OPINION:
President Biden loves to warn Americans about how democracy is under siege or on the brink of collapse, depending on the speechwriter. In Iowa last week, though, more than 110,000 people braved negative 20-degree temperatures to hear from candidates and their surrogates, discuss and vote for who they believed should lead the nation forward.
In New Hampshire, candidates for president have spent months in diners, bars and coffee shops crisscrossing the Granite State, making a direct case to voters. You can’t just do a drive-by in New Hampshire. You have to eat the pancakes and take the tough questions directly from the people. Hundreds of thousands will come out to vote in the first-in-the-nation primary on Tuesday.
The road to becoming the leader of the free world starts in school gymnasiums, church basements and living rooms along the snowy, wind-swept streets of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Those places ignite a spark that sustains liberty’s flame. It should dispel any doubt about the health of our system, even with all the forces working against it, including Mr. Biden.
For Mr. Biden, sounding the alarm over the impending doom of the democratic process is a strategy to distract from the excesses of the deep state and socialist Democrats who seek to monitor, regulate, tax and control every aspect of American life. That doesn’t sound like democracy.
It would appear that “strategic ambiguity” isn’t only a policy toward China. Mr. Biden and his party seem ambivalent about democracy, the democratic process and constitutional freedoms.
This past week, Americans learned that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has been asking banks to turn over customer information based on certain search terms and merchant category codes.
New information has shown that the Biden administration asked banks to search private accounts for specific keywords that the government said could be markers for dangerous extremism. If you bought a Bible or religious text, shopped at Bass Pro Shops or Dick’s Sporting Goods, or bought a MAGA hat or ammunition online, your bank could flag those purchases for the government.
This report comes on the heels of an effort by the FBI to infiltrate Catholic churches and conservative Catholic groups in an attempt to identify alleged extremists.
Democrats increasingly support noncitizen voting and continue to believe that certain racial minorities are not intelligent or sophisticated enough to obtain voter ID, a policy supported by more than 70% of Americans. If Mr. Biden really cared about democracy, he’d support voter ID.
Mr. Biden’s political allies are behind the militant censorship efforts, “wokeism,” speech codes and infringements on parental rights. They even support junk science to justify mandates, mass firings and other controls over the population.
Defending democratic values here and abroad is a moral imperative. Mr. Biden may talk about saving democracy from former President Donald Trump, but he also consistently chooses terrorism, communism and socialism over democracy.
While it may be difficult, as a nation that represents the vanguard of pluralistic self-governance, we must steadfastly support other nations that have those values while we defend our own.
Mr. Biden failed to deter the invasion of Ukraine, a young democracy. He abandoned Afghanistan to Islamic terrorists just as that country was beginning to experience the benefits of a free society. He claims to support Israel but has repeatedly called for measures that would accrue an advantage to Hamas while failing to counter the Iranian theocracy. His administration’s policies have emboldened the Mullahs and provided them with a financial windfall.
You can’t say you are a defender of democracy and then not support independent self-determination for Taiwan. After the people of Taiwan bucked Chinese interference by electing a new hard-line anti-communist president, Mr. Biden promptly released a statement saying that he did not support an independent Taiwan. Instead of having the courage to abrogate this country’s nonsensical “one China” policy, he again kowtowed to the communists in Beijing, leaving an important democracy and its people in a dangerous limbo.
Top White House officials also had prominent roles this past week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, a gathering that has precious little to do with protecting freedom and democracy.
One of the reasons Americans have such a negative view of Mr. Biden is that they’re learning that democracy isn’t in danger from Mr. Trump, that White supremacy isn’t the greatest threat to the nation and that conservatives who believe in individual liberty aren’t extremists.
They know democracy isn’t just a throwaway line in a campaign speech. Participatory government is the cornerstone of human advancement. Democratic societies have higher standards of living, better human health and natural environments, more innovation and greater stability. And they protect human rights.
So the next time you hear President Biden talk about threats to democracy, remember that no one ever tells you they’re going to conquer or enslave you.
To paraphrase a famous line from Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas,” those who are your greatest threat come with smiles. They come as your friends, the people who claim to have cared for you all of your life. And they always seem to come at a time when you’re at your weakest and most in need of their help.
In this case, they love chocolate chip ice cream, too.
• Tom Basile is the host of “America Right Now” on Newsmax and is a columnist for The Washington Times.
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