By Robert Steven Ingebo

The Democratic Party promotes a social-liberal platform, which is based upon the concept of social justice. Social justice is the belief that all citizens should have equal rights throughout all institutions of a democratic society. The relevant institutions include taxation, entitlements, labor laws, regulation of markets to ensure fair distribution of wealth (economic equality), equal opportunity and equality of outcome. Equality of outcome means that everyone living in the world, including the United States, should have relatively the same standard of living.

Democrats strongly and passionately believe that social justice is the only means of securing the welfare of everyone residing in the U.S., legal or otherwise. To them, strict adherence to social justice is necessary to achieve their utopian society, which is based upon equality of the masses.

The Democrats’ method of delivering equality of outcome is called the welfare state. In its perfect form, the welfare state is supposed to the eliminate the wealthy and poor classes, resulting in a middle class that includes an upper, middle and lower tier. Additionally, the welfare state provides equality of opportunity through entitlement programs, such as free public education and health care, and eliminates poverty through generous social welfare programs, paid for through the mechanism of progressive taxation.

The Democratic Party believes that in order to achieve perfect social justice, all individuals living in the U.S. should have equal rights and equal access to all of the entitlements and social welfare benefits of the welfare state with no differentiation between those that are here illegally and those who are legal citizens. The Democrats also believe that if any illegal immigrants or refugees, including those who are criminals, are deported, their utopian welfare state cannot be fully realized because deporting illegals eliminates their access to the entitlement and welfare programs, resulting in unequal outcomes, which is contrary to (global) social justice.

Here are some facts about the U.S. welfare state during President Obama’s eight-year tenure:

• Number of Americans on food stamps: 43 million.

• Home ownership: Dropped to the lowest number in more than 50 years.

• Amount spent on social welfare programs: $1 trillion dollars annually. The Census Bureau estimates that if we paid that amount out in cash to the poor in our country, it would be four times the amount needed to lift them all above the poverty line.

• Number of U.S. citizens living in poverty: 45 million.

• Job creation: 11.5 million jobs were created, however, there are currently 95 million former employees now unemployed, resulting in a net loss of 83.5 million jobs.

• GDP growth rate: Up 15%, which is 9% lower than the median GDP growth rate of 24%.

• National debt: More than doubled to $19.8 trillion.

• Debt as a percentage of GDP: Over 100% by the end of President Obama’s second term.

The following are a few examples of how the Democrats react when they are confronted with the spectacular failure of the U.S. welfare state:

Hillary Clinton’s remarks describing 50% of Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables.”

The Democrats blaming white people as a whole for slavery, genocide of the Native Americans and a plethora of other evils, maintaining that white people should be ashamed of the color of their skin because it is the same color as the people who perpetrated these unthinkable acts.

The use of identity politics to shut down anyone who disagrees with them. “The racism, sexism and xenophobia used by Mr. Trump to advance his candidacy…” and so on.

College professors routinely punish students who don’t believe in social justice. One coed refused to answer honestly how she feels in her law school class because she knows if she did, her professor would lower her grade.

Lately, the Democrats have resorted to using coercion in a brutal attempt to impose their values on all Americans because they are angry that President Trump beat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election and they are terrified of losing all of what little remains of their political power because of the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

They know that their failure to elect Hillary Clinton spells disaster for them because President Trump will take a jackhammer to their beloved welfare state, possibly ending it for good, and replace it with free market capitalism.

Because it is unthinkable to the Democrats that President Trump was actually elected president, they have let their emotions cloud their judgement, resulting in their denial of reality. This explains their attempts to shut down the speech of anyone who disagrees with them by calling them racists, bigots, xenophobes, homophobes and white supremacists instead of actually having an intelligent conversation with Republicans and Trump supporters about why the welfare state is better for the citizens of our country than free market capitalism.

The Democrats and the mainstream news media don’t seem to understand that social justice and the resulting welfare state that it creates has led to economic collapse in other countries.

Italy and France are two examples of typical Western European welfare states. Italy’s total debt is approximately 259% of GDP. France’s total debt is around 280% of GDP. Both of these debt-to-GDP ratios do not include unfunded pension and health care liabilities as well as Eurozone bailouts. It is evident that the debt of both countries will soon spiral out of control without severe cutbacks on entitlements, social welfare programs and government pensions.

