For the Radical Left, Slogans Matter More than Lives

AMAC Exclusive – By Clayton Fuller

In recent years, slogans proclaiming that various groups of lives “matter” have become ubiquitous in American society, and now can be seen on everything from t-shirts to yard signs. Left-wing groups first advanced “Black Lives Matter” as a corollary to their calls to “Defund the Police,” to which many people reasonably responded that “Blue Lives Matter” as well and, perhaps most in line the foundational American principle of equality, “All Lives Matter.” For the radical left, however, these mottos were deemed “insensitive” and “racist,” and they instead forwarded a slew of new slogans like “Trans Lives Matter” and “Immigrant Lives Matter.”

However, despite all the rhetoric asserting that the lives of every identity group in the left-wing coalition “matter,” the disastrous and in many cases deadly consequences of the policies advanced by those same ideologues are conveying the very opposite message: that the lives of actual human beings don’t seem to matter much to the far left. While many conservatives have, not entirely without merit, laid the blame for such policies at the feet of the Democratic Party, the progressive movement responsible for this radical policy shift has in many ways transcended one political party. Instead of championing the lives of certain sub-groups of Americans, today’s radical left is pushing an agenda that is proving itself indifferent to the welfare of just about everybody.  

One need only look at the crime wave sweeping the country to see that both blue lives and black lives are suffering under the current ascendancy of far-left leaders. The country saw 50 law enforcement officers killed in the first 8 months of 2021, a 51.5 percent increase compared to the same time period in 2020. In response, progressives in Congress introduced legislation that would only further erode protections for police officers and hamper their ability to do their job. Those same Members of Congress and activists in academia have also continued their calls to “Defund the Police,” even as they hire private security forces.

But it’s not just the lives of the police that the radical left has failed to defend. Over Labor Day weekend in Chicago, for example, there were at least 60 people shot. While the racial breakdown of those deaths is not yet available, of the 770 murders in Chicago in 2020, 80% of the victims were Black. Will Kim Foxx, Chicago’s radical prosecutor who allowed dangerous criminals back on the streets, say their names? In Portland, there have been roughly 90 murders this year. Blacks make up only 6% of Portland’s population, but of those 90 murder victims, 40% percent were Black. Will Portland’s progressive district attorney Michael Schmidt say their names? In Atlanta, the situation is truly dire for Black Americans. 291 of the 311 shooting victims in 2021 have been Black. 252 of the 291 were Black men. Maybe Atlanta’s far-left mayor should spend less time campaigning for candidates in other states and more time addressing the crisis rocking her own city.

The current presidential administration, of course, has implicitly endorsed all of this radicalism. Biden lectured all Americans to “lay down the heavy burdens of hate at last” by doing “the hard work of rooting out our systemic racism” in his August 2020 speech accepting his party’s nomination, but has said nothing about the dramatic increase in the number of actual criminals terrorizing law-abiding citizens. He also endorsed the aforementioned “police reform” bill, saying that “this moment demands action.

But such political grandstanding should not be surprising given that Biden and his allies repeatedly put political considerations above ensuring the safety of American service members, contractors, and diplomats overseas. Biden’s disastrously planned evacuation from Afghanistan led to the tragic killing of 13 U.S. service members and the leaving behind of potentially hundreds of American citizens who are now stranded in the country. After they loyally served the United States for years, Biden also abandoned Afghan interpreters and allies who assisted American forces, leaving them to be tortured and killed at the hands of the Taliban.

The radical left has also shown a callous disregard for the unborn at home. After first pressuring Biden to abandon his previous support for the Hyde Amendment, far-left figures in Congress are pushing a $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill containing policies aimed at expanding abortion services throughout the United States. While most Democrats have in the past claimed that they wanted to make abortion “safe, legal, and rare,” those moderate and conservative factions of the party have now been exiled. Instead, the new position of the extreme leftists who run the party today is that abortion is a health care right to be paid by the taxpayer.

Notwithstanding their smooth-sounding slogans, the truth is that American lives of all backgrounds are more at risk today in a country run by the radical left than they were a year ago. This includes victims of human trafficking, drug addiction, and overdose, whose numbers are on the rise as criminal networks, deadly fentanyl, and opioids freely move across Biden’s open borders and into America’s most vulnerable communities. Whether Blue, Black, Military, or Unborn, the value of actual human life appears of secondary importance to the task of advancing highly ideological slogans that today’s liberal elites want everybody to repeat. Despite what Biden may say, the only heavy burdens Americans need to lay down are the morally bankrupt ideas, policies, and psychology of the far left that have now infected the Democratic Party.

Clay Fuller served as a White House Fellow from 2018-2019 advising senior Trump administration officials on special operations oversight at the Department of Defense and advising the Office of the Vice President on countering the opioid epidemic.  He is an experienced federal, military, and Appalachian prosecutor as well as a reserve military officer with a decade of national security experience.  Follow him on Twitter @Clay4MainStreet and on Facebook at Clay Fuller: Main Street Patriot.