Democrats Are the Kings of Manufactured Emergencies
On Feb. 15, President Donald Trump announced that he would pull the trigger on his so-called “nuclear option” — the declaration of a national emergency — to secure funding for his single largest campaign promise: a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
It has now been one month since the president’s controversial Rose Garden announcement and the ensuing emergency declaration. In those weeks a resolution was quickly drafted, and passed in the Democrat-held House, to block the declaration. The resolution was passed in the Senate by a 59-41 margin on Thursday as several prominent Republicans voted in favor.
As was to be expected, Trump quickly took to Twitter, announcing he would “look forward” to overriding the resolution.
Despite mounting Republican opposition to the declaration and the bad executive power precedent it may set, it does not appear there will be enough votes in the Senate to override the impending presidential veto.
For the moment, the president’s dreams of a barrier on the U.S.-Mexico border seem safe from harm.
With that in mind, numerous prominent progressives in Congress, on social media and in the left-wing blogosphere have already returned to their typical talking points — the most frequently parroted being the assertion that the crisis at the border is “manufactured,” and the proposed solution is outrageous and expensive.
Speaking of Manufactured Emergencies
Apparently, there is no “crisis” worthy of being deemed an “emergency.”
Irresponsible parents and disgusting human traffickers are not dragging small Central and South American children across hundreds of miles of dangerous terrain to use them as bargaining tools to enter the US. Thousands of pounds of deadly drugs are not being smuggled across the border.
Those xenophobic Republicans have made the whole thing up — as they have been since the problem first kicked up in the mid-1900s.
The Democrats would have you ignore the largest fentanyl bust in American history — made just one month ago at the border — or the fact that Pew Research Center reported a dramatic spike in border apprehensions in 2018.
They hold that because the Department of Homeland Security reports that more illegal immigrants enter the United States as Visa overstays than cross from Mexico, there is no crisis at the border. Because MSNBC’s Ali Velshi can point to statistics that support the associated cost of illegal immigration being “only” $54 billion per year — not the $200 billion Trump claimed in his State of the Union Address — there is no “emergency.”
And I assume you should only go to the hospital for stitches if you are literally going to bleed out. Otherwise, why are you wasting the doctor’s time?
Nevertheless, conservatives should be glad that progressives are harping on the topic of “manufactured emergencies” and “nonsense solutions.” Particularly because it gives us great footing to discuss, in context, the American left’s sensationalist rhetoric surrounding climate change.
Prognosis: 12 Years to Live
A perfect example of such alarmist climate rhetoric came from Beto O’Rourke as he spoke about the Green New Deal on the campaign trail in Iowa yesterday.
“Not to be dramatic, but literally, the future of the world depends on us,” O’Rourke said.
Similarly, the sponsor for the bill, Democratic Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez brought this sensationalist rhetoric to what may have been a whole new level in January when she publicly asserted that the planet would be lucky to last two more decades.
“And we’re like: The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her usual eloquent manner.
Increasingly alarmist claims like these are no surprise when one remembers that just years ago figures like President Barrack Obama, who presided over a floundering economy and numerous Middle Eastern conflicts, claimed that climate change was the “greatest threat facing our nation.”
Before that, failed presidential candidate Al Gore released “An Inconvenient Truth” while the nation reeled from an already lengthy War on Terror, declaring that major American cities would be underwater in a matter of years if Americans did not put Democrats back behind the wheel.
Despite the fact that most studies find that the globe is, according to NASA, warming at a miniscule rate of between .01 and .02 degrees Celsius per year, Democrats are intent upon referring to this slow-growing issue as an immediate emergency.
America, the Martyr
Worse still than the alarmist rhetoric surrounding the issue is the fact that the left-wing solution is to martyr the United States in the pursuit of some environmentalist moral high ground.
It matters not that even if the climate were changing at a rate that would dramatically harm human-kind in the near future, America alone could never affect substantial enough change to save it.
It matters even less to the left that nations like China produce twice the carbon dioxide the United States does with no signs of slowing. That nations like Russia, Japan, India, Turkey and Iran — who produce comparable sums of carbon — have yet to ratify or work toward accordance with the Paris Agreement does not mean that we should not make drastic and expensive changes.
No, the new left would have you believe it is imperative that the American taxpayer foot a nearly $100 trillion bill to atone for the climate sins of all humanity.
Apparently, we should rebuild every structure in the U.S. to be carbon neutral in the next ten years, stop consuming foods we enjoy and stop flying to our favorite vacation destinations while nations like China, Japan and India continue to violate our oceans and our ozone layer — all while shellacking us economically.
The motto seems to be: We’re all going to die. Vote for us and we can all go out miserable while making a statement.
For any American still wondering which political party has pragmaticism, reason and the best interests of the American people at heart, look no further than the issues major politicians on either side of the aisle point to as urgent crises and emergencies this nation can solve. Look no further than their proposed solutions for those emergencies.
The distinction is abundantly clear.
Where progressives see a slowly changing globe as an “emergency” America must martyr itself to solve, conservatives see threats to the safety, security and economic well-being of the American people as the emergency — and their solutions are more than reasonable.
The views expressed in this opinion article are those of their author and are not necessarily either shared or endorsed by the owners of this website. If you are interested in contributing an Op-Ed to The Western Journal, you can learn about our submission guidelines and process here.
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