Pop Quiz:
What British Prime Minister said: “Nothing is more destructive of human dignity than a rule which imposes a mute and blind obedience.”?
What author wrote: “Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”?
What American author said: ““They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged. And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.””?
What American feminist said: “Women’s studies is a comfy, chummy morass of unchallenged groupthink . It is, with rare exception, totally unscholarly. Academic feminists have silenced men and dissenting women.”?
Answers at the end of the post.
It is an axiom in American politics that in any Presidential election 40% of the voters will slavishly vote for the candidate with a D following their name. Recent polls suggest that the voter group most reflexively loyal to the Democrat brand is “white, suburban, educated” women. This counter-intuitive datum begs for a discussion of the reasons why so many voters fall in behind the Pied Pipers of the Democratic Party.
From 1861 to 1913 there were ten Presidents elected, nine of which were Republicans. The one elected Democrat stands out because he vetoed 304 bills passed by Congress (259 more than the second most prolific user of the veto pen during that period), in large part because he had actually read the US Constitution. During this 52 year period we saw 13 states admitted to the union and we secured our Manifest Destiny. In addition, it was the longest period of unbridled economic freedom and industrial growth in world history. Whether or not this was due to the Republican leadership can be debated but there is certainly a strong correlation.
However during this incredible national expansion sinister forces were stirring across the pond. In 1867 Karl Marx published the first volume of his masterwork injecting envy and division into social policy. Das Kapital had a major impact on the evolution of political opposition to the American success story. Marx and his ignorant followers embraced dirigisme and authoritarian centralized power. The Democratic Party is the red headed step-child of Marxist “philosophy”.
Commencing with the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 the Democrat “elite” worked diligently to destroy the American experiment in limited government. Our Constitution is designed to stifle the migration of power to a central authority. Between Lincoln and turn of the century the Federal government worked as designed…”The best government is that which governs least”.
The 20th century has been marked by an assault on limited government by four megalomaniac Democrat Presidents: Wilson, FDR, LBJ and Obama. We are dealing with the national dumpster fire that these men left us when they exited, not surprisingly, stage Left.
So what is the attraction of the Democratic Party?
The 1976 Democratic Party platform specifically called for a “fairer distribution of wealth, income and power”. In 1980 the Party’s platform promised that “honor and truth and integrity” would be “restored to our government and to our political process.”
The report card on promises made…
Race
One of the reasons for the poor Presidential election results after 1860 was the Democrat history of racist policies. It was the party of slavery, the instigator of the Civil War and provided the management team for the Confederate States. After the war the Democrats implemented Jim Crow and protected the Ku Klux Klan and lynching. They legislated segregation in all aspects of social intercourse. Suppression of Black voters was policy in all of the states of the former confederacy.
Today the Democrats infantilize Black Americans suggesting that Blacks can’t be expected to figure out how to secure photo IDs for voting. In addition, they rely of fearmongering. Privileged Leftist “newscasters” aver that Blacks have never had it worse than is now. Felons like George Floyd are lionized and Winston Smith is working tirelessly to erase the sordid history of the Party…successfully it appears as products of our public school indoctrination system have no idea who Emmett Till was.
Spending
In 1929 the National Debt was $17 Billion and today it exceeds $34 Trillion. This obligation is the direct result of profligate spending by the Federal government. Annual spending is unmanageable and, as DOGE has shown, is shrouded in mystery and billions of dollars have been given the David Copperfield treatment. And what has this irresponsible spending accomplished?
Distribution of Wealth (and taxes)
During the last 48 years the presidency was equally divided between the two parties. So how has the tax burden changed over this period. The top 1% of income earners (the “super rich”) paid about 45% of total income tax revenues in 2021. Does that constitute a “fair share”? If not, then what is a fair share?
When Wilson secured passage of the 16th Amendment the top end tax rate reached 67%. Harding dramatically reduced tax levels…and government spending. Under FDR the top tax rate soared to 94% on incomes over $200,000. Today under Trump the tax levels were reduced for the various brackets from 39.6%, 33%, 28%, 25%, to 15% to 37%, 32%, 24%, 22%, and 12%. Progressive but not confiscatory. The Democrats want, surprise, surprise, to increase those rates.
Social Issues
Since the creation of the Department of Education under Carter the quality of of education has been in free fall. The integrity of our borders has been destroyed and we are overrun with illegal tourists who, according to Pelosi, are here to clean our toilets and in some cases to rape and murder our daughters. The Left terrorizes the people with horror stories of climate disasters around the corner (the location of that corner is never identified). The government used the Covid epidemic, unleashed by the CCP, to impose policies that have done incalculable damage to our national confidence in the healthcare system and the ultimate impact on students who faced school closures and untested vaccines has yet to be determined. We are at war over the use of pronouns. The Democrats demand “due process” for every illegal immigrant but refuse the same for any Republican who was within 50 miles of the Capitol on January 6. We face rampant anti-Jewish behavior on college campuses. Young people are having a transgender program forced upon them through drugs and unneeded surgeries.
What is it about this calamitous agenda that so hypnotizes American voters that they will blindly pull the Democrat lever in the voting booth? What causes the insane behavior against Tesla cars? Why do allegedly educated people call everyone who disagrees with them Nazis, Fascists and/or racists? What happened to civil discourse?
The Wisdom of Watterson
Calvin and Hobbes was an iconic comic strip. The wisdom of Calvin, as demonstrated by the following quotes, applies to our news media:
“Maybe we can eventually make language a complete impediment to understanding.”
“The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity.”
Answers to the pop quiz:
What British Prime Minister said: “Nothing is more destructive of human dignity than a rule which imposes a mute and blind obedience.”? Anthony Eden, successor to Churchill in 1955
What author wrote: “Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”? Mary Wollstonecraft, author of Frankenstein, an allegory about our Federal bureaucracy
What American author said: ““They hate because they fear, and they fear because they feel that the deepest feelings of their lives are being assaulted and outraged. And they do not know why; they are powerless pawns in a blind play of social forces.””? Richard Wright in Native Son
What American feminist said: “Women’s studies is a comfy, chummy morass of unchallenged groupthink . It is, with rare exception, totally unscholarly. Academic feminists have silenced men and dissenting women.”? The irrepressible Camille Paglia