The Democratic Party and its presidential and vice presidential candidates, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, are trying to remake the American government, people, economy, and culture.

Their ideas are terrible. Sadly, establishment Republicans share many, if not most, of these ideas.

First, Democratic Party leaders are pushing ideas that would remake our government. The Democrats would change how we elect the president by eliminating the electoral college and giving statehood to Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. They would change the Supreme Court by packing it with more than the usual nine members. They would increase the power of the government over our lives by socializing medicine (single-payer healthcare), socializing college (making public college free), and giving free medical care to all immigrants, including illegal aliens, and then raising taxes to pay for these things. They would allow 16-year-olds to vote, thereby giving easily manipulated adolescents political power, even though they cannot be trusted to drink, have sex, or marry.

The Democrats and establishment Republicans support an interventionist foreign policy. Consider the establishment’s wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, and Syria. The U.S. stations troops in 150 nations (roughly 165,000 personnel) generations after we fought wars in places such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea. Even after all the blood and treasure we poured into recent wars, the Taliban are poised to take over Afghanistan if we leave, Iran controls Iraq, Libya is a failed state, and the Assad government continues to rule Syria. Consider, also, the roughly 10,000 people the U.S. killed via drones in backwater countries such as Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. No one should want more of this.

If this were not enough, consider the embarrassing Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who died on Friday. She supported restricting business owners’ right of free speech and practice of religion (Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 2018), not recognizing an individual’s right to bear arms (District of Columbia v. Heller, 554 U.S. 570, 2008), removing any real constitutional road block to the government taking people’s property via eminent domain (Kelo v. City of New London, 545 U.S. 469, 2005), permitting the government to engage in ever more race and sex discrimination (Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306, 2003), and destroying what little is left of federalism by in effect repealing the Commerce Clause (National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, 567 U.S. 519, 2012) and Gonzales v. Raich, 545 U.S. 1, 2005). She, thus, wanted to restrict or eliminate important constitutional rights found in the First, Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments and to gut the central Article I brake on federal power. Now imagine a judiciary packed with Ginsburg-like embarrassments.

Second, consider how the Democratic Party leaders would remake the American people. The Democrats’ — and establishment Republicans’ –love immigration. Roughly, 60 million immigrants and their young children live in the U.S. today (2016 figure). Immigrant households are far more likely to be on some sort of welfare (63% versus 35%) and more than twice as likely to be on Medicaid or get free food. The Democrats (along with a lot of Republicans) want to flood the country with many more low-skilled immigrants and to amnesty the 22 million illegal aliens currently here. The Democrats want to get as close as they can to open borders via attempted amnesties, laws that prevent the building of a wall, catch-and-release policies, a push to eliminate ICE, refusal to enforce crime and welfare requirements, and so on. The Democrats thus want to dilute the historic American people.

Third, consider how the Democrat party would remake the economy. The Green New Deal would involve a radical restructuring of our energy industry, the life blood of our economy. They would try to ban fracking and try to shut down some of the natural-gas and petroleum pipelines. Socialized higher education and medicine would involve a complete takeover of large portions of the economy. The Democrats would regulate business more and put more race-and-sex preferences and quotas in place.

Fourth, the Democrats will also change the country’s zeitgeist through cancel culture, imagined racism (see Black Lives Matter and the diversity-industrial complex), monument removal and name change, political violence (Antifa), and stultifying political correctness. These cultural changes are an abomination.

No adult thinker believes that the package of Democratic changes would make us better off. Right now, the U.S. is one of the richest and freest countries in the world. There is a fairly strong correlation between economic freedom, happiness, and political freedom. An economically free country has a clear-cut rule of law, limited regulation, open markets, and small government. Restricting Bill-of-Rights liberties, diluting the historic American people, and further socializing the economy will not make us freer, happier, or wealthier. Nor will it bring us more peace. Yet as currently constituted, the Democratic Party wants to restrict, dilute, and socialize in precisely this way.

More directly, who wants to live with the Democratic vision? If the Democrats’ vision is enacted, you won’t be trusted to keep your money, own guns, or say what’s really on your mind. Your country is going to add tens of millions of people over the next decade who don’t share your culture, language, or values and, increasingly, see you as an obstacle to their progress. Things you long took for granted (”I may sell my cakes to whom I choose”) turn out not to be part of American freedom. The icons with whom you grew up (for example, Winston Churchill, Christopher Columbus, and George Washington) get pulled down and shoved down the memory hole. They are replaced with politically correct icons that are not important parts of the American story. Even truth is dumped overboard as the media and elites ignore obvious truths about Biden’s mental ability, race and sex differences, speech being different from violence, and so on.

Americans do not want to live like this. Nor should they.

Stephen Kershnar is a State University of New York at Fredonia philosophy professor. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com