Capitalism, climate change, border security, the women’s pay gap—Pope Francis has had plenty to say about American political issues throughout his tenure. But suddenly, when it comes to what has been arguably the most important political issue for the Church over the past several decades—an issue, unlike economics or climate science, which he is qualified to lead on—he is silent. And why? Could it be that it would require him to criticize a liberal Democrat, instead of a Republican politician?
The Catholic Church has lost enough credibility in the last few years for them to not step up in every pulpit and every church in this nation and implore their congregants to recognize the evil being committed. If they don’t do this, then they are part of the problem. If you’re Catholic, listen closely to what your priest says. Hopefully, he will talk about the evil that is occurring under the law across this country.
The Left’s Changing Story
Twenty-three years ago, Bill Clinton said abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare.”26 His party agreed with him then, stating in the 1996 Democrat Party platform that its goal was to “make abortion less necessary and more rare, not more difficult and more dangerous.” The platform went on to note the abortion rate was dropping at the time, that efforts to reduce unwanted pregnancies should be supported, and even called on Americans to “take personal responsibility to meet this important goal.”27
There were Republicans who agreed with that concept of abortion. There were Republicans who were pro-choice, but it was rare to find a Republican who supported third-term abortions. In fact, 87 percent of Americans are against third-term abortions. The radicals are pushing past third-term abortion to out-and-out infanticide.
Today, there is a website called Shout Your Abortion.28 Leftists today would probably consider the 1996 Democrat Party platform “hate speech” for suggesting an abortion might not be something to be shouted or celebrated. I’m not exaggerating; at a recent Shout Your Abortion event, actress Martha Plimpton told the audience she had her first abortion at the Seattle Planned Parenthood, punctuating her announcement by raising her arm and yelling, “Yaaaaay!” The audience cheered. Plimpton went on to say, “Notice I said first. And I don’t want you guys to feel insecure. It was my best one. Heads and tails above the rest. If I could ‘Yelp’ review it I totally would.”29
One might assume Democrat Party presidential hopefuls are taking a more moderate stance than Plimpton or governors Northam, Cuomo, and Raimondo. That would be assuming too much. For the most part, they’ve avoided commenting on the bill, even when asked directly. When Democrat presidential candidate and New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand was asked by the Washington Post if there should be any restrictions on late-term abortions, she replied, “There is zero place for politicians to be involved in these very complicated medical decisions, and they should only be made between a woman and her doctor—period, full stop.”30 Translation: She’s not able to answer whether or not she believes a mother should be able to take a child’s life. And she does a political two-step in talking about a doctor and a patient, when in truth it’s about the law and the right to live pursuant to the Declaration of Independence. Zero place for politicians to be involved? Defending the right to life is the primary duty of politicians. And these are not complicated medical decisions. The decision to kill is not complicated.
That’s about as much as anyone has been able to get out of the far-Left Democrats who have announced for president, which isn’t surprising. Only 13 percent of Americans support abortion in the third trimester.31 The Democrats are hoping they can avoid taking a position on this subject, leaving them free to support what New York is doing on a national level. They are devious in their derangement, aren’t they?
In stark contrast, President Trump took an unambiguous stand against this horror in his State of the Union address earlier this year:
There could be no greater contrast to the beautiful image of a mother holding her infant child than the chilling displays our nation saw in recent days. Lawmakers in New York cheered with delight upon the passage of legislation that would allow a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth. These are living, feeling, beautiful babies who will never get the chance to share their love and dreams with the world. And then, we had the case of the governor of Virginia where he basically stated he would execute a baby after birth.
To defend the dignity of every person, I am asking the Congress to pass legislation to prohibit the late-term abortion of children who can feel pain in the mother’s womb.
Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life. And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: all children—born and unborn—are made in the holy image of God.32
The president’s thunderous statement begins very similarly to those cards Governor Raimondo of Rhode Island is sending to newborn mothers—but in the president’s case, his actions match his words. As our founding document says, we are endowed by our Creator with an inalienable right to life, which governments are instituted to secure. The president is promising to do so; his opponents respond with eerie silence.
It’s hard not to dismiss this insanity as fringe extremism that would never win elections, but it isn’t. Like their calls to abolish ICE, eradicate the health insurance industry and replace it with “single payer,” get rid of air travel as part of their Green New Deal, and a host of other anti-American positions, the Left has made celebrating abortion mainstream. The radicals continue to resist everything that has made America what it is in order to remake America into what they want. They’ve made abortion up to and including the moment of birth the law in eight states and they will make it the supreme law of the land if they get the White House and Congress together. That this could be our future is both heartbreaking and terrifying.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Democrats’ Siren Song of Socialism
We’re reaching a turning point that will forever determine our future—how we live our lives and how our children will live theirs. The gap between the Left and the Right has never been wider. And yet, amazingly, it continues to widen. Every time we turn on the TV, open a laptop, or listen to the radio, another bizarre, offbeat, outlandish idea is being pushed by the Left to destroy capitalism and bring us closer to socialism.
