Power Grab - Jason Chaffetz Page 0,27
price increases in energy, goods, food, and transportation. What are the chances they will do so willingly?
Nearly every declared Democratic presidential hopeful initially praised this specific proposal and continues to support its broad framework. Not one Democratic senator was willing to vote against it when Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put it to a vote. Instead they all voted “present” in the hope of avoiding going on the record.
There are plenty of other examples of force-deploying policies from the left. Presidential hopeful Kamala Harris has released a comprehensive immigration plan that would prevent the deportation of over 6 million illegal border crossers. The proposal bypasses Congress completely. Her unconstitutional solution calls for a presidential expansion of DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) that would eliminate any requirement for Dreamers to apply for legal status by the age of thirty-one, would raise to seventeen the age at which qualifying applicants could have been brought to the United States as children, and would give Dreamers green cards. All without any input from the lawmaking branch of government.
Bernie Sanders is supporting a Medicare-for-all scheme that would make private health insurance illegal and centralize the power over every American’s health in the federal bureaucracy. The House version of the bill has 107 cosponsors—half of the Democratic caucus. The bill replaces what’s left of the free market in health care (such as it is) with policies that restrict freedom and expand force. Your freedom to choose a private or employer-sponsored health plan will be taken away. In its typical one-size-fits-all fashion, the government will dictate your health plan, your doctor, your hospital, and your ability to get approved for a procedure. Government will set the prices for drugs, surgeries, and preventive care. This represents a massive expansion of government force with no means for anyone to opt out of the program. This policy encompasses the key components of fascism: centralization of authority and stringent socioeconomic controls.
Free speech in particular has been under attack from the left. By labeling traditionally mainstream Christian beliefs as racist, homophobic, or bigoted, they seek to marginalize people of faith. Left-leaning progressive nonprofits like the Southern Poverty Law Center clamor to dox organizations that engage in speech they don’t like. Progressives at the IRS targeted nonprofit groups based on their political leanings. Progressive students at college campuses clamor to exclude or disrupt conservative speakers, abridging the freedom of others on campus who wish to hear them. When was the last time we saw conservatives shut down a progressive speaker on a college campus?
One particularly ironic example is happening in my own state, where progressive groups have demanded that a conference scheduled at Utah’s Brigham Young University in 2023 be moved because of the university’s morality standards. The Classical Association of the Middle West and South (CAMWS), an academic organization for scholars of ancient Greece and Rome, initially stood firm against the heavy pressure from progressives. But the group eventually caved, ironically invoking the group’s policies on inclusivity and diversity to justify excluding a university with a divergent view. These are the tactics of authoritarians.
The first bill introduced by Democrats in the 116th Congress also contains a raft of provisions limiting free speech. As my friend and colleague Senator Mike Lee often explains, Democrats believe anyone is free to publish opinions about political campaigns, but only if they don’t actually own the printing press.
Some in the media have taken to attacking what they call “bothsidesism”—which New York Times columnist Paul Krugman describes as the “almost pathological determination to portray politicians and their programs as being equally good or equally bad, no matter how ludicrous that pretense becomes.” Krugman believes some opinions (apparently, even mainstream conservative ones) are so beyond the pale that good journalists have a duty to shun them. Yes, fascist threads run deep in the fabric of the American left.
One need look no further than the confirmation hearings of Justice Kavanaugh to find fascism gone mainstream in America. They built upon some of the very same tactics I saw deployed at my last town hall. They were not interested in truth. They were interested in narrative. It didn’t matter what was real, only what could be projected. We saw key players dispense with the battle of ideas, again relying on debate-killing epithets to destroy the opposition at any cost. Truth became collateral damage.
We saw the divide-and-conquer tactics of identity politics in which men were pitted against women and stereotypes were taken as gospel truth. We witnessed the deployment of nonprofit networks