"The Durham Report and History"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Durham Report and History”

May 30, 2023

 

“Who controls the past controls the future.

Who controls the present controls the past.”

                                                                                                                                George Orwell (1903-1950)

                                                                                                                                Nineteen-Eighty-Four, 1949

 

In his 1982 story of a small Irish village, Passing the Time in Ballymenone, American historian Henry Glassie (1941-) wrote: “History is not the past but a map of the past, drawn from a particular point of view…” All histories reflect the author. But good historians account for that, differentiating between actual events and their personal opinions. The Founding Fathers were conscious of history when they selected Washington as the capital of the new United States in 1790. It was a “federal enclave,” separate from both the commercial/industrial north and the agrarian south. It was not beholden to one party or one faction.

 

However, over time, as its bureaucracy increased and as public sector unions took sway, Washington changed; so that today in the District, according to the Pew Research Center, Democrat registrations, among federal government employees, outnumber Republican registrations two to one. While the leaders of Washington’s agencies reflect whichever party is in power, permanent federal government employees are, on balance, sympathetic to the Democrat Party. 

 

The purpose of the Durham Report was to shine light on nefarious attempts to affect the outcome of the 2016 election – to address the widely accepted view that Donald Trump colluded with Russia to affect the outcome of the Presidential election that year. It also offers an alternative (and more accurate) perspective on subsequent efforts to undermine Mr. Trump’s Presidency. The Report details how the nation’s premier investigatory and intelligence services, in cooperation with the Clinton campaign, falsely implicated Mr. Trump as having colluded with Vladimir Putin to sway the election.   

 

While unsurprising to those of us skeptical of accusations of Russia collusion on the part of the Trump campaign in 2016, findings in the Report should concern all Americans. The idea that a few senior officials in Washington’s intelligence services would try to influence the outcome of a Presidential election campaign should send shivers up the spines of anyone who believes in our Constitution and the democratic process. I recognize there are those who believe Donald Trump was and is so vile a person that any means to keep him from office were and are justifiable, but that line of thinking leads to totalitarianism. 

 

Like many at the time, I was skeptical that Mr. Putin would prefer the mercurial Mr. Trump, a man he did not know as a politician, to a woman he did know and with whom he had dealt. The accusation, on its face, seemed absurd. What we did not know, and what the Durham Report tells us, is the extent to which leaders in Washington’s intelligence bureaucracy would go to provide federal support for one Party’s candidate. 

 

Forty years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously wrote in The Washington Post: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”  But facts can be misconstrued, mislabeled, or falsified. “Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes truth,” is a law of propaganda, something known to psychologists as an “illusion of truth.” The Durham Report did not include indictments, but I suspect Special Counsel John Durham was concerned first with preventing another illicit attempt to use government employees to affect an election, but also with how history would recall the 2016 election and its aftermath. The Country does not need to be divided any further than it already is.

 

In a recent article for the Manhattan Institute, on a different subject, Zach Goldberg and Eric Kaufman wrote as to how facts can be “framed or contextualized” to increase political polarization. Compare, for example, mainstream media’s reporting on January 6 to their reports on Russian collusion. Both January 6 and the Russian collusion were undemocratic and violated the spirit of the Constitution, if not its actual principles. But one was performed in the open, for all to see. The other was done in secret, with falsified documents and lies to Congress. The January 6 riot was an illicit, but ridiculous unarmed attack on the Capital. It was not an insurrection, as the media likes to call it. The rioters were unarmed and there were no political or military leaders. The Capital police were armed, with one policeman shooting and killing an unarmed woman as she climbed through a window. The attack had no chance of succeeding. The best barometer we have to measure any shock to the nation is the stock market, an impartial assessor. On January 5^th, 2021, the Dow Jones Industrial Averages (DJIA) closed at 30,391.60. On January 6, they closed at 30,829.40, up 1.4%. On the 7^th, they rose again to 31,041.13. A week later they closed at 31,060.47.  In contrast, following the attacks on 9/11, markets were shuttered. When they re-opened six days later, the DJIA declined by 7.1%. On December 8, 1941, the Monday after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the DJIA closed down 3.5%. 

 

Yet prosecution of the January 6 participants proceeds. While participants in the Russian collusion are enriching themselves, giving speeches and selling books, more than a thousand January 6 rioters have been charged, with some languishing in jail without due process. The contrast is stark between Merrick Garland who weaponized the Justice Department and Special Counsel John Durham who chose not to indict those who had misused their power and position to pursue a false story. One abetted a polarized nation; the other helped soothe differences. What will history say?

