special prosecutor to undermine conservatives, why not
appoint one to investigate liberals. I
suggest that they start with Hillary Clinton and proceed to Obama.
This ought not, however, be
done immediately. It would distract from
repealing and replacing ObamaCare or enacting tax cuts. For the present, Trump and his people can go
into a rope-a-dope mode. They can absorb
the blows until their adversaries tire themselves out.
One of the things I learned
in growing up is that bullies must be resisted.
They like easy targets. When you
fight back, they seek less dangerous victims.
The goal is thus to give them a bloody nose so they think twice about
turning the United States into a banana republic.
Liberalism has lost its
way. It has had so many failures that
its advocate’s are in a state of shock.
They do not seem to realize how perilous their current methods are. The rest of us, however, must not be intimidated
into submission. Resisting their attacks
is the least we can do.
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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