WHY HAS THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
GONE MAD?
By: David Kupelian
11-22-2018
Right
now, tens of millions of Americans – including many decent, traditional
Democrats – are wondering what on Earth has possessed today’s Democratic Party.
How
can one possibly explain what increasingly appears to be the progressive left’s
growing descent into madness?
What
are normal Americans to make of the never-ending attempts to overturn the
constitutional election of President Donald Trump by any means possible – legal
or illegal, moral or immoral? What explains the willingness to savagely destroy
decent people like Brett Kavanaugh and his family with willful disregard for
the truth, evidence, presumption of innocence, due process, honesty and basic
humanity? What explains the perpetually outraged mobs harassing Republicans and
forcing them out of restaurants, movie theaters and airports – and the constant
ludicrous demonization of them as “racists,” “fascists” and “white
supremacists”?
Before
exploring this question, let’s first pause and allow for the fact that there
are many decent people on the left. There are people of conscience and
principle, a prominent one being former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz,
who today openly criticizes – and is persecuted in return by – his fellow
leftists. Moreover, there are rational – or at least understandable, however
flawed – arguments that can be made in favor of some leftwing policy positions
such as socialized medicine (concern that poor children get needed medical
care), gun control (desire to avoid tragedy arising from criminal or mentally
ill people with firearms) or raising the minimum wage (concern that everyone
has a living wage). Those making such arguments may be naïve, mistaken about
their facts, ignorant of the laws of economics, think too emotionally, or be
oblivious to the unintended consequences of their feel-good policies – but that
doesn’t mean they’re insane.
However,
something very different is going on now.
There
are no rational, sane or even understandable arguments for insisting that
dozens of different genders exist, or for forcing women to allow men to use
their locker rooms, bathrooms and showers and to compete in (and often win)
their athletic competitions, and for forcing everyone else to play along with
the delusion that a man is a woman (or vice versa) or else be treated as
criminals. There are no sane arguments for importing as many immigrants as
possible from terror-hotbed countries into the U.S., and for eliminating
America’s borders and dismantling her border law enforcement agencies, and for
creating irresistible economic incentives for poor people the world over to
flood into the U.S. at wildly unsustainable levels.
There
are no sane arguments for eliminating voter registration requirements, as
Democrats now advocate. There are no sane arguments for upending the world’s
most hallowed, 250-year-old legal system whose central tenet is “innocent until
proven guilty.” There are no sane arguments for attacking people just for being
white, or just for being men.
These
and other current Democrat policies and obsessions are purely destructive. In
the microcosm, the analogy would be to an individual whose life is composed
entirely of one irrational, self-destructive event after the other, amounting
to inevitable suicide.
Bring on the ‘guillotines’
Consider
the Democrats’ new love affair with violence.
Although
cable news officially banned the M-word (“It’s not mob behavior,” insisted
CNN’s Don Lemon, “it’s people who are upset”), in reality left-wing mobs now
besiege, scream at and harass Republican officials at every opportunity.
“You
cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand
for, for what you care about,” Clinton told CNN. “That’s why I believe, if we
are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate, that’s when
civility can start again. But until then, the only thing that the Republicans
seem to recognize and respect is strength.”
That,
of course, is the classic totalitarian position of both communists and Islamic
supremacists; each literally defines “peace” as the condition that will naturally
result when the entire world is communist – or Islamic. When we control
everything, there will be peace.
Unfortunately,
when Clinton urged uncivility, and former Attorney General Eric Holder
instructed Democrats to “kick” Republicans (“when they go low, we kick them”),
when Nancy Pelosi told a New York gathering to expect “collateral damage” to
those Americans who don’t agree with her party’s radical agenda, and Minnesota
Democratic Party communications official William Davis threatened Republicans
with “guillotines,” the left’s pre-election message was clear: Violence is
not only OK, it’s how we win.
