By Kim Weissman With the victory of the West in the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, many among us believed that America's constitutional republic was
secure; we believed that even if we had enemies in the world, they were disorganized and weak, and in any case far from our shores. September 11, 2001 disproved those assumptions. But our external enemies are not the
biggest challenge that we face in the 21st
century. There are other threats, far more insidious and far more dangerous to our survival as a constitutional republic, because they operate from within, cloaked in the false mantle of patriotism and a pretend devotion to the good of the nation.
Protesters ransack a Bush campaign headquarters in Orlando, Florida. Bush campaign workers are assaulted in Miami. Shots are fired into Bush campaign offices in Knoxville, Tennessee and Huntington, West Virginia.
Republican headquarters in Bozeman, Montana are vandalized, for the second time in a week. The window of the Bush campaign headquarters in Bellevue, Washington is smashed, the office burglarized and computers containing
campaign plans are stolen; cars with Bush bumper stickers are vandalized and campaign signs are painted with swastikas and burned.
Scenes such as these used to be the stuff of evening news reports about elections in
foreign nations struggling to achieve liberty and representative government; but thanks to the unending torrent of hatred spewed by democrats and leftists and magnified by the media, these events are now taking place in
our own neighborhoods.
If such criminal violence had been directed against Kerry campaign offices and workers, the media would be in full-throated hysteria, Democrats would be screaming "hate crimes" and demanding
investigations by the Justice Department, and they would also probably seek to involve the U.N. Civil Rights Commission, claiming this to be an organized civil rights violation designed to inhibit voter turnout (with
more faith in non-democratic foreign organizations than in their own countrymen, Democrats have already succeeded in getting international monitors to supervise our upcoming election).
But because Republicans are the
targets of these crimes, one can barely find reference to any of it in the national major media. The use of violence by the left is nothing new: environmentalists destroy logging and construction equipment and spike
trees to injure and maim loggers, torch SUVs, burn genetically modified crops and research laboratories and assault laboratory employees, and have burned down a housing development and a ski resort.
In congressional
testimony, the Domestic Terrorism Section Chief of the FBI said, "special interest extremism, as characterized by the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) and the Earth Liberation Front (ELF), has emerged as a serious
terrorist threat."
The haters on the left do not seek the physical destruction of this country as a foreign enemy nation or terrorist would; they surreptitiously seek the destruction of our Constitution and our form
of government as a representative republic. They seek a nation in which individual liberty bows to collectivist demands; a nation in which the government provides cradle to grave socialism, paid for by confiscation and
radical redistribution of private property; a nation whose Constitution is no longer the supreme law of the land but whose courts defer to "international norms" and global jurists; a nation in which national sovereignty
and national security are subservient to the orders of global bureaucrats.
Some call those who would make such radical changes to our nation "liberals", but traditional liberals, though often misguided, honestly did
seek to advance the good of the nation, and usually had at least a passing respect for the Constitution – at least to the extent that they felt a pang of guilt when they violated it. The people who we today call
"leftists" often call themselves "progressives", although the "progress" they seek is the conversion of this nation into their concept of a socialist "utopia", and they feel not a hint of guilt when they subvert the
Constitution. These leftists almost exclusively call the Democrat Party home. It is true that the Republican Party has also been complicit in the subversion of the Constitution, and the Republican Party also has much to
answer for, for the part they have played in the perversion of America's original constitutionally limited republic into a gargantuan monolith of virtually unlimited reach and power. But to some extent, the modern
Republican Party has changed places with the traditional liberals, at least in that most republicans know when they violate the Constitution, and most of them feel a pang of guilt, however slight, when they do so. But
that doesn't stop them, no more than that small twinge of guilt stopped the liberals of old. But the difference is that what would have been considered far too extreme several decades ago has today become the central
ideology of the Democrat Party; while in the Republican Party, extremism is still relegated to the fringes. The Democrat Party is dominated by small cadres of people who despise the values that this nation represents
and the principles upon which it was founded. The blame-America-first crowd invariably sides with the enemies of this country, whether they are communist dictators or fanatic Muslim terrorists or the anti-America cabal
at the United Nations. To republicans the Constitution is an interesting historical relic, respected but not very often honored; while to leftists the Constitution is a despised straightjacket, to be destroyed in their
quest for unlimited power.
Over the next few elections the American public will face some stark choices, and those choices will determine the very survival of self-government and individual liberty in this country;
because leftists have demonstrated a visceral hatred for the democratic processes upon which this nation is based, and it is their fervent desire to radically re-order this nation beyond recognition. Is that too harsh?
The truth is often uncomfortable. Look at how the Democrat Party has positioned itself in this election – bad news for the country is good news for them. When a so-so, could-be-better jobs report was issued this week
before the second presidential debate, what do you think the reaction was from people in the Kerry camp: concern about unemployment, or cheers of glee because they could use it to attack Bush?
