Election 2024 - The Guts Are Spilled

The recent presidential election is over – Thank God.
But let us look at some of the points involved.

First, lets examine our national groundwork:

1. Our government is not a democracy—at least, not just a democracy, alone. Many people have that mistaken idea, promoted long and hard by recent political parties.
But when Benjamin Franklin was asked about it he said “Its a republic—if you can keep it.”

2. So whats the difference between a democracy and a republic?

A democracy is a government of and by the people, and the US government fits that description. BUT, a republic, by cintrast, is a government of limited powers, and our constitutional framework emphasizes that feature as well.
In short we are BOTH – a combination. Which is where our strength lies.

3. Republics, unfortunately, tend to devolve into democracies – and democracy declines into despotism. Why? Because when the people throw off the constraints of limited government, they want always more new government “benefits,” and are ever more willing to give power to leaders who PROMISE to deliver those benefits. But once seated in power, he doesnt need popular support anymore, and he becomes a despot.


As to the campaign and election....

4. Kamala Harris desperately warned that the future of American democracy was at stake. She was right—but for the wrong reasons. The danger to our democracy—our republican democracy—is and was an arrogant liberal elite determined to enforce “woke” ideology on the country.

5. Remember when Trump tried to put his political opponents behind bars? Pretty awful, right?
If you remember that, go see a doctor because your memory is shot - he never did.
However, The Biden administration DID unleash a campaign of “lawfare” on Trump and his supporters.

6. Next, the Democratic leadership jiggered the rules of the primary campaign to ensure that Biden would face no serious opposition. Then, when his weaknesses became unmistakable, they tossed the rules out altogether and put Harris in his place. They willfully twisted the rule of law to suit their own political ends, and the sad thing? Very few Americans caught it, or said much about any of it. They seemed to just expect it from the Democrats.
Yeah - sad.

7. But it gets better. Once in power, the zealots of the “woke” regime threw law-enforcement against their ideological enemies. Federal SWAT teams burst into the homes of pro-life activists to make arrests - when local authorities had already declined to prosecute.
Elderly women were sent to jail for peaceful, prayerful protests at abortion clinics.
Meanwhile truly violent criminals escaped prosecution; the regime was more worried about challenges to its ideology than threats to public safety.

8 . Harris, for her part was obsessively focused on the idea that Trump might undermine access to abortion. 
Her supporters shrieked about alleged dangers; one liberal commentator tearfully cried that his daughters would not be able to exterminate his grandchildren.

Meanwhile, the abortion lobby was pouring tens of millions of dollars into campaigns to have abortion access literally enshrined in many state constitutions. This despite the fact that there was no existential threat to legal abortion on the political horizon. Heck, the Trump-Vance team even deserted the longstanding Republican pro-life stand along the campaign trail.
But the even the half-baked idea that abortion was threatened had everyone in an uproar.

9. In the same spirit, the culture warriors relentlessly pressed the attack on other fronts:

- They demanded the use of “preferred pronouns”
- They enforced the right of “transgender” men to compete as women
- They denied the objective reality of male and female sexual identity, denouncing parents who resisted the cross-gender “grooming” of their children.

Of course any arguments against these progressive ideals was blasted. Administration officials used social-media platforms to suppress anything they defined as “misinformation.”
They even leaned on George Orwell's, “1984” by demanding we create a Ministry of Truth...or whatever they called it

10 . Remember when Barack Obama opposed the legal recognition of same-sex marriage? I do.
Today, such opposition is denounced as bigotry.
What other moral walls might the “woke folk” have kicked down under Harris?

11. In short, Democratic excesses —and the Harris campaign—show that democracy in American is indeed, “small-d democracy,” and it is divorced from its essential republican character. And here's the really bad part: they want it that way.

Liberal ideologues thrust aside a government of checks and balances, of strictly enumerated powers, of prudent limitations. Instead they were all-in for doing whatever they wanted to do, dumping on anyone in their way. For them, their majority could rule, even if it was a slim majority, because they had the office.... and the rights of the “deplorable” folks that disagreed will ever matter.

Edited from the article by Phil Lawler, here: https://www.catholicculture.org/commentary/saving-world-from-democracy/