Podcast: Play in new window | Download ()
Subscribe: Android | RSS | More
It’s bad enough when a presidential candidate won’t fire staffers who talk about killing political opponents or putting them in gulags. But when that man then promises to immediately issue dozens of executive orders upon taking office because we “cannot accept delays from Congress,” it perhaps should give you more than pause.
This is exactly what socialist senator Bernie Sanders has vowed to do, too, to circumvent congressional Republicans and Democrats who oppose his radical agenda. As the Washington Post reports, “Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is considering dozens of executive orders he could unilaterally enact on a wide range of domestic policy issues if elected president … according to two people familiar with the campaign’s planning and an internal document reviewed by The Washington Post.”
“Several of the executive orders would reverse President Trump’s policies on immigration, including an immediate halt of border wall construction, removing a limit on accepting refugees for asylum, and reinstating the Obama-era DACA program,” relates National Review. Another order involves forcing Americans to fund the Planned Parenthood prenatal infanticide business.
“Other orders include a ban on the exportation of crude oil to combat climate change, and the severing of any federal contracts with companies that pay employees less than $15 an hour,” the site continues.
Of course, not only would such an oil export ban do nothing to fight “climate change,” it also would damage us economically as we’re now a net oil-product exporter; in fact, the United States’ having become the world’s largest oil producer has in great part fueled our recent economic success.
Enforcing a $15 minimum wage also is damaging, as it excludes many minorities, youth, and low-skilled workers from the job market and harms small businesses while benefitting giant corporations.
{modulepos inner_text_ad}
Most troubling about the latest Sanders revelation, however, is the internal document statement, “We cannot accept delays from Congress on some of the most pressing issues, especially those like immigration where Trump has governed with racism and for his own corrupt benefit.” (This claim is ironic given that the Democrats have used immigration to import voters and increase their power.)
Of course, Sanders wouldn’t be alone in abusing executive orders; modern presidents are notorious for doing so. What may concern many, though, is what he might attempt to do via those orders — because he’d be like no other president, modern or otherwise.
Not only is he an avowed socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union and defended the autocracy’s food lines, but undercover videos released the last couple of weeks show Sanders campaign staffers talking about Marxist revolution in a way that would have made any Maoist Red Guard proud. Their shocking promises for post-election actions include, The New American reported Tuesday:
• murdering the rich;
• murdering moderate liberals [the Clintons were mentioned];
• burning cities and murdering police;
• gulags for Republicans;
• nationalization of social media;
• abolition of landlords, and
• mass destruction of property.
A Sanders field organizer also said that as far as the more extreme measures go, they’re trying to “keep that on the back burner for right now.”
Just as shockingly, it’s two weeks since the first video’s release, and Sanders has still refused to fire the violent, Marxist employees (latest video below). Could this be because he approves of the agenda? Another campaign staffer certainly thinks so, saying he believes the senator is a “legit socialist masquerading as a democratic socialist.”
Distressingly, the Sanders internal document does reflect the above radicalism in a significant way. Saying we cannot accept delays from Congress is the sentiment of a revolutionary, not someone content to operate within a representative constitutional republic whose pace of change is, sometimes, glacial. Relegation to evolutionary change may sound bad and sometimes is inconvenient, but it respects the principle expressed in the proverbs, “Look before you leap” and “Haste makes waste.”
An immature person — a child, for example — craves immediate gratification, wanting everything now. He’s eager to break down barriers and bulwarks and lay laws and institutions flat to make way for an old mistake he fancies a new idea. And viewing matters through the snapshot of time that is his own existence and being historically illiterate and chronologically chauvinistic, he is, to paraphrase G.K. Chesterton, oblivious to the danger of tearing down those barriers because he has no idea why they were put up.
But a wise person understands that if “you will not have rules, you will have rulers,” to quote Chesterton again. I’ll add that if we won’t tolerate impeding institutions, we’ll have stampeding dissolution — following by order-establishing autocracy.
Bernie Sanders likes to emphasize that he’s a democratic socialist — but he increasingly seems more socialist than democratic.
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.