Indeed,
the Democratic evocation of “guillotines” is no accident. In her 2011 book,
“Demonic: How the Liberal Mob Is Endangering America,” Ann Coulter explained
how Democrats “are heirs to the French Revolution, the uprising of a mob,”
whereas “conservatives are heirs to the American Revolution and the harmonious
order of a republic.”
Thus,
in Minnesota, after Davis’s call to the guillotine, two Republican candidates
were assaulted – not mobbed, mind you, but physically attacked and
injured. Shane Mekeland, a state representative candidate, suffered a
concussion after being sucker punched while speaking with constituents at a
restaurant. And state Rep. Sarah Anderson was punched after spotting a man
destroying Republican yard signs. Her attacker desisted only when she ran away
from him to her car and threw it in reverse, she told the Washington Free
Beacon: “It was just insane. He was charging at me, saying, ‘Why don’t you go
kill yourself?’ To have someone physically coming after you and attacking you
is just disheartening.”
So,
how do we explain this disturbing transmogrification of what was once a
comparatively sane and civil Democratic Party?
Don’t
bother asking leftists; they’ll insist you’re the crazy one. “Democratic
Socialist” Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently demonstrated
the left’s go-to tactic of projection when she
told Vanity Fair Democrats couldn’t compromise with the “insane people” on
the right who are holding the country “hostage.”
‘Psychological
causes of political madness’
In
trying to come to grips with the metastasizing madness of today’s Democratic
left, pundits typically cite factors such as these, all of which play a role:
Hatred
of Trump –
This is indeed a major factor, since intense hatred can, all by itself,
literally make a person crazy. As I write in “How
Evil Works”: “Hate is like spiritual plutonium, possessing bizarre,
explosive and transformative qualities of which we are largely unaware. It is
the means by which evil itself blooms on this earth, especially when rage is
focused and magnified by a malignant worldview.” If you get mad enough – you
go mad.
Toxic
ideology –
This would be the “malignant worldview” just mentioned. The radical-left
ideology that has consumed today’s Democratic Party is arrogant (moral
superiority to “greedy, racist Republicans” is its ethical foundation), it is
dishonest (lying to defeat “fascists” and “Nazis” is always morally
permissible), contemptuous of history (leftist revolutionaries see the past as
wall-to-wall oppression that must be overturned and buried), and religiously
devoted to socialism (this despite its stunning 100 percent failure rate, most
recently in oil-rich Venezuela where inflation approaches 1 million percent and
there’s no toilet paper).
Emotional
thinking –
It’s widely recognized (there are even multiple peer-reviewed
studies confirming) that liberals think more emotionally, while
conservatives think more logically, in arriving at policy ideas. Unfortunately,
emotional thinking is incompatible with sober consideration of the long-term
consequences of policies that, however disastrous in the long term, make the
person advancing them feel like a morally good person right now.
Hatred
of America
– The same leftists who so easily brand Trump and Republicans as racist and
immoral tend also to feel essentially the same way about their own nation –
seeing America as a fundamentally racist, immoral country. That is why, to cite
just one example, over
100 Civil War-era statues, monuments and symbols have been torn down across the
U.S. since 2015.
Indoctrination – It’s well known that
America’s colleges and universities, with rare exceptions, are utterly
possessed by the most radical parts of the leftist political and cultural
spectrum, prompting historian William Lind to refer to today’s colleges as “small,
ivy-covered North Koreas.”
Other
factors are often cited: Conservative political commentator Steven Crowder says
the left is not
compassionate as claimed, but rather, consumed with envy. (Indeed,
Winston Churchill described socialism as “the gospel of envy.”) If that sounds
like a transgression of the Tenth Commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” consider
that in reality the left cannot operate or even exist in its present form
without violating
virtually all of the Ten Commandments – from “Thou shalt not kill”
(abortion), to “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (the left’s sexual revolution),
to “Thou shalt not steal” (“wealth redistribution”) to “Thou shalt not bear
false witness against thy neighbor” (the left’s reflexive defamation of
opponents as “racists” and “haters”).
