How To Save Taiwan From Chinese Aggression
In the book 'The Boiling Moat,' defense and foreign policy experts put forth a number of sound ideas to enhance American readiness and stop the Chinese military conquest of Taiwan.
We heard a lot about democracy during the election season. The left circulated the narrative that Trump would be the end of democracy while the right called him the savior who would rescue it from the undemocratic Biden regime.
Mark Levin, however, says we need to be reminded of something: “[Our Founding Fathers] didn't support democracy; they supported republicanism.”
“Democracy means factions can take over or a majority can be tyrannical,” he says, adding that our Founders saw this in other countries and “didn’t want anything to do with it.”
“They wanted republicanism; they wanted checks in power,” he explains.
That’s why they enshrined certain principles in our Constitution.
That way, “you can't have people vote away your rights,” says Levin. If “90% of them don't think you should have the right to bear arms, that's too damn bad.”
The fact that our forefathers foresaw the inevitable issues with a true democracy and created our brilliant system proves that “they were geniuses.”
Their installation of the Electoral College was equally brilliant.
Even though we see people like Tim Walz advocating for the demolition of it, Levin knows the truth: It’s for our nation’s protection.
“You choose a president not through a direct election” but rather via an “Electoral College. Why?” asks Levin. “One person is the head of an entire branch; we can't just leave it up to a popular vote” because then “the cities will choose the president.”
“In order to have a union and in order to make sure every aspect of the society was represented, they came up with this brilliant Electoral College,” he explains.
Because of this brilliant system of balance, “California doesn't get to drown out Montana, Wyoming, [or] Idaho.”
“If you had a national popular vote, that’s what [California] would do,” says Levin.
A system in which “the president [is] chosen by the people through the Electoral College but not chosen by the legislature” was “unheard of” at the time. So was the idea of “staggered terms” and a “bicameral congress.”
“So the accumulation of power, the centralization of government is limited,” Levin explains.
To hear more of his explanation on the brilliant and effective system of government designed by our forefathers, watch the clip above.
To enjoy more of "the Great One" — Mark Levin as you've never seen him before — subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
I’ve often reflected on Donald Trump’s charge that massive fraud occurred during the 2020 presidential election. While I’m not convinced the opposition cheated enough to change the outcome, I do agree with J.R. Dunn at American Thinker, who argues, “We’re not going to debate whether cheating in fact occurred in 2020 — the only ones who dispute that at this point are the bought, the braindead, and the comatose.”
My acceptance of this view stems largely from the behavior of Democratic Party operatives since 2020. They have used highly questionable tactics to influence election outcomes, including flooding the country with millions of illegal immigrants brought here as potential Democratic voters. In fact, Democrats have already started registering some of these new arrivals, who, grateful for benefits like living expenses, medical care, food, and shelter, are likely to vote in their favor.
The ruling left’s ideal outcome would involve the complete elimination of genuine opposition, leaving only allies or powerless coalition partners.
In states controlled by Democrats or those they are close to controlling, such as my home state of Pennsylvania, voter ID requirements are being removed. This change aims to enable individuals who shouldn’t have voting rights to cast ballots. Similarly, in 2020, ballots were widely mailed to addresses where registered voters once lived but may no longer reside. Democratic operatives likely visited these addresses to fill out ballots, while unguarded drop boxes in Democratic areas were reportedly filled with pro-Biden ballots late at night.
Recently, the Department of Justice has attempted to prevent Republican governors from removing noncitizens from voter rolls, as seen in a widely publicized case in Virginia. Congressional Democrats also strongly oppose limiting voting to only citizens, aligning with the party’s support for massive illegal immigration — essentially importing future Democratic voters.
These practices recall the “salami tactics” communist operatives used in Eastern Europe after World War II, which allowed them to gain power through seemingly constitutional means. Instead of the deep state and corporate media, as in today’s context, communists like Matyas Rakosi in Hungary and Klement Gottwald in Czechoslovakia relied on the Red Army to break up their democratic opposition.
Some of these gradualist tactics, pioneered by communist takeover strategists, echo what our Democratic Party and similar woke leftist parties in Europe are already doing. Much like today’s Democrats, the communists worked relentlessly to delegitimize any party to their right, including agrarian groups, nationalists, and even social democrats, labeling them as fascists and Nazis.
Much like slicing a salami, the political spectrum was gradually narrowed to the communists and their willing collaborators. These collaborators bear a striking resemblance to today's neoconservatives, who now seek favor with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz while denouncing Trump and MAGA Republicans as neo-Nazis.
The totalitarian left has long perfected the art of marginalizing opposition. During their rise to power, the communists welcomed bourgeois progressives, the Eastern and Central European equivalents of figures like George Will, Ken Adelman, John Bolton, Robert Kagan, and Dick and Liz Cheney. Applying “salami tactics,” they outlawed noncompliant parties and, where possible, jailed their leaders as “fascists.” This approach mirrors how today’s media and Democrats treat MAGA Republicans, whom President Biden recently denounced as “garbage.” The ruling left’s ideal outcome would involve the complete elimination of genuine opposition, leaving only allies or powerless coalition partners.
