If by rule of law we mean a principle of governance in which legal standards are clear, are duly enforced by public officials, and are validated and maintained by an impartial and timely judicial system, leading to public trust in fair legal consistency and public order, then we can say that today the rule of law no longer applies, or applies only selectively, in a constitutional republic like the U.S. or a parliamentary democracy like Canada.
In Canada, the current prime minister has flouted the rule of law and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms so often that the country is now verging on the status of a third-world autocracy. The media is in his well-lined pocket and raises no objection to his frequent violations of the Conflict of Interest Act and federal ethics rules, to punitive and irrelevant vaccine mandates or his targeting of disfavored individuals and organizations, or his invoking of the Emergencies Act to crush a legitimate and peaceful truckers’ protest and unilaterally freezing the financial assets of its supporters. He has embraced the practice of Caudillo politics, and the nation as a whole goes along with it.
The U.S. under the Obama and Biden administrations is likely in worse shape than its northern neighbor. The rule of law has become a figment of the political imagination, a process that has been developing over many administrations but has now reached its nadir. Those who serve or are affiliated with the political Left, that is, the Democrat party and its outriders, need never fear retribution for crimes, felonies, misdemeanors, or breaches of the Constitution, for ignoring Congressional summonses or destroying potentially incriminating evidence. Its opponents, on the other hand, have no such immunity or legal redress from arbitrary government-inspired reprisals, vendettas, and raids carried out on the flimsiest of pretexts against its own citizens. Examples abound, and no savvy individual can be unaware of them.
The most recent incident of government overreach is the most politically fraught and conspicuous violation of the rule of law in recent American history. The raid on former president Donald Trump’s private residence by a veritable SWAT team of armed FBI agents should not have come as a surprise. It is massively obvious that the Democrats and their perfidious Republican allies, or RINOs, in concert with the administrative “deep state,” will do everything in its power to prevent the re-election of Donald Trump as president. It will prosecute his allies, spy on his meetings, mount the Russia collusion hoax, launch bogus impeachment trials, and conduct Soviet-style show trials. It will raid his home on the warrant of an Obama-appointed judge who represented employees of pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Anything goes. The rule of law is no longer a check or impediment; it is a quaint memory of better times or forgotten entirely. We are now living in Thunderdome at the mercy of a manifestly rogue regime.
Related: We’ve Got the Deep State on the Run. Here’s What Needs to Happen Next.
In an analysis here at PJ Media, investigative journalist and founding editor of HillFaith Ministries Mark Tapscott asks why the IRS has hired 87,000 additional agents and is “buying millions of rounds of ammunition and thousands of weapons… In other words, Democrats have a history of politically and illegally weaponizing the IRS against Republicans, conservatives, and evangelical Christians, or roughly half the voting population of America.” He then asks rhetorically: “Do you think there is anything these people won’t do?” The trouble is that there are more than enough fanatics and zealots, rioters and insurgents, roaming the land, influenced by an atmosphere of hatred, rancor, and malice constantly stoked by the media and the political class and prone to take matters into their own hands.
The immediate fear is that the “once and future president” may be the victim of physical violence. America is no stranger to lethal and potentially lethal attacks on its presidents and major political figures. Four presidents have been assassinated since the Civil War, and another five survived attempts on their lives, most recently Ronald Reagan. On June 14, 2017, Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) was seriously wounded, and five others were shot, by a gunman with “a clear hatred for Republicans,” who also regarded President Trump as a traitor. On June 8 of this year, a conservative Supreme Court justice luckily escaped a contemplated attempt on his life; two other conservative justices were also at risk.
Violence is in the air. Cities can be looted and torched with the tacit or explicit approval of mayors and governors. Felons can be released without bail or charges laid. On the other hand, decent people and patriot citizens who have fallen out of favor with the authorities can be imprisoned without due process and kept under lock and key indefinitely. Progressivist schoolboards can regard concerned parents as domestic terrorists, leading to the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division creating a “threat tag” based on Attorney General Merrick Garland’s October 4 memorandum that called on the FBI to “use its authority.” The “deep state” is so deep that it is subaqueous.
Political commentator Steve Turley succinctly describes the “deep state” as a permanent, unelected, bureaucratic apparatus, comprising as well the three-letter federal Agencies, and corporatist bankers, that have assimilated both official parties into a uniparty. It is the sworn enemy of Donald Trump, who vowed to “drain the swamp” and remake the Republican party into a patriot party. It has mobilized its formidable resources against him and with its media collaborators created a climate of repression and terror. In effect, the rule of law has become a fairy tale for children; it is neither stable, enforced, nor judicially confirmed and binding.
In such a chaotic environment, my fear is that Trump is now in the crosshairs. “Accidents” can happen. A “crazed individual,” inflamed by media hatred and official denunciations, can join the list of aspiring presidential assassins and commit, or attempt to commit, so hideous an act — which would then be hypocritically condemned in mock horror by those who stand to profit by it. One thinks of Woodrow Wilson’s triumphant smile when he heard that his rival Teddy Roosevelt had died.
In short, I am apprehensive that there may be an attempt on Trump’s life. What has happened before in the Republic’s annals of political treachery and partisan fever can happen again, particularly in so incendiary an era when the rule of law has fallen into abeyance. Trump will have to be super vigilant and take every possible precaution, especially considering that he is almost perpetually “on stage.” We must not deceive ourselves. A raid, however appalling, is nothing compared to an attempted assassination, though it prepares the ground for acts of civic atrocity. That is par for the course when a nation descends into a tolerated and accepted state of lawlessness.
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