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Sometimes a “radical” is someone right 50 years too soon (or too late) — and often a “moderate” is a wrong radical who wants to be thought right by people voting today. The latter is the case with this year’s Democrat candidates, points out commentator Jack Hellner, as he warns of the “phony press trope about all those Democratic ‘moderates.’”
Contrasted with avowed “democratic socialist” Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), voters are supposed to believe that ex-vice president Joe Biden, Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Ind.), and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) are moderate alternatives.
Yet calling “them moderates is as big a lie as the fake dossier, the fictional Russian collusion story and investigation, the lie about what President Trump said in Charlottesville, the smear against white Christian boys as racists for wearing MAGA hats, and the attacks on Judge Brett Kavanaugh with no evidence,” writes Hellner at American Thinker. “The purpose of all of these lies is the same: to destroy Trump and elect a Democrat. Facts haven’t mattered for a long time.
“Every Democrat is for much bigger government, more regulations, and much higher taxes,” Hellner continues. “That is not moderate in any sense of the word.” Far more shockingly, however, all the so-called “moderate” Democrat presidential contenders support at least some of the following positions:
• Eliminating fossil fuels, in one time frame or another.
• Prenatal infanticide on demand. “Mayor Pete, Bernie Sanders, and other Democrats say there is no room for pro-life people in the Democrat Party,” Hellner reminds us. “That is not moderate.”
• Medicare for All or some version of ObamaCare, which “are far-left positions, too, because they take away freedom of choice and are intent on eventually destroying the private sector,” Hellner avers.
• Free healthcare for illegal aliens. “There is nothing remotely moderate about not enforcing immigration laws, open borders, sanctuary cities and states, free education for illegals, [and] free citizenship for illegals,” Hellner also reminds us.
• Believing a boy is a girl if he claims he is (and vice versa) and allowing males to use females’ bathrooms and locker rooms and compete in their sports.
• Claiming it’s “racist” to require voter ID
Of course, all of this does seem “moderate” compared to the even-further-left Democrat fringe, 44 of whom in the House are supporting “The New Way Forward ‘End America’ Bill: The Worst Legislation You Never Heard Of.” It would decriminalize illegal border crossing and require us to use taxpayer money to bring convicted and deported alien felons back to the United States.
This “moderate Democrat” claim is, at least in part, a ruse designed to facilitate Democrat electoral success. The idea is to tell voters, “Hey, these people aren’t radicals like Bernie,” so they can feel comfortable casting ballots for a radical in sheep’s clothing. This said, there’s not only a reason why people could sincerely view these Democrat frontrunners as moderate, but also an environment in which they absolutely would be.
Realize that “moderate” — and “liberal” and “conservative” — are relative terms, corresponding to different positions in different times and places.
For example, while 1950s American conservatives were staunchly anti-communist, a conservative in the Soviet Union was a communist.
Then, when Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated in 2002, BBC News ran the headline, “Dutch far-right leader shot dead.” Yet Fortuyn was quite liberal by our standards, being a pro-prenatal infanticide, openly-homosexual ex-sociology professor branded a rightist mainly because he aimed to stem Muslim immigration into Holland. Moreover, his fear was that zealous Muslims threatened the nation’s liberal social structure. Also note: He was typical of Western European “conservatives.”
Explanation? The only consistent definitions of “conservative” and “liberal” are, respectively, a “desire to maintain the status quo” and a “desire to change it.” Thus, times and places with different status quos — different “centers” — will have different conceptions of what these political terms represent.
Of course, different “centers” means having different “moderates.” And with today’s “progressive” pseudo-elites having drifted so far “left,” as is said, the world’s Buttigiegs can be moderate in that context.
Framing this in absolute terms, however, what is imprecisely called “leftward drift” is actually entropic change — movement toward moral disorder.
That said, even within the context of our current political spectrum the billed-as-moderate Democrats are radical; they’re far to the “left” of the Democrat electorate’s center. In reality, the populist President Trump is far closer to being a moderate for our time.
The deeper lesson is that Hell’s moderation is Heaven’s malevolence. And as long as “conservatives” are content to be the caboose to liberals’ engine of change, our moderation will increasingly deliver hell on Earth.
Photo: AP Images
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
