Liars (29 page)

• In California, a P.F. Chang's restaurant was sued under the law because the coat hook on the door of a
toilet stall was at an improper height.

• Using the ADA, the federal government sued United Parcel Service for its refusal to hire one-eyed drivers for its big trucks, even though UPS argued that such a hire would endanger “the health or safety of others to a greater extent that
if an individual without a disability performed the job.”

• One wheelchair-bound convicted child molester who lived in Arizona was said to take regular trips to California just to file nuisance
lawsuits against businesses under the ADA.

Again, these suits, and thousands like them, occurred as a result of the actions of a
Republican
administration. Unfortunately, the next Bush administration didn't do any better.

With the full support of many Republicans in Congress, George W. Bush's administration passed Medicare Part D, a brand-new prescription-drug entitlement program that significantly expanded the federal government, not to mention the country's deficit. The administration also supported a taxpayer bailout of the bad decisions of Wall Street, under TARP, which was capped off by the bizarre, Orwellian pronouncement by the president that he had “abandoned free-market principles to save the free market.”

I've heard from Republicans who were in the room during some
of the debates over TARP. What they saw were Mafia tactics; people had to commit to the bill before they could leave the room. They were told they would be personally responsible for the downfall of civilization if the government didn't hand billions to Wall Street, without any real plan or accountability.

The Bush administration spent billions in Afghanistan and Iraq in a Wilsonian effort to remake two backward societies into perfectible democracies, to enact the progressive notion that we were gods who could create the perfect world. Both Bushes also talked about some variation of a “new world order.”

Bush 43 signed into law a campaign-finance reform bill, a passion of
Republican
Senator John McCain, which was one of the most anti-free-speech laws passed by Congress since the Sedition Act under Wilson. As Senator Ted Cruz, among others, has pointed out, limiting the amount of contributions that an individual can make to a candidate of his or her choice is a racket designed to protect incumbents from being challenged by outsiders. Because incumbents already have good name recognition, they generally need far less money to win reelection than a challenger needs to get elected in the first place. (Not to mention that incumbents, because of their time in office, also usually have access to tons of money from lobbyists and special interests.)

Republicans are still at it. The Republican leadership in the House, led by men like John Boehner and Eric Cantor, pushed for amnesty for illegal immigrants. They were urged on and supported by corporate-welfare advocates, such as members of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who are prepared to flout all respect for the rule of law, as long as they can get cheap labor for their own businesses.

They also pushed for funding of the Export-Import Bank, a government entity created by Franklin Roosevelt that gives taxpayer-backed loans to the “right” corporations and supposedly helps them sell American products overseas. While it sells itself as a tool to help small businesses, the truth is that nearly ninety percent of the Export-Import
Bank's funding goes to big corporations such as Boeing, General Electric, and Caterpillar. These companies do a fine job of creating their products and providing American jobs all on their own. According to the classical liberal, free-market way of thinking, they do not need any extra handouts from the state. But that's not what progressives believe.

In case there's still any doubt, let's check in with Stuart Chase (discussed at more length in part III of this book), the key FDR adviser who coined the term
New Deal
. In his eighteen-point plan to move the United States from free enterprise to a new “Political System X”—which Chase also tentatively identified as “state capitalism”—he included this line at number nine: “The control of foreign trade by the government.”

The Export-Import Bank, a product of Roosevelt and Chase's New Deal, is a major part of keeping the government's hand in foreign trade, clearly a progressive notion. But what does this have to do with Republicans?

In 2015, the Export-Import Bank faced its first real existential threat, as conservative lawmakers refused to renew its charter, actually putting it out of action for a matter of months. The fight over the Export-Import Bank that year led to many strident debates in both houses of Congress as Republicans found themselves drawing battle lines. In the Senate, Ted Cruz took to the floor to call out Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for refusing to disclose a secret
deal McConnell had made to keep the Export-Import Bank open.

In the end, sixty-two Republicans in the House joined most Democrats on a measure to save the Export-Import Bank. In December 2015, final legislation that would preserve the bank until 2019 was tucked into a larger highway bill and passed both Houses. The Washington media called it “a paragon of
Capitol Hill humming along as it was designed to.”

Republicans voted for more government control of trade, a progressive
principle straight out of the New Deal playbook. People like Cruz and Representative Jeb Hensarling tried to put a stop to it, but, as the media said, progressivism just kept “humming along” with bipartisan support. Why? Because too many politicians, including Republicans, were afraid of giving up even an inch of their own power and control. They feared the consequences if they failed to deliver for their corporate pals at the Chamber of Commerce and other big-money lobbyists. Given a chance to shut down a progressive New Deal program, Republicans instead decided to keep their heads down and keep their power, too afraid to give the real free market a chance.