 

The biggest scourge that faces us is not January 6 or even the Russian collusion hoax – it is wokeness, with its attack on free speech and its confiscation of the English language. It has polarized and bifurcated our nation. We need the healing that Mr. Durham offered, not the lies and the salt-in-the-wound that is the preference of Mr. Garland and minions like Adam Schiff and Liz Cheney. In Reason and Common Sense, George Santayana wrote: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Not knowing John Durham, I cannot be certain of his intent, but the consequence of his Report, as I see it, is an attempt to set the record straight as to exactly what happened and who truly colluded with Russia during the summer of 2016, and to prevent such iniquitous activities in the future. Durham did not seek retribution. He provided the nation with an honest rendering of the facts. Let history be the judge.

"Donald Trump - Antihero?"

 If we weren’t so uptight and fearful of offense, one might find humor in today’s politics. A hundred years ago Finley Peter Dunne would have had fun with what our political class has provided. Mark Twain would have enjoyed chronicling John Kerry’s chasing around the globe in his exhaust-spewing private jet warning the multitudes to stay out of the gas-guzzling vehicles they need to get to work. Mel Brooks, in his prime and without the puritans who now dominate our cultural and media institutions looking over his shoulder, could have made us look in the mirror at what we have done to ourselves and our society. But, sadly, the ability to laugh at ourselves has become a lost art.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Donald Trump – Antihero?”

July 28, 2022

 

“Recently, scholars have used antihero archetypes to describe politicians and

explain their effect and affect, including former U.S. President Donald Trump.”

                                                                                                                                Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

                                                                                                                                July 23, 2022

 

Antihero is defined as a character who lacks qualities of a traditional hero – morality, courage, an obeisance to traditional rules of behavior. Wikipedia lists such fictional characters as typifying the antihero: Shakespeare’s Othello, John Milton’s Lucifer, Jane Eyre’s Edward Rochester, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, and George MacDonald Fraser’s Harry Flashman. Do you, as does Wikipedia, see our former President among that group? I leave you to be the judge.

 

No matter one’s opinion, the word ‘antihero’ may make wince the large swath of Americans who see Mr. Trump as a villain – some for his character, which was revealed in his lack of positive response during the afternoon of the January 6 riots; others for his antiestablishment/anti-elitist credentials, which threatened official Washington, including members of January 6 committee. ‘Hero,’ even when preceded by ‘anti’ would not be to their liking. 

 

Yet even those who despise him cannot ignore the fact he was (and is) a hero to his estimated twenty to thirty million die hard supporters, most of whom live in non-elitist communities and work in non-establishment jobs. His supporters, who encompass all genders and races, see big-city and suburban financial and cultural elites as sanctimonious, hypocritical, and uninterested in the social and economic mobility that has characterized the United States. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Joseph Epstein, wrote “My sense is that just as Mr. Trump gave us Joe Biden, liberal culture earlier gave us Mr. Trump.” I agree. Mr. Trump was thrust upon us, in reaction to those who derided American history, patronized minorites and who treated millions of white, working-class Americans as ‘deplorables.’  Those who now reject him most vehemently bear primary responsibility for his political rise. 

 

Donald Trump went to Washington to clean out the “swamp,” and the “swamp” fought back just as Senator Chuck Schumer said it would, when he told Rachel Maddow on MSNBC in January 2017: “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you…he’s being really dumb to do this.” Ms. Maddow did not follow up, as a good investigative journalist would have done, on the implication that intelligence services have too much power, that they embody the “swamp.”

 

Had Mr. Trump been born five hundred years earlier, Shakespeare might have found him a candidate for one of his tragedies. He has an outsized ego and lacks principle, but he took on an adversary (the “swamp”) embedded so deeply into our culture that attempts to cleanse it were akin to Hercules’ task of cleaning the Augean Stables. Sadly, unlike Hercules, he failed.

 

Regardless of whether Mr. Trump is an antihero, hero or neither, it is my ardent wish – despite what he achieved: increased employment and incomes for minority workers, the Abraham Accords, restoration of pride in America’s imperfect greatness and more – that he retire from public life and release Republican candidates to battle issues not personalities. However, despite their demonization of him for his moral shortcomings following the 2020 election, Democrats do not want this to happen, for they recognize that their best chance of election success in 2022 and 2024 is to keep his name front and center, which is the fundamental – though unstated – excuse for the January 6 committee. Mr. Trump has become Democrats’ biggest asset and Republicans’ biggest liability. It is why Democrat PACs throw money at Republican fringe candidates supported by Mr. Trump. (Ironically and indicative of our odd state of political affairs, Mr. Biden has become Democrats’ biggest liability and Republicans’ biggest asset.)

