The Left's Contract on America

There is a school of thought that progressives intend to destroy society one brick at a time in order to rebuild it according to their own twisted designs. And there is ample evidence of that mindset at work among progressive leadership. But being a child of ’60s liberals, who morphed into or were replaced by today’s leftists, I can tell you that there are those in the left-wing fold who honestly believe that any plan hatched by their side, no matter how absurd or dangerous is beneficial. This belief is spurred on in part by the origin of the ideas in question. In other words, “our side thought of it, so it must be beneficial.”

Another driver of bad ideas is that they are the polar opposite of what conservatives would do and thus inherently good. Leftism is also fueled by emotion and impulse. So if an idea meets the two criteria above and has the benefit of triggering a flood of emotion and endorphins, it is acceptable. How else would one explain the recent news out of Seattle? Namely, the revelation that the city has essentially abandoned treating drug addicts in favor of enabling them by providing them with all of the necessary supplies, in this case pipes.

Jason Rantz at KTTH notes that during a recent city council meeting, Councilwoman Sara Nelson asked public health workers how passing out drug paraphernalia to users reduces the harm done by drug usage, a reasonable question. Brad Feingold, who is the strategic advisor for Public Health Seattle-King County, rationalized the move by claiming that passing out smoking pipes would bring addicts in for treatment. Nelson wanted numbers. Feingold had none.

As tepid and flaccid as Feingold’s response was, he at least tried to offer some justification for the move. He was obviously caught in a lie, but hey, he tried. Amber Tejada of the Hepatitis Education Project was under no such delusions, openly stating that the goal was not to aid in recovery. She said that the aim was to “facilitate and champion” drug use. She commented:

I know it can be a little controversial, but one of the key tenets of harm reduction, that I see, is that we want to be able to facilitate and champion autonomy of people who use drugs, And so, you know, there are folks who don’t want to stop using drugs. There are folks for whom abstinence is not something by which they measure their success in life.

Homeless, broke, potentially dangerous, sick, and addicted. If those are Seattle’s benchmarks for success, then the city is indeed succeeding wildly. Tejada argued that by coming to Feingold for pipes, addicts would be less prone to inject narcotics. Meanwhile, Seattle is on track to pass last year’s record for overdoses, crime is rampant, and retailers have left or are leaving.

Consider the story of Maria Reyes. She recently had to revive a 10-year-old boy on the streets of San Francisco, who had come into contact with fentanyl. The Post Millennial reports that it took Reyes 20 minutes to save the boy’s life using Narcan.

Thread: 10-year old boy had to be given narcan because he was POISONED by fentanyl when he walked home from school. This is why we are screaming! pic.twitter.com/blyrVbgAgt

— Erica Sandberg 舊金山的神奇女俠 (@EricaJSandberg) May 23, 2023

As an aside, does anyone else find it telling that Narcan is so readily available? Don’t get me wrong — it is admirable to save someone who is overdosing. But has anyone thought about seriously addressing the root causes of the need for the prevalence of Narcan? Reyes had hoped to confront Mayor London Breed about the problem at a recent press conference on homelessness. It was shut down by left-wing protesters.

Further east, Chicago is refusing to be outdone by its West Coast counterparts. Mayor Brandon Johnson, who is intent on finishing the work started by Lori Lightfoot, has expressed his desire to hike taxes on a city already overburdened by them. Johnson wants $800 million in new revenue. Joe Tabor, writing for the website Illinois Policy has, the list of things Johnson wants to tax:

• $100 million from taxing financial transactions at a rate of $1 or $2 for every “securities trading contract”
• $400 million over four years from raising the real estate transfer tax on high-end home sales, commercial, apartment, and other properties worth more than $1 million
• $98 million from “making the big airlines pay for polluting the air”
• Over $20 million from reinstating the $4 per month, per employee “head tax” on “large companies” that perform at least half their work in Chicago
• $30 million from increasing one of the nation’s leading hotel taxes
• $100 million from new “user fees on high-end commercial districts frequented by the wealthy, suburbanites, tourists and business travelers.”

Naturally, this will be spun as taxes designed to make everyone pay their “fair share,” a tax on the rich, if you will. The result will be businesses looking for the exit or deciding to operate elsewhere and the flight of residents who want or need to avoid the new taxes. It will also mean less revenue and higher unemployment. And so Chicago’s downward spiral will be accelerated. Johnson, it seems, would cure a nosebleed by putting a tourniquet around his neck.

A 10-year-old boy coming into contact with fentanyl is tragic and criminal, as is the enabling of addicts on the streets of Seattle. Johnson’s tax hike might be considered laughable in a gallows-humor sort of way, were the consequences not so dire.

What is chilling and, for that matter, alarming is that these people and their counterparts will never be content to keep their policies contained to their own precincts, although the fact that these cities are suffering is horrific enough. They want everyone to eat the bugs, take the shot, hand over their money, park their cars and live in poverty and fear. If the progressives continue to act unchecked, we’ll all be Seattleites soon. This is a contract on America. It’s a contract on you.