Tea at Trianon: Criminalizing Opposition in a Pseudo-Republic

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, August 10, 2022

Criminalizing Opposition in a Pseudo-Republic

From Mark Steyn:

For almost a decade and a half now, the American "republic" has been decaying to the defining condition of a one-party state - that is, the total merger of the ruling party and the state. Last night, the dirty stinking rotten corrupt US Department of Justice signed off on a raid on Mar-a-Lago, so we've now moved into hardcore banana-republic territory: the regime's cops are busting into the home of the opposition leader. We're told this is because Trump took some "classified" documents with him when he left Washington. Yeah, that's always a pretext for an armed raid: You could ask Hillary Clinton or Sandy Berger.

The FBI has been getting more brazen about its political thuggery this last year, increasingly relaxed about putting its thumb on the democratic scale. As my old pal from Hillsdale days, Joy Pullman, notes in a column written pre-Mar-a-Lago:
In Michigan, the FBI openly meddled in the upcoming election by affecting the selection of candidates, arresting and charging the formerly leading Republican candidate for governor for misdemeanors. The FBI raided Ryan Kelley's home while polls showed him leading the primaries. In the primary election last week, he came in fourth.
Mission accomplished - and all while too many stars of the rube right were still insisting that there are just a few bad apples at the top, I know the rank-and-file, they're salt of the earth, straight-shooting G-men, they gave me this cute lapel pin, etc, etc. There are no straight-shooting G-men: Who do you think are manning the raids, you chumps? Where are the whistle-blowers? Or even the guys who say, "No thanks, I didn't sign up for this"? It's a wholly corrupted institution and has been for the best part of a decade. The default position for what's left of the opposition party ought to be that the FBI is beyond reform, and will be replaced by a new agency with vastly circumscribed powers.

Instead, I see Kevin McCarthy is now threatening Merrick Garland with an "investigation" and ordering him to preserve all documents. Ooooooh! Maybe, after the coming Republican landslide, they can appoint an independent counsel; maybe John Durham or Robert Mueller is available. Why would anyone take McCarthy's threat seriously? If you don't grasp that in today's America there is no equality before the law, there is no point even discussing public affairs. (Read more.)

From Mike Huckabee:

It seemed in 2016 to be just a handful of rogue FBI and DOJ officials. But we now know beyond doubt, with the shameful pre-dawn raid by 30+ FBI agents on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home to confiscate 15 boxes of materials, that it’s a systemic, methodical, highly orchestrated attempt to shut half the country completely out. Two things MUST happen, like a one-two punch to put an end to this travesty:

First punch: Every conservative –- and fair-minded liberal –- must galvanize and gear up to change Congress in November, in a landslide.

Knockout punch: After we do that and Trump announces, we need to rally around him and simply say, “He is the candidate.” He WILL be re-elected. That’s because he’s the only candidate who’ll have the guts to take on this incredibly corrupt machine. We MUST put him back in and let him do this. I’m convinced at this point that this is the only hope for our nation, to get it back to the point where people can believe in it. As it stands now, half of us, if not more than half, do not. (Read more.)

From Red State:

There is nothing the Biden administration and the left at large want more than another January 6th moment before the mid-terms. They long for it, and they are willing to do anything to try to manipulate a reaction out of the right to feed into their narrative. Why? Because they believe it can save them from certain destruction in November.

Further, the FBI specifically wants justification to fight its war on “domestic terrorism.” They want to crush you and anyone who thinks like you. All they need is some on the right to lash out to enact their plan, and they have the entirety of the country’s institutions, including the press, supporting them.
Let me be frank: Do not give them what they want.

Now is not the time to play into the hands of our opponents, and you will not beat the FBI and these other corrupt institutions via disorganized attacks from the outside, no matter how good it might feel in the short term. A red line was crossed with this raid on Trump’s home, and electoral vengeance is justified. But it must come in ways that are actually effective, and that means being strategic and playing the long game. It’s going to take a Republican Congress in 2023 and a Republican president in 2025 to make any headway against this insanity. There is no other way, and once the tables are turned, any Republican politician who doesn’t have the stomach to fight back must be banished. (Read more.)

From Compact Mag:

Love him or hate him, during Trump’s presidency, the economy was strong, markets were up, inflation was under control, gas prices were low, illegal border crossings were down, crime was lower, trade deals were renegotiated, ISIS was defeated, NATO allies were stepping up, and China was stepping back (a little). Deny all that if you want to. The point here is that something like 100 million Americans believe it, strongly, and are bewildered and angered by elite hatred for the man they think delivered it.
Nor was Trump’s record all that radical—much less so than that of Joe Biden, who is using school-lunch funding to push gender ideology on poor kids, to cite but one example. Trump’s core agenda—border protection, trade balance, foreign restraint—was quite moderate, both intrinsically and in comparison to past Republican and Democratic precedent. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Trump neglected much of his own agenda in favor of the old Chamber of Commerce, fusionist, Reaganite, Conservatism, Inc., agenda. Corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and bombing Syria: These are all things Trump’s base doesn’t want, but the oligarchs desperately do, which Trump gave them. And still they try to destroy him. (Read more.)