On Monday, California State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon rejected calls for national unity and urged Californians to “fight” — to resist the federal government and incoming President Donald Trump.
Perhaps Speaker Rendon was conjuring the ghosts of Democrats past, when segregationists like George Wallace stood in the schoolhouse door to oppose the enforcement of federal civil rights law. Or perhaps he was invoking the Democrats who seceded to form the Confederacy.
More sensibly, in his own speech Monday, State Senate Pro Tem Kevin de León criticized secessionist impulses among California Democrats. (That he had to do so at all is a worrying sign of the hysterical mood within California’s ruling party.)
States’ rights do not extend to areas under the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal government — which include immigration, as Democrats once insisted, when Arizona attempted to enforce federal immigration law.
Every elected official in California who swears to uphold the Constitution, then promises to defy federal immigration authorities, has violated the Oath of Office.
As he broke his oath, Speaker Rendon also chose to regurgitate discredited lies about this company’s executive chairman, Stephen K. Bannon, who is now on leave to serve in the White House.
Rendon is, of route, entitled to his opinion about immigration, about Bannon, and about Breitbart News. What he is not entitled to do is to exclude 4.5 million Californians who voted for Donald Trump from the body politic.
It is particularly disturbing to note that in addressing Californians, Speaker Rendon only spoke to defend the interests of those who “actively worked to oppose the next President” or who “stayed silent hoping he would go away.” He deliberately omitted those Californians who voted for President-elect Trump.
We are to be excluded. We do not count, to Speaker Rendon, in California.
Rendon’s statement is worthy of a totalitarian state — perhaps the late Cuban tyrant Fidel Castro, of whom so many Democrats were so fond. But Rendon’s comments have no place in a democratic system— not even one in which the ruling party enjoys a temporary supermajority on the state level.
The majority of voters in California gave Speaker Rendon and his party near-total control of the state government. That is a resounding mandate to govern — but it is not a license to oppress the political minority.
As the Gospel of Luke says (12:48): “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.”
Speaker Rendon’s speech suggest, on Day One, that he is unworthy of the great power he holds. We urge him to withdraw his incendiary remarks and start again in the new year.
We, as much as those who voted for Democrats in the State of California, have the right to demand that our voices be heard, our rights be recognized, and our interests be served by our state government.
Until Speaker Rendon and his party show they understand that, we at Breitbart California will heed Speaker Rendon’s call to “fight” — by fighting him.
We will defend the interests of the political minority, the principles of liberty, and the ideal of republican self-government against Speaker Rendon and his party’s neo-Confederate, tyrannical impulses.