 

Frankly, I do not care whether Donald Trump is considered an antihero or not. He is (and was) a force of nature that arose to contest an increasingly out-of-touch, entitled, moralizing and self-righteous elitist establishment – composed of people from both political parties – who instinctively disagree with the Chinese proverb that it is better to teach a man to fish than to give him a fish. While Mr. Trump was (and is) a flawed man, there was good his Administration accomplished. And his Presidency was tragic in that it cost him a fortune, damaged what reputation he had, and the “swamp,” as we know through the ongoing (and unheralded) Durham investigation, survives. That is a tragedy for all Americans.

"Trust - In Government Bureaucrats or in the People?"

 Mark Twain, who for several years lived in Hartford, Connecticut, is alleged to have said: “If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.” That was true this past weekend here in Connecticut. On Saturday, a beautiful sunny day with temperatures in the mid 50s, my wife and I saw two bluebirds in a field near where we live. On Sunday I brushed four inches of snow off my forlorn Lexus.

 

We will be away visiting grandchildren over the next six nights, while their parents fly off, as our bluebirds apparently did not.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.b;ogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Trust – In Government Bureaucrats or in the People?”

February 16, 2022

 

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers

of the society but the people themselves…”

                                                                                                                Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

                                                                                                                Letter to William Charles Jarvis

                                                                                                                20 September 1820

 

In 1863, on a cool, sunny November day in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, four months after the Battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln gave a four-minute address. In it he reminded the audience: “Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.” The freedom we experience in this 233-year-old experiment, which is the United States, is based upon the individual citizen being the ultimate source of power, expressed through their representatives in municipalities, states and Washington, D.C. Granted, in times of emergency, presidents and governors have assumed exceptional powers, as did Lincoln when he signed the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act of 1863. Nevertheless, fundamental to our democracy is a belief that the people have a greater understanding of their self-interests than do the politicians, bureaucrats and experts who operate the machinery of government. It is, collectively, the wisdom of the people that combine to produce the political strength of our communities, states and nation.

 

All elections are important and as usual we are being told that the current one is critical, because the two sides are so far apart in how they define individual freedom and in their visions for the future. Democrats, too often, believe that government bureaucrats and “experts” can better decide what people should do than individuals themselves: lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, what courses should be taught children in public schools, what forms of energy we should consume, and what opinions should be allowed on social media. Republicans, in general, believe that people make wise choices when offered alternatives: to mask or not; to take a vaccine or not; to have their children learn Critical Race Theory or not; to buy a hybrid, a gas-guzzler or an electric vehicle. They want options in school choice and be able to weigh alternatives.

 

While personally I believe in vaccines and feel certain that masks can, at a minimum, reduce the spread of germs, I have a stronger conviction in common sense – stay home if one has a temperature; when in the grocery store, be alert for (and avoid) those who appear to have a cold; don’t get too close to people, (though I make an exception with my wife, children and grandchildren). Democracy is threatened by those who want to control our daily lives and shut down debate. Democracy needs the freedom that diversity of thought brings. Born on campuses, wokeism has fledged onto Wall Street, into businesses, courts, entertainment, sports and politics. Woke censorship threatens liberty. Former Vice President Hubert Humphrey, in a 1970 speech, said: “Freedom is hammered out on the anvil of discussion, debate and dissent.”

 

Politicians act most responsibly when they are closest to the voters who elected them. Democracy works best in local elections, where power is “held,” as Peggy Noonan wrote in last Saturday’s The Wall Street Journal, “closest to the individual and the family…” It is least effective in gerrymandered districts where one party has control and political minorities have no or minimal voice. Government has grown far bigger than the Founders envisioned. Perhaps that was inevitable, as populations soared and societal needs, such as defense, retirement, healthcare, education and social programs, increased. But each generation of politicians should be conscious of bureaucratic dysfunction and the potential for corruption as the size of government increases. Bureaucrats, whose careers depend on ever-expanding government, have little incentive to support those who want to limit spending and, thus, their career opportunities. The insidiousness of invasive government could be seen in last Friday’s release of details from the Durham Investigation, which showed that Mr. Trump was spied upon – something he has long claimed – not only during the 2016 campaign, but while he was in the White House. And mainstream media censored this news by ignoring it. 