A future Democratic administration led by Harris and Walz could closely resemble the old communist model. The Democrats have already proposed measures like packing the Supreme Court with loyalists, granting statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico to secure additional Senate seats, and federalizing elections while removing voter ID requirements — all under the guise of “saving our democracy.”
Meanwhile, Harris, Walz, and sympathetic media outlets express concern about allowing “disinformation” to circulate without government oversight. The totalitarian left, whether in the modern West or the former Soviet bloc, has always sought to throttle unwanted dissent.
That said, our homegrown version of leftist totalitarianism looks a lot kinkier than what the communists established. Unlike puritanical communist rule, our post-democratic regime is already abolishing gender distinctions, pushing gender-altering surgery for minors, and glorifying homosexual relations. This new form of the totalitarian left would be less about government ownership of resources than reconstructing social and moral behavior and rewarding parasitic capitalists who support those in power.
Although history never repeats itself exactly, troubling trends often have an unfortunate tendency to rhyme.
The New York Times published a think piece last week strategizing how leftists might be able to thwart the will of American voters and rescue democracy from President Donald Trump should he win on Nov. 5.
Using the term "democracy" euphemistically for a state of things in which Democrats or leftists of other stripes are in power, the authors — a pair of Harvard University professors hostile to Trump, the Constitution as written, and the Electoral College — recommended "societal mobilization" should the powers that be fail to get their way.
Daniel Ziblatt and Steve Levitsky's call to action, which critics have noted sounds a lot like color revolution, appears to be the desperate finale following a series of failed efforts by Democrats to remove Kamala Harris' opponent from the ballot or to kneecap him with lawfare.
The duo, working under the assumption that Trump would "dismantle" the republic's electoral system of which they themselves are critics, identified "five strategies that pro-democratic forces around the world have employed" against so-called "authoritarian threats."
The first four are as follows:
Ziblatt and Levitsky, convinced that these four strategies have failed, noted that there is yet a fifth way by which supposed champions of democracy could rob the electorate of their desired outcome: "societal mobilization."
"Democracy’s last bastion of defense is civil society," wrote the duo, who made no mention of the antidemocratic provenance of Harris' candidacy. "When the constitutional order is under threat, influential groups and societal leaders — chief executives, religious leaders, labor leaders and prominent retired public officials — must speak out, reminding citizens of the red lines that democratic societies must never cross. And when politicians cross those red lines, society's most prominent voices must publicly and forcefully repudiate them."
'It was always a Color Revolution.'
The Harvard duo's German and Brazilian examples suggest that they are advocating far more than for Americans simply to "speak out." These examples, when coupled with their other other coercive strategies, call to mind violent demonstrations — not just those of yesterday, such as the Black Lives Matter riots, but the bloody roundup executed by the republican radicals ahead of the Spanish Civil War.
The duo wrote,
The U.S. establishment is sleepwalking toward a crisis. An openly antidemocratic figure stands at least a 50-50 chance of winning the presidency. The Supreme Court and the Republican Party have abdicated their gatekeeping responsibilities, and too many of America’s most influential political, business and religious leaders remain on the sidelines. Unable to rise above fear or narrow ambition, they hedge their bets. But time is running out. What are they waiting for?
Jeffrey Tucker, president of the Brownstone Institute, said of the piece, "That is one chilling article: abolishing democracy to protect it. Amazing. Harvard. Notice how at the end, they tip their hand and call for a defense of 'the U.S. establishment.' Every single one of the cases they mention concerns a populist movement against elites."
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) responded to the Times piece, writing, "Once again, NYT publishes something fundamentally un-American."
"This op-ed is advocating pure authoritarianism under the guise of guarding against authoritarianism," wrote Jeremy Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. "It's amazing how far Harvard's Government department has fallen that it would have professors express such views."
The Federalist's editor in chief, Mollie Hemingway, noted, "I just read a bat guano insane NYT op-ed that said four ways to stop MAGA had failed (hoping it loses, banning the GOP/Trump from ballot, having GOP overturn its voters, establishment resistance) and now recommends what sounds like a color revolution."
"It was always a Color Revolution," wrote Blaze News senior editor and Washington correspondent Christopher Bedford.
Color revolutions — such as the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2005 Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004 — are political upheavals aimed at toppling supposedly illegitimate or abusive regimes and replacing them with supposedly liberal democratic regimes. Blaze News previously highlighted that in many cases, the revolutionaries appear to have been afforded help and direction by state actors and/or by non-governmental organizations.
Christopher Rufo noted in April, "The West's favored methods of supporting Color Revolutions include fomenting dissent, organizing activists through social media, promoting student movements, and unleashing domestic unrest on the streets."
New Hampshire state Rep. Mike Belcher tweeted, "Communist have no qualms about a (any) solution to the paradox of toleration. Our republic tried, but failed to solve for this problem re: Communist subversion about 80 years ago and failed. Recognize that, even in a Trump victory, we are still counter-revolutionary to the established Marxist Regime."
