In 2020, it’s every which way but free.
This is an opinion article from the editor, taken from a segment of the May 8th issue of From the Hawk’s Nest, a bi-weekly newsletter.
I don’t remember his exact words, but during Justin Amash’s brief period of actively considering a run for the White House, he said something along the lines that while the American system is currently threatened, it is the American individual that would be most threatened by its demise.
The ways in which the Democratic Party and the Left have failed to respond appropriately to the rise of Trumpism has come to be something of a theme of mine as of late, and this idea from Justin Amash added another layer to this assertion.
For how much the Democrats talk about norms, values, and our system of government, their political perspective has very little to do with individual freedom. To the progressive mind, the government is a tool of management they can wield to force their utopian sense of justice and equality into being.
In this aspect, Joe Biden and the Democratic Party are not really offering us anything different than what Donald Trump and the Republican Party are currently giving us. The culture war continues to be a fight to the death between two disparate groups who wish to wrest the government from the hands of the other and gain absolute cultural victory at the other’s expense.
There’s been a lot of focus lately on beating Trump and re-establishing the norms of our republic in the wake of his defeat. But Trump didn’t invent big government, deficit spending, or the national debt. Trump didn’t create the welfare state, the imperial presidency, or the unitary executive. Trump didn’t establish the regulatory state, the welfare state, or the federal bureaucracy.
At the end of the day, if Donald Trump loses this election, he’ll be handing off a political office and a branch of government that won’t really be all that different from what he received. If Donald Trump has been an autocratic pseudo-dictator, it is because those who came before him elevated the office he inherited to a pseudo-dictatorial autocracy.
As this year progresses, the arguments for Trump on the one hand and Biden on the other are only going to grow more hysterical. And, they’re largely going to be centered on who would cause the most damage to the system, and who’s presidency will more put the future of our republic at risk.
But, stepping beyond these narrow lesser-of-two-evils considerations and looking at the persistent increase in the size and scope of government and its intrusion into the lives of its citizens, it becomes clear to see that if the option truly boils down to just Trump or Biden, the American individual loses no matter the result.
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