Quote:COVID’s grip on America is relaxing, not so the Left’s. The Left seized COVID as an unprecedented statist opportunity to advance their agenda. Unsurprisingly, they now resist relinquishing it. Since the Left refuse to let go of America, America must let go of the Left.
Last week the CDC relaxed its guidelines for outdoor mask-wearing by those fully vaccinated against COVID. It was more a rearguard action than a vanguard one, but at least it was a start. Several states are well ahead in their return to normalcy.
America’s virus statistics demonstrate the remission of the virus and validate accelerating relaxation of the lockdowns. On a seven-day moving average, active cases, daily new cases, and daily deaths have been plummeting since the beginning of the year.
On the ledger’s other side, vaccinations began in the U.S. in December, averaging over two million a day since February; as a result, around 31 percent of the population is now fully vaccinated at this writing.
Beyond just the statistics, we have long known who the most vulnerable are — the elderly and those with preexisting conditions — and who are not: children. This understanding and the response to it have led to the U.S.’s overall 98 percent survival rate, which is far higher in the least vulnerable. Despite this, the lockdowns have overwhelmingly taken a one-size-fits-none approach, and nowhere more than in school closings. As of the end of April, only 14 states required in-person instruction with plentiful conditions (for all or some grades and either full or part time).
All evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, the Left have little interest in relaxing their COVID power grab. Only eight states have lifted restrictions. Oregon is considering extending its mask and social distancing mandates on businesses indefinitely.
Of course, the most left of America’s major unions have been the epitome of reopening resistance: teachers unions. In most states, they have resisted returning to classrooms like truants. The Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call recently reported that when Congress earlier this year debated “reopening schools and including money for education in a massive coronavirus relief package, the nation’s largest teachers unions sharply increased their spending on political contributions … The money overwhelmingly went to Democrats.”
The Left’s refusal to let go of lockdown protocols, even in the face of mounting evidence that supports doing so, is hardly surprising because they so eagerly seized them initially. Blue governments locked down earlier, longer, and more severely than red governments — often doing so in unnecessary and even counterproductive ways. The temptation and opportunity for unprecedented control were simply too great.
COVID presented the Left with the statist opportunity of a lifetime, justifying, under the cover of COVID, the ultimate masking: the use of government power to advance their preexisting agenda. Naturally, the Left acted most robustly where government was already most intrusive.
So unique was the COVID crisis that they were able to move aggressively and with astonishing alacrity. Starting in California and New York, America was effectively locked down in short order. What the Left could not have prevailed on at the ballot box, they obtained by fiat. All was shrouded under a cloak of necessity and moral superiority, with questioners muzzled by righteous indignation. So successful were the Left that they were able to go beyond just the government’s reach and into public opprobrium to enforce their goals.
Virtually everything the Left had sought incrementally for decades, and with only marginal success, they pursued headlong. The $5.5 trillion in federal spending alone — over a quarter of the size of the entire federal debt in 2020 — in just over a year has provided unimaginable resources for income redistribution. It has also provided billions to cash-strapped blue governments whose long-time leftist policies had already pushed them to bankruptcy’s brink.
Nationwide lockdowns have provided an incredible opportunity for every facet of business regulation. In many locations, this regulation has gone beyond how businesses legally operate to whether or not they can operate at all. And school closures for over a year have given teachers unions complete control of schools and their curricula. Never have parents been more excluded from decision-making, and never have students’ needs been more disregarded.
Yet as successful as the Left have been, they are not done. Even as the Biden administration proposes another $4 trillion in more spending and corresponding taxes on corporations and the wealthy (the Left’s favorite targets), the Left complain that both are inadequate. COVID may be winding down, but the Left are still winding up.
The Left cannot and will not let go because such a unique opportunity is not readily relinquished. Their policy opportunity has far outstripped their political one. There was no mandate for the Left’s policies in the 2020 election, and the slim advantage Democrats hold today could be gone tomorrow — in November 2022 to be exact. So the left are pushing to get more through their closing COVID opening and ensure what they have gotten under the auspices of emergency becomes permanent.
