Justice Democrats is a federal political action committee that took shape in January of 2017. They want to elect progressive candidates within the Democratic party. They recruited and got Rep. Ocasio-Cortez elected. They endorsed 6 others who got elected: Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Pramila Jayapal, Raúl Grijalva, and Ro Khanna.
This group’s beliefs lie to the left of the Democrat mainstream, although not totally out of reach. The Justice Democrats are working within the Democratic party because they know that a third party movement will fail:
“While we agree with efforts to reform our two-party system, the reality is that right now it is next to impossible for a third-party candidate to win a national election. Justice Democrats functions like a party within the Democratic Party — running our own candidates in primary elections and holding those on top accountable to the grassroots.”
If they succeed, they will unveil more and more radical leftist policies that lie even further out of the mainstream of the Democratic party.
What do Justice Democrats want? Instead of examining particulars, which are available on their web site, let’s take a broader view.
In their words, “This is a movement about freedom and justice.” Too bad that they do not know what freedom and justice are. Freedom is the absence of the initiation of force. Since they intend to pass all sorts of programs that initiate or expand the already-initiated force of government, they either don’t know what freedom is or else they don’t want freedom for their fellow Americans. In either case, with few exceptions, their recommended actions are anti-freedom.
Justice is not whatever government or progressives in government say it is. Justice is not the equality that progressives seek: “…equality in all manner and forms…” No, justice occurs when an innocent person is free, or when he retains his rightful belongings and property without their being taken or invaded by the initiation of force by others.
The Justice Democrats say “We need a bold economic vision that will both reclaim lost capital and put money back in the pockets of hard-working Americans, and create millions of new jobs for those who have been left out of the workforce.”
Yes, we do need to be bold, but what do these people promise but more of the same!? How bold is it to expand and extend current government programs and to add new ones? I suppose it is bold when half of America at a minimum does not want to move the dial toward more socialism and totalitarianism.
How does the country reclaim capital? The progressives are clueless. Government consumes 40% of income and that’s diverting a huge share of capital to consumption. The way to “reclaim” capital (more accurately, build or increase capital) is to stop this government consumption, and that can only be done by drastically reducing government programs of all kinds. Then taxes can be reduced. Then capital can be built up. Then job creation will occur and real income will rise.
The socialists of all stripes including the democratic socialists completely fail to understand what has to be done to accomplish their aims. They think that by taking over government and enacting more programs they’ll make life better for workers. They think corporations or business in general are holding back the economy. They’ve got things altogether backwards. If we do what they want to do, the country will nosedive. These are almost totally benighted people who are trying to amass political power. They see that some things are wrong, but their solutions will only make them much worse.
I do regard the Justice Democrats as economic illiterates, because under that hypothesis all that is needed is for them to believe the nonsense that a large portion of Americans has been taught to believe.
However, I do not dismiss the other hypothesis, which is that some are conspiring to create a 100% communist country built along American lines. If people are constantly pushing in that direction, they may be simply closet totalitarians. The two hypotheses are not mutually exclusive. Totalitarian-minded people may hold nonsensical economic, ethical and social views.
The path not being taken by Justice Democrats is the path toward far more limited government. It is the only possible path to achieve the freedom and justice that they aim for. It is tragic that they do not see this or understand the reasons why this is true. It is tragic that they’re wasting their resources on a path that goes in the very opposite direction.
1:37 pm on July 18, 2019
