If Democrats Criminalize Opposition And Cripple The Court, Democracy Is DeadOnly if a critical mass of Americans ‘know what time it is’ will there be any hope of combating this onslaught.By: Ben Weingarten
August 28, 2023
Democrats are seeking to land a one-two punch to cement their control of America today and for generations to come: Criminalize the political opposition and cripple the last authority to which the opposition might appeal in defense of its rights.
This is one way to understand two running lines of attack that may appear independent but are inextricably intertwined.
Criminalizing the OppositionThe first consists of the unprecedented, Soviet show trial-style “show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” “cases” conjured up against Donald Trump and two dozen others in his orbit, chiefly including his lawyers. The zealous prosecutors have many motives for torturing laws to hang them around the neck of the former president and GOP front-runner in the middle of a campaign — a frivolous and vengeful prosecutorial effort pursued arguably in violation of laws, norms, and core principles of justice.
While turning the First and Sixth Amendments into dead letters, these cases also effectively criminalize the seeking of office of anyone who might hold unauthorized views, the Republican contesting of elections or questioning of election integrity, and such Republicans’ legal defense.
“You can go to jail if you disagree with us, and particularly if you threaten our power and privilege,” our betters are saying through their chilling lawfare jihad. The point is that if Americans cannot be trusted to choose leaders within a narrow set of regime-approved bounds, the regime will have to force them upon us by hook or by crook. Locking up the opposition has always been a potential endgame for the ruling class in its war on wrongthink.
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Crippling the CourtThe only thing that may stand in the way of Trump, or any other political dissenters threatened with contrived charges going forward, is the Supreme Court. This brings us to part two of the one-two punch: the Democrats’ sustained attack on the highest court in the land.
Democrats have grown ever more unhinged about the Supreme Court because it represents perhaps the last powerful American institution they do not wholly control. “Borking,” the “high-tech lynching” of Justice Clarence Thomas, and the caper against Justice Brett Kavanaugh normalized vicious political attacks on non-leftist justices aimed at destroying them or, at minimum, cowing them into submission once seated.
By extension, these assaults normalized vicious political attacks on the court itself. For if the justices themselves were deplorable and irredeemable, then so too was the court — a court now to be treated with the same contempt as any other political institution. In reality, what the leftist assailants objected to was that these justices might not rule in accord with the left’s wishes. The court, in short, was illegitimate if it was not leftist.
The assault on the court escalated with the Dobbs leak, which imperiled its ability to function. The intent was not only to exert maximum political pressure on the justices to alter their ruling in accord with pro-abortion activists, but to intimidate them into doing so under threat of bodily harm. The left-wing mob’s threatening conduct was abided by a law enforcement apparatus that refused to arrest those who illegally agitated outside the justices’ homes. Kavanaugh even faced an assassination attempt. The Dobbs leak reflected contempt for the rule of law, for the court as an institution, and for the American people whose rights the court exists to protect.
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Source:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/28/if-democrats-criminalize-opposition-and-cripple-the-court-democracy-is-dead/