Greece’s welfare state has led to out-of-control government spending and borrowing, resulting in bankruptcy. The welfare state mentality of their politicians has resulted in them looking to taxpayers from other countries to bail them out. They fear losing their re-election campaigns because of the millions of Greek citizens who will lose their welfare and retirement benefits as a result of lavish government overspending.

The underlying reason why many Americans resent the Left’s attempts to impose their ideological views upon them is because they don’t want the U.S. to end up like Greece.

The Democrats are so angry about Trump being president that they are retaliating against his supporters by boycotting their businesses, smearing their reputations with lies and slander and trying to get them fired from their jobs.

Colleges, once a bastion of free speech and intellectual diversity, are suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” resulting in a passionate desire to silence anyone from the political Right. Here are a few examples of this un-American practice:

Milo Yiannopoulos is the former senior editor for Breitbart News. Democrats have labeled him a racist, a misogynist and a white supremacist.

On Jan. 13, the beginning of Milo’s U.S. tour, rowdy protests erupted at UC Davis, causing campus Republicans to cancel his appearance.

His visit to the campus of Berkeley University in February was sponsored by the campus Republican club. The university has stressed that it did not invite Yiannopoulos.

Professors joined hundreds of students calling for the event’s cancellation, but university officials said it would be allowed in the name of free speech.

However, when violent protests erupted on campus, administrators at Berkeley decided to cancel the Wednesday event two hours before the former Breitbart editor’s speech because of “the violence and destruction of property and out of concern for public safety.”

The college said that the protests caused $100,000 worth of damage to the campus. The university blamed “150 masked agitators,” called antifa, for the unrest, saying they intruded upon the campus, intending to disrupt an otherwise peaceful protest.

Antifa protesters dressed in black and wearing masks threw commercial-grade fireworks and rocks at police. Some even hurled Molotov cocktails. They also smashed out the windows of the student union center. At least six people were injured.

More than 1,500 protesters gathered at Sproul Plaza, chanting and holding signs that read: “No safe space for racists” and “This is war.” The protesters tore down metal barriers, set fires near the campus bookstore and damaged the construction site of a new dorm. One woman wearing a red Trump hat, while being interviewed by CNN affiliate KGO, was pepper-sprayed in the face.

University police warned protesters to disperse and issued a lockdown for campus buildings when things got out of control. A remaining group of protesters, however, moved into downtown Berkeley and smashed windows at several local banks.

From the facts and events outlined in this article, it is clear that the Democrats, the mainstream news media, the college professors, their administrators and many of their students have gone from mere identity politics to more aggressive tactics like boycotting, slander, public shaming, fake news, coercion and now open violence.

The Democrats, by their own actions, have demonstrated their willingness to attempt to undermine the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by openly engaging in violent activities designed to eliminate freedom of speech of all people holding differing political ideologies.

The Democrats, in their passionate defense of social justice, their bankrupt welfare state ideology and their anger at having lost the election to President Trump, have crossed the line. They have become freedom deniers and freedom haters.

Their vicious identity politics has stirred up the fringe elements of the Left to violence.

A recent example of this is the attempted murder of several conservative politicians while they were practicing for a baseball game.

James Hodgkinson, armed with a rifle and several magazines of ammunition, managed to fire several dozen rounds into the ballfield over the course of about 10 minutes, striking Majority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana, two congressional aides, and two Capitol Police officers. He was stopped by the officers, one of whom continued to return fire even after being hit. It’s a miracle that no one was killed besides the assailant.

The reason for the attack was politically motivated. According to multiple Republican congressmen who left the ballfield just before the shooting occurred, Hodgkinson approached them and asked them whether it was Democrats or Republicans on the field.

The assailant had previously made his political views well known. He campaigned for Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic primary and posted frequently about politics on his social media accounts. He was also a member of a Facebook group that aimed to “terminate the Republican party,” and in March he wrote that Donald Trump was a “traitor” and that it was “time to destroy Trump & Co.” He also had a history of arrests for violent offenses, among them domestic battery, battery, and aggravated assault.

How many more acts of open violence perpetrated by activist groups like Black Lives Matter and antifa upon innocent Americans because of their political beliefs will it take before the U.S. citizens stand up for their right to think and believe what they want?

It’s time for every American to stand up for their God-given right to freedom of speech, which is legally protected by the First Amendment, and put a stop to this great evil emanating from the Democrat politicians who seek to silence millions of U.S. citizens and put them all back under the control of the Democratic Party’s welfare state.

Robert Steven Ingebo is president of FRI Corporation.