Re: 'The world is changing. The GOP isn't [Village News, Letter, 1/4/24]

John Terrell's effort to define Republican beliefs is like Harvey Weinstein defining workplace dating etiquette. He would be better served working to remove the plank from the Democratic party's eyes before accusing Republicans of shortcomings.

Democrats believe that society is responsible for crime, rather than holding criminals responsible for their own behavior. Defunding the police, no cash bail and $950 free stealing were always bad ideas, despite enthusiastic support from numerous prominent Democrats.

Democrats are for allowing unlimited illegal immigrants into our country, so long as they stay out of Democrat cities that call themselves sanctuary cities.

Nationally, Democrats believe that living on increasing amounts of debt is a desirable and sustainable financial path to success. Democrats view corporations as evil but the government as good. More government growth, intervention and control is always desired. Democrat President John F. Kennedy would be turning in his grave to learn that Democrats are asking what their country can do for them rather than what they can do for their country.

It is Democrats who want expanded "institutional authority," not Republicans, who recognize that a free market has proven to be the best economic system. Democrats support government (public) unions. Democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt would be turning in his grave to learn this, as he considered striking government employees to be "unthinkable and intolerable."

Democrats are fixated on skin color. Any criticism or complaint of a person of color could only be the result of racism. Martin Luther King would be turning in his grave to hear that in 2024 Democrats still won't judge minorities by the content of their character.

Democrats support national rent control, oblivious to its effect on housing supply and rent levels for new renters; 94% of economists, who are the scientists of the economy, oppose rent control, but Democrats refuse to listen to science they don't agree with.

Democrats support reparations from people who have never owned slaves nor supported slavery to be paid to people who have never been slaves. Apparently northerners fighting and dying to free slaves 160 years ago was insufficient.

Forgetting that criminals ignore laws, Democrats work to pass laws making guns illegal for everyone. So much for Mr. Terrell's claim that the "liberal view is based on a positive view of humanity, the belief that if people are given freedom to develop themselves, they will thrive and so will society."

Somehow guns are evil independent of the criminals who use them, yet that pesky crime rate keeps getting higher, showing the "dark view of human nature" and "inherently immoral and lacking self-control" Mr. Terrell objects to.

Time and time again, Democrat policies fail to meet their objectives, and in many cases fall victim to the law of unintended consequences as well. The Democrat answer to failed programs is to constantly insist that more money from others is needed to keep these programs running in perpetuity. The idea that the issue lies with the original faulty programs and policies is furthest from their minds. (see Prop HHH, Bullet Train, 2015 Vision Zero, etc.)

Democrats believe Trump began the divide in this country, oblivious to the fact that it was the prior president who did this.

Democrats decry the 2021 "insurrection" only because it wasn't their party. In 2011, tens of thousands of Democrats surged on the Wisconsin Capitol building in Madison and physically occupied it for more than two weeks. They said, "This is what democracy looks like."

In 2018 during the Kavanaugh hearings, a mob of Democrats stormed the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., and pounded their fists in rage on the door. We were told, "It's understandable." In 2020, when groups of liberals marched and rioted in the streets, set buildings on fire, looted businesses, assaulted and even killed bystanders and police, they said "These are mostly peaceful protests."

When Democrats seized several blocks of the Capitol Hill neighborhood in downtown Seattle, declaring it an autonomous zone, they said "It's a block

party atmosphere." When a crazed mob gathered after the Republican National Convention and attacked Rand Paul, a sitting U.S. Senator, we were told, "No justice, no peace."

Remember how police were told to stand down, governors refused to call in the national guard, and Democrats paid bail for violent protesters who were arrested? We were told, "This is the only way oppressed people can be heard."

Yes, Mr. Terrell, I agree that those who claim the higher ground but whose actions don't support it are called hypocrites.

With full control of the branches of government in California, it is Democrats who do the oppressing. I'm sure that's fine with Mr. Terrell, who employs the strategy to "falsely accuse others of failing to divert attention away from themselves." He calls it "bearing false witness, No 9 in the 10 commandments." I call it taking the low road.

It is the Democrat Party that is unfit to lead America, not only for the reasons above, but for many of the same reasons Mr. Terrell gives.

David Felker