Historically, the Left never willingly relinquished power. Unlike conservatives, whose highest faith lies in the private sector, to which they would yield more authority, the Left sees government — especially if they control it — as the highest aspiration for society’s administration. Name a single left-supported program that the Left have ever been willing to see discontinued. Demonstrable failure or success makes no difference to the Left. Their response is always the same: The program in question needs more resources and authority, either to correct its rationalized shortcomings or to expand its claimed achievements.
The Left also are aware that once COVID is no longer a national emergency, the reappraisal of their actions during the pandemic will begin. They know that the general public believes they have a lot to answer for. The public, no longer preoccupied with COVID and no longer held in check by lockdowns, is likely to retaliate against the Left’s harm and hypocrisy during the crisis. The recall effort against California’s Gov. Gavin Newsom and the spiraling investigations into New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo — governors of the two states that began the lockdowns over a year ago — could be just the beginning of the public’s postmortem.
Yet COVID is not the only crisis the Left refuse to surrender. Their claim of systemic racism is equally resilient as they seek evidence of it in every conceivable instance. The Left always follow a similar pattern: seeking to advance by promoting a crisis only they have discovered and that only their policies can solve.
The Left will never relinquish power, just as they will never cease seeking it. They have not in the past, they are not with COVID, and they will not with any of their future crises. It is not in their DNA. The Left’s policies are always just a means to an end, and that end is always power, for which no end is ever intended. The sooner America realizes this reality, the sooner they can rid themselves of the opportunist Left — and until Americans do they can never expect a return to normalcy.
Quote:James Madison, hailed as the father of our Constitution, is probably turning over in his grave given the shredding of our God-given constitutional values and principles upon which we were founded.
Madison recognized that since concentrating power leads to tyranny, dividing government power was essential for the preservation of liberty. He will never be accused of being short-sighted about the threats government would pose to the people.
Madison and others set out deliberately to design a form of government that would limit abuses and withstand the test of time. America now faces that test, and the central question that has emerged is: Will we pass the test, or will we fall into the abyss of history as other nation-states have done?
Along with other framers of our nation’s Constitution, Madison argued for dividing federal power among the three branches of our government — legislative, executive, and judicial. These should be studied and clearly understood by every American schoolchild from an early age, but to our nation’s and our children’s detriment, they are not.
And what is even less understood is why the Founders adopted a structure that they knew would result in conflict among the branches. In truth, the constitutional structure was designed not to enhance the efficiency of the government but to impede the exercise of raw governmental power and to protect the liberty of the people.
Separation of powers is not a flaw in our system of government, as many demanding changes increasingly assert. It is purposely designed to protect our constitutional republic from the tyranny of a few — tyranny that today is knocking down the door of America.
Contrast the original design chosen by our framers with the intemperate statements of President Biden, who demands Congress yield to his will on matters such as gun control, under the threat that he will usurp the role of Congress by signing executive orders.
Consider the effect of the Democrats’ dangerous threat to pack the Supreme Court if it does not bow to President Biden’s broad claims to executive authority in violation of the separation of powers. Explain why 20 of our 50 Republican senators voted to confirm Merrick Garland as attorney general — under whose leadership the Department of Justice just conducted an early-morning raid on the law office and apartment of President Trump’s former lawyer, Rudy Giuliani.
To fully appreciate how dangerous these recent developments are, only three months into the Biden administration, Americans must now revisit the original plan.
In 1788, Madison penned Federalist No. 51 to persuade the people of New York to ratify the Constitution. He explained the rationale for dividing federal power among three branches of government as “contriving the interior structure of the government” so that “its several constituent parts may, by their mutual relations, be the means of keeping each other in their proper places.”
All said, having three branches place checks and balances on each other to prevent an out-of-control government keeps imperfect humans from gaining too much power.
Again, the ideas of Madison were intentional in order to select persons to serve in each branch of government in a manner that would prevent one branch from controlling the other. Our Constitution was designed so that each branch would be able to operate within its sphere independently from the other branches.
And it was structured so that each branch would have “the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.”
“Ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” Madison wrote. God knows we have seriously ambitious politicians now “serving” who are hungry for even more power for themselves — but so far the Democrats in Congress are embracing the far-left Biden/Harris/AOC agenda lock, stock and barrel.
Madison considered this separation as not some mere preference but instead absolutely “essential to the preservation of liberty.” As a student of history, Madison fully expected that the government he helped create would eventually become abusive of its citizens. He wrote that the separation of powers was “necessary to control the abuses of government” because government was no more than an assembly of sinful men (and women).
He asked, “[W]hat is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” Then he penned his famous line: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”
So Madison grounded the need to separate powers in the very nature of man. His is a distinctly biblical view of man, which makes clear we have all been born with original sin. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).
Madison was a practical, God-fearing man and a realist — something we need more of today — and he understood the fallen nature of those who would serve in government. The reality is that we have a government composed of sinful people exercising authority over a population of sinful people.
It will ever be thus, but effective checks on the government’s exercise of its power truly are “essential to the preservation of liberty.”
Where did the idea of “separation of powers” originate? The principle of separation of powers is attributed to the French political theorist Baron de Montesquieu. The framers were well familiar with Montesquieu and his treatise “The Spirit of the Laws,” written decades earlier, in which he advocated dividing power among branches of government.
But where did Montesquieu find that concept? In Book I, Chapter I, of his “Spirit of the Laws” he confesses that God is our “creator and preserver.” He explains that man “constantly violates the laws God has established,” as “he is subject to ignorance and error” and “falls subject to a thousand passions.”
Hence, he repeatedly refers to the need to “separate” and “balance” power — not to concentrate it.
Tracing the thread of this principle even further back, the Holy Bible describes the nature of man as being “shapen in iniquity.” (Psalm 51:5). And it describes the nature of God, and his attributes, and his role in preserving his creation. One verse that summarizes all three of those roles is Isaiah 33:22: “For the LORD is our judge [judicial], the LORD is our lawgiver [legislative], the LORD is our king [executive]; he will save us.”
Certainly, it is no coincidence that these functions are reflected in the three separate branches of our federal government. While the Lord God can fulfill these three roles perfectly, the same could not be said of any of his creation — at least since Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden.
Because humans (men and women alike) are most certainly not angels, we must divide the various functions of government and not trust anyone in government with too much power. Whenever any one branch of government tries to usurp the power entrusted to another, it is the duty of the other branches to resist.
Under the Constitution, the judiciary has the duty to decide cases based on lawless acts by the states, though the Supreme Court’s refusal to do so last year amid a contested election raised serious concerns.
Increasingly, that is the story of our federal government — usurpation and abdication. None of the branches seems to want to perform its own function, but rather wants to exercise the power of another branch.
Where are our political or even our moral leaders? We the people are demanding answers from federal officeholders and will not be satisfied with your “politics as usual” answers any longer. We will not be satisfied because our nation faces a critical transition point in U.S. history, and your continued usurpation and abdication of your constitutional functions is unacceptable.
Whenever there is a failure of one of the branches to do its duty to defend its constitutional responsibilities (and these current failures of our government represent a clear and present danger to our republic) — the duty falls on We the People to remove those who have betrayed their trust and to restore constitutional order.
And We The People need to quit complaining about the politicians and instead vote them out, or better still, get involved intimately and directly in the constitutional republic that the eminent Benjamin Franklin warned us about keeping.
Sadly (or not, depending on your viewpoint), this is where America stands today.
Quote:In the not-too-distant past when America used to make patriotic instead of “woke” films, fictional President James Marshall, played by Harrison Ford, proclaimed in Air Force One that “America will not negotiate with terrorists.” When Air Force One was later hijacked by terrorists, he stuck to his word, telling the ringleader “get off my plane” before literally throwing him off it.
Conservatives on Capitol Hill should rewatch this movie — and take its lesson to heart.
What the Biden administration and its radical left allies are engaged in is nothing short of political terrorism. Their tactic is simple: give us what we want, or we will blow it all up by packing the court, ending the filibuster, adding new states, and pushing a federal takeover of elections.
