The Infrastructure Bill Is the Royal Road to Communism

A National Guard soldier stands outside the razor wire fencing that surrounds the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 15, 2021. (Liz Lynch/Getty Images)

Commentary

I used to think the idea that the USA could turn communistic was nonsense. It could never happen here.

No longer.

The way that 19 Republican senators have folded in like sheep for—or should I say colluded with Democrats on—the 2,700-page, trillion-dollar infrastructure bill is but one more indication of this appalling trend that is crossing over into a new reality.

I am not even going to go into the fact that—other than those who created this boondoggle, and even with them, it’s questionable—no one has had the time to really read it, let alone study its implications. As Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn.) pointed out, it’s twice the length of the Bible.

But something jumped out at me as particularly alarming: the intrusion into our cars.

Yes, we have plenty of driving regulations, many justifiable, but in this case, we’re going two steps further, the second of which is especially dangerous and redolent of the c-word. Neither one is good.

The first is that mileage taxation is under study. That would mean that people who live in distant suburbs and commute to work—most often the less well-off, due to the lower property values further from cities—would be double-taxed, since they already pay a tax for their gas.

The intent of this is to drive people who want a home of their own out of the suburbs and exurbs and into cities where they must live in apartments where they are ultimately more easily controlled. This exacerbates a statist trend that has been going on since the Obama administration.

Meanwhile—and here’s the yet more ominous part—we will all be monitored via computer access inside our cars for alcohol intake, ostensibly, or so we are told, for our own good.

This may sound like a little thing, but it’s not. It is one more rather large step into the ongoing death of privacy and into state control. Once systems like this are turned on, they can only expand.

Most readers have heard of the Chinese communist “social credit scores” that track and then rank for their obedience citizens of that country via their cellphones. But as far as I know, even the CCP hasn’t put mechanisms like this in their citizen’s cars.

Of course, we must turn off our cellphones to have that freedom—and even then it’s tricky (see what Apple’s been up to lately)—but cars were once the one zone of true privacy for Americans. For that too, if this legislation goes through, we can say “no longer.”

This was obviously not of great concern to the 17 referred to above, nor was it apparently bothersome that the infrastructure legislation is an obvious stalking horse for the forthcoming Green New Deal legislation. That GND has little to do with the environment but almost everything to do with the furtherance of American Marxism.

(Incidentally, although few realize it, the United States already spends nearly as much on social welfare as the allegedly socialist societies of Scandinavia. We are en route to passing them by a considerable amount.)

So who are the 19? This time, as opposed to my previous article, they must be named because—enough is enough—the job of our legislators is to represent the views of his or her constituents. I would be willing to bet my house that in no more than one or two of these instances, at best, is this even remotely the case.

This isn’t always true. In some situations, most would agree, a person should indeed vote his or her conscience that might, temporarily at least, go against his constituents. But to say this kludge of a bill being rammed down the country’s throat—and, yes, I would like to see infrastructure improvement, as would most people—is such a situation is laughable.

Some of the senators on the list, such as Burr, are thankfully about to retire, but many are not. For them, come primary time, you know what to do.

• Roy Blunt of Missouri
• Richard Burr of North Carolina
• Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia
• Bill Cassidy of Louisiana
• Susan Collins of Maine
• Kevin Cramer of North Dakota
• Mike Crapo of Idaho
• Deb Fischer of Nebraska
• Lindsey Graham of South Carolina
• Chuck Grassley of Iowa
• John Hoeven of North Dakota
• Mitch McConnell of Kentucky
• Lisa Murkowski of Alaska
• Rob Portman of Ohio
• Jim Risch of Idaho
• Mitt Romney of Utah
• Dan Sullivan of Alaska
• Thom Tillis of North Carolina
• Roger Wicker of Mississippi

A final note: To understand what’s happening to our country, I would highly recommend this video from the Academy of Ideas. It’s quite brilliant—and scary. But, properly understood, it’s an excellent incentive to act.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.