HILL: What progressives get wrong in their narrative about conservatives

FILE - Ken Burns, director of the PBS documentary series "Country Music," takes part in a panel discussion during the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour, July 29, 2019, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Hampshire College has received an anonymous $5 million gift in honor of one of its most famous alumni, award-winning documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, that will help the school continue its academic transformation. The gift announced Tuesday, Jan. 4 2022 is the second $5 million gift the college located in Amherst has received since it launched a $60 million fundraising campaign January 2020, following a financial crisis that prompted the school to consider a merger. (Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP, File)

Progressive liberal Democrats think every conservative is a fascist who is “just dying” to take over government and run things like Italian strongman fascist leader Benito Mussolini did before World War II. 

To assert American conservatives are “fascists” who want to take over government at any level is laughable on its face. I had liberal friends swear Donald Trump was the reincarnation of Mussolini before being inaugurated in 2017. 

If Trump was indeed the reincarnation of Mussolini, he sure failed as a fascist strongman. He had four years to bring in brown-shirted, leather-booted, goose-stepping henchmen to take over the US government and bring in the Fourth Reich in America ― but it didn’t happen. 

Documentary producer and director Ken Burns was on “Morning Joe” recently promoting his three-part series on PBS about the Holocaust and American complicity in Hitler’s rise to power. He said he moved up its release to 2022 instead of 2023 because of the troubling rise of “authoritarianism” he has seen in America. 

He was referring, of course, to the singular events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021 demonstrations on Capitol Hill, specific acts of which were horrible and deserving of punishment. Mr. Burns should have talked about the heavy-handed abuse of government power at the FBI, CIA, IRS and Department of Justice under former President Barack Obama and now President Biden on top of the roughly dozen deaths which occurred during BLM/antifa-sponsored riots and the billions of dollars of property damage and destruction in ten weeks from May 25 and July 31, 2020.  

According to the Major Cities Police Chiefs Association, 2,000 law enforcement officers were injured in 8,700 BLM/antifa protests nationwide; 574 events were declared riots with violence and other criminal acts; 624 arsons were started with 97 police vehicles burned; officers were accosted with bricks, fireworks and Molotov cocktails; 2,385 incidents of looting were committed; 40% of all protests involved civil disobedience and 16,200 people were arrested for protest-related crimes.  

Local district attorneys declined to prosecute over half of those cases. 

Ken Burns has not produced a documentary for PBS about Hillary Clinton and the left’s efforts to undermine the peaceful transfer of power from Barack Obama to Trump in 2016. If he ever wanted to document the rise of fascism in America, he has plenty of evidence to pursue ― from the left. 

The truth of the matter is conservatives don’t like government. Anyone who is center-right on the political spectrum doesn’t want to take over government ― they want our government to perform the basics of civil government and stay out of the rest of their lives and businesses.  

Trying to get an accomplished conservative business professional to run for elective office is near impossible. Ask an activist liberal to run for office and they jump at the chance.  

Now really ― who is lusting for power to control other people’s lives in such a scenario, the far-left socialist liberal or the conservative? 

American conservatives are classical liberals who love freedom more than anything else in every aspect of life. Freedom of choice in business, education, religion, association, assembly, media, entertainment and recreation is what they believe in ― they do not want or trust one person or a group of narrow-minded idealogues to make such decisions for them. 

On the other hand, progressive liberal Democrats absolutely love government. The more government control they have, the merrier they are. Progressive Democrats want to control the cars you drive and the worldview they want our children to adopt in every public and private school in America. Progressives want to use the coercive power of government they 100% control to make you pay higher taxes to pay for their climate agenda; CRT curriculum in schools; DEI policies in business and academia and just about everything else under the sun they have envisioned for their Utopian America. 

Most Americans want the government to work and provide basic services such as good roads and clean water; good public education which teaches basics of math, science, English and history; keep us safe from criminals ― and then leave us alone. 

When it comes to losing our democracy, Mr. Burns and his ilk need to take a look through the other end of their telescope and focus on the impingement of freedom caused by the left, not the right.