Liberty V. Liberals
By Mike Mina (11/01/04)
By now, in spite of limited coverage by the mainstream national media, most people have heard reports of election fraud and other electoral abuses being perpetrated by some Democrats and liberal political action organizations. These include:
- Paying felons (including sex offenders) to conduct door-to-door registration drives. While this may not be illegal in all states, the registration process often involves giving one's social security number and other sensitive information to the canvasser.
- Reports from various Bush-Cheney headquarters across the country of violence against Republican campaign workers, burglary, property damage, and even gunshots. (Don't leftists believe that citizens shouldn't own guns? Or are they just "more equal" than we are?)
- The filing of approximately 35 lawsuits in 17 states, even before voting began, in some cases.
- Advising Democratic operatives that "If no signs of intimidation techniques have emerged yet, launch a pre-emptive strike," as published in The Drudge Report.
- Forged signatures on voter registration cards.
- Reports from all over the country, and even abroad, of Americans who have registered to vote multiple times.
- In Florida, one man, a registered Democrat, deliberately drove his car toward Representative Katherine Harris as if to run her down. He was charged with aggravated assault.
- The Columbus dispatch reported that Ohio's voter registration rolls appear to contain 122,000 duplicates.
- In Toledo, Ohio, one man was paid in crack cocaine to register voters, and turned in over one hundred registration cards with false names and addresses. As one Cleveland Plain Dealer reporter put it, "This is your election process on drugs."
- Closer to my home, I received a warning from the Republican Party of Cuyahoga County (Ohio) telling people to take their yard signs in at night, due to reports of signs being stolen, ripped and burned. In my own quiet little suburb, I saw only two signs vandalized. One was a Bush-Cheney sign (of course), and the other was for a pro-life Democrat opposed only by an Independent in a local election.
It is not my intent to document all of these incidents. Others have done a better job than I can, most notably Jim Geraghty in The Kerry Spot on National Review Online. True, there have been reprisals, but by some estimates, the ratio of anti-Republican incidents to anti-Democratic incidents is about seven to one. Had conservatives or Republicans committed anti-Democratic incidents in large enough numbers, the mainstream national media would have seized upon it and made it a major issue.
These tactics should not surprise us. Most liberals are moral relativists who believe in using the courts to subvert the Constitution and the popular will. We should expect them to use the courts to alter the outcome of elections. Why would it be any other way? The Democratic National Committee claims it will have up to 10,000 lawyers ready by Election Day. Move over Helen of Troy, John Kerry's is the face that launched 10,000 attorneys.
Moral relativists should be expected to defend free speech only when it suits them, and to intimidate those who disagree with them. The surprise is not that they are engaging in voter intimidation, the surprise is that it took until 2004 for this behavior to emerge.
While I am certainly not a part of the "blame conservatives first" crowd, let us consider the possibility that, by essentially being decent people, we chose to be as harmless as doves without being as shrewd as serpents.
Most liberals believe in the ultimate perfectibility of humanity. Man can become God, and therefore Man must become God, and none can be permitted to stand in the way. Where conservatives failed to be as shrewd as serpents, liberals heeded the voice of the serpent.
Consider the hubris: "If we do the work that we can do in this country, the work that we will do when John Kerry is president," John Edwards boasted, "people like Christopher Reeve are going to walk, get up out of that wheelchair and walk again." Thus would John Edwards play John the Baptist to Kerry's Christ.
The death of Mr. Reeve shortly thereafter was a terrible tragedy. Greek and Roman Pagans might have attributed that to Edwards' hubristic claims, which they believed brought down the wrath of their gods. But if you are your own god, acting for what you see as the betterment of humanity, hubris is not a danger, it is a perverse strategy for evangelism. And as your own god, what is there to fear except those who do not share your dogma?
The leftist Sturm Abteilung responsible for the above incidents view their fellow Americans not as citizens exercising their civil rights, but as obstacles and enemies to be silenced and intimidated. Fortunately, they seem to lack someone to organize their efforts, but that can change.
Liberal thuggery should have been made a campaign issue at the state and local levels, but it is almost too late. Where were our demands that Democratic Party officials condemn these actions? We would condemn similar anti-Democratic incidents. Where were our "non-partisan" voter rights organizations, demanding that there is no place for the sick haters of free speech that would vandalize homes and otherwise intimidate voters? Where were the demonstrators in front of buildings used by Democratic and liberal organizations? Where were the "LIBERAL SS WANABEES DO NOT SCARE US" placards?
There is a BillionairesForBush.com web site, even though the only billionaires I know of support Kerry. Where was LiberalsAgainstFreeSpeech.com? NoneShallOpposeKerry.com? KerryIsOurSavior.com? LeftWingThugsForKerry.com? And where were the flyers advertising these sites?
We were not shrewd enough. Or angry enough.
The man who recklessly drove toward Representative Katherine Harris said "I intimidated them with my car. I was exercising my political expression." And the Kerry Spot reported that three teenage boys in Duluth, Minnesota vandalized one man's Bush-Cheney sign and painted a swastika on the sidewalk in front of his house. One of the three, a high-school senior, said "It was not an act of hate.... My mom called me a terrorist. It wasn't terrorism; it was activism. It was for a cause...."
I was exercising my political expression. It was activism. It was for a cause. Die, conservative, die!
In the case of Liberty v. Liberals, we find the defendant guilty. I hope enough voters will pass sentence, because these people cannot be allowed to win, not when they use tactics like this. They must be demoralized, not energized. And by 2008, I hope enough of us conservatives can learn to become the sons of bitches it will take to save this country from the likes of these.
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