Many
people have long cited liberals’ trademark naïvete, which in large part
explains the natural leftward-tilt of many young people. Others focus on the
left’s willful blindness to the lessons of history, economics and human nature.
Still others, like ’60s New Left leader David Horowitz, document the religious
aspects of leftist belief. After all, since the leftist-socialist-Marxist
worldview is fundamentally atheistic – and since man is inherently religious by
nature, seeking meaning and significance higher than mere day-to-day survival –
leftist political ideology easily takes on the exalted qualities and fervency
of a deeply held religious belief.
Some
psychologists and psychiatrists have taken a stab at this subject, including
Lyle Rossiter, M.D., a clinical and forensic psychiatrist and expert witness in
countless court cases, who wrote “The Liberal Mind:
The Psychological Causes of Political Madness.” In it, Rossiter explains:
To rescue us from our troubled lives, the liberal
agenda recommends denial of personal responsibility, encourages self-pity and
other-pity, fosters government dependency, promotes sexual indulgence,
rationalizes violence, excuses financial obligation, justifies theft, ignores
rudeness, prescribes complaining and blaming, denigrates marriage and the
family, legalizes all abortion, defies religious and social tradition, declares
inequality unjust, and rebels against the duties of citizenship. Through multiple
entitlements to unearned goods, services and social status, the liberal
politician promises to ensure everyone’s material welfare, provide for
everyone’s healthcare, protect everyone’s self-esteem, correct everyone’s
social and political disadvantage, educate every citizen, and eliminate all
class distinctions. Radical liberalism thus assaults the foundations of
civilized freedom. Given its irrational goals, coercive methods and historical
failures, and given its perverse effects on character development, there can be
no question of the radical agenda’s madness.
‘God gave them over to a depraved mind’
Yet
there is still one final factor that must be explored, one that ultimately
becomes the key to unlocking our puzzle. But before we get there, consider the
following:
·
Recently, a Florida middle school physical education teacher was
punished – in fact, transferred out of his school entirely – for refusing
to enter the boys’ locker room and shower area to observe a minor female
undressing and showering. Yes, you read that right. (The biological female
“identified” as a male and thus had been given permission to undress and shower
with the boys, against the wishes of virtually everybody else, including the PE
teacher.)
·
A Marine and Gulf War veteran, Mark Salvas had recently been hired as a
Democratic Party leader in Pennsylvania, when he was suddenly forced
to resign his position after it was discovered that one year earlier he had
posted the following on Facebook: “I stand for the flag, I kneel at the cross.”
Apparently regarding that as a veiled attack on Colin Kaepernick and other
multi-millionaire pro athletes who refuse to stand for the national anthem
before sporting events, Democratic Committee Chairwoman Nancy Mills justified
Salvas’ firing by saying, “We have a zero tolerance for sexual harassment or
racism of any kind.”
·
A recent survey
of over 2,000 adults revealed that almost half favor being able to define
yourself as whatever gender you like, while one in three believe you should be
allowed to self-define your race, one in five say you should be able to
self-define your age, and one in 10 polled “support those who wish to define as
a non-human species.” It seems that, with an ever-increasing segment of our
population, “transgenderism” has morphed into “trans-everything-ism,” whereby
you can be whatever gender, race, age, nationality or species you want. There
is no objective reality. There is no God, no ultimate Truth, no higher law of
right and wrong. Whatever thoughts and feelings arise in and dominate your
mind, however bizarre or flat-out insane, that’s “your truth.”
Friends,
a spirit of madness – of delusion, of depravity, of otherworldly folly –
increasingly possesses the “progressive” left and its political stronghold, the
Democrat Party.
Let’s
remember, it’s impossible to truly explain human behavior without accounting
for the spiritual dimension, since at our core we are spiritual beings. We take
our shape – our thoughts, our worldview and our very identity – from the way we
respond to the leadings of God or the devil, from a dimension just beyond our
senses.
