Which Way, American Citizen?

Which Way, American Citizen?
President Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech at Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia, Pa., on Sept. 1, 2022. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Dominick Sansone
9/7/2022
Updated:
9/8/2022
0:00
Commentary

President Joe Biden’s Sept. 1 speech was disturbing for many reasons.

The individual ostensibly in control of the nation’s military and federal law enforcement resources identifying a massive swath of the population as an extremist group composed of radical political ideologues is never a good sign.

Taking it one step further and stating that the group is actively conspiring to overturn the American government and even way of life, then implying that he, as the president, has the subsequent duty and responsibility to enact the measures necessary for preempting such a scenario, is even more worrying.

It can’t be emphasized enough just how unprecedented Biden’s speech was. The commander-in-chief equating his political opposition with a rebel insurgency is something new for this country.

Furthermore, the fact that the FBI recently raided the home of that opposition’s leader on a fishing expedition with an indictment following the midterms highly likely, and the implications become even starker.

And yet, despite all these worrying trends, Biden’s speech was in many ways very enlightening and even uplifting for those who find themselves on the side of the opposition.

It may sound counterintuitive, but the stakes were finally made clear for what the future of this country is going to be. “The soul of the nation,” as the speech was designated, really is on the line, and any pretenses for not preparing accordingly have been definitively cast aside.

The mask was pulled off (not the useless COVID mask—most of them are still wearing those) to expose what choice the nation truly faces. Biden said that America is at an inflection point, and the country’s ability to defeat the Trump-directed insurrectionists is going to “determine the shape of everything that is to come after.”

Protesters gather at the police line on the west side of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Special to The Epoch Times)
Protesters gather at the police line on the west side of the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Special to The Epoch Times)

Okay, let’s run with that for a second. What exactly is the “way of life” that the supposed extremists are trying to undermine? What is the better direction that Biden as representative of the inclusive-tolerant left is promising?

The 46th president lays it out very clearly.

The first issue is, of course, abortion. “The right to choose and the right to privacy.” Today’s mainstream liberal maintains the belief that access to safe, easy, and readily available infanticide has been the hallmark of every good and civilized society at the peak of its cultural flourishing and life-affirming preeminence.

Next up is naturally gun control. The proposition of a citizenry capable of self-preservation is the antithesis of the American left. Government is to be relied on to take care of that for you.

No mention was made of the dramatic rise in violent crime across the country due to lax prosecutorial initiatives or the unmitigated hordes of illegal aliens pouring through the wide-open floodgates on our southern border. As has been evident for some time now, real crime reduction and stemming immigration are non-issues for Democrats.

Add to all of this the other features of the “American way” that today’s left stands for:

Introducing radical gender ideology in schools, exposing children to explicitly sexual topics at an increasingly young age, and the mutilation of their genitals and hormone treatment labeled as “gender-affirming care.”
Supporting the right to expose children to sexual perversion up to and including naked adult men through the likes of Drag Queen story hours and “kid-friendly drag shows” (as if such a thing exists).
Masking and vaccinating children subsequently creates a myriad of developmental problems, exposing them to potentially harmful side effects even though they are essentially at zero risk from COVID-19.

Instructing children in a divisive, distorted, and racially-charged version of American history, as well as teaching white children that they are inherently guilty for everything bad in the past.

Opponents of the academic doctrine known as critical race theory protest outside of the Loudoun County School Board headquarters in Ashburn, Va., on June 22, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
Opponents of the academic doctrine known as critical race theory protest outside of the Loudoun County School Board headquarters in Ashburn, Va., on June 22, 2021. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
After laying out what his side stands for, the 46th president went on to lie about the notion that the unarmed protests on Jan. 6 almost overturned the U.S. government (yet he recently mocked the notion that citizens with assault rifles could challenge the F-16-equipped military state—how does that work?).

“Trump supporters are trying to overturn Democracy,” Biden continually recited throughout the entire speech. The current resident of the Oval Office made it his central theme that anyone who sides with his primary political opponent is against free and fair elections—an absolute inversion of the truth.

Forget about the fact for a minute that America is very clearly a constitutional republic, not a democracy. No voter ID, unlimited mail-in balloting, and forget about the idea that a winner can be determined in one day, as has been the case throughout all of U.S. electoral history oddly before the tumultuous 2020 race, not to mention every other civilized country. That is apparently the way of a secure, healthy, and properly functioning “democracy.”

But then Biden told the single biggest lie of the entire night: Most Republicans aren’t “MAGA Republicans.”

Biden distinguishes between the latter and the good pet Republicans. The dangerous “extremists” are apparently those who would disagree with the exemplified Democrat belief in unrestrained license and the holy tenet of “tolerance.”

