Buried at the end of page nineteen of the Biden administration's twenty-three-page Interim National Security Strategic Guidance issued to the public last month is this gem: "Authoritarianism is on the global march, and we must join with likeminded allies and partners to revitalize democracy the world over."

Put aside, for a moment, that the custodians of our constitutional republic still mistake "democracy" as the antithesis to "authoritarianism," rather than "liberty" or "individual rights," which are the true bulwarks for a free people to guard against the tyrant's will.

Authoritarianism is on the march?

Um...it sure looks as though it's already firebombed the turrets, splintered the drawbridge, and stormed the castle.  At the very least, it traipsed into American homes this last year like a wet skunk sneaking through the kitchen's doggy door entrance. 

"Wear a mask, or you will be punished!"

"Stay at home, or you will be punished!"

"Stop praying at church, or you will be punished!" 

"Forget making a living, or you will be punished!" 

"Inject this into your body, or no vaccine passport!" 

"Oh, and if you would be so kind, please let a local Democrat operative fill out your unidentifiable and untraceable mail-in ballot, so that every single vote counts!"

I hate to break it to the same vast national security apparatus that largely failed to predict the fall of the Berlin Wall or the dissolution of the Soviet Union (thanks, Gipper!), but authoritarianism slipped inside the outer perimeter wall some time ago while the Pentagon was getting drunk on one too many virtue-signaling cocktails of climate change alarmism, sex change operations for the boys, and rooting out soldiers who might admit to having ever enjoyed The Dukes of Hazzard.  (Speaking of outer perimeter walls, we're on track to see one to two million foreign nationals attempt illegal entry into the U.S. this year, if the Defense Department can find some time in its busy schedule protecting other nations' borders to consider doing the same here.)

While Democrat activists posing as journalists spent the last five years accusing President Trump of being "literally Hitler," the Fourth Estate joined the Judicial Branch in making nary a sound as municipal and state tyrants and federal agencies wielding power divined from thin air arrived at the august legal conclusion that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights exist only to protect Americans during times of peace and extraordinary security.  As with so much of the law that now governs the citizens of the United States, it was amazing to discover nearly two and a half centuries after it was written that the First Amendment does not actually protect the exercise of religion during flu season, or free speech if such speech is used to question the legitimacy of the last election or the viability of future vaccines, or freedom of the press if Google and Facebook deem what is published contrary to the Democratic Party's official propaganda, or the rights to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances if the government serendipitously discovers that all aggrieved citizens are really "domestic terrorists."  Who knew there were so many "penumbras and emanations" hidden within the First Amendment's text that its true meaning could actually be diametrically opposed to the plain meaning of its own words?  It's as if the Founding Fathers were so concerned about protecting rights and liberties from the ever-expansive encroachments of government that they spoke in riddles!

Over half the country still believes that the last election was stolen from President Trump (Shh!  Don't speak too loudly, citizen.), but the current occupant of the White House (in a foreign setting, one might say "usurper") is so at home in his new digs that he's already announced plans to confiscate American firearms and dismantle the Second Amendment because (feverishly shakes Magic 8-Ball) "no amendment is absolute."

Again, what genius of legal reasoning!  Here I was under the impression that the Founders were so concerned about later generations misconstruing the Bill of Rights as denying to the people all other rights and powers not enumerated that they specifically wrote the Ninth Amendment to safeguard the public's sphere of liberty and protect the people from governmental overreach.  And yet the legal scholar in the White House has discovered the Founders' true intent: to make specifically enumerated rights even less protected than the unenumerated ones.  Who knew that the right to "keep and bear arms" actually included an invisible parenthetical clause stating, "unless the government should feel threatened"?  How myopic I've been in thinking that threatening the federal government was the entire point of the Second Amendment, a kind of "break glass in case of emergency" Plan B should the government decide to throw Plan A — adhering to the text of the Constitution — out the window.  Thank goodness we have authorities who have no trouble telling us what the Constitution actually authorizes!

How can the United States fight authoritarianism while making it domestic policy?

At some point, you just throw up your hands and wonder how the American establishment class manages to walk and chew gum without forgetting where it's going or who it is (no wonder Biden's been so comfortable in office for fifty years).  Sure, we have some seriously sadistic tyrants in our midst who know exactly what they're doing by poisoning the well of American freedom and reimagining America as Venezuela, where tribal conflict is not just encouraged, but required for the system to propagate.  But we also have an awful lot of D.C. dimwits who can't comprehend the cognitive dissonance of simultaneously vilifying the state of Georgia for ever so slightly securing its elections against voter fraud while applauding the economic miracles of China's slave labor dictatorship.

Politicians, Hollywood stars, and Major League Baseball can all feign indignation, turn their backs on ordinary Georgians living paycheck to paycheck by pulling jobs from the state, and publicly celebrate the false god of "social justice," but they'll never give up all that sweet Chinese cash made off the backs of the religious prisoners, intellectual dissidents, and racial undesirables who give China's manufacturing sector the "comparative advantage" to undersell its global competitors.  It takes an outrageous combination of shallow hypocrisy and mendacity to frantically charge half of America with engaging in super-secret, unconscious racism while extolling the world's largest slaveholding plantation on the other side of the planet.

If America's government and business oligarchs rake in money from racist authoritarians in communist China while peddling racism and authoritarianism at home for political power, can they still give each other awards for being antiracist champions fighting for the common good?  Only in America are the "woke" so completely unawake.

"Do what I say" government is catnip for the political class.  Wisdom and restraint are losing ground.  And it's becoming difficult to see how America can fight authoritarianism abroad while embracing authoritarianism at home.

Image: Jeff Turner via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.