Here we are in the seventh week of the occupation of our nation’s capital. There are now enough razor wire, barricades and checkpoints to make the former Capital of the Free World a clone of Baghdad’s Green Zone; more troops occupy the capital now than when the British burned it in 1814. One must present one’s papers to armed guards in order even to approach the one-time “People’s Temple of Democracy,” a.k.a. the Capitol Building. Meanwhile, people illegally cross our southern border by the thousands while those charged with protecting those borders from this sort of incursion – and thereby, with the preservation of our national sovereignty – are told by their bosses in the Biden Administration not to inconvenience these illegal entries.
Anyone else think there’s something BAD wrong with this situation?
Let’s consider the American version of the Reichstag Fire, the so-called “Insurrection” that occupied the Capitol Building for a few hours on January 6 of this year. It was an odd sort of insurrection, to say the least; only a rioter was shot and there was no attempt by the occupiers to hold the building by armed force – the usual hallmark of a true “insurrection.” So this was nothing of the sort. It was instead a reprehensible attack on a Government building by a mob. But it was not unique. In the past year there have been other such instances outside Washington, some of which have become public knowledge despite the best efforts of our national media to look the other way and to force others to do likewise.
No matter. The attack on the Capitol Building was violent enough, chaotic enough and near enough to major media outlets to be an easily-exploited cause célèbre, precipitating a convenient lockdown of the city and a growing search for “domestic terrorists,” a.k.a. anyone not down with the radical Democrat remaking of America. Marinus van der Lubbe couldn’t have done a better job.
Now, with the active connivance of the Democrat party’s stenographic pool which this nation’s once-proud media has become; with the vigorous assistance of the apparatchiks in the Federal Bureaucracy; the wholehearted cooperation of their clones in academia and the diligent work of their allies among Silicon Valley’s Lords of Tech, the Great Purge has begun.
Remember “Loyalty Oaths?” They’re back and will soon be widespread, as the “search for extremist elements” among National Guard units will seep first into the military and the Federal Bureaucracy, and from there will inevitably spread throughout our society. “Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the TEA Party?” “Do you know anyone who listened to Rush Limbaugh? How about Ben Shapiro?” “You look like you need ‘re-education,’ fellah…”
It’s all so tediously familiar, a carbon-copy of the same, boring authoritarian takeover script we’ve seen a hundred times.
-1 Manufacture a crisis.
-2 Blame “enemies.”
-3 Demand power to “root out” said enemies.
-4 Cow your political opponents and consolidate power before a majority realizes that the goal is permanent power, not public safety.
-5 Enjoy the perquisites of a single-party state.
Perhaps this is why the Left is in such a sweat to eliminate the last vestiges of historical knowledge in our country: such knowledge might inconveniently remind Americans that paroxysms of rage and fear are easily exploited by demagogues and inevitably lead to a bad end. Historical knowledge warns us all that while our system of government is unusually good because it was created out of respect for the freedom of the individual, it is unusually fragile because it relies on an educated public that cherishes forbearance, moderation and an acknowledgement of limits to power in both its government and its political leaders. As these values are leached away or negated by false historical narratives, government becomes susceptible to control by idealogues and despots, with the attendant bad effects for the country and its citizens.
In preparing for the crises yet to come we should all have another read of Lord Acton’s “Essays on Freedom and Power.” Or, for a more modern point of view re-read Orwell’s “1984.” It’s less a novel than a roadmap these days.
