Some  friendly liberal advice to  Republicans.

I want to offer my sincerest apologies for your present illiberal treatment by the Democrats, especially progressive Democrats. Your rights as Americans are being violated—in speech and in deed and in broad daylight. If present trends continue, it’s not going to end well for America.

May I offer you some advice? I know the nature of what you are up against. Progressives are bullies. They don’t like liberals either. Progressives don’t like the idea or reality of dissent. They are impatient with the democratic process and persuasion. It’s either their way or the Substack way. They are unbearable.

Heads up: they are goading you to a prime-time slaughter. A mild-mannered historian, Jon Meacham, framed a Bull Connor of a barn-burner speech for President Biden. As the race-baiting segregationist Connor once sought to do with blacks, Biden’s speech looked to put the deplorable outside our civic and social order as enemies of the people.

Meacham’s speech had a message for two groups of Republicans.

To the mainstream, populist-adjacent Republicans, the message was: It’s time to bend the knee and join the Liz Cheney, Democrat-sanctioned Republican future.

To the “ultra MAGA” Republicans, the message was an intended provocation—a poke in the chest, a double-dare to stand up and push back.

The progressives are ready and want you to show up for a fight. They want you to show yourselves as the animals that they say you are. They are provoking folks who see themselves as American patriots so that they can cast them as domestic terrorists.

Don’t take the bait. They are looking to provoke a civil war. Instead, give them a civil rights response: peaceful and nonviolent protest is the only way forward. That’s the proven way to fight the oppression of greater power with asymmetrical advantages.

It’s good to know the extent of the power behind the provocation, and the comparative strength of your arms.

With regard to voters, the United States is still evenly divided, but below the voter waterline, Democrats and Republicans are far from equals. Democrats have institutional arms that Republicans can’t match and don’t fully appreciate. The commanding heights of education, entertainment, media, Big Tech, big business, Wall Street, advertising, and the permanent state—these are all solid assets of Democrats. Even if Republicans win, and win, and win again, the Democrats are in a different weight and fight class. In their own heads and in reality, they are Leviathan.

One would think, looking at politics through this lens, that Democrats would calm down and ride the arc of history to eventual victory. The Republican frog is being slowly boiled. Why spike the heat and have them jump out? Just give it time. Instead, they are raising the heat to encourage the frog to jump.

Why would they do that? Because they can. They have the collective power to pull it off.

Parties and politicians rise and fall, but Washington has a permanent administrative class that defends its own interests, which appear completely aligned with Democrats and against Republicans.

Once upon a time, Republicans could think that the CIA and FBI, the Justice Department, and the military were balanced, even favorable to their interests. No longer. Once upon a time, the media and the Democratic Party were deeply suspicious of these institutions; now they are the cheerleaders and apologists for them and regard their personnel as trusted experts whose patriotism is beyond reproach.

Maybe Al Gore did create the Internet. Before tech was Big Tech, it presented itself as a rival to all the Davos hierarchies; now it is their tool. Business rivals work in concert with one another against those they find deplorable, looking to erase them in a world that otherwise catalogs everything.

All these institutions—and their tectonic, aggregated influence—are in Democrat’s hands. They and their commanding partners understand their asymmetrical superiority, and they think it’s in their short- and long-term interest to demonstrate it now.

Why? The biggest threat that progressive politics faces are the consequences of progressive legislation. Progressivism comes on the scene as a luxury good. The immorality of “poverty in the midst of plenty” is their platform to re-imagine society. But in the end, they always drive out prosperity and make poverty more pathological. Look at New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco—this is the logic of progressive government made real. It doesn’t poll well or perform well at the ballot box.

Democrats should take a hit this November—so they are flexing their muscles across the commanding-heights marketplace to solicit an advantageous response. Their prospects improve with political violence. Preceding Biden’s speech was the legally sanctioned raid of former President Donald Trump, who is widely expected to pursue one more presidential campaign. After the speech, the FBI legally served and netted all the president’s men, with no blowback at all from the mainstream press. Poke, poke.

Don’t take the bait. If you do, you’ll be playing into the trap set for you.

If you find yourself mad as hell and you don’t want to take it anymore—for the sake of what you hold dear, stand down. You should be suspicious of anyone calling for kinetic action. There is good reason to think that that person is an FBI agent. Big Tech and the FBI are watching, waiting, and enabling. They want a super-sized Ruby Ridge. Don’t give it to them.

An eyes-wide-open understanding of this asymmetrical distribution of power calls for a civil disobedience response—peaceful, nonviolent resistance. Let them show their illiberal nature. Don’t give them a diversion that distracts from the consequences of their horrible policies.

