American leftists spiral toward authoritarianism, and they’re taking us with them

I write this today with compassion and concern welling up within me: Liberal leaders in politics and their misleaders in the media seem to be in the throes of an unbreakable, feverish distemper that threatens the very existence of this republic.

What appears to be a rabid, insatiable lust for power is driving the far-left to whip up blind rage among its followers, and to censor, sue and imprison its opponents – and now to suggest impeaching judges and imploding institutions that stand in its way.

All, quite perversely, in the name of “saving democracy.”

America isn’t perfect. But it’s the best, freest, most welcoming place on Earth. Yet, the left carries on as if the nation is irredeemably malevolent and its institutions must be burned to the ground for something pure – a collectivist utopia as yet unprecedented in human history – to rise from the ashes.

An anger-fueled Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-New York, famously disgorged his venom – not just for America, but for Israel – in a profane pre-election rant that, truth be known, may have accelerated his career’s death spiral. He lost, but the damage was done, the hatred spread among his faithful.

During Supreme Court consideration of abortion in 2020, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threatened two justices by name at a pro-abortion rally just outside the court, warning them, “You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

Then, in June 2022, just weeks after the leak of the decision that would overturn Roe v. Wade, a man was arrested outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and charged with attempted assassination.

On Monday – as another of Trump’s supporters was escorted to jail – the left perceived the U.S. Supreme Court was letting Donald Trump off its legal meat hooks, with a reasonable, necessary decision protecting all presidents from legal attacks over official acts. It sent the left into full rabies mode, attacking the court’s conservative majority as alleged dangers to democracy.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York, railed ignorantly, “Today’s ruling represents an assault on American democracy. It is up to Congress to defend our nation from this authoritarian capture. I intend on filing articles of impeachment upon our return.”

In actuality, the courts exist precisely to prevent “authoritarian capture.” And any cool and coherent mind knows that threatening a court with impeachment because it doesn’t rule the way you like is, itself, the very definition of a threat to democracy.

Then, most ominously, the president used his position’s primetime powers Monday night to issue a full-frontal assault on the credibility and independence of the judiciary because he disagrees with its ruling against his political rival.

That’s the stuff of banana republics.

Biden’s loathsome rant is even more dangerous and reprehensible than it is shameless and shameful. In five deplorable minutes, this president set back the cause of justice and eroded his followers’ paltry remaining respect for our vital third branch of government.

You can’t get more incendiary – or more Third World – than that.

“Rage has again replaced reason as commentators misrepresent the [presidential immunity] opinion and race to the bottom in reckless rhetoric,” writes George Washington University School of Law Professor Jonathan Turley – who is, notably, an avowed Barack Obama voter.

“Within minutes of the Supreme Court’s decision on presidential immunity, liberal politicians and pundits seemed to move from hyperbole to hyperventilation,” Turley added in a New York Post column.

“[T]he Democrats have become the very threat that the court was meant to resist.”

All this, after having tried to frame Trump as a Russian asset and then launching a multiyear, multimillion-dollar sham investigation of what turns out to be their own handiwork; then the paper-thin impeachments; then the intelligence community’s lie that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation in order to protect President Biden just before the 2020 election; and now all the criminal and civil cases having materialized after Trump filed to run again.

What won’t the left do to consolidate its control over the government? What won’t it do to our country in its rabid, single-minded pursuit of a one-party state – which, elsewhere in the world, is known as communism and despotism?

All I know to do – other than write plaintive warnings about the existential crisis the left is igniting, and to perform my own individual civic duties – is to pray. Hard.

I implore all Christians and conservatives: Pray fervently for our country, and for any of our liberal friends who are being unduly and treacherously misled, at high velocity, toward rank authoritarianism – the likes of which we have only witnessed from afar.