The Democratic Party - A Picture America can do without...

Sometimes when we look at events in isolation we see them as tragic or despicable or just lamentable. When we look at them together as a group however we come away with a completely different impression. They can seem to form a pattern or a picture that was hardly discernible when seen in isolation. The following is a collection of just such events.

• Earlier this year Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, seeking to save the state from financial ruin, set about to adjust the way the state dealt with public employee unions. The result was a demonstration of force and the threat of violence from the unions. Union minions took over the state capitol, intimidated legislators and in the end caused millions of dollars of damage to the capitol itself.



• This year has seen a wave of flash mob attacks around the country where youths utilize social media to coordinate attacks on stores or random people. From Chicago to Dallas to Philadelphia to Washington these attacks represent something different. Many of the attacks were caught on tape. The thing that jumps out at one is that many of the criminals had smiles on their uncovered faces. They were literally having fun destroying or stealing others property or harming the innocent store clerk or random passerby. In a mirror image of the riots in the United Kingdom last month, these adolescents seemed to be sociopaths in the sense that they had no connection to civilized society.



• The voters of Indiana’s 7th District must be proud. Their congressman, Andre Carson last week told an audience in Miami that some in Congress would “love to see us as second-class citizens” and “some of them in Congress right now of this tea party movement would love to see you and me…hanging on a tree.” The Congressman is accusing Tea Partiers and fellow Congressmen of being murdering racists. The most despicable thing about the Congressman’s comments is not that he said them in the first place, but that his comments aroused approval of the members of audience. In addition, so acceptable to Democrats are the Congressman’s statements that he was more than willing to defend them once they made it into the public square.



• At this year’s Labor Day celebration in the Democrat run disaster that is Detroit, Teamster’s Union President Jimmy Hoffa said this: “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these sons of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong!” Hoffa was literally declaring war on the Tea Party. This was not delivered in the dark corner of a union hall somewhere but in front of thousands of people as well as the President of the United States, not to mention a number of news cameras. In his remarks that followed, President Obama not only did not distance himself from Hoffa’s remarks, but acknowledged him by name as one of the “Proud sons and daughters of Michigan representing working people here and across the country.”



• Finally there are the longshoremen in Washington State. Five hundred members of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union stormed the Port of Longview last Thursday and destroyed the property of EGT, LLC, a company with whom they are involved in a labor dispute following EGT’s use of workers from a different union. What’s worse, the union thugs threatened a policeman and took six guards hostage for a number of hours. The union’s actions defied a federal restraining order issued the previous week against it after the union was accused of assault and death threats. While the union officially branded Thursday’s action a “wildcat” action over which they had no control, the day before the ILWU President Bob McEllrath and 18 others were arrested and vowed to return.

The thing that stands out about these various events is not that violence occurs or that people use despicable rhetoric to try and gain support for their unsupportable platforms or positions. No, the thing that stands out about them is that the people at the center of these various events seem surprisingly comfortable doing what they were doing or saying what they were saying in full view of God and Creation - not to mention the general public via some video cameras.

Few of the flash mobbing youths are concerned enough about anonymity to even bother to make the most rudimentary attempt at covering their faces. The Wisconsin Capitol had an air of Mardi Gras about it as demonstrators went about defacing state property in full view of news cameras from around the country. Jimmy Hoffa felt entirely comfortable offering the President of the United States his “army” in order to “take these sons of bitches out” in front of thousands of people and numerous cameras.

While criminals and manipulative politicians are not particularly unique or new, what is new is the brazenness with which they perpetrate their crimes or throw around demonstrably false charges or exhort their followers to violence. Other than the longshoremen who used violence under the cover of night, none of these people seem to be a bit concerned with a threat of sanction or consequence.

Individually these events are disheartening to say the least. Together however they are something more. Together these events form a picture of the modern Democratic Party. Government welfare programs, identity politics and union thuggery. This is a picture the United States can do without.

Unless America wants these anecdotes to become the norm, a change will have to be made. A century of failed policies should be enough to send the Democratic Party to the dustbin of history. Let’s hope 2012 is the beginning of the end for the party of big government, confiscatory taxes and anti-social behavior. Now that's a picture worth seeing.