by Thaddeus G. McCotter
In our celebrity-crazed culture, too often a person’s capacity to garner attention exceeds his talent in his chosen field. This applies to politics, too. A politician’s well-manicured image obfuscates the policies he espouses, especially during a campaign. Consequently, if elected, the ramifications of a politician’s policies that were neglected, amidst the consultant-crafted images our campaigns have become, suddenly manifest themselves in the most unpleasant ways.
In the 2020 presidential campaign between Joe Biden and the incumbent Donald Trump, the juxtaposition of their images couldn’t have been more Manichean. Coddled by the media, Biden was portrayed as an empathetic, avuncular individual bent upon bringing “the adults” back into the room so as to restore calm to a nation ravaged by the volatile policies of the incumbent. Reviled by the institutional Left and some legacy GOP, President Trump was portrayed as the chief reason for the chaos wracking the nation—and, yes, he hurt himself by issuing sundry intemperate remarks on a host of subjects.
Upon further examination, Trump’s policies weren’t the cause of the turbulent times wracking the nation. From the time he was duly elected, the chaos was deliberately stoked by the Left.
The Left called upon electors to ignore the popular votes of their states and instead choose Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College.
The Left falsely accused Trump of having colluded with Russia to steal the election and hamstrung his fledgling administration.
The Left called themselves #TheResistance—an insult to the truly heroic French resistance of occupied France—to insinuate (and sometimes declare) despicably that Trump and his supporters were literal Nazis.
The Left demanded the 25th Amendment be used to remove Trump and, failing that, unsuccessfully tried to impeach and remove him twice.
At the height of the 2020 campaign, the Left took to the streets for the less-than-peaceful protests (and with the insane sanction of public health experts) to establish a narrative of chaos in “Donald Trump’s America.”
The above is not an exhaustive list. But the purpose here is not to provide a litany of recriminations from the past. It is to begin the process of looking past the personalities projected by both the Left and the Right in order to divine the root cause of the chaos roiling our country that, far from abating, has accelerated under the Biden Administration.
The Left is chaos incarnate. Be it in power or out of power, the Left produces division and discord not only as a tactic, but as a product of its spiteful, envious, and hateful ideology.
The Left seeks to “fundamentally transform” America. People don’t try to fundamentally transform things they love. The Left fundamentally despises America as currently constituted. Convincing themselves they are morally superior for being purblind to the inherent goodness of their fellow citizens, they feel morally justified in doing whatever they wish to get their way.
In power, then, you get Joe Biden celebrating how high energy prices are spurring our “incredible transition” to a governmentally dictated “green energy” future that will devastate our economy and damage our nation’s ability to defend itself. This is the deliberate use of economic pain and misery to “fundamentally transform America.”
Out of power, we see the Left vowing a “summer of rage” and to be “ungovernable” in the wake of the leaked draft Supreme Court opinion in the Dobbs case. Both the Left’s response and the leak itself, constitute more acts of chaos that will continue to incite societal turbulence and wrack our citizenry.
Thus, whether one resists or submits to their ideological dictates, the Left’s policies will cause chaos—as the intended or the unintended consequence of their aim. For instance, they believe big government will stem the chaos. But big government is chaos, and we see the dire consequences of it from the illegal immigration over the porous southern border to the inflated prices of food on the family dinner table.
Yes, the lunatic right-wing fringe is also a source of chaos. But it is infinitesimally small and is not institutionalized as is the chaotic Left. Importantly, unlike left-wing extremism that is never acknowledged but rather normalized—indeed, it is lionized by its fellow-traveling media cronies—everyone has rightly and repeatedly denounced the lunatic right-wing fringe.
It is wise to remember that America is a revolutionary experiment in self-government. This chafes the Left, as they seek to expand paranoia and dependence among the populace in order to concentrate power in a highly centralized, elitist, and omnipotent government. Thus, the entire thrust of the leftist agenda is to ensure that America’s revolutionary experiment in self-government fails. Since the Left is hellbent on doing this, chaos ensues.
Knowing this, the conservative author Russell Kirk’s famous trilogy for the survival of our free republic was “order, justice, freedom.” Above all, he sagely observed, for a self-governing republic the primary need was for order—not imposed by the state; but rather imposed by the self to order one’s own soul. Surrounded by citizens and systems they purportedly despise, is it any wonder so many on the Left have such difficulty ordering their own souls and affairs? Perhaps, the fear and arduousness of doing so explain why they squander so much of their lives trying to coercively manipulate the souls of others?
During last week’s Mass, the Gospel reading included the passage from John 27: “Jesus said to his disciples: ‘Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give it to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid.’”
Is there any better instruction for a self-governing republic?
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The Hon. Thaddeus McCotter is the former chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, current itinerant guitarist, American Greatness contributor, and Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Show.”