In June, Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck detailed the seven conditions that must be met for a color revolution to successfully topple a government.
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I am a lifelong Democrat, a feminist, a progressive, and a Jew. I marched to Take Back the Night and canvassed for the Sierra Club in college. I volunteered with a domestic violence shelter as a young lawyer. My children and I donned pink p***y hats as we chanted at the 2016 Women’s March in Washington, D.C. I held a “Jews for Black Lives Matter” sign at a BLM rally in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood. I took a group of teens to protest the killing of Antwon Rose in downtown Pittsburgh. I became a foster mom during the pandemic. Last summer, I shared my home with a family of Muslim refugees from Afghanistan.
I’ve supported only Democratic candidates for president. I posted a Clinton/Gore sign in my bedroom window before I was old enough to vote. I attended an Al Gore rally in 1996 at the University of Delaware. I volunteered to get John Kerry elected. I contributed to Barack Obama’s campaign. I dressed up in a pantsuit and took my kids with me to vote for the candidate I thought would be the first woman president, Hillary Clinton. In 2020, I voted for Joe Biden.
Islamist ideology is a poison. It is not liberal. It is not progressive. It is not inclusive.
You might think, then, that as a resident of Squirrel Hill, I’d be voting in the upcoming election for Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), state treasurer candidate Erin McClelland (D), U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), and Kamala Harris (D). You would be wrong.
After witnessing the horrors of October 7 and after realizing that too many Democratic Party elected officials and constituents lack the moral clarity to respond effectively to the war Israel is fighting and to the threat of Islamism, I have decided to vote Republican. On November 5, 2024, I will vote for congressional candidate James Hayes (R), state Treasurer Stacey Garrity (R), U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormack (R) — and, reluctantly, Donald Trump (R).
Most people believe that this is an important election — that its results might even determine the future of our democracy. I agree with them. And that is why, in 2024, I am voting for the party that is more likely to contain Iran and remind it and its terror proxies that America will defeat their threats to democracy and freedom; more likely to support Israel in its defensive, existential war; and more likely to protect civil rights by punishing unlawful acts of violence and anti-Semitic harassment on college campuses.
I am not voting for the party that abandoned the girls of Afghanistan and unnecessarily sacrificed the precious lives of our soldiers there. I am not voting for the party that condemns anti-Semitism on the right while excusing, and even spreading, leftist anti-Semitism and blood libels. I am not voting for the party that is equivocal in its support for Israel as she fights to defend her borders, half the world’s Jews, some of the freest Arab citizens in the world, and Western values, including democracy. I am not voting for the party that chooses appeasement as its foreign policy. I am not voting for the party that took no definitive action as anti-Semitic violence raged on college campuses across the United States.
The threat coming from Iran and its proxies (including those who support them in the West) is a threat to women, LGBTQ+ people, Jews, and other minorities. It is a threat to liberal democracies across the world. We must elect those who will not tolerate an Islamist invasion of a liberal democratic ally and who will make it clear that Islamism will never defeat Western civilization. If the United States permits Islamists to spread their supremacist, misogynist, Jew-hating, freedom-hating ideology, they will do so. While Israelis and others in the Muslim and Arab world are most vulnerable, it is only a matter of time until we are all at risk.
Islamist ideology is a poison. It is not liberal. It is not progressive. It is not inclusive.
Islamists ban girls from school (Afghanistan). They brutally murder gay men, sometimes by throwing them off buildings (Palestinians, Islamic State). They rape, murder, mutilate, and burn Jews (October 7). They kidnap non-Muslim girls into sexual slavery (Boko Haram, Islamic State). They imprison, rape, and murder women who violate hijab rules by daring to expose their hair or neck (Iran). They stone women for having unsanctioned sex or pursuing forbidden love (Taliban, Iran). They kidnap, imprison, torture, and assault women as part of their plan to relegate women to the role of bearing child soldiers for their Islamist army (Houthis).
These are the ways of the “freedom fighters” in support of whom our college campuses have erupted. Islamist leaders happily acknowledge the support they have received from progressive students. The ayatollah of Iran publicly reached out to the student radicals, stating, “You have now formed a branch of the Resistance Front and have begun an honorable struggle in the face of your government’s ruthless pressure — which openly supports Zionists.”
The United States must recognize the imminent threat posed by Islamist ideology. It must defeat Islamists when they dare to cross a democratic country’s border. If they are not stopped, they will continue to spread their vile ways in an Islamic caliphate across the Middle East, Europe, and, eventually, the Americas. They will institute the same regressive laws in other lands that they have instituted in their own.
Today, Israel is actively fighting this threat on seven fronts. If we do not ensure that Israel wins these wars and if we do not help her to defeat the threat posed by Iran soon, we risk not only the lives of persecuted people and other minorities in faraway lands but, in time, our own.
It has been heartbreaking for me to realize that the party I believed would always defend the rights of women and minorities is not interested in defending them against the Islamists. This November, I will vote for those who I believe will fight the hardest to protect democracy and Western civilization.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPennsylvania and made available via RealClearWire.