America’s New Know Nothings

Listening to various big-government socialist Democratic Party candidates in the recent primaries, I was struck by how little they know about the real world.America has a new Know Nothing Party, and it is called Democrat. Consider the evidence.Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s description of his new government-run grocery store is clearly out of touch with reality. Does anyone, Mr. Mamdani included, really believe a group of unionized New York City bureaucrats can run a grocery store with lower prices than Walmart, Costco, Kroger, or Amazon? It is an absurd idea.Further, listen to the growing big-government socialist demand for Medicare for All. This would involve government bureaucrats in Washington setting rules and enforcing regulations over every doctor, hospital, and pharmacy in the entire country.We just had a stunning reminder of how bad nationalized, government-run healthcare can be when the British National Health Service announced new rules for prostate cancer screening. The London Telegraph has been on a campaign to get men screened for prostate cancer, because it will save thousands of lives. Instead, the government announced it would restrict screening to men with a specific gene mutation and a family history.Doctors noted that there were no prostate cancer specialists on the committee that made the decision. Indeed, the decision would limit screening to about 1,500 men. As the Telegraph reported, “Most prostate doctors disagree with the government limits. They say targeted screening would save thousands of lives, while current rules leave men unprotected.”Advocating a government-run, nationalized health system such as Medicare for All requires rejecting every fact we are learning from the British system or simply being ignorant of the facts.The big-government socialist approach to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, controlling the border, and illegal immigration reflects the same disconnect with reality. The Biden-Democratic Party experiment with open borders was a disaster (and a major factor in President Trump winning in 2024). The American people deeply oppose illegal immigration by large numbers. No Democrat can side with the American people and against the party’s own militant minority on this issue.A friend who had grown up under Soviet Communism in Poland said she was frightened by how much the new big-government socialists sound like the communists of her childhood. She knows how this focus on government leads to a police state which punishes and locks up those who oppose it. She fears it is coming to America and wishes these big-government socialists could spend a year in the kind of impoverished police state which communism produces. As she said to me, “they know nothing about these things they are saying.”Her remark led me to research the origins of the Know Nothing Party in the 1850s. For a brief period, it was a viable opposition to immigration and especially to Catholics. The Know Nothing movement began in 1849 in New York City and was initially a secret society called the Order of the Star-Spangled Banner. When asked about it, its members were supposed to say, “I know nothing.”As the Whig Party collapsed, many of its members shifted to the Know Nothing Party. At its peak, after the elections of 1854, the Know Nothing Party held more than 100 congressional seats and eight governorships. It was so strong it controlled several state legislatures.President Lincoln opposed the Know Nothing Party. At a policy level, he was deeply supportive of immigration and opposed religious discrimination. On political grounds, German immigrants were a key part of his new Republican Party.In fact, if the Know Nothings had won, the North would have likely lost the Civil War. Germans alone made up one-fourth of the Union Army if you count Germans born in America and migrants from Germany. They would never have fought for the Know Nothing Party.Similarly, today’s Know Nothings are incapable of solving America’s problems or helping America survive great national security threats.They are as dangerous in their own way as the Know Nothings of the 19th century.The next time you see one of them on television making outlandish and absurd comments, just remember “they know nothing” — and make sure they lose the election.

America’s New Know Nothings

America’s New Know Nothings

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