You have a decision to make. Do you want to live in a country where no matter how hard you work, what you do, or how much you succeed, you simply won’t improve your lot? Do you want to benefit from your own success or would you prefer the government take over and use your hard work to benefit everyone else?
Unfortunately, it’s hard for many people to resist the siren song of socialism. I call it that because the Sirens in ancient Greek myth were female creatures who stood on the shore of their island and sang beautiful songs that sailors couldn’t resist. But they only sang to lure sailors to doom on their rocky coast.
Socialism is like that beautiful song. As Dennis Prager, conservative radio talk show host, writer, and founder of PragerU, said on my show, “Socialism appeals to human nature. And the reason is this, and this is critical. Liberty is not what people most yearn for. People most yearn to be taken care of.” The problem is, it doesn’t work.
As Prager also observed, “There is only one economic system that has lifted humanity—and I mean the bulk of humanity—from poverty.” And that is capitalism. Socialism creates no wealth. Only capitalism has created wealth. Poverty is the human norm. So, the only question intelligent people should ask is, “How has wealth ever been created? Not, “Why is there poverty?” Poverty is like air. It is there. The question is, “How do we create wealth?” Capitalism is the only answer, but who learns that? Who is going to teach that in schools today, given the indoctrination that has supplanted education in our schooling?
As part of their subversive “resistance” to President Trump, many on the lunatic Left have removed their moderate masks to show their true socialist colors. Whether they call themselves socialists or not, every one of the Democ
rat 2020 presidential candidates supports the Green New Deal proposed by a freshman congresswoman so knowledgeable about Washington that she thinks she went there to sign bills!1 Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (aka AOC) Green New Deal will literally pull planes out of the sky.
I suppose that’s just fine with the Left, since they’re happy with the influx coming in on foot through our southern border. No air travel required for them!
Green New Deal
This Green New Deal requires every building in America to be retrofitted for environmental reasons and high-speed rail developed to make air travel supposedly unnecessary.
My favorite part is where they seek a “net zero greenhouse gas” in ten years. Now, why net zero as opposed to just plain zero? The reason—and no, I’m not kidding—is they’re not sure they’ll be able to get rid of bovine flatulence. Yes, you understood correctly, they’re worried about cows farting. These “emissions” from cows are a grave concern to the Left because they have an environmental impact. The methane gas produced by bovine flatulence is a greenhouse gas. I thought it was a farmhouse gas, but what do I know? Apparently, ol’ Bessie’s indigestion contributes to global warming.
Need I say more?
Modern Monetary Madness
Proponents of the Green New Deal and Medicare for All consider exploding deficits no big deal because—according to AOC—we can just print more money.2 Yes, in addition to her other departures from reality, AOC subscribes to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a particularly bizarre corollary to the “deficits don’t matter” fallacy used by politicians to rationalize their profligate spending.
According to this theory—or at least AOC’s understanding of it, which may not be any better than her understanding of anything else—worrying about deficits is unnecessary. Because the government prints its own money, it should simply print enough to cover all the Democrats’ programs. And if this causes inflation? Just raise taxes to “remove excess money” from the economy! Brilliant!
You know what, Congresswoman? You should have left your Monopoly game home when you came to Washington.
Look, I’m not an economist, but you don’t have to be to know this theory is nonsense. No matter how they try to confuse you with this sort of mumbo-jumbo, the government can’t legislate scarcity out of existence. Money is only a medium of exchange. No matter how the monetary system is configured, the amount of goods and services being produced is finite. Life in the real world means trade-offs.
Nothing the Democrats propose acknowledges this inescapable reality. Even under MMT, with the government printing the money instead of taxing or borrowing it, real resources are consumed, whether it’s steel for a bridge to nowhere, food, clothing, and healthcare for illegal aliens, or construction labor and equipment to retrofit every building in the country, once those real resources are consumed, they are no longer available for someone else to use. All MMT does is obscure what is really going on: the government is deciding how scarce resources are to be exchanged and consumed, just like in the old Soviet Union or in Venezuela today. MMT attempts to obscure that reality with pseudo-economic sleight of hand.
Like all socialists, the Democrats promise you the world and tell you it won’t cost you anything. That is why they’re always talking about taxing the rich, even for amounts well in excess of 100 percent of their income. “I’m tired of freeloading billionaires,” said Elizabeth Warren. Who are they freeloading from? The top one percent of income earners pay more than the bottom ninety percent combined. Who’s freeloading from whom?3
Demagogues like Warren are always talking about the rich not paying their fair share to give their voters an excuse to loot them. They know there is a percentage of the population greedy enough not to care about the moral implications of using the government to steal for them and stupid enough to believe there is no downside.