Most of this is not
applicable to rank-and-file democrats, private citizens who support the Democrat Party and who faithfully vote for democrat politicians under the impression that the Democrat Party is committed to individual liberty and
the good of the country, who believe that the party is committed to civil rights and equality. The Democrat Party is none of those things, not any more. It has been hijacked by left-wing extremists, special interest
activists and pressure groups to whom individual liberty and the good of the country, civil rights and equality, are of secondary concern; activists whose primary driving motivation is the power to rule, not the freely
given authority to govern.
Remember the spectacle of left-wing interest groups going to court during the recall election in California and trying to get judges to stop the election? Whether you like the idea of
recalling a governor or not, the fact is that the recall procedure was added to the state Constitution of California by the vote of California's citizens nearly a century ago. The procedures that were followed – wildly
hysterical accusations by left-wing activists notwithstanding – were strictly according to the constitutional provisions ratified by the vote of the people of California. It was democrats and left-wing activists
who went to court to try to stop a free election by the people of California pursuant to their state Constitution.
The California recall was not the first time that democrats tried to have judges, rather than
the votes of the people, determine the outcome of an election. Once again – notwithstanding the hysterical accusations by left-wing activists and their media sycophants, claiming that Bush was selected
by the Supreme Court – it was Al Gore who first went to court in the 2000 election, in an attempt to get judges to circumvent the duly designated state officials charged with certifying the election
pursuant to state laws enacted by the elected representatives of the people in the Florida legislature. Lost amidst the hysterical revisionist history peddled by the left, which has by now become conventional wisdom –
that Al Gore actually won the popular vote in Florida – is the reality that after the dust settled in Florida, numerous media consortiums sent teams to Florida to perform their own vote recounts. Remember that? Try as
they might, repeatedly changing the standards of what they counted as a vote, including using the standards demanded by the Gore team, those media consortiums almost uniformly came up with the same result: Bush
really did win. But that hasn't stopped leading lights of the Democrat Party from continuing to claim that the 2000 election was stolen.
After the 2000 election was certified by duly designated Florida state
officials, and while Al Gore's team was trying to have the votes of the people nullified by judges, it was still-President Bill Clinton who ordered the federal General Services Administration (GSA) to deny the staff of
President-elect George Bush access to the transition offices. Most people have forgotten that little exercise in Third World politics. One of the facets about the American government that people around the world have
always admired is the smooth way in which administrations change following presidential elections, even when the new administration is the diametrical opposite of the outgoing administration in every way. Presidential
transition offices were designed to smooth that transition from the old administration to the new, and it has always been customary for the outgoing administration to cooperate with the incoming administration in the
transfer of power, regardless of party differences, as a symbolic reaffirmation by all political parties of their dedication to the Constitution and to the power of the free people of the republic, in whom all political
power ultimately resides. Since the start of our republic, the smooth transfer of power between old and new administrations has been a hallmark of our self-government, of which we are justifiably proud. But in 2000,
Bill Clinton ordered the GSA to withhold the keys to the transition offices from the staff of the incoming administration, thereby delaying the transition. We can only speculate about how the bad blood engendered by
that petty, partisan grasp to retain power by the outgoing Clinton administration may have affected any advice that might have been given to the incoming Bush administration regarding, let's say, the terrorist threat
facing. Who would accept advice from people who show such blatant bad faith?
In the 2002 election voters, in addition to increasing the majority of republicans in the House, returned the majority in the Senate to
republicans (the democrats obtained their majority by convincing Jim Jeffords, who had been re-elected to the Senate as a republican in 2000, to ignore his voters and switch parties). When the minority party becomes the
majority party, the standard practice is for the previous majority – now minority – committee chairmen to relinquish their control over Senate committee chairmanships, which are always held by the majority. The
committees are, as a matter of routine business, reorganized by vote of the Senate to recognize the new majority ordained by the vote of the people and to establish the funding levels of the majority and minority
members of the committees. But not this time. Following the 2002 election, for nearly a full week, the United States Senate was blocked from doing business by democrats led by Senator Tom Daschle, because of the refusal
of minority democrats to recognize the results of the election. Newly elected members could not be assigned to committees, and committees could not meet to do the business that the people elected them to do. The
Senate was paralyzed because democrats refused to accept the will of the people and refused to recognize the results of the election that turned them out of power.
What is at stake? Merely the continuation of
this country as it has existed for the last 228 years: as a self-governing republic founded on individual liberty, with elected officials who are accountable to the people they serve, and a limited government under a
Constitution and Bill of Rights. That's all.
(What Is At Stake in the upcoming election concludes next week.)
E-mail Mr. Kim Weissman
