A couple weeks ago, I wrote about how Democrats hate democracy. The Democratic National Convention kicks off in a week, where it is widely assumed Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, will be selected as the official candidates for President and Vice President in November's national election.
Under normal circumstances, there is a cycle of primary elections in each state winnowing the field of candidates down based on at least some semblance of public participation. Then the party insider "superdelegates" get to put their thumb on the scale. This year, they didn't even bother with that charade. A woman who didn't even make it to the Iowa caucuses and was explicitly chosen as VP based on her gender rather than her accomplishments is now being crowned by a party without even a pretense of polls beforehand. Isn't that at least slightly concerning?
And by the way, if Biden was not, in fact, "sharp as a tack," just who has been running the show for the last 3-1/2 years?
But those questions are just the beginning. What can we say about Walz?
I haven't been a Minnesotan for a quarter century, and my family moved away before I was ever eligible to vote, but the state has trended toward Democratic policies for ages. The Twin Cities radiated the malaise of welfare state entitlement programs and confiscatory taxation even then. As is so often the case, a major population center or two uses "democracy" to justify the bandwagon fallacy as they trample the sparsely-populated surrounding rural region, but that trend has escalated sharply.
Walz is a white boomer. He worked as a teacher, enlisted in the military, became a congresscritter, got himself elected governor, and now plans to be the next VP. It doesn't look like he has ever worked in the real productive economy of voluntary exchange. It also looks a lot like when Obama picked Biden as VP: Get an old-as-heck white dude for a running mate to look more legitimate if you aren't already an old white dude yourself. The optics aren't great.
But what about his record? Surely there's something good there, right? Well, Minnesota was... not good for freedom during the COVID panic, and Walz was in charge of the whole thing. When the George Floyd killing occurred, Walz was still the guy in charge. There's a lot of he-said-she-said online, but it's readily apparent things got way out of hand. What we can't escape is his statements about free speech.
"There's no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy." (source and 3rd party analysis)
Yes. Yes, there is, you pompous moralistic authoritarian. At the federal level, it's called the first amendment to the United States Constitution. At his state level, there is Article 1, Section 3 of the Minnesota State Consitution. We live in an era where we have in living memory seen statements which were declared "misinformation" later acknowledged as accurate months after government pressured social media outlets to censor people for dissent. This man is absolutely a danger to liberty if this is his understanding of freedom.
Yes, I know Trump also said, "...take the guns first, go through due process second." Criticism of Harris and Walz is not support for Cheeto Mussolini, you ignorant troglodytes. Drop the false dichotomy of partisanship, please.
Walz and Harris are both abysmal on 2nd Amendment grounds, don't get me wrong. They're both of the opinion that only government should have anything even cosmetically considered an "assault weapon," and Walz actually signed the kind of "red flag laws" which promote theft first, kangaroo courts later. That's not how a defender of freedom behaves.
I remain politically homeless. If you think my concerns are misplaced, or my facts and reasoning are in error, by all means, chime in. You'll face a challenge in convincing me to shift back to supporting the political process. I have no king but Christ, and I condemn this vainglorious posturing of politics as exhibing all seven deadly sins.
EDIT
That's not a very uplifting post. How about a weird song in closing instead?
You can try all ya want!
I'm not your property
I told you before-
But you're still not listening!
If you're not on Hive yet, I invite you to join through InLeo or PeakD. If you use either of my referral links, I'll even try to delegate some Hive Power to help you get started.