LIE 6

Hillary Clinton has spent her career
fighting for equality for all Americans.

—PRIORITIES USA ACTION, PRO-CLINTON SUPER-PAC, 2016 CAMPAIGN

As president of the United States, nobody will fight harder to end institutional racism
and to reform our broken criminal justice system.

—BERNIE SANDERS, 2016 CAMPAIGN

Progressives tell us over and over again how much they believe in equality for everyone. They spend a lot of time talking about racial equality—and definitely not because the African-American community is seen as a deep and critical reservoir for Democratic votes.

In the 2016 Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders tripped over each other in their attempts to shine as the greater champion of black Americans. The Clinton campaign's line was that “more than a half a century after Dr. King voiced his dream for a more equal America, and civil rights activists marched and died for the right to vote, America's
struggle with racism remains far from finished.”

Clinton herself has declared: “We can't hide from any of these
hard truths about race and justice in America. We have to name them, and
own them, and then change them.”

Sanders has also invoked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., pandering desperately for votes during the South Carolina primary with an ad highlighting his attendance at King's landmark “I Have a Dream” speech in 1963. “He was there when Dr. King marched on Washington,” the ad says of Sanders, “unafraid to challenge the status quo to end racial profiling, take on police misconduct, and take down a system that profits from mass imprisonment.” In the same spot, Sanders thunders, “There is no president who will
fight harder to end institutional racism.”

Even fellow authoritarian Donald Trump made his own ham-handed attempts to woo black voters—or, rather, to declare that he didn't have to: “I have a great relationship with African-Americans,” he told CNN. “I just have great respect for them, and you know
they like me. I like them.” His outreach to Hispanic voters was best exemplified by his posting a picture of himself on Cinco de Mayo eating a taco salad. Flashing a grin and a thumbs-up, Trump
declared in the photo's caption: “I love Hispanics!”

Another prominent minority community, Americans with disabilities, is less aggressively courted around election season, but progressives nevertheless take prominent stances on rights for the disabled. Clinton told us, “We should acknowledge how the disabilities community has played such an important role in changing things for the better in our country,” and her campaign pointed out that “Hillary has spent her life fighting for
the rights of Americans with disabilities.”

According to “champion for the rights of people with disabilities” Sanders, “We as a nation have a moral responsibility to ensure that all Americans have access to the programs and the support needed to contribute to society, live with dignity,
and achieve a high quality of life.”

But what if all of this were a cruel lie? What if it were all a shallow and cynically rhetorical attempt to win votes and assume power? What if these minority communities were actually the object of progressive contempt rather than compassion?

Progressives actually do believe in equality for everyone—as long as everyone is equally strong, brilliant, and “Nordic.” Progressives may talk a lot about fighting for the rights of African-Americans, disabled Americans, and other minorities now, but the movement from which they continue to claim inspiration fought for exactly the opposite: their lynching, their sterilization and abortion, and their political neutralization. In perhaps less offensive and less overt ways than a century ago, that fight continues today.

Here is one of the “hard truths about race and justice in America” that Clinton will never acknowledge: in traditional American progressivism, there is literally no place for those who don't fit into progressives' ideal society.

We learned about Margaret Sanger's obsession with eugenics in part I and her many unsavory quotes about culling the “intake and output on morons, mental defectives, epileptics . . . illiterates, paupers, unemployables, criminals, prostitutes, dope-fiends.” Sanger recognized that eugenics' aim could be advanced by birth control, especially among the lower classes. Although there was some initial resistance to her methods—there were concerns that “desirable” people using birth control would be counterproductive—Thomas Leonard notes that Sanger “convinced skeptical eugenicists that
birth control could be a valuable tool of eugenics.”

The other valuable tool was forced sterilization, the removal of testicles and ovaries. Progressives across America in the 1910s and '20s
championed “model laws” for sterilization. One early adopter was New Jersey, which passed an act “to authorize and provide for the sterilization of feeble-minded (including idiots, imbeciles and morons), epileptics, rapists and
certain criminals and other defectives.” The man who signed that law was Governor Woodrow Wilson.

Virginia passed its eugenics legislation in 1924. Three years later, it was challenged before the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of
Buck v. Bell
. The case involved Carrie Buck, a young woman who had given birth to an illegitimate child and who had been deemed “feeble-minded” and committed to a mental institution, which had then ordered her sterilized. Buck and her legal guardian protested, claiming that her right to due process as well as her rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment had been violated.

The Court ruled eight-to-one against Buck, and the majority opinion was written by progressive icon Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., in especially chilling language: “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is
broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes.” Agreeing with the “evidence” presented that Buck's mother, Buck herself, and Buck's daughter were all “feeble-minded,” Holmes declared:
“Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”