A certain pattern is emerging on the far left. Political figures spend years currying the favor of other extremists with outrageous commentary, proudly proclaiming their commitment to eliminating the Senate, opening the border, and other measures. Then, they delete all of the comments and declare themselves mainstream. The idea is to run in the center but govern from the far left, the so-called Spanberger strategy. The latest example is William Lawrence, who is running for Michigan’s 7th Congressional District. However, Lawrence’s prior self reveals just how radical this movement could prove.
Like many professors, pundits, and politicians on the left, Lawrence has called for sweeping changes in our constitutional system. Lawrence reportedly has demanded a “fundamental overhaul” of the Constitution while calling for the elimination of the Senate, police, prisons, and borders.
He has even denounced the nuclear family as an “isolating, individualistic, violent way of organizing society.”
Notably, he is the latest radical to show that the “Big Tent” party has little room for moderates. While establishment figures like Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries seek to use this mob, radicals have made clear that they will be next. Darializa Avila Chevalier is the latest Democratic Socialist to mock the establishment’s pitch of a Big Tent party: “A big tent doesn’t pay your rent, lower your grocery bill, or take on the corporations bleeding our country dry. Democratic socialism does.”
In Lawrence’s case, he even put this feelings to music, writing a song a few years ago that calls for the death of moderate former Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, declaring, “Our generation says f**k you for everything…Hurry up and die so that we can get started.”
He has also denounced capitalism and the very concept of the nation-state.
Lawrence was previously arrested for resisting police officers while protesting a pipeline.
As discussed earlier, candidates like James Talarico in Texas have scrubbed their social media accounts or dismissed their earlier radical claims, including attacks on capitalism. Supporters view these candidates as already proving their bona fides and understanding that they are just sanitizing their records for voters who want the illusion of a moderate. Accordingly, many applaud figures such as Socialist Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, dismissing her own extremist statements just a few years ago as “Woke 1.” like some distant childhood stage.
These radical figures are learning that their views are distinctly unpopular with American voters so they are perfecting stealth socialist candidates who can run a type of Spanberger campaign while later pursuing a socialist agenda.
Lawrence’s past positions show little nuance and closely track the platform of the Democratic Socialists of America. Destroying the constitutional system, rejecting the nation-state, eliminating prisons, and other radical positions propelled these candidates through the primaries. The effort to now scrub the records shows the utter contempt that many have for average voters.
Lawrence shows the delusion of establishment figures such as Gavin Newsom that they can use a mob to gain power without being eventually devoured by it. In my book Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution, I discuss the French Revolution and its decline into what the Framers called a mobocracy. What became known as “The Terror” was started not by the working class, but by educated lawyers, journalists, and even aristocrats as part of the Jacobin movement.
These are hardcore revolutionaries with an agenda that would destroy the world’s oldest and most successful democratic system in history. Party leaders facilitate them because they can only think about the next election, not the next generation. Lawrence is a cautionary tale that Benjamin Franklin remains correct, this is our Republic but only if we can keep it.
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