So
let’s consider one more explanation for the left’s growing madness, which
brilliantly describes the terrible consequences of refusing to acknowledge
God’s existence despite being surrounded by overwhelming evidence of Him, of
embracing and celebrating gross immorality, and of choosing to reject God’s
laws of life while suppressing the truth and persecuting those who uphold it.
And
as you read the following, bear in mind that this analysis – quoted from the
Bible (Romans 1) – is mocked by our society’s elites, who regard it as hateful,
superstitious, contemptible and dangerous:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven
against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by
their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because
God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s
invisible qualities – his eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly
seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without
excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave
thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were
darkened. …
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires
of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one
another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served
created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised. Amen. Because
of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged
natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also
abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one
another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves
the due penalty for their error.
Furthermore, just as they did not think it
worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved
mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. They have become filled with
every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy,
murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters,
insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey
their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy.
Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve
death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those
who practice them.
That
was the Apostle Paul writing to the new believers in Rome. Now consider one
other scriptural passage, this one from the Old Testament (Deuteronomy 28), in
which Moses lays out the just rewards of life – first for loving and obeying
God, and then for rebelling and turning against Him.
“And it shall
come to pass, if thou shalt hearken diligently unto the voice of the LORD thy
God, to observe and to do all his commandments which I command thee this day,
that the LORD thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth: And
all these blessings shall come on thee, and overtake thee, if thou shalt
hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God:
Blessed shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt
thou be in the field.
Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the
fruit of thy ground, and the fruit of thy cattle, the increase of thy kine, and
the flocks of thy sheep. …
The LORD shall establish thee an holy people unto
himself, as he hath sworn unto thee, if thou shalt keep the commandments of the
LORD thy God, and walk in his ways.
Many
other promises of blessings are also cited.
However,
what about those who stubbornly rebel against God, so as to be their own
pathetic god?
“But it shall come to pass, if thou wilt not hearken
unto the voice of the LORD thy God, to observe to do all his commandments and
his statutes which I command thee this day; that all these curses shall come
upon thee, and overtake thee:
Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt
thou be in the field. …
Cursed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the fruit
of thy land, the increase of thy kine, and the flocks of thy sheep. Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and
cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out. …
The LORD shall smite thee with madness, and
blindness, and astonishment of heart:
And thou shalt grope at noonday, as the blind
gropeth in darkness, and thou shalt not prosper in thy ways: and thou shalt be
only oppressed and spoiled evermore, and no man shall save thee.
Thou shalt betroth a wife, and another man shall lie
with her: thou shalt build an house, and thou shalt not dwell therein: thou
shalt plant a vineyard, and shalt not gather the grapes thereof. …
The fruit of thy land, and all thy labours, shall a
nation which thou knowest not eat up; and thou shalt be only oppressed and
crushed always.
Today’s
Democratic Party – not every Democrat of course, but the national party and its
leadership – has abandoned God and His laws. As celebrated Russian author,
dissident and gulag survivor Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said so famously and simply
at the end of his life, about why communism had destroyed so many millions of
innocent lives throughout the 20th century: “Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”
What
about us? Each of our individual lives unfolds in the midst of a millennia-long
war between the powers of light and darkness. And the main battle is raging
within the mind of each of us. If we harken to the temptations of the Dark
Side, we descend into a state of delusion, hatred, sin and bondage, cut off
from God’s grace and wide open to demonic forces. This is not about theology or
philosophy or psychology, but our everyday street-level reality.
Very
simply, we are meant – indeed we have been conceived and designed by our
Creator – to be obedient to Him, spiritually sensitive to His laws, to love God
and our neighbor, always repenting of our sins and forgiving others for theirs.
If we do this, if we travel this beautiful path with humility and gratitude and
courage, we are walking in God’s light and His blessings will follow us always,
in this life and the next.
Otherwise,
it gets ugly. I’ve been there and I don’t recommend it.
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