When the American Conservative Union asked if I wanted to address CPAC this year, of course I said yes. Then came several weeks of discussion as to what the subject of my speech should be. This is the biggest event of its kind in the nation, with more than 200 speakers and this year in excess of 10,000 attendees, more than half under the age of 25, so I am not envious of the job Matt Schlapp and Dan Schneider have to do to pull off such a feat. (Especially when your speakers include the president and the vice president and all the security that entails).
The topic we eventually settled on was the threat Russia poses to America, a subject I am always happy to address given my family history. With parents who suffered under a Stalinist dictatorship and a father who escaped from a Communist political prison, providing a reality-check on the menace posed by a Russia still run by a KGB colonel comes easy.
However, on the day, eight minutes into my speech I decided I needed to change tack. Russia is a threat, but it is not the Soviet Union. Instead I felt compelled to talk about the real threat we face as the free-est nation on God’s Earth: the rise of socialism within our borders.
My speech was on the morning of the first day of CPAC, and the remarkable thing was, as the next three days unfolded, my decision to ad lib on that specific topic was echoed again and again—without any “central planning” from the organizers—by speaker after speaker. From Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, to Mr. Brexit, Nigel Farage, to Mark Levin, and finally the vice president and President Trump himself. (If you missed the president’s barnburner, do yourself a favor and watch it. And bookmark the link so you can return to it when you feel like the radical crazies are winning and you need a laugh).
All of us ended up reflecting on the fact that, like a zombie that just will not die, Karl Marx’s ideology of destruction is back, and this time not as an external threat held to by a nation that wants to destroy or enslave us, but in the guise of an erstwhile mainstream American party that has been taken over by extremists.
Yet those who have surrendered to the deadly utopianism seem to be suffering from a psychosis of some kind. Democrats by and large deny they are socialists, so much so that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) stood to clap during the president’s State of the Union as he pledged that America will never be a socialist nation. This at the same time that Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) announced her “New Green Deal,” a centralization of power designed to destroy the free-market completely. No gasoline engines. No air travel. All buildings demolished and then rebuilt to a politically correct code. Not to mention the rationing, or eventually phasing out of red meat so we can get a grip on bovine flatulence. (If you want to see the original green scam plan Ocasio-Cortez’s office tried to deep-six, you can find it here.)
If patriotic Americans ever capitulated and the plan were implemented it would give more power to the federal government than any Communist state ever had. Yes, there may have been breadlines in Moscow, Prague, and Warsaw, but they never banned meat or automobiles.
The fact is, the Democratic Party is in big trouble. Its old white leadership thought they could allow the fringe types into the club and control them, dilute their extremism. They are failing. This burgeoning internal civil war is clearest not when it comes to new disagreements but rather, in confronting old skeletons.
The Left has always had a default setting that was anti-Israeli and anti-Jewish. Just look at the history of the crypto-anti-Semitic BDS movement and where it was born.
The industrial, military and political establishment thought they could control and use Hitler, too. Perhaps we shouldn’t endeavor to repeat that mistake. Extremists have no place in our government, but that is the business of the voters. However, as with many other issues, the real problem is the liberal media supporting the liberal agenda.
Probably not since in times past the two parties represented different ways to do the same thing. Now, however, the Democrats come to represent a different system of government instead of different ways to make capitalism and freedom better. In times past, it wasn’t necessary to defend the very character of our system of government because it was far and above better than anything else in the world. Now, however, Democrats turned socialists use the very victims of their own failed policies as proof that because not everyone benefits from our constitutional republic to the same degree (though all benefit) it should be replaced with a system that mandates all outcomes are equal, even if those outcomes are far less beneficial to the general public than under the other system.
Of course, the leadership will benefit greatly and richly.
Actually, we’re just trying to settle who’s best qualified to take the Trump travesty down. Any GOP volunteers who develop a spine and begin talking genuine American values and principles again will be given due consideration. Are there any left who haven’t been purged from the party?
@Greg:
This ought to be good…
Oh wise one, please enlighten us as to what the genuine American values and principles are a short list will do.
@kitt: Well, look at their HR 1 and the pro-Omar resolution to see what their values are. As to principles, they don’t have a single one.