Republican presidential candidate (and now presumptive nominee) Donald Trump won the Iowa caucus and the New Hampshire primary in the past week, breaking records in both contests. In Iowa, Trump received an unprecedented 51% of votes cast -- more than 30 percentage points ahead of the runner-up, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (who has since left the race and endorsed Trump). In New Hampshire, Trump received a record 175,000-plus votes and beat former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley by 12-plus percentage points.
Predictably, the American Left is freaking out. For months, their talking heads have been warning that Trump's election will usher in a literal dictatorship. As I wrote last week, the baseless accusations are cast at both Trump and the Americans supporting him. Democrats are ratcheting up this polarizing tactic, which they've used for years. In 2008, Barack Obama characterized Americans who opposed his candidacy for president as "bitter" people "clinging" to their "guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them." During her 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton declared Trump supporters to be a "basket of deplorables." In 2024, Democrats are accusing Trump voters of wanting authoritarianism and fascism.
This latest steaming pile of propaganda is inexcusably ignorant. Or perhaps it is yet another instance of projection.
The Americans who plan to vote for Trump are not supporting him because they prefer his dictatorial inclinations to the other guys but because they want someone in charge of the executive branch who does not see the government's role as controlling every aspect of their lives.
This stands in stark contrast to the Democratic Party's efforts to regulate entire industries out of existence or the mad, anti-liberty, anti-human fever dreams of the globalists on display at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In 2014, WEF speaker Yuval Harari informed a TEDx event audience that human rights don't exist; they are "like heaven or God -- just a fictional story we've invented and spread around." At the 2022 WEF meeting, Alibaba President J. Michael Evans touted a developing "individual carbon footprint tracker" that would monitor where you travel, how you travel, what you eat, and what you read on the internet. And the WEF's 2016 predictions for 2030 -- including having to pay fines for emitting carbon dioxide (does that include exhaling?), restrictions on meat consumption, and the end of private property ("You'll own nothing and you'll be happy") -- are infamous.
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Americans who support Trump understand that this country enjoys the prosperity it does, not because the "right" people control everything, but because no one does.
The more control one person or a small cadre of people have -- politically or economically -- the greater the risks to everyone.
Consider: If one company's leadership makes a catastrophically bad decision, that company may fail. But in a free, entrepreneurially capitalist country, other companies will be available to provide the goods and services that the failed company can no longer produce. A relative few bear the risk of error.
However, if those making a catastrophically wrong decision are in control of an entire industry or an entire economy, then the whole system can collapse, with devastating consequences for millions -- tens of millions -- of people.
History is replete with examples. The former Soviet Union collapsed politically because its centrally planned economy suffered disaster after disaster. Government takeover of the Venezuelan economy destroyed that once-prosperous country, plunging its residents into abject poverty. When the president of Sri Lanka banned nitrogen-based fertilizer, the country's agricultural sector collapsed, as did its exports, leaving Sri Lankans without adequate food, fuel or oil to heat their homes.
Here in the United States, we have witnessed the nasty consequences of plenty of government policy failures: the health risks of COVID-19 shots, the spectacular failure of wind power in Texas during the 2021 winter storm, the inability of electric vehicles to start in the bitter temperatures across the northern U.S. two weeks ago; California's water shortages and the struggling capacity of its electrical grid.
Egotists like WEF founder Klaus Schwab and his God-complex, like-minded cronies across the globe never consider that they could be wrong about anything.
But they are always wrong about something.
Trump voters do not want a dictator; they do not want an imperial presidency at all.
They want a president who understands that free and independent businesses operating in a minimally regulated environment are the lifeblood of American prosperity. They recognize that an executive branch that refuses to enforce federal laws is failing in its primary constitutional obligations to the American public. They understand that a justice system that picks and chooses whom to prosecute based on their race, ethnicity, or political belief is no justice at all. They are tired of inflation caused by misguided energy, trade, and environmental policies. They are tired of our veterans suffering and dying with their physical and mental health needs unmet; tired of homeless people living in the streets; tired of open borders, of tens of thousands of Americans dying of fentanyl overdoses, and tired of unpunished crime, all while hundreds of billions of our hard-earned tax dollars get laundered through foreign wars into the pockets of multinational defense contractors, corruptocrat politicians and warmongering toadies who never saw a foreign conflict they didn't want to exploit.
These Americans reject the globalist overlords pushing their anti-human philosophies down everyone's throats, and they fear being enslaved by governments infiltrated by mindless drones in thrall to the latest apocalyptic power grab.
The press and the Left can hand-wave and hyperventilate all they want about "threats to our democracy." But American voters see where the threats of authoritarianism truly lie, and it isn't with Donald Trump.
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