According to most opinion polls, Donald Trump is the leading candidate to become the next president of the United States. As of last Thursday, Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies. Former President Trump will not be sentenced until July 11, four days before the Republican National Convention. Trump will likely be nominated as the Republican representative.
Joe Biden, or whoever runs his social media accounts, posted on X (formerly Twitter) in response to the false conviction of a political opponent, “No one is above the law.” It’s surprising to hear Hunter Biden, the father of prostitution, crack smoking, and money laundering, make such a statement, but the president did not hesitate to do so. The left has abandoned any remaining claims to constitutional rule and embraced a very simple mantra: “All for your friends, all for the law.”
Conservatives may be uncomfortable with the idea of political enemies, but they won’t disappear if we close our eyes and hope for the next election.
America prides itself on the rule of law and the orderly transfer of power. Our ruling class lectures other nations’ leaders on the importance of constitutional order, liberal democracy, and human rights. So how did our shining city on a hill degenerate into a regime so corrupt that it would make a Third World dictator blush? One major reason is that conservatives abhor basic political opposition.
James Madison recognized in Federalist No. 51 that humans are not angels and that simply appealing to human good nature is not enough. “Ambition must be opposed to ambition,” he wrote. But this political balance cannot be achieved if the only guiding principle on either side is to avoid the use of power. A balance of power is always based on the idea that if one side violates norms, that side will reciprocate. Ronald Reagan understood that the doctrine of mutually assured destruction relies on a credible threat to use terrible power to restore order if red lines are crossed.
Conservative leaders have not only abandoned the idea of tempering ambition with ambition, but by demonizing the exercise of power, they have sanctified the principle of total surrender. Conservative pundits have turned politics, which has always been a contact sport, into a debate club, believing that the best arguments will win.
Existential Threat
America’s Founding Fathers certainly believed in free speech, but they also understood that ultimately only power, not lofty speech, can restrain power. Persuasion is based on a common religion, morality, and history. The further a political system moves from these organic bonds, the less able people are to reconcile their differences through debate and agreement.
Many people, even on the right, hate Donald Trump. They hate his crude personal behavior, they hate his response to the pandemic, they hate his weakness in the face of a security state bent on destroying him. I am not here to defend these undeniable aspects of his character, but Trump is merely the most visible target of a broader campaign to criminalize political opposition in the United States.
Joe Biden’s Justice Department on Friday succeeded in getting a 73-year-old woman sentenced to more than two years in prison for praying during a protest at an abortion clinic. Her family fears she will die in custody due to her age and health. Douglas McKee now faces possible jail time for posting memes insulting Hillary Clinton. Trump’s lawyers and many former officials in his administration are facing prosecution for allegedly intimidating tactics aimed at making it impossible for them to serve the former president.
Any political party that seriously opposes the current administration would understand this attack on its voters and presidential candidates as an existential threat, but Republicans have done nothing — beyond the ineffectual finger-pointing and balking that has become the GOP’s standard response.
Many Representatives and Senators are tweeting their anger, but that’s not enough. Ordinary voters vent their frustrations on social media because they have no other place to be heard. When public officials resort to the same behavior, it means one of three things: they’re cowards who won’t take action, they have no real power and are lying to their constituents, or they’re complicit in the destruction of the country.
Elections alone are not enough
Many conservatives pin their hopes on November 5th, believing that electoral procedures will avoid the need for substantive action. This faith in procedures has made them perpetual victims of a progressive establishment that has mastered the art of manipulating procedural outcomes. If Republicans can jail candidates, officials, and voters without exacting a political price, it is insanity to believe that elections will magically solve this problem.
Hunter Biden is a drug addict with a long history of hiring prostitutes, buying guns illegally, laundering money, etc. He almost certainly committed crimes within the jurisdiction of Republican prosecutors. If he didn’t, it doesn’t matter. The left has played around with jurisdiction and statutes of limitations in both the Trump and McKee cases.
Ambition must be made to curb ambition. Hunter Biden is not the only corrupt Democrat who has escaped justice due to the deference of Republican officials who want to be seen as nonpartisan. The era of such deference is over. Prosecutors should bring cases against every corrupt Democrat they can find and make it clear that these actions will continue until Trump and other political prisoners are pardoned.
Powerful Republican governors should apply pressure by enforcing immigration laws. The Biden Administration is encouraging illegal invasions of the country with the goal of permanently changing the demographics of the country and fundamentally shifting the nation’s electoral balance. Governors such as Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, who have already demonstrated their resistance to corrupt federal government orders, should lead the way by closing their state borders and deporting all illegal immigrants within their jurisdictions. Republican House members should stop all funding for foreign wars. In fact, they should completely defund the Administration.
Conservatives may be uncomfortable with the idea of political opponents, may find it antithetical to their principles to acknowledge that people in their own country are hostile to their way of life, but those people aren’t going to go away if they close their eyes and hope for the next election.
Whether people on the right like it or not, they have an enemy. That enemy has already succeeded in making it a crime to oppose the government, and unless ambition is checked by ambition, there is nothing to stop the left’s march to total domination. The Republican Party must exact a price from its political opponents or it will slide into total irrelevance. Anything for a friend, even the law for an enemy.
