I have long enjoyed reading op-eds in the Gazette-Mail by retired lawyer Charles McElwee and have admired his dedication to the betterment of West Virginia.
His strong advocation for commonsense economic development based on our many competitive advantages has been a common goal with my vocation spanning several decades.
Accordingly, I hesitated to voice dismay with his op-ed published last month declaring Democratic socialists a threat to freedom, as it was such a sharp departure from those many other insightful pieces of the past years.
It pains me to write, but I found it to be profoundly hypocritical.
Specifically, the intellectual dishonesty associated with his call for “West Virginia citizens ... to decide whether they want to make their own economic choices in life ... or prefer to have a Central [Economic] Planning Committee of the U.S. government make choices for them.”
First of all, there is of course, no such things as a Central Economic Planning Committee. What McElwee has done is resort to Cold War-era language as hyperbole in the form of a scare tactic to mislead and assert that “bad actors,” to use a legal term, are out to take away your freedom.
Nor is it true, as he writes, that “domination of every aspect of our lives is the goal of Democratic socialists.” This is, instead, the use of extremist language to vilify “others” wrongly so as to provoke derision and false moral outrage.
Truth be known, it’s not these members of Congress who are seeking to infringe on West Virginians’ rights but, in actuality, far-right Republicans right under McElwee’s nose.
Unlike the phantoms McElwee has created with his divisive language, there are very real MAGA Christian nationalists at every level of West Virginia state government who have demonstrably infringed dramatically on West Virginians’ personal rights.
And it’s not just the rolling back to the 19th century of women’s reproductive rights but a far broader erosion of individual and citizen rights through a supermajority abuse of power in the Legislature, as well as those in the executive branch and other governing boards.
What about the state Senate suspending constitutional rules and allowing dozens of bills to advance and then pass without public hearings?
Where is the outrage when our secretary of state joins a “Stop the Steal” rally and bolsters efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election? How about when he further joined lawsuits, on behalf of West Virginians, and, in effect, tried to undermine the constitutional process?
Where was the outrage when Republican members of the state’s congressional delegation backed lawsuits to overturn the election? Or when our attorney general supported a federal lawsuit to challenge ballot counts in other states?
How about Governor Jumbo’s assertions that President-elect Joe Biden shouldn’t visit West Virginia? Or, most importantly, where was the indignation over the Jan. 6 assault on Washington and our very democracy?
Where was the moral outrage when a sitting president violated election laws in Georgia by threatening action against their secretary of state if he couldn’t “find 11,780 votes?”
Instead of righteous indignation toward these people, we are instead lectured that the moral high ground rests in demonizing the very elected officials who bravely stand for the rights of all people to health care, economic equality and civil rights.