 

Individually, we have all made poor decisions, but, in aggregate and over the years, a belief in the wisdom of the people is what distinguishes a democracy from an autocracy. Political correctness and identity politics are taking us in new and dangerous directions, which has led many to believe that a professional class of bureaucratic experts can be trusted to make better decisions than pesky voters. Two years after COVID-19, the governors of twenty-six states still exercise emergency powers. Is this warranted?

 

Granted, there is a fine line between personal, individual liberty and anarchy. But it is a line we have navigated for over 200 years. The word anarchy is derived from the Greek word meaning “having no ruler,” a belief system that rejects governmental authority. That is not the case of those of us who argue for greater individual freedom. We believe in government, but one that is limited and non-intrusive. Our differences lie in opposing opinions as to who to trust more with power – unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats or the people? We are commanded to follow the science, but what does that mean when we have experts who offer contradictory opinions? Which should we follow? Individuals should have choices. Science, by definition, is never settled. Like democracy, it is always a work in progress. In a perfect world, the media would help us reach independent conclusions by offering more than one side of a story, but, sadly, that is not the case, as they have become propaganda arms for their preferred political philosophies.

 

I, for one, trust the people, whether it is truckers in Canada or parents in Virginia.

"A Middle Way - Is It Possible?"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“A Middle Way – Is It Possible?”

December 18, 2019

“Medio tutissimus ibis”

(You will go most safely by the middle way)

                                                                                                Ovid (43BC-c.17AD)

                                                                                                Metamorphoses

In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal (“I’m Partial to Impartiality,” December 12, 2019) Joseph Epstein wrote, “I happen to be someone who, in politics, yearns for impartiality.” I suspect that that desire for impartiality is common to most Americans – in the current environment, it “is a consummation devoutly to be wished,” as Hamlet would say. Most recognize we live in a pluralistic society, comprised of people from every nation on earth, representing all religions and races. In our homes, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates, we speak 350 languages. Nevertheless, we have in common a love of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We favor a middle road, which accommodates all travelers. But, in recent times, with our biases, real and imagined, we struggle for a common purpose and a common morality. Where I disagree with Mr. Epstein, whose mind and writing style I admire and envy, is that he puts principal blame on Donald Trump for the discord that has disrupted our lives. I would certainly agree that Mr. Trump has accentuated the divide, but real blame is more widely distributed.

Politicians have compartmentalized the electorate – youth versus age, urban versus rural, rich versus poor, people of color versus Caucasians, immigrants versus nativists, gays versus straight, globalists versus nationalists. As well, there are those in the industrialized (and former industrialized) parts of the Country who have seen coastal elites become wealthy, while their incomes have fallen or grown stagnant. There are a few immigrants who have chosen not to adapt to the culture of their adopted country, and there are people who have been here for generations who fear a breakdown in the social unity they have enjoyed. A culture of victimization, identity politics and moral relativism accentuates these divides. There are secularized elites on the coasts who cannot understand why folk in rural areas cling to religion and guns. There are those who have hated Mr. Trump from when he first ran for the Presidency, people who will do anything to remove him from office. (Last week, Nancy Pelosi, in a slip-of-the-tongue, said she had been working on impeachment for two-and-a-half years. Yet, hypocritically, she claims it is with great sadness she has advanced articles of impeachment.) And, of course, social media allows factions to gather in greater numbers, with more intense focus. And there are those like me who fear that the decades-long tilt in Washington toward statism, with the acquiescence of mainstream media, risks the fundamentals of personal liberty and economic liberty on which this nation was founded. In good conscience, I cannot remain silent.

So, how do those of us who fear the loss of individual liberty compromise with opponents’ intent on subjecting the people to greater regulation and governance by the State? How do we stay midstream? If we do not, will we rip the nation apart? We recognize that the natural path of government is toward more regulation, greater power and, of course, higher taxes to support its bigger size. And what should the role of government be? We wonder, are we correct to worry? Illumination is found in a 1787 letter from Thomas Jefferson to James Madison: “I hold that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellions, as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.”

The process of governing is never as smooth as it seems in retrospect. Violence erupted on the floor of the House in pre-Civil War days. Reconstruction wasn’t much easier. Roosevelt’s New Deal created anguish, among conservatives, as did the Civil Rights riots in the 1960s and among progressives during the Reagan years. Differences are a hallmark of a democratic system. Most people prefer a centrist approach to the extremism of today. But that requires political objectivity, a characteristic foreign to most of us, including many of those in government.