This is the path to short- and long-term Republican gains. For all that we have at stake, please commit to this path. We rise and fall together.

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This article was published by The American Mind and is reproduced with permission.

Editors’ Note: This article was originally penned in 1949.  Yet, it has amazing applicability today.  Democrats are making quite a plea right now, that they support “democracy”. It is the buzzword of the 2022 Mid-term election cycle. Adrian Fontes has a promotional sign saying to vote Democrat to “support democracy.” Without a real definition of what they mean, it is hard to know what they are talking about but it sure sounds good. But is it good and is it what you think democracy means? Does forcing you to agree with them on how you wash your dishes, your clothes, how much water to use in your toilet, how you heat your house, what kind of car you drive, what you can eat, and what your children are taught, and even what you think about sex, down even to the words you are permitted to use, sound like democracy to you? Does taking half of your income and tracking closely how you spend what is left sound like democracy to you? Does conducting elections where illegal aliens can vote, thus canceling your vote, sound like democracy to you? Does conducting elections where voter rolls are not clean, where the custody of ballots is not secure, and where the tally is not accurate, sound like proper procedures for democracy to function? Does sending the FBI after parents who dare to question school officials sound like democracy? Moreover, to hand over state and police power to determine the aforementioned life-controlling decisions to unelected judges and unelected bureaucrats, sound like democracy?  It should be obvious, in the “democracy” constructed by Democrats, most of the government decisions that govern minute parts of your life are enforced by a permanent bureaucracy: people who were never voted into office and who cannot be removed by voters from office. Beyond that, do humans have some unalienable rights determined by either their inherent nature or God, that cannot be taken from them, even if by majority vote? If the majority of 51% of your neighbors vote that you may not practice your religion, is that right? In short, are there limits to democracy that cannot transgress your personal liberty? It is clear that “democracy” is now a term to be used to club Republicans, even while the “democracy” constructed by Democrats, in reality, looks closer to rule by the unelected elites in a model of American socialism.

It is generally accepted that a government can enslave the citizens. Enough kings and emperors and generalissimos and führers have done so to establish that fact quite conclusively.

But the belief prevails that “It is impossible for liberty to be lost under a democratic form of government. Democracy assures that the will of the people shall prevail, and that is liberty. So long as democracy is preserved we can rest assured that liberty will be continued to the full.”

The more a person leans on an unsure support, the more certain he is to fall. Edmund Burke observed that people never give up their liberties except under some delusion. Probably no other belief is now so much a threat to liberty in the United States and in much of the rest of the world as the one that democracy, by itself alone, guarantees liberty.

Willis Ballinger’s study of eight great democracies of the past—ancient Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, the First and Third Republics of France, Weimar Germany, and Italy—reveals how unreliable is this hope. He reports that liberty perished peacefully by vote of the people in five of the eight countries; that in two of them it was lost by violence; that in one of them a dictatorship was established through the buying of the legislature by a fraudulent clique. One who would understand the problem of liberty must understand why it is possible for liberty to be lost even in a democracy, and how to guard against it.

The “democratic” form of government refers to one of the mechanisms by which the scope of government—the things to be done by government—is to be determined and how its management is to be selected. This may be done directly by decisions of the people themselves (in a “direct” or “absolute” democracy), as when a direct vote is taken on an amendment; or it may be done by delegating the power of decision in these matters to certain “elected” representatives (in a “representative” democracy or “republic”). There is an important difference between these two types of democracy but that distinction is not the object of our present concern.

In both instances, the plan rests on widespread sovereignty at its base. Decisions as to either the issues or the delegations of power are rendered according to the majority—or some other predominant proportion—of the opinions expressed.

The features that distinguish a democracy from any other form of government have to do with the mechanical design of the government, as distinguished from the composition of the load of authority that it carries. This is the same sort of difference as that of the design of a truck as distinguished from its load, or the shape of a cup as distinguished from its contents. In speaking of liberty, what we are really concerned about is what government does—the nature of the load—rather than the style of wheels on which it rides, or some other feature in the design of the vehicle; we are concerned, for instance, with whether or not the government should control prices rather than the department which shall do the job or the name of the person who is to head the department.

If an act of government in any country violates the liberty of the people, it is of little importance who did it or how he came to have the power to do it; it is of little importance whether a dictator gained his power by accident of birth, by force, or by the vote of the people.

