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We should reject the term “liberal” when applied to Democrat nominee for president Kamala Harris, because she is not a liberal, nor is she a progressive. She is, like Bernie Sanders of Vermont, an American socialist. Any political influencer – particularly reporters and editors used to using words correctly – understand full well that John Kennedy was a liberal, as were the 18th century founders of our republic. Kennedy’s address to the Economic Club of New York easily might have been written by Adam Smith, the author of the Wealth of Nations.
The first significant progressive in the United States was Theodore Roosevelt, a former Republican president who, denied re-nomination by Republicans, ran for the presidential slot under the progressive Bull Moose Party in 1912.
Initially, progressivism was a reaction against the moneyed elite of the Gilded Age. Progressivism, much older than Roosevelt, is not a new idea. It is an old idea that in its postmodern invocation has been found wanting.
Postmodern progressivism is palsied with socialism. And once socialism is mixed in with progressivism you have a much different pail of paint. The key doctrine of socialism is the preeminence of centralized power. A command economy and social structure needs a socialist law-making branch, a politicized and compromised justice system, and an executive enforcer. Socialism is force. Without an enforcer – a Lenin or a Stalin – you cannot have an enduring command structure. Socialist change can only arrive after the non-revolutionary past has been radically altered.
Harris only partly fits the bill of an enforcer, a joyous enforcer to boot. Despite rumors to the contrary, former President Donald Trump, even in his worst moments, is neither an enforcer nor the second coming of an American Stalin.
Both Harris and U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont are socialist dilettantes. But somewhere in the wings – if, and only if, the impulsive American response to a command economy and destructive anti-democratic social change is put aside -- a proto-Stalinist or Leninist is patiently waiting his or her turn at the governmental tiller.
Before the world can be born anew, you must destroy the old familiar world. Change is a sacred totem for the socialist. Remember former President Barrack Obama’s formulation: “We are the change we have been waiting for,” or Harris’ more recent frequently mentioned evocation that social reformers must embrace joyfully “What can be, unburdened by what has been.”
Know Your Meme sheds some light on Harris’ often repeated phrase; “Kamala Harris contains multitudes. As chatter heats up around the possibility of the Vice President running in 2024, posters are wondering about what can be (Kamala 2024) unburdened by what has been (the already-held 2024 primary elections).”
Harris’ self-representation following President Joe Biden’s forced decision to walk the plank and leave the White House at the end of his term in office may be in part an attempt to slough off her four accommodating years as Biden’s Vice President. Republicans, to be sure, intend to keep Harris’ nose attached to her vice presidential grindstone. The past, after all, is not merely a snakeskin to be tossed aside – as, indeed the Democrat Party has tossed aside both Biden and “the already-held 2024 primary elections” -- when political circumstances warrant.
The Democrat nominating convention in Chicago will disburse on August 22nd. Everyone knows it is little more than a political show. The Democrat presidential nominee, at the end of the day, will not have been selected by the party bosses of old or primary delegates sworn to represent the interests of Democrat voters who had appointed them to nominate a president. No, Harris will have been hoisted into her position by the modern equivalent of party bosses once driven from the temple of democracy by the primary system.
But, we have been instructed by Harris not to worry overmuch about the past when in pursuit of a utopian future full of bumper sticker promises but woefully lacking in details.
An Associated Press report printed in a Hartford paper one day before convention delegates were to assemble in Chicago – “Harris poised to accept nomination, again” – notes “this was the first time a nominee was named prior to a party’s convention,” a slip of tradition and orthodox procedure, that underlines Harris’ weird notion that Democrats should never feel burdened by the weight of history, but should instead work to dethrone history. Readers will note the “again” sneer in the AP story.
The story makes reference to “a ceremonial vote at the Democrat National Convention,” a “re-staging of the official nomination vote from early August.”
“Delegates will gather on the convention floor on Tuesday to cast their symbolic [emphasis mine] votes,” the story advises. Just as a photograph of a person is not the person photographed, so the Democrats unconventional convention cannot be a convention in which delegates appointed by the states select their party leaders.
It is very difficult to avoid the suspicion that what we have here is a fake convention, a mere afterthought to affirm choices made by invisible party bosses operating behind opaque walls.
Well, at least the show put on by boss-chosen party leaders is unconventional and perfectly in keeping with Harris’ often repeated plea that a new neo-progressive Democrat Party should not fear, under her guidance, to toss convention – pun intended -- into the ashbin of history.