All of these are nuclear options meant to achieve a permanent, one-party political takeover of the country. If you thought the loss of public confidence and the reaction to the 2020 election was bad, you can’t imagine what the lost confidence in our system would be if all of these power grabs occur.
Nowhere is this strategy more apparent than on the issue of illegal immigration. And as of right now, all signs point to Congress giving in to Biden’s demands, which would damage the basic structure of our country as a democratic republic and destroy the confidence and trust of the public in the federal government in a way we’ve never seen before.
Joe Biden entered the White House promising the largest amnesty for illegal aliens in U.S. history. No one knows how high the number will be, as we don’t even know how many illegals are in the country. Estimates generally range from 11 to 22 million.
Whatever the number, there is no acceptable amnesty deal for the far-Left that doesn’t include a “path to citizenship,” which is D.C.-speak for getting more votes for Democrats in elections as soon as possible. The voting aspect of this is fundamental: without a voting component, Biden and his left-wing advocates would not support it.
It’s all about the votes, a political move at its very core as the left sees this as permanently changing the electorate in their favor. Don’t believe us? Remove the “path to citizenship” aspect from any immigration “deal,” and try to find a national elected Democrat who would support it.
So how is the Biden administration getting Republicans to even consider such a deal? Well, in short, Biden blew up border security and the legal immigration system and will only fix it (or so he claims) if they give him what he wants. He is currently waving illegal aliens in like a third-base coach telling his star runner to head home. His administration is literally letting thousands of aliens a day cross the Southern border, helping Mexican drug cartels fill their coffers with the funds flowing from their human-smuggling operations in the process.
What Biden wants is more illegal aliens in the country to generate more appetite for an amnesty “solution” for such a large population. And he and AWOL border czar Kamala Harris won’t lift a finger to fix the mess they made unless they get something bigger in return.
Unfortunately, some Republicans are already taking the bait. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), along with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), recently introduced a bill that would help implement the open-border policies Biden has established by more quickly “processing” and then transporting illegals into the far reaches of the country, without even forcing Biden to put back into place the effective enforcement policies he undid that caused this crisis.
“Processing” just means rubber-stamping their entry and then releasing them to disappear into the heart of our vast nation, where they will never be found or ever removed from the country. At the same time, a group of Republican senators are pushing for a massive amnesty and considering mere nods at border security.
Letting the Biden administration destroy border security to allow unimpeded illegal immigration and then giving him concessions to do even more damage to the country is a strategy only a used-car salesman could love. This border crisis was caused by Biden’s irresponsible and reckless actions. It can be mitigated only by Biden himself re-implementing the policies he undid. This does not require any congressional action, let alone nation-changing concessions.
If Biden wants to be the president who oversaw the most overrun border in U.S. history, with all of the resultant crime and budgetary problems, then that is something he will have to answer to voters for in the 2022 midterms. Granting him the ability to freely process and transport illegal aliens into the United States even faster and in bigger numbers only grants the far left a public relations and political victory. It is treating the symptoms, not curing the disease — and it allows them to say, “Well, at least the facilities are no longer at overcapacity because we are shipping them to American communities faster.”
The same goes for Biden and his cronies wanting to throw our increasingly fragile nation into a crisis we have not seen since the Civil War where the basic legitimacy of government craters in the wake of partisan court-packing, adding new states to manipulate the Senate, ending the filibuster to tyrannize the minority, and a federal takeover of elections that gives federal bureaucrats and the party in power in Washington, D.C., the ability to sway and control election results.
If Biden and the far left decide to go down the path of making good on their threats, then the drastic, lasting damage they would do to the country will be forever linked to their actions. The reaction and consequences will exceed any immediate political gains they hope to gain.
That will be their cross to bear, but conservatives on the Hill shouldn’t give into these threats to compromise and give them anything that will help them achieve their objectives.
We don’t send conservatives to Capitol Hill to make liberal policy happen slightly more slowly. We send them to have the same strength and patriotism of President James Marshall and to tell the radicals to get off our plane.
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[NEWS] The Left Will Not Let Go of COVID