Liberty has been defined as the right of a person to do whatever he desires, according to his wisdom and conscience. It specifies the right to do what he desires, rather than the obligation to bow to the force of others in doing what they desire him to do; otherwise slavery becomes “liberty,” and true liberty is lost. It makes no difference whether the transgressor of liberty carries the title of slave master, or king, or führer, or president, or chairman of the county committee, or whatnot.

Historical enterprises that violate liberty are not restricted to instances of complete dictatorship, nor are they all political. The only difference between the aggressive bully under anarchy and the similar acts of the dictator is its formalization into governmental authority. That may make the acts of the dictator legal, in a technical sense, but it does not make them proper or wise in any other sense.

Small dictatorships precede large ones, and destroy liberty to whatever extent they exist. “Power,” which replaces liberty, is the irrevocable authority over others. One person’s opinions, decisions or actions become substituted for those of another, for a long or short time, for a wide or narrow scope. This is the material of which dictatorships, either large or small, are made. The means by which power is acquired, whether by the “democratic” process or by conquest, does not change its status as power. It is true that under persuasion or demonstration, one person may influence the ideas or actions of another, but, as mentioned before, if there is no irrevocable grant of authority—even temporarily or for one single instance—it is not power.

Suppose, as illustration of encroachment on liberty, that I desire to produce some wheat on my land, with which to feed my family. I shall have lost my liberty in that connection whenever I am prohibited from doing so. The loss of liberty would be the same whether the prohibition was by taking my land, or by prohibiting me from growing wheat on it, or by taking the wheat away from me after it was grown. Nor would it make any difference what official title happened to be attached to the person who enforced the edict, nor how he gained his throne of authority. Further, and most important to the subject now under discussion, it makes no difference whether or not some of my neighbors approved of that act, or how many of them approved of it. It makes no difference because, in any event, my liberty in this respect would be gone.

It should be clear from what has been said that the citizens of a democracy have in their hands the tools by which to enslave themselves.

This is a far cry from the common belief that democracy offers any definite and automatic protection of liberty. This illusion, that the democratic process is the same as liberty, is an ideal weapon for those few who may desire to destroy liberty and to replace it with some form of authoritarian society; innocent but ignorant persons are thereby made their dupes.

Under the spell of this illusion, liberty is most likely to be lost and its loss not discovered until too late. Liberty can easily be taken from the individual citizen, piece by piece and always more and more, as more and more persons under the spell of the same illusion join in the Pied Piper proceedings. Finally, all liberty is gone and can be recovered only by a bloody revolution.

Liberty does not mean the right to do anything that is the product of a democratic form of government. The right to vote, which is the sovereignty feature of democracy, assures only the liberty to participate in that process. It does not assure that everything done by that process shall automatically be in the interests of liberty. A populace may commit both political and economic suicide under a democracy.

Anyone who will defend his liberty must guard against the argument that access to the ballot, “by which people get whatever they want,” is liberty. It would be as logical to assert that liberty in the choice of a wife is assured to a person if he will put it to the vote of the community and accept their plurality decision, or that liberty in religion is assured if the state enforces participation in the one religion that receives the most votes in the nation.

There is no certainty whatever that liberty in a country with the democratic form of government is at a level higher than in a country having some other mechanism of government. There is no certainty that liberty will be maintained where the founders of a democracy may have hoped that it would be preserved.

The illusion that liberty is assured so long as a democratic government is preserved is well illustrated by an event recently reported in the newspaper. Items to illustrate the same point can be found in the newspapers daily. A news dispatch reports that an increase in rent ceilings has been “turned down” by “top administration officials.” The mere fact that some officials have acquired the power to deny this liberty to those who own this particular form of property is evidence of the fact that liberty in this respect is already gone; no process of selecting the officials who made the decision can make it not gone.

But let us pursue the matter further. It is argued that, since this act occurred in a “democracy,” the “will of the people” has prevailed and liberty has thereby been assured. Did you participate in this decision of “top officials”? Did anyone ever ask your opinion about whether this increase should be granted? Was the person who made the decision elected by the voters, or appointed by someone—perhaps by someone who was himself appointed by someone? And finally, coming to the elected official, did you vote for him or for the other fellow? Did you approve of his advisers, or were they perhaps defeated candidates for office of former years?

Actually all these considerations are beside the point anyhow, so far as liberty is concerned. Even if there had been approval all along the line, it is a violation of economic liberty and of liberty in general for me, a nonowner, to be able to control the rent charged by a neighbor to a third party.

Being able to review a decision or to request its review, under the democratic design of government, does not assure that liberty will be protected. Reinstatement of lost liberty can be requested and refused time and time again, without end. A slave, similarly, might ask his master for his freedom time and time again; he is not considered to be free by reason of the fact that he is allowed to ask for liberty.

