Surrounded by the daily miracles of Jesus, which served as indisputable public displays of His miraculous power, the Pharisees incessantly called upon Christ for a miraculous sign to confirm His claimed deity. How blind they were to demand an exhibition of what was daily being exhibited before their very eyes.
Like the Pharisees of old, present-day Americans appear blind to what is clearly evident all around us. Our country, which has unmistakably been meandering into the morass of socialism for some time, has suddenly nosedived into it lickety-split. Yet, we can’t see what is incontrovertibly transpiring before our very eyes; or maybe, we just refuse to open our eyes to it, fearing we can’t face it, with all of its bone-chilling consequences.
In his book, Against Leviathan – Government Power and a Free Society, Robert Higgs explains how our government has transformed itself from one of “defined and limited” powers, as our Founding Fathers envisioned it to be, to one driven by a “Crisis Constitution.” As Higgs argues, America is now living in “an age of permanent emergency.” The dire danger of this to our nation is found in the “justification” of government’s infringement upon our Constitutional rights and freedoms during the duration of declared national emergencies. For instance, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that during such times the American people “must surrender or forgo exercising rights which in other times could not be impaired.”
It was Benjamin Franklin who famously opined, “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” In his classic work, The Road to Serfdom, F. A. Hayek warned of how a democratic nation could be fast tracked into a socialist state by its government’s invoking of War Powers. Whereas government’s usurpation of control over an increasingly dependent citizenry normally requires incremental implementation by piecemeal changes, it can be done in one fell swoop in a time of war, since the invoking or War Powers enables the government, under the guise of protecting and preserving the republic, to nationalize the country’s private industry and to nullify its citizens’ individual rights and freedoms.
Realizing the seductive power of war, our cunning contemporary politicians often invoke war metaphors to lessen public resistance to intrusions into our privacy, the confiscation of our property, and interference with our personal liberties. For instance, consider a few of the war metaphors employed by modern-day Machiavellians: (1) The war on poverty (2) The war on drugs (3) The war on terror (4) The war on climate change, and, now, (5) The war on the coronavirus.
According to Hayek, war metaphors are more dangerous than real war, since they are perpetual. Having no “logical endpoint,” Hayek argued that they “may be invoked forever.” Take for example Jesus’ teaching that the poor will be with us always (John 12:8). Does this fact not make our government’s declared war on poverty a perpetual emergency, one which provides cunning politicians with never-ending cover for their ever-increasing confiscation of our hard-earned tax dollars, as well as their ever-increasing intrusion into our constitutional rights and privileges?
Make no mistake about it; President Trump’s invoking of War Powers and citing of the “National Emergencies Act” in his public declaration of war on the coronavirus puts private businesses, as well as our private lives, under the thumb of Uncle Sam. Suddenly, overnight, government has usurped the power to prohibit us from such things as traveling, working, doing business, assembling, buying firearms and ammunition, and even leaving our homes. In the past, such a power grab by the federal government, especially with no justification other than a virus, would have been met with an abrupt backlash and an avalanche of critical debate. Today, however, the only protest comes from protesters who criticize the president for not acting fast enough or for not going far enough.
Our president’s habitual antagonists, Democrats, who’ve unremittingly renounced him for abusing his presidential powers every time he has taken an executive action, are now, suddenly and surprisingly, applauding him for invoking his executive powers, as well as advocating that he expeditiously execute them to the utmost extreme. What possible explanation is there for these previously polarized politicians, who were, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, exhibiting insoluble enmity, now finding solidarity over stringent restrictions upon our personal liberties?
Democrats have learned from their political party’s playbook, Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, to exploit all national disasters, in order to advance their draconian socialist agenda. For instance, do you remember the advice given to president-elect Barack Obama during the financial crisis of 2008 by Rahm Emanuel? Emanuel, Obama’s former Chief of Staff, counseled the newly elected president to “never let a serious crisis go to waste.” According to Emanuel, a crisis is “an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.” Echoing Emanuel, not to mention exposing, as Emanuel did, the ulterior motive of Democrats during national disasters, Majority Whip James Clyburn recently counseled his Democrat colleagues to take advantage of the “tremendous opportunity” afforded them by the coronavirus pandemic and its accompanying financial crisis “to restructure things to fit [their] vision” for America.
It’s not just Clyburn who is advocating the exploitation of the coronavirus pandemic and its accompanying financial crisis to surreptitiously advance Democrats’ socialist agenda. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been coaxing her political caucus colleagues to quickly pitch their plethora of proposals, such as Green New Deal environmental schemes and taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, for inclusion in the Republicans’ unprecedented 1.6 trillion dollar stimulus package. According to Pelosi, “Time is of the essence!” Democrats must move swiftly and stealthily if they hope to succeed in slipping their socialist wool over the eyes of a panicked public during this precarious time of a passing pandemic.
Unbeknownst to most Americans, “Pandora’s Box” has been opened on our democratic republic by politicians on both sides of the political aisle; and not just Democrats and Republicans in our nation’s capital, but also in statehouses, city counsels, and county commissions all across the fruited plane. While Democrats are intentionally prying it open, Republicans are assisting them out of a sense of political expediency, fearful of unfavorable poll numbers if perceived by a panicked public as the lest bit dispassionate over people’s plight during this present, unprecedented, and passing pandemic. Still, regardless of intent or motive, there is one unsettling and irrefutable fact—UNDER THE GUISE OF SAVING US ALL FROM THE CORONAVIRUS, DONALD TRUMP, ALONG WITH BOTH DEMOCRATS AND REPUBLICANS, IS DOING MORE OVERNIGHT TO TRANSFORM US INTO A SOCIALIST STATE THAN BERNIE SANDERS OR JOE BIDEN COULD EVER HOPE TO DO IN AN EIGHT-YEAR-STINT IN THE OVAL OFFICE.