Left tries to reverse LA retreat surreptitiously

As Louisiana’s political left fights to halt a retreat that has accelerated over the past year with the election of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and the most conservative Legislature ever, its tactics have begun to rely more heavily on subterfuge and “useful idiots.”

Although thought to have originated from Soviet strongman Vladimir Lenin to describe non-communist sympathizers to communism, the term seems to have come from Western European communists referring to other leftist political parties. It has evolved these days into a term more closely associated with economist Ludwig von Mises’ “useful innocents,” or people generally unaware or uncaring of the implications of a radical political agenda but who agree with its propagation for their own reasons unrelated to the underlying ideology.

Where the left understands it cannot control majoritarian political institutions or public opinion, it seeks out indirect ways, using nondemocratic agents if necessary, to try to advance its policy agenda. Some recent examples in Louisiana demonstrate the left’s willingness to find more ways to skin a cat to force its unloved agenda into policy.

Last week, several organizations and individuals filed suit against Louisiana’s new law that makes controlled substances of the two drugs necessary to induce a chemical abortion. It’s a nuisance suit with little fact or logic behind its argumentation, in its claiming the law violates the state Constitution because it creates “differential treatment” for treating a medical condition like hemorrhaging.

That view completely ignores that together the two drugs can be used to violate the law and dangerously so, to kill the unborn, unlike other ways of treating hemorrhaging. But that’s of no concern to the left, which broadly denies human life and wants to force everywhere abortion on demand up to and through birth.

To bolster its case, abortion sympathizers enlisted medical professionals and groups as plaintiffs and uses in its claim opposition from other such groups. But the giveaway as to the suit’s true nature is that the legal firms behind it support unfettered abortion on demand and are incensed that the law makes illegal their favorite subversion tactic to overcome states like Louisiana with strict pro-life laws: shipping the drugs in from out-of-state without oversight. So, they enlist others who may not agree with illegal use of the drugs as abortifacients but believe in the legitimate uses of the drugs, which is the farthest thing from the minds of the special interests who want these used not to save lives but to end them, as a means of trying to put a compassionate face on their bloody efforts.

Another example involves legal maneuverings to stop industrial expansion along the Mississippi River in areas with poorer, often racial minority, populations. This summer, the National Park Service – which since the Democrat Pres. Barack Obama terms has become increasingly politicized and sympathetic to the left – declared a portion of St. John the Baptist Parish’s east bank as a candidate for National Historic Landmark status, which increased regulatory hurdles with more potentially on the way. That was too much for a firm wishing to build an eco-friendly grain export facility with a large economic impact that would have created hundreds of jobs, who pulled out of the permitting process calling it too onerous.

Opposing the facility, and in favor of increased land use controls, are some in the community who see such operations as destructive of local history. But behind them are other special interests whose impetus in opposition comes from wanting to increase wealth redistribution not by economic development but by demanding greater government benefits for communities “victimized” by a mythical “environmental racism,” using these others whose interests lie only in preserving family homesteads.

And the left keeps pressing. Down the river in St. Charles Parish, it’s trying to stop another firm from building a chemical manufacturing and carbon capture facility, using the same tactic of rallying residents decrying perceived threats to a community and its history when it wants to stop economic development. Here, there’s an extra wrinkle: the irony that the plant is designed to cut out most greenhouse gas emission and store it, but that’s not good enough for climate alarmists whose goal is to trigger wealth redistribution by hampering economic growth by calling upon the catastrophic anthropogenic global warming bogeyman and in demanding redistribution to make up for alleged damages.

It never ends with these folks. They can’t win at the ballot box, so they use every obstructive means possible to thwart the will of the majority and hijack others unaware or even unsupportive of their agenda to aid them in advancing their policies. While some of those outside of leftist special interests may have sympathy for their agenda, many others don’t, and, unfortunately, they end up getting shamelessly used.