By Mike Scruggs
Category: Mike Scruggs' Column

The Terrible Disorientation of the Democrat Party’s Moral Compass

“Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.” - Lavrentiy Beria, Chief of Stalin’s Secret Police

The Democrat Party is drawing closer and closer to the Stalinist brand of justice that prevailed under the Communist regime of the brutal dictator, Joseph Stalin, from 1922 to 1953. But it was originally a party loyal to the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and Constitutional government.

My grandfather, W.C. Bradsher, was a Democrat County Chairman in Greene County, Arkansas, during the Roosevelt Administration. He was a former teacher, school principal, and an affable and astute cotton-buyer, cotton-gin owner, banker, and Rotary Club member, very active in community affairs.  One of the most treasured and often read books in his library was a collection of the writings of Roman Senator Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 to 43 BC).

Cicero held several offices in the Roman Republic and was Consul of the Roman Republic in 63 BC. He was an ardent advocate for republican principles and spoke strongly against dictatorial trends in Roman government. In 60 BC, he refused Julius Caesar’s offer to become the fourth member of what was later called Caesar’s Triumvirate, because he suspected (rightly) that it would undermine the Republic. He was not involved in Caesar’s assassination in 44 BC, but he opposed Mark Antony and was assassinated in 43 BC by followers of Mark Antony.

Like Marcus Tullius Cicero, who he admired, my grandfather was a principled conservative—a constitutional conservative, as were many of his contemporaries, especially in the South. In fact, for much of the 19th Century in the U.S., Democrat and Conservative were virtual synonyms. Grover Cleveland, Governor of New York (1883-1885) and President of the U.S. (1885-1889 and 1893-1897) was a principled conservative Democrat. In early 1937, however, my grandfather, who had been a strong Roosevelt supporter and campaigner, confided to my grandmother (Mamie Patishall Bradsher) that some of Roosevelt’s policies were not going to be good for business or the country. 

In a Fourth Grade mock presidential election in Memphis, Tennessee, I voted for Harry Truman. I am not sure who my parents voted for, but in 1952, they voted for the Republican, Dwight (I like Ike) Eisenhower and continued to vote Republican in presidential elections. My Dad, who at one time was a Union shop steward and local union president, was a strong admirer of Republican Ronald Reagan. Although there were still many conservative Democrats in the South in the 1960s, they began to disappear. I became disenchanted with Lyndon Johnson, his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, and the Democrat Party while in the USAF and voted for Barry Goldwater in 1964. When I got home to Georgia later, I found that every one of my high school friends voted for Goldwater.

The Democrat Party continued to drift to the left on economics and national security, and became even more radical left in its social and cultural policies. It is no longer the party of my grandfather or my parents. I changed my party registration to Republican sometime before 1968 and have since been a Republican County Chairman in two states—Alabama and North Carolina. The Democrat Party has become dominated by cultural Marxists whose code of ethics closely resembles that of radical Saul Alinsky, Marxists, Nazis, and radical Jihadist Islam. Whatever advances the Party is right, and truth is whatever advances the Party. The end justifies the means and lies, slander, fraud, and ruthless character assassination have become normalized Democrat activist behavior. Conservative, moderate, or even decent and honest liberal Democrats have become a beleaguered and usually silent or silenced minority.

The alarming degree of the Democrat Party’s drift from honest politics could be clearly seen during the recent hearings of the Senate Judicial Committee on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court.  This loss of moral compass has been underwritten and encouraged by corrupt media and academia and immensely wealthy radicals who want to erase the America in which truth, honor, courage, faith, and just law flourished. They are attempting a ruthless character assassination of a judicial candidate with a remarkably solid ethical reputation based on an 11th hour accusation that cannot be sustained by any fact or reliable witness. The timing is especially suspicious, resembling the October surprise defamations of Republican candidates that have become a common staple of Democrat political campaigns. With the deterioration of political ethics has also come an emphasis on emotion rather than truth, fact, or logic. Hence we hear Democrat politicians and their followers hanging justice on the emotional state of the accuser. Essentially stating, “I believe her because she is emotional”—regardless of the known facts. We hear New Jersey Senator Booker claiming that the accused must prove a negative, usually a logical impossibility and certainly a miscarriage of the American sense of justice. Accusations cannot be accepted as truth without evidence and cross-examination. In a just society, the accused are innocent until proven guilty, and that burden is on the accuser and lawful authority, not the accused.  

The Democrats turned the hearings of the Senate Judicial Committee into a circus of emotion, dishonesty, and dishonorable delay tactics. It reminded me of the Salem Witch Trials in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. I have read more than a dozen books on the Salem Witch Trials and have visited some of the historical sites involved. This interest is because I have an ancestor (Sarah Towne Bridges Cloyse, wife of Peter Cloyse) who was accused of being a witch. In fact, two of her sisters, Rebecca Towne Nurse, and Mary Towne Esty, very honest and godly women, were hung for being witches, although completely innocent and respected Christian women. They were accused by hysterical young girls and women who imagined, dreamed, or hallucinated that those they accused were witches. The standard of the Salem Witch Trials was the same as the Democrats on the Senate Judicial Committee—guilty unless proven innocent.

In Salem, the evidence was only in the imagination of emotionally disturbed young girls. If someone claimed you were a witch, no matter how fantastical and not subject to earthly confirmation or even perception, the court sentenced you to death by hanging. No appeal. Many people who were not witches confessed to being witches, because that confession preserved their life for awhile. If you were accused and did not confess, you would be hung, as were a total of 19 accused. Those who dared contradict these young accusers were quickly accused of being witches and had the choice of confession or hanging. Besides the hysterical young troop of girls, there were adults, some parents, who suggested that people they viewed with enmity or envy were witches. Many innocents were hung after a nightmarishly unjust trial. There was evil driving the hysteria in Salem, just as there is evil driving the character assassination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

I believe the Republican Party needs some campaign conduct reform, and I believe there are periods when the Republican Party succumbed to disgraceful corruption—during the reign of the Radical Republicans during the Reconstruction era (1865-1877).  The Democrat Party was once the party of the Constitution and the common people and maintained in most instances honorable political practices. The Republican Party may need some reform, but the ethical standards of the Democrat Party have now deteriorated to the point that few of its original virtues remain and few if any Democrat leaders are seeking to restore them. It is now a Marxist dominated party seeking power by whatever means and lies. It is disproportionately financed through the dark money of George Soros and other lavishly funded leftist foundations and international resources. The current defamation campaign against Judge Kavanaugh has several important ties to Soros, including Christine Blasey Ford’s radical leftist lawyer, Debra Katz.

As evidenced by Democrat Party activists and the Democrats on the Senate Judicial Committee, the Democrat Party has now become the party that routinely uses slander, character assassination, fraud, disinformation, lies, and hysteria to gain and maintain power. They have also gone full tilt toward every form of social and cultural radicalism and embrace unbelievably dangerous and destructive forms of economic socialism.  They should be rejected by the decent and rational voters remaining in their own party.

Every eligible American citizen should vote, but none who love, truth, honor, freedom, and common decency should vote for any Democrat, unless they have publicly decried the slander, character assassination, demagoguery, kangaroo court tactics, and lies evidenced by the campaign to block Judge Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court. If they object to his position on abortion or some other issue, let them say so, rather than resort to false witness against him and despoiling the American system of justice.    

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