The constitutional crisis over an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez presidency

OPINION:

In 2008, Barack Obama was “The One.” He charmed a nation and inspired a generation of young voters.

In 2024, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, may be the heir to Mr. Obama’s legacy. As President Biden’s reelection prospects dim, rumors of an AOC presidential candidacy are beginning to swirl.

Three high-profile campaigns by fellow socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders paved the way for Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Over the last decade, socialism has gone mainstream in many corners of America. The left has unfinished business in Mr. Obama’s quest to “fundamentally transform America.”

The aging octogenarians who lead the Democratic Party will soon exit stage left, giving way to a new generation whose vision of America stands in stark contrast to the ideals of the limited government established by our Founding Fathers in the Constitution.

While conservatives cry foul over government overreach — particularly abuses of power by unelected bureaucrats in the so-called “Deep State” — Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and the left assert that Washington is not doing enough.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s agenda calls for unlimited federal power, unrestrained by constitutional checks and balances. She wants to end the filibuster in the Senate, pack the Supreme Court with left-wing justices, and implement massive environmental and social programs requiring an unprecedented centralization of power in Washington.

Many elements of Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s agenda are already being pushed by the Biden White House. They are waging war on fossil fuels, leading to painfully high energy prices. They spent trillions of dollars on “emergency” COVID-19 relief, resulting in the highest inflation rate in 40 years. They ignore immigration laws, allowing a flood of illegal immigrants and handing control of our border to human-trafficking drug cartels. And they collude with Big Tech to monitor and manipulate the flow of information, even attempting to create the equivalent of a Ministry of Truth to censor “disinformation” from their ideological opponents.

These policies are increasingly unpopular and may lead to a Republican tsunami in the midterm elections this year. But the United States will remain more divided than ever, with a growing segment of the population — concentrated on the coasts and in major cities throughout the country — falling under the spell of socialism. Decades of indoctrinating American students, bolstered by left-leaning mainstream media and their allies in Big Tech and Hollywood, have produced a voting block that may soon bring socialists to power.

The allure of “free stuff,” “social justice” and “equity” is attracting more and more hoodwinked voters who are unaware or unconcerned that Marxists killed perhaps as many as 100 million people over the last century. Socialism is a big lie, sold with false promises. As President Gerald Ford warned us, “A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.”

The biggest obstacles standing in the socialists’ way are the states and the Constitution. A majority of states are now controlled by Republican legislatures and governors, and they are the ultimate “check” to unbridled federal power. The oft-forgotten 10th Amendment clearly states, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The Constitution was written expressly to limit the power of the federal government. Its authors — who fought the American Revolution to cast off the yoke of a tyrannical King George III — were determined to prevent the rise of a similar tyrannical authority in the future. They established a legal system protecting individual rights, enshrining civil liberties in the Bill of Rights.

Socialists, on the other hand, prefer group rights over individual rights. They place the power of the state above the rights of the individual. Everywhere it’s been tried — the Soviet Union, China, Cuba and most recently Venezuela — socialism has been a gateway drug to totalitarian rule. Quite simply, socialism cannot coexist with the United States Constitution.

As long as the Constitution protects Americans’ rights to freely exchange ideas and to defend liberty, socialism will never take hold here. That’s why the left must discredit the Founding Fathers — tearing down statues and vilifying them as “oppressors” in revisionist history lessons — in order to discredit the Constitution itself.

Imagine if Ms. Ocasio-Cortez implemented a socialist system in the United States. Would she follow the example of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, who packed the courts to control the judiciary and established a state-controlled media? Would she implement draconian gun control to disarm the citizenry? Would she imprison her political opponents? Is America willing to take that chance?

A constitutional crisis may be on the horizon, with red states squaring off against a tyrannical government in Washington. Millions of armed, freedom-loving Americans will not submit without a fight. More importantly, if our cold civil war gets hot, our men and women in uniform — who take a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution — will be the ultimate arbiters of power. As Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong said, “Power flows from the barrel of a gun.”

This is the frightening scenario that I envisioned in my novel, “States of Rebellion: The Rise and Fall of the Ocasio-Cortez Administration.” Socialism could lead to the bloodiest conflict in America since the Civil War. Let’s hope we wake up and stop it before it becomes reality.

• Gibson Kerr is the author of the recently published novel, “States of Rebellion: The Rise of Fall of the Ocasio-Cortez Administration,” by Bombardier Books/Post Hill Press.