Former President Donald Trump addresses thousands of MAGA supporters at a rally in Prescott Valley, Ariz., on July 22, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
Former President Donald Trump addresses thousands of MAGA supporters at a rally in Prescott Valley, Ariz., on July 22, 2022. (Allan Stein/The Epoch Times)
Contrary to what the 46th president says, the people who vote Republican are overwhelmingly “MAGA Republicans,” according to his own description. The principles that got Trump elected in 2016—curtailing immigration, enacting economic initiatives favorable to the United States, and creating an America First foreign policy that eschewed needless war—remain the principles that the majority of citizens embrace.

This has been borne out in the 2022 electoral cycle. Political newcomers have been successful in primaries against the “good” Biden-approved Republicans by sticking to the talking points of true America First policy that stands against the left.

Meanwhile, only two out of the ten Republicans who voted to impeach Trump will be running in November. The rest were either swept aside or decided to avoid the embarrassment of an inevitable defeat. Republicans facing off against Democrats in early 2022 had also lost when they refused to represent the real interests that American citizens care about and instead tried to promote left-lite positions.

Americans want leaders who are going to stand up and confidently say no to the radical left-wing agenda. Say no to open borders, gun confiscation, promoting degeneracy to children, and destroying the American economy for climate change extremism.

Americans do not want to be Europe, especially not Germany. The war in Ukraine is not a pressing issue for us. We do not want representatives who support sending billions and billions of dollars in weapons and aid to Ukraine while we suffer at home. Likewise, we don’t want unaffordable energy as the result of “punishing Russia”—even though our virtue signaling is having no actual effect on Russian policy—and lofty climate goals dictated by disconnected elites in Brussels and Davos.

We want leaders who will also be culture warriors on the home front—not go along to get along. Glenn Youngkin beat the odds to win his race for governor in Virginia because he called out the infiltration of pernicious critical race theory into his state’s public schools, listened to the voice of parents, and vowed to fight against it.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is as popular as he is because he actively uses the tools available to him to fight against left-wing lunacy. Despite liberal media foaming at the mouth, he has strongly opposed the latter and used his means as governor to punish dissenters who refused to accept the will of the people.

Biden and the establishment are trying to willfully force the American political scene to go back to the way things were before 2016—back when Republicans were exactly the same as Democrats, supporting the same goals and operating from the same foundational understanding of what the future was supposed to look like.

Politicians who accepted the left-wing dogma that America is an idea that was defined by the fact that anyone can come here at any time and do absolutely anything that they want, and saying otherwise was “hateful” or “un-American.”

“Republicans” like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.

Vice Chair U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) attends the third of eight planned public hearings of the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington on June 16, 2022. (Sarah Silbiger/Reuters)
Vice Chair U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) attends the third of eight planned public hearings of the U.S. House Select Committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in Washington on June 16, 2022. (Sarah Silbiger/Reuters)

It’s no coincidence that this speech was delivered at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were signed. The message was clear: This is what America is, who we are, and this is the only direction available to us—or else.

By attacking anyone who stands on the opposing side as extremists, Biden was essentially saying that they have abrogated their position as inheritors of the American legacy—as defined by his radical side.

A dividing line was drawn in the sand for Republicans, present and potential: “Either fall back in with the program as dictated, accept your role as controlled opposition, or face the repercussions of being an enemy of America.” The increased rhetoric as of late about fascism and the government violently stopping any potential “insurgency” suggests that finding yourself in the latter camp will be a risky position.

Americans should be honest about where we find ourselves as a nation. Leftist media is very happy with the proposition laid out in Biden’s speech (see their cringe-worthy embrace of “Dark Brandon”); they actively want the president to use the means available to him to crush the right, violently or otherwise.

Remember when over 50 percent of Democrat voters indicated they would be okay with potentially sending the unvaccinated to detainment camps for the “public good”? What would make you think they would say otherwise about supposed “insurrectionists,” which Biden has just equated with every Trump supporter—a notion, by the way, with which they generally agree?

It’s not a conspiracy theory to talk about the reality of political prisoners when the nation’s commander-in-chief just laid out the logical justification for such. Who is going to voice opposition? MSNBC commentators? The Atlantic staff writers? Stephen Colbert?

The truth is that if “MAGA Republicans” means refusing to bow down and lick the boots of the radical American left, then yes, most right-leaning Americans are certainly the political extremists that Biden says they are.

Now, let’s see which Republican politicians have the courage to hold the line, choose to actually represent the interests of voters, and face whatever comes next.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Dominick Sansone is a doctoral student at the Hillsdale College Van Andel Graduate School of Statesmanship. He is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times, and has additionally been published at The American Conservative, The Federalist, and the Washington Examiner.
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