Now, realistic people know that every dollar you take away from a rich job creator is a dollar they can’t use to create a job. The Green New Deal promises to create government jobs, but those are jobs that don’t provide more benefits to people than they cost. If they did, they would have been created in the private sector for profit. Besides, whenever the government does undertake to build something or “fix” something, it costs more and is far less efficient than when the private sector does it.
This is why we have a booming economy under Donald Trump, while we were supposed to be happy with 1 percent GDP growth under Obama. Even President Trump’s infrastructure plan gets the private sector involved in rebuilding America. Only $200 billion of the estimated $2 trillion comes from the federal government.4
This is a plan that would actually work, as opposed to the Obama “stimulus” that built almost nothing with over $800 billion. Biden had the gall to brag about this “shovel-ready” disaster—and we know what they ended up shoveling—before joining his Democrat colleagues in calling the president names.
Besides childish name calling, the Democrats offer nothing but more cartoonish fantasy. When I say “cartoonish,” I mean it literally. They construct a dreamworld for the slow-witted in which rich people “hoard” their wealth, like a wealthy person in a cartoon who has a room full of money and just rolls around in it all day. According to this childish fantasy, there is enough cash just sitting in the bank accounts of Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and other superrich businesspeople to pay for everything they propose, as if the rest of us should be their problem.
I have news for anyone who believes this nonsense. Jeff Bezos doesn’t have $150 billion in cash in his bank account. Like most people who become rich by founding successful companies, his fortune is comprised mostly of stock in the company he created. It’s the same for Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and the rest of those among the richest people in the world.
Their wealth is part of the market capitalization of companies that employ hundreds of thousands of people and provide valuable products to hundreds of millions. Now, you can try to tax those assets, as Elizabeth Warren has suggested, but there is a cost and not just to Bezos, Gates, and Ellison. If they must liquidate stock in the companies they created, not once but every year, it will shrink the market cap of those companies over time. That means that Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle will not be worth as much, will not have as much capital to get loans, create jobs, and further innovate. That means fewer jobs for new people entering the workforce. This scheme will backfire on the people the Democrats say they want to help.
For economically ignorant leftists like Warren, this probably sounds like a value-added benefit to her confiscation scheme, because it will make big corporations smaller, thus moving toward more “equality.” Warren claims to be a “capitalist to her bones,”5 and, in her mind, making big corporations smaller probably promotes competition or “gives smaller firms a fair shot.”
I have news for you, Liz, that isn’t capitalism; it’s socialism. I don’t care what you think is in your bones, Native American or otherwise, artificially shrinking a company’s size through confiscatory taxes has nothing to do with capitalism or competition. Increased competition is achieved by what Donald Trump has been doing: getting rid of outdated or otherwise useless regulations that create barriers to entry into the market for new businesses that can compete with the established giants. Those regulations create compliance costs that big, established companies can afford but new startups often can’t.
A House Built on Lies
One of the more alarming developments in American politics over the past several years has been the rise in popularity of socialism with American voters, especially among young people. As recently as 2010, 68 percent of Americans aged eighteen to twenty-nine favored capitalism, while 51 percent said they approved of socialism. In a poll last summer, that same age group preferred socialism to capitalism by 51 percent to 45 percent.6
The same poll showed 57 percent of Democrats overall said they approved of socialism, while just 47 percent said they approved of capitalism. I hope President Trump wa
s right when he said, “America will never be a socialist country,” during his 2019 State of the Union speech. But one thing seems blatantly obvious: the Democrat Party has become a socialist party, whether their politicians admit it or not.
Of course, some of them do, notably Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Rashida Tlaib. However, most of the Democrats seeking the presidential nomination have tried to distance themselves from the socialist label. Like Elizabeth Warren, almost all the other candidates who have announced have proclaimed themselves capitalists.
“The people of New Hampshire will tell me what’s required to compete in New Hampshire, but I will tell you I am not a democratic socialist,” said Kamala Harris in February.7 “I’m a capitalist,” said Beto O’Rourke ten days later. “I don’t see how we’re able to meet any of the fundamental challenges that we have as a country without, in part, harnessing the power of the market. Climate change is the most immediate example of that.”8 Cory Booker says, “I am not for socialism. I am for capitalism,”9 while Amy Klobuchar adds, “Put me down as a capitalist.”
Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Beto O’Rourke, and the rest all say they’re not socialists like Bernie, but most are on board with Medicare for All, free college, a Green New Deal, and the rest of Bernie’s socialist policies. It’s like someone saying I’m not an alcoholic but drinking a fifth of bourbon with every meal.
It’s relatively easy to see through the Democrats when they say they’re not socialists, but the lies don’t end there. Literally everything they tell you about capitalism and socialism, who will pay for the programs they are running on and even the supposed distinction between “democratic socialism” and plain old socialism is a lie. Just as the architects of Obamacare lied to the American people, whom they considered “too stupid” to make an informed decision, the socialists, overt and covert, pushing this economic transformation are lying about what they’re proposing.
Radicals, Resistance, and Revenge: The Left’s Plot to Remake America Page 18