Anything Democrats Don’t Like is a “Threat to Democracy”
https://issuesinsights.com/2023/08/03/anything-democrats-dont-like-is-now-a-threat-to-democracy/
When a handful of Democrats introduced a bill to impose a progressive wealth tax on millionaires and billionaires, they didn’t just say that income inequality was bad. They called it a threat to democracy. Apparently, anything and everything the left doesn’t like is now a threat to democracy.
Reps. Rashida Tlaib, Barbara Lee, Summer Lee, and Jamaal Bowman – four of the most far-left lawmakers in Congress – introduced the OLIGARCH Act (we won’t bother spelling out the acronym) to “tax extreme wealth, reduce inequality, and combat the threat to democracy posed by billionaires.”
“The bill ensures accountability and is an effort to restore democracy,” the press release states.
Tlaib says “billionaires are threatening our democracy.” Not to be outdone, Barbara Lee calls them a “major threat to democracy.”
How exactly do the rich threaten Democracy?
Summer Lee claims that “the 400 richest Americans have 22,000 times the political influence of the bottom 90%” – citing the conclusion of one research paper published 14 years ago.
Morris Pearl, chairman of the Patriotic Millionaires, which backs this bill, insists that “without decisive action, this vicious cycle of concentrated power and money will dismantle our system of democratic capitalism, and with it, our way of life.”
Their solution is to impose an entirely new wealth tax, starting at 2% and climbing to 8%, on anyone who has a net wealth of more than $140 million.
Let’s leave aside the fact that such a wealth tax would be virtually impossible to impose, would be a disaster for the economy, and wouldn’t raise nearly the revenue the left predicts. (Which is why several European countries abandoned their own wealth tax schemes after witnessing their adverse effects.)
Let’s also leave aside the fact that a wealth tax is almost certainly unconstitutional. (A fact even liberal law professors admitted in the New York Times, writing that such schemes would “run headlong into more than two centuries of precedent that cast doubt on the constitutionality of wealth taxation.”)
The more fundamental problem with this bill is how it continues the left’s attempt to turn every policy debate into a war over democracy. Election laws designed to mitigate fraud are threats to democracy. “Misinformation” – defined as anything the left doesn’t like to hear – is a threat to democracy. Recent Supreme Court rulings are a threat to democracy. The prevalence of guns is a threat to democracy. Climate change is a threat to democracy. The “war on woke” is …. you guessed it … a threat to democracy.
An op-ed in The Hill declared that “As we mark 100 days of MAGA control of the U.S. House of Representatives this week, one thing is absolutely clear: Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the extreme members he has put in positions of power, appear focused on undermining our democracy.”
When President Joe Biden announced his reelection, he claimed “That’s been the work of my first term – to fight for democracy.”
Enough!
None of these things is a threat to democracy. The left is using this claim to stifle debate. That way, the discussion is no longer about, say, tax reform, or gun control, or free speech, it’s about the future of democracy. And who would want to be against democracy?
The next time some politician starts blathering on about “threats to democracy,” take a moment to remind them that we, thankfully, don’t live in a democracy. We live in a constitutional republic. And the real threats to our republic are coming from those on the left who want to tear up the Constitution in the name of democracy.
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