Consider in detail all the acts of all the units of government for one day. How many among them were the proper functions of a liberal government as you would judge it; of those that were, in how many instances did you have any opportunity or right to participate in the decision; if you disagreed with the decision, in how many instances was there anything that you could do about it?

Strange indeed is this concept of “democratic liberty,” which has gained such widespread approval! Strange is a concept of “liberty” which allows you to be forced to pay the costs of promoting acts of which you disapprove or ideas with which you disagree, or which forces you to subsidize that which you consider to be slothfulness and negligence. Your “liberty” in the process is that you enjoy the right to be forced to bow to the dictates of others, against your wisdom and conscience!

Being forced to support things directly in conflict with one’s wisdom and conscience is the direct opposite of liberty, and should under no circumstances be allowed to parade under the esteemed banner of liberty. It should be labeled for what it is.

The people of the United States now live under a president who was elected to that office by the expressed preference of only one person out of six in the land; by only one person out of four who were eligible to vote; by less than half of those who voted. And many of those who voted for this candidate will certainly disapprove of many of his official acts. This illustrates how the democratic process is a far cry from guaranteeing the liberty of the people.

Professor F.A. “Baldy” Harper was the founder of the Foundation for Economic Education.

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This article was published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute and is reproduced with permission.

A coalition of House Republicans led by U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, is “demanding answers about Venezuela releasing violent prisoners early and pushing them to join caravans heading towards our southern border” in a letter sent to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“We need transparency and accountability from this administration,” Nehls tweeted when publishing a letter he and his colleagues sent late last week.

In their letter, the group expressed “serious concern” about a recent DHS intelligence report “received by Border Patrol that instructs agents to look for violent criminals from Venezuela among the migrant caravans heading towards the U.S.-Mexico border.

“It has been widely reported that the murderous narco-terrorist Maduro regime in Venezuela is deliberately releasing violent prisoners early, including inmates convicted of ‘murder, rape, and extortion,’ and pushing them to join caravans heading to the United States. Some of the released prisoners have already been spotted within migrant caravans traveling from Tapachula, Mexico, toward our southern border as recently as July of this year, meaning they could already be in our interior.”

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data, between October 2021 and July 2022, more than 130,000 Venezuelans were encountered illegally entering the U.S. across the southern border.

“DHS confirms that Venezuela empties prisons and sends violent criminals to our southern border,” Nehls previously argued. “President [Donald] Trump warned us about this years ago.”

Trump reiterated his claims last June at an event in the Rio Grande Valley with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. He said federal security officials in his administration thwarted drug dealers and smugglers and halted much illegal activity across the border as a result of deals he made with Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador.

As a result of these agreements, criminals from these countries weren’t allowed to enter the U.S. or these countries would stop receiving financial aid from the U.S. government.

Under the Obama administration, when MS13 gang members and other criminal foreign nationals were deported, their home countries wouldn’t take them back, Trump said.

“For years, these countries wouldn’t take them back,” Trump said, which is one reason why he halted financial aid to these countries. Then he got calls from their leaders, he said, who told him, “Sir, you’re not paying us anymore.’ And I said, ‘That’s right.’

“And we were bringing them in by the thousands getting them out. And now they’re sending them back because what they are doing is they are opening their prisons and prisoners, murderers, human traffickers, all of these people, drug dealers, they’re coming in through the caravans, not everybody, but are coming in illegally,” he added.

The members of Congress asked Mayorkas to provide information about what precautions DHS was taking to prevent criminals from Venezuela from entering the U.S., if DHS was aware of the current location or final destination of released prisoners, how many Venezuelan nationals have already entered the U.S. at the southern border since President Joe Biden took office and how many of them have criminal records.

The letter comes after Mayorkas in July extended by 18 months Temporary Protected Status for eligible Venezuelans.

He said doing so was “one of many ways the Biden administration is providing humanitarian support to Venezuelans at home and abroad, together with our regional partners. We will continue to work with our international partners to address the challenges of regional migration while ensuring our borders remain secure.”

The 18-month TPS extension became effective Sep. 10 and lasts through March 10, 2024. Only beneficiaries under Venezuela’s existing designation, and who were already residing in the U.S. as of March 8, 2021, are eligible to re-register for TPS under the extension. Venezuelans who arrived in the U.S. after March 8, 2021, are not eligible for TPS. Approximately 343,000 individuals are estimated to be eligible for TPS under the existing designation of Venezuela, DHS says.

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This article was published by The Center Square and is reproduced with permission.