Has it finally happened? Has Hillary Clinton at long last actually said something honest and accurate? In an interview with PBS Friday, the once and possibly future presidential candidate warned that the 2022 elections were shaping up to be a showdown between “authoritarianism” and “democracy,” and for the first time in Hillary Clinton’s long and distinguished political career, she is actually quite likely to be correct. As you might expect, however, she is only right by accident, and in a way that is diametrically opposite to what she intended.
PBS’ Judy Woodruff asked Clinton, “The midterms: conventional wisdom is, not a good year for the Democrats. As you know, when your husband was president, President Clinton, under President Obama, huge losses in the House races in the middle of the first term. Do you have any reason to believe it’s going to be different this year?”
Hillary answered:
Well, I know the history, so I’m aware of the challenges, but I’m not about to throw in the towel or give up. I mean, I think it depends upon, you know, number one, uh, whether Democrats are willing to point out the extremism that has captured the Republican party. And to make it clear, this is not about special interest groups, this is not about one group of Americans versus another, this is about the rise of authoritarianism within our own country. This is a direct attack on our democracy. So if Democrats are willing, you know, not only to address the issues that are kitchen table issues, which we do pretty well, but also to raise some of the concerns about what kind of country we’re going to have, uh, I think that we can do better than is predicted.
It’s very clear now: the Democrats have decided to cloak their assault on the foundations of our free republic and their embrace of authoritarianism as a defense of “our democracy” against the authoritarianism supposedly coming from Trump and his supporters.
Yet it is a Democrat administration (contrary to Jen Psaki’s claims), not a Republican one, that has set up the Disinformation Governance Board within the Department of Homeland Security. But even when the Board was announced, its chief, Nina Jankowicz, explained that it would be all about protecting, not destroying, Americans’ First Amendment rights. “A HUGE focus of our work,” she tweeted, “and indeed, one of the key reasons the Board was established, is to maintain the Dept’s committment [sic] to protecting free speech, privacy, civil rights, & civil liberties.” Jankowicz has also claimed that contrary to the witness of your lying eyes, it is Leftists and minorities, not conservatives, who are being censored on social media. (Who? When? Where?).
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Barack Obama, meanwhile, recently recommended that the government adopt procedures for censoring speech based on “whether it strengthens or weakens the prospects for a healthy inclusive democracy.” Hillary herself agrees. She tweeted on April 21, “For too long, tech platforms have amplified disinformation and extremism with no accountability. The EU is poised to do something about it. I urge our transatlantic allies to push the Digital Services Act across the finish line and bolster global democracy before it’s too late.”
So apparently, in order to save “democracy” (by which Leftists always mean their own political and cultural hegemony) from the Republicans’ “authoritarianism,” we have to impose censorship. In order to save the patient, we apparently have to kill him. This legerdemain reveals the Left’s utter cynicism: Leftists such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, but by no means only them, think so little of the intellectual capabilities of the American people that they think they can bamboozle them into acquiescing to authoritarianism under the guise of fighting authoritarianism, and giving up their freedom of speech in order to save it.
When I first read Orwell’s 1984, I thought the ruling party’s three slogans, War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength, were way over the top. Sure, I thought, totalitarian regimes lie to their people and twist the truth, but even they wouldn’t be brazen enough to invert reality so totally and think they could get away with it. Well, I shouldn’t have doubted the skill of the master’s hand. Hillary Clinton’s dark warnings about GOP “authoritarianism” only confirm that Orwell was absolutely right — the Left does indeed invert reality that brazenly, as well as follow Saul Alinsky’s dictum, “Accuse your opponent of what you are doing.”
Will they get away with it? In the final analysis, only by chicanery and force, after the manner of all authoritarian regimes. That is, if they get the chance to resort to such means.
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