There are times when various members of the radical left are amusing. There are times when they’re funny. There are times when they make you want to start an insurrection or something.
Then there are times when they say something that just causes your jaw to drop to the floor and your head to shake in wonder at the stupidity of it all.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) doesn’t think that anyone who borrowed money to get an education should have to pay it back. Considering how generous Pressley is with other people’s money, this isn’t surprising.
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What’s surprising is that Madam Pressley believes that it’s “policy violence” to think anyone should pay it back.
Let’s make it plain: student debt is policy violence.
We’ll keep fighting to relieve families across the country, to make sure our policies & budgets reflect their lived experiences & that we build this grassroots movement to #CancelStudentDebt together🧵
— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) December 17, 2021
It’s an interesting concept — if we lived in Fantasyland. Alas, many of us are stuck in the real world, and forgiving $1.7 trillion in student loans is just plain balmy.
Paying your own debts that you entered a contractual agreement to repay is VIOLENCE. But forcing blue-collar workers to repay your debts while you engage in online social justice activism is EQUITY. Am I understanding this correctly?
— Christina Pushaw 🐊 (@ChristinaPushaw) December 17, 2021
In truth, as Brad Polumbo of the Washington Examiner points out, the people who would be harmed by forgiving student debt are the very people Rep. Pressley purports to care for the most.
I oppose student debt “cancellation” because it is actually a regressive policy that forces working-class taxpayers to pay the bills of a wealthier subset of society: the college-educated. I also believe that it’s an (insanely expensive) Band-Aid on a bullet hole. It fails to address the failed federal policies that have made college so absurdly expensive in the first place.
I’m hardly alone in this view. A February 2021 Yahoo Finance survey found that 54% of voters oppose the cancellation of all student debt. Apparently, Pressley believes those of us who hold the radical view that people can pay their own bills are committing an act of violence!
Pressley is so eager to win the argument that she mislabels a political disagreement as an act of aggression. It’s a familiar tactic on the left. When protesting Biden is seen by some as a “terrorist act” and radical feminists see any sex at all between a man and woman as “rape,” all you can do is shrug your shoulders and change the subject.
After all, if speech is violence, then the government is justified in quashing it. If speech is violence, then violence is justified in response to that violent speech. By Pressley’s disturbing logic, student debt cancellation advocates would have the right to assault their ideological opponents physically as a matter of self-defense!
Despite the congresswoman’s unhinged rhetoric, “policy violence” is not a thing. Disagreement is not an act of physical aggression. It’s dangerous that a government official such as Pressley would claim otherwise when doing so isn’t just false but also paves the way for assaulting the First Amendment.
Fortunately, there are still enough representatives in Congress who would vote down the silly idea of forgiving $1.7 trillion in student debt. But Democrats are getting sillier and sillier every year, and there are no guarantees going forward.
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