He really did. He just had a different name for them.

I’ve quoted Thomas Sowell many times on this blog about the anointed, and how they believe that saying something is true is more important than whether it is true—that, in fact, saying it makes it true.

A few years ago in Illinois there was a Nazi running for office in a Democrat-dominated district. The district was pretty much one hundred percent Democrat, to the point where Republicans don’t even bother to run an opponent. So this guy told the State of Illinois that he was a Republican, in order to get on the ballot unopposed; Republicans pointed out that he was not, in fact, a Republican, but under Illinois election rules the Republican Party had no say in who ran as a Republican.

Illinois is also an open-primary state. This means that none of the people voting for this guy in his nearly 100% Democrat district were Republicans either.

In other words: this was not a Republican primary. This was not a Republican candidate. These were not Republican voters. And the candidate was not going to win in the general election against the official Democrat nominee anyway.

But the left wanted the Republican Party to take money from actual Republicans in Illinois to fight this guy. In order to fight an extreme Democrat in an extreme Democrat district, Democrats tried to force Republicans to spend money donated by Republicans to support the official Democrat against the unofficial Nazi, also supported by Democrats.

This is part of why we have such a dysfunctional political system, and why third parties have such a hard time taking hold. They have to defend themselves in venues they aren’t part of and have neither candidates nor voters in.

The Democrat’s plan was a win for hate. Either the Republicans raise a Nazi’s profile by competing against him, or the Democrats raise a Nazi’s profile by promoting him as a Republican.

When it was pointed out that raising his profile at all was a waste of money, because the guy wasn’t going to win, the Left claimed that there was money “earmarked for the Republican party’s race in that district”—a district and a contest that Republicans had never competed in before and hadn’t planned to compete in now—and that money would go to waste if it wasn’t used.

That’s a purely leftist notion: there is money in the air and we need to spend it now! Or it’s gone! There’s no reason to save it for a contest where it matters, or move it to a contest that matters. Effectiveness doesn’t matter, spending money is what matters. Money that isn’t spent doesn’t exist. Money that’s saved doesn’t exist.

Conservatives often point out that when a Republican does something wrong, it’s the fault of conservatives, but when a Democrat does something wrong, it’s the fault of America. But in fact that’s not true: there’s also a middle ground where, when a Democrat does something wrong, it’s still the fault of Republicans.

You can see that right now where just about every crime by Democrat constituents in Democrat-run cities is blamed not on the policies of the Democrats who govern those cities, but on… Donald Trump.

1. If it’s not a Democrat, blame it on Republicans.
2. If it is a Democrat, but not obviously, blame it on Repbulicans.
3. If it is obviously a Democrat, blame it on America.

None of that is, or was at the time, out of the ordinary, but I decided to engage them to see why? Why should someone waste their money and their time on an endeavor when that money and effort could be saved for more fruitful endeavors?

The answer was that money which isn’t theirs isn’t anybody’s. They refused to think about it as someone’s actual money that must be taken, or someone’s actual time that must be used—wasted, in fact—in a pointless contest. Rather they referred only to funds floating around that must be used or it disappears. Instead of it being wasted if it’s used on a pointless campaign, it is wasted if it isn’t used on a pointless campaign.

They specifically refused to consider donating their own time or money to fight Nazis.

Spend other people’s money, force other people’s effort, all to make the world a worse place. From slavery to the Unaffordable Care Act, sometimes it seems like that’s the only thing Democrats know how to do since the beginning of their party: control other people’s labor and confiscate the fruit of other people’s labor.

Whether they call it slavery or liberty doesn’t matter. As Lincoln would have said, quoting wisdom far older than himself, you can call a tail a leg—it doesn’t make the animal walk.