Tea at Trianon: Indictment Of Trump Is A Declaration Of War Against American Voters

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

Friday, August 4, 2023

Indictment Of Trump Is A Declaration Of War Against American Voters

From The Federalist:

In Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department took the unprecedented step of indicting former President Donald Trump — Biden’s chief rival in the upcoming 2024 election — for repeatedly expressing his opinion that the last election was stolen, rigged, and unfair.

It’s an opinion millions of Americans share, and to which they are unquestionably entitled thanks to the First Amendment. That includes Trump, who has said repeatedly (and recently) that the 2020 election was stolen. He’ll probably keep saying it until his dying day, and he has every right to do so.

The idea that our Justice Department can indict someone, especially the sitting president’s main political rival, over speech that’s protected by the First Amendment is simply insane. It puts us firmly into banana republic territory, where tinpot dictators jail their political opponents ahead of election day to ensure their “reelection.”

Simply put, this indictment is nothing more than a declaration of war against American voters and their constitutional right to free speech. As Jonathan Turley noted on Twitter, “If you take a red pen to all of the material presumptively protected by the First Amendment, you can reduce much of the indictment to haiku.”

Consider what’s alleged, and what isn’t, by DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith (who, let’s not forget, was once rebuked by a unanimous Supreme Court after he tried to put a GOP governor in prison during the Obama administration). The charges against Trump do not include incitement to violence on Jan. 6, 2021. You might be surprised to hear that after Smith’s hyperbolic press conference Tuesday, in which he went on and on about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and how horrible it was.

Instead, the charges are that Trump committed conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. Sounds scary, but what it amounts to is the criminalization of opinions with which Jack Smith and the Biden Justice Department happen to disagree. (Read more.)