HUMAN EVENTS: What happened in Spain is the inevitable fruit of Leftist politics

Watching the protests erupting in Spain, we are strongly reminded of a justly famous lyric from the Beatles: “You say you want a revolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world. You tell me that it’s evolution, well, you know, we all want to change the world. But when you talk about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out?” What the Beatles either didn’t know, or were too sly to say, however, is that at some point, revolution always leads to destruction; if not to achieve power, then to keep it.

Such is the exact bargain being struck by Leftist Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez, who is so desperate to cling to power that he’s now offered amnesty to honest-to-God insurrectionists in order to get their support for his leadership in the Spanish Parliament. The Spanish people, naturally, are not pleased: Madrid recently was rocked by a protest against the amnesty which gathered, even by the lowest official counts, at least 80,000 people. At that was only one protest among dozens across Spain. At least one Spanish conservative party has pledged “we will not shut up until there are new elections,” which they can probably safely assume, Sanchez would lose decisively after this deal. The July 23 election was inconclusive to the point where there was no clear victor.

The American reader may be lost as to why this matters, so let us explain: those who Sanchez is proposing to pardon spearheaded a failed attempt on the part of the Spanish province of Catalonia to secede from Spain in 2017. Basically, imagine if the people who created the infamous 2020 Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in Seattle had extended their reign to all of Washington state and had tried to officially secede from the US with an illegal vote, only for their leaders to run off and hide in Canada to avoid being tried for treason, and you have some idea of the sort of forces that Sanchez is willing to excuse and even play ball with in order to retain power. While we believe the Democrats’ pearl-clutching over the supposed “insurrection” on January 6 wildly overestimates the protesters’ power or intentions, it is nonetheless true that a leader who openly makes a deal with actual traitors in exchange for power would, indeed, be a bridge too far for any civilized country.

And, contrary to what our betters in the mainstream media tell us, this is almost inevitably the kind of thing that Leftists do, rather than conservatives. We would say that we can’t let what happened in Spain happen here, but the fact is, it already has. Multiple times. And always – always – the Left has been responsible. 

Historically, for example, there was the case of the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA), who quite literally sent a go-between to propose actual collusion with the Soviet Union to undermine then-President Ronald Reagan, both at the foreign policy level, and in his presidential bid. Kennedy was never tried for this blatant act of treason, just as he was never tried for sending Mary Jo Kopechne to a watery grave. In fact, Democrats courted the traitor’s approval until his death in 2009. The same goes for the ways in which Leftists continued to make excuses for communist spies like Alger Hiss, or the Rosenbergs. 

However, while these examples are the most blatant, one hardly has to reach back to the 1980s or even the 1940s to find similar examples of American Leftists tolerating and even encouraging criminal or even treasonous acts. Look at the aforementioned CHAZ, and the seeming total absence of legal consequences which its creators faced, though two black teens were killed in their “autonomous zone.” Look at the willful silence of the press in the face of the shooter who shot Rep. Steve Scalise on the baseball field for the crime of being a Republican. Look at the clear double standards with which they excuse supporters of the murderous terrorist organization Hamas for overrunning Washington and attempting to break into both Congress and the White House, but condemn January 6 protesters for doing something as little as shouting the wrong words from a megaphone. Less savvy conservatives might be surprised at the blatancy of all this, but we are not. Because even longer than the Left have been tolerating criminal behavior, it’s been telling us what it wants, and what it wants is the very thing that the Beatles were so leery of: revolution.

Let’s be clear: revolution is inherently treasonous. It either results in the overthrowing of an old system, the creation of a new nation, or in the death/imprisonment/exile of its leaders. This is as it should be, considering what a drastic remedy revolution is for whatever ills the revolutionary seeks to correct. It is literally the last resort for those who are politically aggrieved, and why not? Even when they are successful or necessary (like our own American Revolution), revolutions are still wars. That is to say, they are violent, bloody, and traumatic events. 

And yet, the Left romanticizes revolution. In fact, in some cases, it even seeks to make it permanent. At minimum, it speaks of “fundamental transformation,” which is simply revolution with the serial numbers filed off. This is partly because most of them are too enamored with destruction, and too intellectually lazy, to think what comes after the violence, and partly because Leftist traditions like critical theory make the search for solutions a fool’s errand. The destruction is the point. The subversion is the point. The treason, defilement, and cruelty – all done speciously in the name of “empathy” with the supposedly “oppressed” – are the point. 

Why, then, should anyone be surprised that the Spanish Left are prepared to tolerate and even bed down with insurrectionists like the Catalan independence movement and the Basque Nationalists, whose allegiance the socialist leaders also court? And why should we be surprised that today’s Left is more than willing to elect presidents whose autobiographies were ghostwritten by domestic terrorists, or even to deny the existence of similar terrorists, only to then threaten juries in their name when accountability looms? The fact that the Catalan independence movement’s “revolution” failed in Spain is beside the point to the Left; the fact that they attempted it makes them bedfellows regardless of anything else. And make no mistake, giving the Left further power in America will only ensure those kinds of devilish alliances increase.

Which is why it’s fortunate that in Spain, and hopefully in America as well, people are beginning to respond to the “revolutionaries” in their midst with a less iconic, but more apropos, lyric from the Beatles: “You say you’ll change the constitution, well, you know, we all want to change your head.” Let’s hope that enough people, across the globe, feel similar sentiments, because otherwise, don’t you know, it really won’t be alright.