New face of authoritarian Toryism

New face of authoritarian Toryism – Monterey Herald, submitted March 3, 2020, unpublished

Bernie Sanders and the current crop of Democratic Party leaders have become the new face of authoritarian Toryism. Like the old Toryism of King George III, Bernie and his cohorts are extremely conservative and statist. Consider private ownership of guns. The Tories sent an army to Lexington and Concord to confiscate the colonists’ rifles and gunpowder. Now these progressives want the same.

Under the Coercive Acts, the Tory government restricted trade, closed down Boston Harbor, and prevented capitalists from trading, crippling Boston’s economy. They enacted the Stamp Act, which imposed a series of harsh taxes on colonists in America. As for the anti-free-speech fanatics on campuses, they parrot the Massachusetts Government Act of 1774, which banned free speech and assembly.

Always in search of tax revenues, the Tories imposed a plethora of revenue-raising taxes, including the Sugar Act and the multi-level Townshend Acts. And when the colonists asserted self-determination and a sort of state-rights approach, Tory loyalists clamped down with government centralization, and passed the Declaratory Act, making the colonies subordinate solely to the British Parliament.

Unfortunately, Bernie and his comrades are attempting to bring back this type of tyrannical rule, ushering in a new era of Tory socialism.

—Lawrence Samuels, Carmel