Founding Father Alexander Hamilton once observed that arbitrary imprisonment is a tool of tyrants. As the list of political prisoners in America grows constantly, while actual criminals are released daily onto the streets, we have to ask ourselves if we are already being oppressed by petty dictators.
“The practice of arbitrary imprisonments have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny,” Alexander Hamilton once wrote in The Federalist Papers. If that is so, Americans are already living under a tyrannical government, one which holds political prisoners arbitrarily and unjustly.
The first, most obvious, and most egregious example is, of course, the Jan. 6 political prisoners. Over 1,200 Americans and counting have been arrested in connection with Jan. 6, some of them for no more than a text or being present on Capitol grounds that were normally public. Most of the Trump supporters on Jan. 6 were unarmed, and the majority were peaceful, while the only individuals murdered that day were protestors killed by Capitol police. Yet these Jan. 6 prisoners have been literally tortured in jail, deprived not only of rights but of basic necessities, treated worse than terrorists. Physical assault, lack of hygienic and medical necessities, weeks or months of solitary confinement — these were and are the realities for the Jan. 6ers.
One Oath Keeper who never entered the Capitol building and was unarmed was sentenced to 18 years in jail. The man who was photographed with his feet on Nancy Pelosi’s desk received four and a half years’ prison. Young Jake Lang has been in jail for over a thousand days without trial, let alone conviction. There’s even evidence to suggest the FBI might have entrapped many of the Jan. 6 protestors into committing a “crime” which the FBI then weaponized into a full-scale political persecution and media smear campaign (there were so many federal plants in the crowd that day that the FBI lost count).
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Then there are at least a dozen peaceful pro-lifers who face years in jail after being arrested (and some convicted) of the “crime” of blocking an abortion clinic with their protest — even though it’s debatable whether the pro-lifers even did block the clinic. Oh, but those pro-abortion radicals who attacked and vandalized and burned dozens or even hundreds of pro-life centers and churches? Almost all of them got off scot-free, with the feds evincing very little interest. Those pro-life protestors never destroyed property or attacked people, yet they are in handcuffs while pro-aborts who really did pose a threat of domestic terrorism are roaming free. That’s arbitrary imprisonment, if ever I saw it.
Or look at the case of Miles Guo, the Chinese dissident who was sensationally arrested and imprisoned early last year on fraud charges. Whether Guo actually committed fraud I don’t know; since the federal agencies who locked him up actively covered for Joe Biden and are involved in the shameful persecution of Jan. 6 prisoners, I personally am highly skeptical. In any case, Guo has been in jail since, and he has been denied bail more than once. The total hypocrisy of the federal government is clear, however, in the fact that two Chinese spies who were arrested for running an illicit Chinese Communist Party (CCP) police station in America were released on bail the same day of their arrest. That was right as Guo was denied bail.
Guo’s organization New Federal State of China argued that the CCP’s influence network had always aimed to influence and weaponize the U.S. justice system to lock up Guo, who was an influential, wealthy, and outspoken opponent of the CCP, not to mention an ally of prominent conservatives like Steve Bannon. One thing is certain: the anti-globalist, anti-CCP dissident has received shockingly different treatment from literal foreign agents working for our worst enemy. Hunter — and Joe — Biden are accused of engaging in money-laundering and tax fraud, but they have so far experienced no consequences, even though the Bidens are certainly more dangerous to the country than Guo is.
Hamilton was only a teenager when he joined the Revolutionary Army, staying true to the cause in the dark and discouraging days of 1776. He played an important role at the Battle of Yorktown, was a delegate at the Constitutional Convention, and served as the first U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under George Washington. Altogether, from the battlefield to the capital, from the military to politics, from impoverished obscurity to famous prosperity, Hamilton fought and suffered for liberty and was able to view both tyranny and freedom in practice from multiple perspectives. He knew well how hard freedom is to win and keep, how tyranny is always lurking in the shadows.
On the day after his birthday (January 11), it seems particularly appropriate to remember the words of Alexander Hamilton warning about arbitrary imprisonment and to recapture his fighting spirit.
