A Confused Movement

The growing movement which oddly calls itself “The Resistance” seems more and more confusing to me, even in that they are calling themselves by that name. What is bizarre, however, is the increasing clamor for impeachment of the newly-elected President.

First, “resistance” is what one does against a totalitarian government. In a democracy, those on the losing side of an election are called “the minority” and remain part of governance, in the legislature and the electorate.

When Obama won and Democrats took control of the legislature, conservatives vowed to prevent the implementation of a liberal agenda. I did not regard that as a worthy goal, really, but I respected then, and I respect even more so today, that they carried out that goal by working as part of government. They were the “obstructionist minority” in the legislature, and the voters worked to raise votes to get more members of their party elected.

Now, liberals, being on the losing side of the election, are voicing not the goal to remove the winner of the election at the end of his first term by the electoral process, nor to work within government to prevent him from implementing his agenda, but to discredit and remove him from office by strong arm tactics immediately.

What are they thinking? If they succeeded we would have to quit pretending that we are a democracy. No nation in which the losing side can discredit and remove the winner of an election can call itself a democracy.

They seem to have the idea that they can advocate a democracy in which only their side is permitted to win, but an election with only one permissible outcome is the kind of thing that they do in, for instance, Syria.