The criminalization of political differences destroys what’s left of civility in our political culture.
By Jonathan S. Tobin
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/448050/trump-campaign-russia-lock-them-mentalityFor a year, Democrats listened to crowds at Trump rallies and even the delegates at the Republican National Convention
engage in chants of “lock her up.” Today, the Internet is reverberating with Democrats engaging in some virtual revenge as the
latest leaks about the investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians have indicated that
Jared Kushner is a “person of interest.”
That means liberals are chortling about the president’s son-in-law having to choose between a jail cell and informing on his wife’s
father. Of course, even the Washington Post story that reported the leak indicated that Kushner is not a target of the investigation
or even a principal focus of its activities and that he hasn’t actually been accused of any wrongdoing. But in a fishing expedition
in search of a crime that no one can put his finger on — whether it is treason or incomplete disclosure forms — anyone can be a
person of interest when he’s at the nexus of the Trump campaign and government like Kushner.
Of course, Ivanka’s husband isn’t the only one being fitted for an orange jumpsuit by Trump’s foes. Former national-security adviser
Michael Flynn has already invoked his Fifth Amendment rights to avoid incrimination. It appears the former general didn’t report
the money he got from a Putin propaganda outlet or the fees he was paid for lobbying for another authoritarian government, Turkey’s,
when he was getting ready to work in the West Wing. That’s certainly fishy and might be criminal, but so far all we know is that
he may have not told the truth about his activities and conversations. That’s enough to cause the wiseacres on morning talk shows
to label the decorated veteran not merely a bad choice for the NSA but a Russian “spy.”
Flynn is, of course, in no position to complain about people hoping to see him in jail, since he was the one that led the crowd in
“lock her up” chants at the GOP convention in Cleveland.
It’s important to state that if anyone on the Trump campaign really did collude with the Russians in any way with respect to the 2016
election, they do deserve to be locked up. The same applies to anyone else in the administration. That principle still is valid even if
those now looking to nail Flynn, Kushner, or anyone up to and including the Donald on any possible charge in the past dismissed
the very real apparent violations of regulations and laws involved in Hillary Clinton’s e-mail scandal as well as various other Obama
administration scandals involving the IRS or actual spying on journalists . . .
. . . Our constitutional system is not foolproof, but it works best in the context of a civic culture rooted in virtue and respect for
differences. After Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, neither party can claim to care much about virtue. And as both sides embrace a
“lock them up” outlook, tolerance of opposing views in the public square has been discarded in favor of a Facebook-feed mentality
in which all ideas and persons who don’t confirm our pre-existing prejudices and assumptions can be deleted and “defriended.”
The result isn’t just the collapse of civility that is taken for granted on both sides of the aisle but a political cycle in which the
impulse to criminalize differences has become the default reaction to losing an election. If that is where we are, America is not
merely a bifurcated nation but well on its way to banana-republic status.
(Emphasis added.---EA.)