Recent events have given confirmation that fears of an imperious government are justified. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), in a report written by Clayton Thomas of the Congressional Research Service, claimed that American military and national security leaders have been lying about progress in Afghanistan for eighteen years and across three Administrations. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report showed that FBI agents methodically lied about the Russian collusion, asserting, as Newt Gingrich recently wrote, “…that everything Congressman Devin Nunes had reported about the FBI’s activity was true, and everything Adam Schiff had said was a lie.” While Mr. Horowitz’s report suffers from double-speak and government gobbledygook and could use Strunk and White’s Elements of Style for clarity, he ends his section on the four FISA applications: “We concluded that the failures described above and in this report represent serious performance failures by the supervisory and non-supervisory agents with responsibility over the FISA applications.”  And we have yet to hear from John Durham, the special prosecutor appointed to look into the origins of the Russian investigation. Richard Jewell’s lawyer’s summation, in the eponymous movie directed by Clint Eastwood, tells the jurors a truth, that his client’s accusers were “two of the most powerful forces in the world, the United States government and the media.” It is the willful use of government power for personal or Party purposes that we should fear. On the flip side, the UK elections last Thursday saw a democratic expression of the will of people. In Boris Johnson’s election, socialist and anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn lost, and the electorate voted for Brexit – the nation state of Britain was deemed to be a greater protector of individual sovereignty than the multinational European Union.  

The challenge for republican democracy is accommodation – how do we access the middle way – without abandoning principles. The United States is a hundred times larger, in terms of population, than it was in 1776 and far more diverse; yet the principles embedded in our founding documents are ageless. Democracy is hard work and includes an acceptance of accountability. We are a nation where the people – not elected leaders, bureaucrats or military leaders – are sovereign. Sovereignty is a privilege that presumes responsibility and requires an educated electorate. It feeds on free markets. It demands impartiality on the part of government servants. It calls for unbiased reporting by the media. Yet, both government leaders and the media have failed. We have seen their bias and how they have been used – both bureaucrats and reporters – to try to unseat a duly elected President. We need government to provide communal services like schools and roads; we need a government of laws that is a guarantor of property and human rights; one that is an arbiter of disputes and that protects the cultural cohesion of society. We need a government that is accountable to a sovereign people, people who must be responsible and accountable citizens. E Pluribus Unum tells us a middle way is possible. But we cannot abandon liberty.

It is easy to slip, Eloi-like, into the comfort of permitting the state to assume responsibility for more and more aspects of our lives. That is the promise of socialism, which is sold most easily to those forgoing the dignity that comes with hard work, who lack aspiration and personal responsibility, to those without knowledge of our civic structures and economic history. The dream of socialism may sound enticing, but the reality is servitude. A middle way, even when deemed safe, only works when we understand the stakes.

"Impeachment"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Impeachment”

November 7, 2019

“Why not amend the Constitution so that any President

who is impeached and acquitted is permitted to serve a third term?”

                                                                                                William Mattox

                                                                                                “Impeachment Needs a Replay Booth”

                                                                                                Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2019

                                                                                               

Like most clever but sensible suggestions for Congress – the elimination of frivolous impeachment attempts – Mr. Mattox’s proposal will never be adopted. It makes too much sense for a Congress that prefers political theater to judiciously carrying out their responsibilities as legislators.  

The American journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken once wrote: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the people alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” And the granddaddy of all hobgoblins is impeachment, at least here in the fourth quarter of 2019, a year from a presidential election that will see the most vilified President we have ever had run against one of the most far-left leaning candidates ever nominated. “Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy night,” said Bette Davis in the 1951 movie “It’s All About Eve.”  For us Americans, it will be a bumpy year.

Cynicism fills the air. Politicians live by scruples known only to themselves. Their concern is their own welfare and that of their party. Their goal is power. That end justifies whatever means or processes are felt necessary to achieve it. Yet, they wrap themselves in cloaks of righteous indignation. “Every member should support allowing the American people to hear the facts for themselves…this is nothing less than our democracy.” Stirring but hypocritical words spoken by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as she allowed Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to conduct impeachment hearings – hearings held in secret, where Republicans were not allowed to call witnesses and to which Mr. Trump’s lawyers were banned from attending. Schiff and the media have made much of diplomats fired, like the former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Do they forget that elections have consequences? Foreign policy is the responsibility of the President and changing ambassadors is expected and common.

