(Editor’s note: while Don is out of the office, please enjoy this guest editorial)
We here at Americans for Limited Government have been warning about increasing level of hostility from the progressive left for well over a year. Unfortunately, the warnings came true with Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) being shot and several Members of Congress being assaulted in their districts. The language and vitriol from the left is ratcheting up again, and things are starting to spin out of control. Unless something is done, people are going to get hurt, and the fault will lie with the instigators of the mob.
History buffs and those of us that have served in the U.S. military know what is going on. We have studied the history of warfare and civil conflict and can easily identify the signs something is wrong. A common tactic in warfare is the dehumanization of the “enemy.” A quick search of historical wartime slang will uncover a staggering number of pejorative terms to describe the “other side.”
Why dehumanize the “other” side? Not only does the tactic make it easier to attack, but it also encourages the attack, and that is why the left has taken to calling people they disagree with Nazis or fascists. After all, who doesn’t want to kill Nazis, the most evil people in human history?
Glimpses of the coming violence appeared in the run-up to the 2016 election. Democrat mobs would attack Trump supporters at events, which culminated in the cancelation of a Trump campaign rally in Chicago after violence against the Trump supporters. The mob had won, violence and the threat of violence influenced a political campaign.
The campaign continued following the election of President Trump. The so-called anti-fascist group, Antifa, emerged to violently confront anyone they disagreed with. Apparently, members of the group do not own dictionaries. On inauguration day, the group rioted and burned cars in the Capitol as their nemesis was sworn in. Since then hardly a week goes by without an incident of violence being perpetrated against someone for political reasons by the extreme left. Keep in mind; all the violence has been justified as “fighting Nazis.”
The mainstream media has jumped into the fray also. It is not even worth pretending anymore that the U.S. has an objective press and this past week proved that. The media published multiple photos of illegal “immigrants” in austere conditions designed to anger people. What the media didn’t tell the people was the photos were from the Obama administration. Mysteriously the photos did not run nonstop on cable news when they were taken in 2014.
The mainstream media has run the illegal immigration issue nonstop for past week, intentionally painting anyone that disagrees with them as monster, Nazis, or fascists, ignoring any argument for a secure border or an orderly process for dealing with the flood of illegal immigrants.
Time magazine even went so far as to use a young girl that was not separated from her parents in a deliberate attempt to paint the President as a monster. Time issued a “correction” about the image but did not do away with the photo, because it represented the point they wanted to get across.
The language and visuals are designed to achieve one goal, anger and excite the base. Objective achieved.
DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has been under constant harassment. Nielsen has been chased from restaurants and now has people camped outside her home. The sole purpose of the harassment is to intimidate the Secretary into not following the law.
This past weekend we saw Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders asked to leave a restaurant she was dining at because the owners had a different political opinion. It got worse because as Sanders obliged the request, the owner felt it was her duty to follow the in-laws of Sanders and continue to harass them at a different dining location, according to Mike Huckabee.
As the harassment and endangerment of government officials was taking place, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) had the chance to calm the situation, to be a stateswoman. After all, one of her colleagues was shot last year by a man targeting people he disagreed with politically.
Let’s just say she did not take the high road. She bellowed, “And I want to tell you, for these members of his cabinet who remain and try to defend him, they are not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they are not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they are not going to be able to shop in a department store…The people are going to turn on them, they are gonna protest, they are gonna absolutely harass them until they decide that they are going to tell the president ‘No, I can’t hang with you.”
A sitting Member of Congress calling for the harassment of government officials, and her colleagues on the left side of the aisle have gone out of their way to blame Trump for making Waters do what she did.
And things may have just taken a turn for the worse. DHS has issued a warning to employees asking them to keep their doors and windows locked at home after a senior official in Washington, D.C. found a burned animal carcass at their residence. This occurred after the personal information of almost 1,600 ICE agents was released by an NYU professor, putting their lives in danger.
The actions of the left are out of control. They are using violence and the threat of violence to intimidate government officials into policy changes, the very definition of terrorism. The so-called leaders of the left must get control of their mob. We are at a critical point in the history of the country. The next reprehensible act by the mob on the left could lead the country down a path it cannot recover from.
Printus LeBlanc is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government.
