A Soviet-styled Future in Oregon?

By Dennis Linthicum, Oregon State Senate – District 28

September 2, 2023

After my last newsletter, I received several responses to my assertion that socialism is a destructive ideology. I’ll admit that I may have been too willing to blame the Democrat party as the only source of the current wave of destructionism in Oregon. However, my claim is still valid – socialism is destructionism.

Whether only Democrat party members praise collectivist ideals was not my main point. All political party members can be caught promoting socialist ideas, some more than others. My warning is that single-party rule tends toward totalitarianism and is dangerous. Any of us can be teased down the candied highway of socialism by “free” government money.

But government money is never free. The regulatory requirements for using federal funds are rarely of practical or fiscally responsible natures. They always carry a political burden.

This ought to be obvious but it often escapes scrutiny because governments spend enormous amounts of money trying to mask their agenda – which is always more control.

Think about the recent COVID corruption scheme that engulfed the entire world. Supposedly, it was for our safety. But now we see that it was nothing but a litany of lies and strategic manipulation. It was used for control, pure and simple. It also allowed aligned players to make billions in profit, circumvented due process and re-engineered our society through destructionist racketeering. The Democrat/Socialist party was the prime contractor in this destructionist effort.

Now, we see the fulness of designs for power politics coming to fruition here in Oregon. Last week’s mainstream mouthpieces were giddy with news that Oregon Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade confirmed that she intends to enforce the DOJ’s interpretation of Ballot Measure 113. The majority party’s DOJ claims that Measure 113 bans lawmakers from running for re-election if they denied quorum for more than 10 days.

This is an unconstitutional, brute force abridgment of the democratic process and the free-speech rights of the Senators who adhered to the rules of the Senate while denying quorum.

Republican Senators are not the so-called “grumblers and malcontents” who refused to “go-to work.” They were, and are, principled fighters. They were setup by the Democrat majority, in concert with union muscle, to implement the final solution in a long-coveted dream of single-party rule here in Oregon.

In Oregon, drastic legislative language was aimed directly at destroying parental rights, our constitutionally codified 2nd Amendment protections, and our rights to self-defense (HB 2002, 2004, 2005, SB 348, et.al.). These bills were brought to the front of the legislative calendar to tease principled opposition members from office. It was nothing but a sadistic bit of cheese on the bait-trap tray.

Senate President Wagner (D-Lake Oswego) was more than happy to deny any and all excused absences to ensure a clear ballot for the next election cycle. The radical left is far too rapacious to be concerned with the long-term consequences of their actions because one-party rule is the only goal that matters.

There was never any room for compromise or deliberation because the majority party was unwilling to negotiate until their opposition had been thoroughly gutted by the unconstitutional 10-day limit imposed by Measure 113.

Every day we see increases in state-sponsored censorship, the weaponization of fear, and the demonization of common-sense, truth-telling, and citizen participation. All of these campaigns have been camouflaged in the narrative of tolerance while representing a frontal assault against self-governance.

To illustrate my point, I include just one of many historical illustrations. Below is a complete quote, from pgs. 97-98, in Roger Moorhouse’s historical narrative, The Devils’ Alliance – Hitler’s Pact with Stalin, 1939-41, (emphasis added):

“Events moved with dizzying speed that summer. After their experience in eastern Poland the previous autumn, the Soviets were already well practiced in the art of ‘democratic demolition.’

“Within a month, across all three Baltic states, elections were called by the newly formed, Moscow-friendly governments. This in itself would have been quite a novelty, as all three states had spawned authoritarian – albeit largely benign – governments in the 1930s, but the Soviet variant of democracy was even less worthy of the name.

“Only approved candidates were permitted to stand, all others were removed from the ballot and arrested. Voting was compulsory, with those spoiling their ballot or refusing to vote risking arrest: ‘Only enemies of the people stay at home on election day’, warned one Estonian newspaper.81

Moorhouse’s narrative continues:

“To reassure the people, Soviet representatives were at pains to stress that the independence of the Baltic nations would be respected, vehemently denying that incorporation into the USSR was in the offing.

The results were preordained, to the point that they were even accidentally announced in Moscow before the polls had closed:

97.2 per cent of Latvian voters were said to have voted for the approved list,
99.2 per cent in Lithuania and
92.8 per cent in Estonia.82

“Voter turnout was also unfeasibly high, ranging between 84 and 95 per cent; one electoral precinct in Lithuania even achieved the remarkable feat of voter turnout reaching 122 per cent. The true figure across all Lithuania has been estimated at barely 16 per cent.83

“Once compliant ‘people’s parliaments’ were installed, all that was left for them was to vote themselves out of existence. The first act of each, therefore, upon meeting in late July, was to petition Moscow for accession to the USSR as a constituent republic.

“After a period of ‘consultation’ the Supreme Soviet in Moscow duly granted the requests:

Lithuania became a Soviet republic on 3 August 1940,
Latvia followed two days later and
Estonia on 6 August.

In Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn, there were confusion and humiliation as people sought to take in what had happened to them, and to the independent states that they had once inhabited.

“In desperation, a few took to the forests to fight the Soviet occupiers; others chose more passive forms of protest such as placing flowers at national memorials, or singing patriotic songs.

“Khrushchev would later write in his memoirs, without a hint of irony, that the annexation of the Baltic states was a ‘great triumph’ for the Baltic peoples, as it gave them ‘the chance to live in conditions equal to those of the working class, peasantry, and laboring intelligentsia of Russia’.84”

History should be our guide.

In Oregon, we can see the same regimen of election tampering being unleashed under the color of law. The current Democrat-party led attack against the right of local constituencies to choose their own representatives is not a new idea. If Measure 113 stands it will be one of many steps toward the soviet-style authoritarianism that destroyed all of the free, fair and honest electoral challenges to the soviet model of single-party rule.

History will be repeated if we fail to learn our lessons. We should be willing to question the timing and fury of indictments against former President Trump as it relates to denying his opportunity to be on election ballots in the near future.

Coincidentally, conservative Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was also barred from running for office until 2030 by a panel of judges. The partisan judges concluded that Bolsonaro spread doubts about the country’s electronic voting system. Meanwhile, the current socialist President, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was convicted of bribery charges that were overturned, under controversial circumstances.

We have big challenges in front of us. We must continue to extol our belief in liberty, free markets, fiscal responsibility, ordered liberty, equal opportunity, medical freedom, free-speech and freedom of conscience rights for everyone.

I need your help to mount a strategic challenge to the unconscionable assault on the rights of minorities everywhere – the right to protest government policy, to air grievances in public without persecution and the right to continue the fight for our respective liberties.

This battle was brought into our front yards, now let’s muster our courageous response!

E-Mail Dennis Linthicum: d4linthicum@gmail.com