Vice President Kamala Harris listens during a virtual tour of the Community Vaccination Center at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona Monday, Feb. 8, 2021, in the South Court Auditorium in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
Democrats, driven by the progressive arm, know that it’s this year or never for “making central government authority the virtually irreversible locus of power in the U.S. system,” writes Daniel Henninger in the WSJ.
Democrats’ determination, driven by party progressives, to cram a generation’s worth of entitlements, taxes and welfare spending into a single reconciliation bill they will pass with a vice-presidential vote is properly seen as an act of desperation.
The Ticking Clock
Beyond D.C., the Left’s appeal that all must be done to “save our democracy” with command-and-control rule over entire populations is losing public support all over the world, continues Mr. Henninger.
Cuba, South Africa, Haiti, Belarus, Myanmar
Cuba, South Africa, Haiti, Belarus and Myanmar all have seen recent explosions of significant antigovernment protests. In a world overwhelmed by dramatic events, one’s instinct is to let them wash through. But maybe we should consider the possibility that something other than random chaos is reflected in so many antigovernment protests. Wildfires can also erupt among nations.
Cuba:
Nikole Hannah-Jones, architect of the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” said this week, “The most equal multiracial country in our hemisphere, it would be Cuba.” She added, “That’s largely due to socialism, which I’m sure no one wants to hear.” Not anymore in Cuba, it appears.
South Africa:
SA has just seen its worst rioting since apartheid ended and the African National Congress came to power in a democratic election in 1994. The ANC has run South Africa ever since, never losing an election and largely immune to international criticism, with the past week’s riots occurring under “reform” President Cyril Ramaphosa.
A Searing Indictment of the ANC
Brian Pottinger, former editor of the South African Sunday Times, offers a searing and comprehensive indictment of the ANC’s nearly three decades of misrule.
“To gain control of the state,” he writes, “the ANC followed a policy of ‘cadre deployment’ of party faithful to occupy every level of government. Unable to even manage its own party affairs, they had no hope of managing a modern state. Everywhere there was dysfunction, collapse and corruption, the burden again borne most heavily by the poor.” All this, he writes, “has not gone unnoticed by the people burning the malls today.”
ANC, a Model for Black Lives Matter
Meanwhile, one finds academics writing admiringly that the African National Congress is a model for Black Lives Matter in the U.S., offering “lessons in white allyship from the South African anti-apartheid movement.” And maybe they’re right that South Africa’s ANC is in fact the political model for Black Lives Matter. BLM’s global network issued a statement this week praising Cuba’s government for its “solidarity with oppressed peoples of African descent.”
These United States
Meanwhile in the U.S., writes Mr. Henninger, the debate is about “democratic capitalism and whether it can provide what its critics on the left call distributive justice, or equity.”
Their alternative, on offer now in Congress, is a softened version of centralized government direction for a country of 328 million people. The result surely would be permanent misrule.
Who already in possession of freedom would want to go there?
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