Having lost all statewide offices to the Democrats in the 2018 election, the Republicans were unwilling to leave after eight years of highly divisive and incompetent rule in Wisconsin. They decided to directly overturn the people’s decision by actions in back room offices during a lame duck session by passing and enacting a law which drastically reduces the power and influence of the principal state offices, for example, the governor and the attorney general. The Republican participants in the lame duck session were themselves gerrymandered into office. As evidence, the Republicans have the current majority and in the fall 2018 election Democrats received 54 % of the votes but received only 37% of the seats. Needless to say the outgoing Republican governor Scott Walker promptly signed the bill. This basically keeps most of the political power in Republican Party hands even though the people of Wisconsin voted to take it away.
Not a single Republican legislative or party official protested this act by the legislature. What are these people doing? This is fascist-type behavior! These are the sort of tricks that Victor Orban of Hungary utilized to push the democratic state of Hungary into a Mussolini style fascist authoritarian country. This seems to be what the Republicans in Washington are aiming at in Wisconsin, sort of an Orban style authoritarian state by the Great Lakes. And likewise neither similar behavior in Michigan nor the outright electoral fraud committed in North Carolina has been criticized by Republican Party leadership. It appears that the Republican Party just isn’t interested in democracy anymore. It seems to have become a made-in-Europe neo-fascist Party. This means that every election threatens America’s liberties with one of the two major parties having evolved into an authoritarian party opposed to democracy.
Authoritarian rule seems to be spreading around the world as in the 1930’s. In those years it was Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. Today it is Orban, Erdogan, Putin, Xi, Ayatollah Kameini, Duterti of the Philippines and many others. In earlier times American principles and its people were protected by FDR and Ronald Reagan against the strongmen. But who will stand up for America now?
Our Founders had a lot to say about this:
“A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of the Republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.”
Alexander Hamilton, 1788
“Real liberty is neither found in despotism or the extremes of democracy, but in moderate governments.”
Alexander Hamilton, 1787
“But if the laws are to be trampled upon—with impunity—and a minority (a small one too) is to dictate to the majority there is an end put, at one stroke, to Republican government; and nothing but anarchy and confusion is to be expected thereafter…”
George Washington, 1794
“A Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty once lost is lost forever.”
John Adams, 1775
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude rather than the animating contest of freedom—go from us in peace. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!”
Samuel Adams, 1776
“No person that has enjoyed the sweets of liberty can be insensible of its infinite value, or can reflect on its reverse without horror and detestation.”
Alexander Hamilton, 1774
“Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government; that whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied upon to set them to rights.
Thomas Jefferson, 1789
“It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions.”
Samuel Adams, 1748
“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
Thomas Jefferson, 1800
“I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of examples of justice and liberality.”
George Washington, 1790
John Jay