The imbroglio of impeachment reminds one of Alice’s adventures in court over the case of the missing tarts. When the King asked the jury to consider their verdict. “No, no said the Queen. Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” What we are witnessing is a farce, but one with sobering consequences that, at best, will rebound to impale she (or he) who wields the sword when party leadership next changes, and at worst will damage our democratic Republic. In a recent op-ed in “The Hill,” Alan Dershowitz wrote that a foresighted Alexander Hamilton had warned that the decision to move forward with impeachment will be “more regulated by the comparative strength of parties than the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut and now investigating the special counsel’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, spoke in March 2018 at the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford, CT: “One thing that I try to bear in mind, and try to encourage in new young prosecutors, particularly those who are making their bones or cutting their teeth, is an awareness of the incredible power that is wielded by law enforcement, and perhaps federal law enforcement in particular. Issuing a subpoena can destroy someone’s reputation. It can damage their business, hurt their families. It is an awesome power that we have, that should only be used in appropriate instances.” Wise words that should be heeded by powerful agencies like the IRS, the Justice Department and the EPA, as well as by members of Congress, especially the latter, as they satiate a lust for revenge that had its genesis in hatred.

In the recent vote to formally launch an impeachment investigation, the fact that not one Republican voted with the majority suggests that Hamilton’s concern is real. Looking at the three previous impeachments – Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton – two were acquitted (Johnson and Clinton) and Mr. Nixon resigned, as he likely would have been convicted, as his was a crime that could be deemed nonpolitical. The attack on Mr. Trump has been political from the GetGo, as the Resistance began before he took office. The Russian probe came to naught, as did attempts by Stormy Daniels and others to discredit him. The odor from Ukraine has more of a Biden smell than a Trump aroma. Unlike some Republicans when attacked, Mr. Trump fights back, a response that has surprised a Left used to submissive opponents.

The Left would have us believe that any defense of Trump is a “defense of the indefensible,” a phrase that has a nice ring, but one which has no applicability in this instance, as the aggressor has been for three years the Resistance, comprised of those who do not believe Mr. Trump deserves the Presidency, that he did not win  fairly, that  he is dangerous and unqualified, a potential dictator. What these detractors fail to see is their own, undemocratic behavior – using intelligence bureaucracies to find dirt on Mr. Trump, conducting closed-door meetings to which Republicans are barred, denying freedom of speech on social media and in universities, curtailing freedoms of religious expression. A government that wants to regulate one’s behavior is one that is dangerous to liberty. Which Party wants to provide Medicare for all, free college and cradle-to-grave care? As attractive as those programs sound, they come with a cost, not just in dollars, but more importantly in freedoms foregone. As Kimberly Strassel wrote in her new book Resistance: “Tyrants don’t get rid of rules; they pile them on.” Love him or hate him, President Trump has rolled back regulations, providing more freedom to individuals, not less. It is not he who is a threat to liberty.

There will always be extremists in a nation of 330 million people – psychos that represent the far right and the far left. They need to be watched, but they don’t represent the real risks to our democratic Republic. It is when extremism infiltrates mainstream thinking we have to worry, and that is what we are seeing in the resistance to Donald Trump. I have often expressed my dismay at Mr. Trump’s character, his Tweets, his rudeness and his profanity. But he does not represent a threat to our Country. If coarse language speaks louder than positive deeds, then criticism of Mr. Trump is warranted. But if mellifluous words disguise odious actions, then it is the Left that bears watching. The media have their eyes Right, leaving the Left unguarded. They are enamored by the “wokeness” of progressive politicians, with their political correctness and identity politics, by the charisma of Hollywood and late-night TV talk-show hosts, and with ivory tower-ensconced social justice warriors in our universities.  

Impeachment is but the latest attempt to destroy the man who was elected in 2016, the most investigated President we have ever had. In hanging Russian collusion around his neck in January 2017, the Resistance thought they had him. Two years later, the Mueller Report found no collusion. The whole idea that Putin would have preferred the mercurial Donald Trump whom he did not know to Hillary Clinton whom he knew well and whom he had handled successfully never made sense. That Mr. Trump is boorish lent credibility to the belief he was chauvinistic, but, again, nothing incriminating was found. The conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, while Trumpian, was harmless and not unlike conversations other Presidents have had with their counterparts over the years. Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over.” That seems to define Democrats in Congress today, in their search for a grail that contains evidence implicating Mr. Trump in some impeachable offense.

Impeachment is a distraction to a people who must decide what sort of country they want – Socialism, with its costs in dollars and lost freedoms, or free market capitalism, which offers the social and economic escalator of opportunity that takes people up and down. For all of our sakes, I hope they choose the latter.