“I am not among those who fear the people. They, and not the rich, are our dependence for continued freedom.” —Thomas Jefferson (1816)

Last week I devoted my column to The Patriot Post’s 20th anniversary. I did so in order to acknowledge our editors and staff, who do an outstanding job, and our fellow Patriots, who have supported and promoted our efforts for all these years.

Meanwhile, our editors were hammering Hillary Clinton for her denigration of Donald Trump’s supporters at a major fundraiser with her “LBGT constituents.”

According to Clinton, “To just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. Some of those folks, they are irredeemable. … And unfortunately, there are people like that and [Trump] has lifted them up. He has given voice to their websites that used to only have 11,000 people, [but] now have 11 million. He tweets and retweets offensive, hateful, mean-spirited rhetoric.”

Clinton’s adoring Leftmedia sycophants defended her claim, characterizing it as a “gaffe.” But a gaffe is defined as “an unintentional remark; a blunder.” And this was no gaffe — it was scripted, it was intentional, and it captured perfectly the utter contempt with which Clinton and her like-minded Democrats view middle America.

Perhaps it was also a calculated attempt to divert attention from her recent collapse at the 9/11 Ground Zero memorial event in New York City, due, she claimed, to a “bout with pneumonia.” Or maybe it was a diversion from her collapse in the polls in the wake of her endless lies about concealing official communications.

As for the other half of Trump’s supporters, Clinton said they are misguided “people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change.”

Ah, yes, foolish people just “desperate for change,” rather than eager to award Barack Obama a third term by electing Hillary Clinton.

In those statements to her wealthy left-elitist donors, Clinton didn’t just offend tens of millions of grassroots Trump supporters, she insulted all grassroots Americans nationwide. And she offered her absurd assessment of rank-and-file Americans a week after smearing Trump supporters as racists. Clinton’s “deplorable” characterization of her fellow Americans parallels Barack Obama’s description of his detractors as being “bitter and cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them.”

Having seen the uproar caused by her comments, Clinton, ostensibly, attempted to walk them back by noting they were “grossly generalistic and that’s never a good idea. I regret saying half.” Perhaps she meant “all” instead of “half.” And this from a faux populist candidate whose campaign slogan is “Stronger Together.”

For his part, Donald Trump fired back, saying: “We have the support of cops and soldiers, carpenters and welders, the young and the old, and millions of working-class families who just want a better future. These were the people Hillary Clinton so viciously demonized. … She divides people into baskets as though they were objects, not human beings.”

He continued, “While her campaign slanders you as deplorables and irredeemables, I call you hard-working American Patriots who love our country and want a better future for all our people. You are everybody. Above all else … you’re entitled to leadership that honors you, cherishes you and totally defends you.”

Worth special consideration is a sizable subgroup of Clinton’s “deplorables” whom she knows do not support her: the deployables.

Recent polling of military personnel found that Obama’s support among the uniformed services has dropped to a paltry 15%, while his disapproval ratings in that group are at an all-time high. This extends to Clinton as Obama’s heir apparent.

Giving voice to the millions of military personnel and their families who are prohibited from speaking ill of their commander in chief, one of the many retired senior military officers who oppose Clinton stepped forward on behalf of the active duty ranks.

A colleague with whom I serve on the National Advisory Board of the Medal of Honor Heritage Center, Gen. Burwell Bell (USA-Ret.), offered his thoughts on Clinton’s disparagement of grassroots Americans:

“Hillary Clinton’s assertion that half of Donald Trump’s supporters are in a ‘basket of deplorables’ is an insult to millions of American citizens and illuminates a dangerous movement and trend in the Democrat Party. For the past several years both President Obama and now Hillary Clinton have chosen to divide Americans into often times fictitious and mean-spirited groups, and then demonize those groups in order to isolate them while energizing the Democratic base. … Mrs. Clinton’s demonizing and marginalizing American citizens is shameful. I spent 39 years of my adult life defending all Americans. I deeply resent Mrs. Clinton’s [denigration of] the American electorate. Candidates should articulate policy perspectives and not divide Americans in an effort to conquer millions of our citizens.”

The fact is, Hillary Clinton and her left-elite cadres detest and despise people like us. Indeed, they despise “We the People…”

Of course, those are the first words of the preamble to our Constitution, which defined the principle of Rule of Law. That venerable document enshrines the unanimous declaration of the equal and inalienable Rights of Man — the rights of all people.

What distinguished our founding contract from all others is its avowal that all legitimate power is and should be entrusted to “the People” rather than state potentates.

To that end, John Adams once observed, “If the people are capable of understanding, seeing and feeling the differences between true and false, right and wrong, virtue and vice,” they would remain the repository for Liberty.

But Clinton and her statist elites do not trust the People, which is why they are forever endeavoring to subjugate their constituents to state rule, using all means to shape their opinions toward compliance — the very antithesis of Liberty. They corrupt the will of the people by propagating endless lies in order to inculcate into their subjects the belief that they are victims and that they can’t survive without the protection of the Democrat Party and the state.

Of the susceptibility of the people to such inculcation, Patrick Henry wrote: “It is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth – and listen to the song of that siren, till she transforms us into beasts.”

Clinton’s fallacious proposition depends on a majority of American voters falling under the spell of the Left’s relentless rhetoric, and who will, like lemmings, pull the lever that makes her their master.

Thomas Jefferson warned, “Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone.” Indeed, the degeneration of the behemoth beast that is our central government today is testament to his timeless wisdom.

UPDATE: Will Clinton ever learn? (Purely a rhetorical question.) In 2018, she is still blaming her loss on grassroots Americans, or as she describes us, racist misogynists.

Pro Deo et Constitutione — Libertas aut Mors

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis