We were at a football party last night cheering on our team- LSU- against Arkansas (not a whole lot to cheer about) and having a discussion I am sure many are having these days—roughly along the lines of “What in the hell is happening to our beloved America?’- when a friend (credit: friend Sue!) made a remark which will furnish the theme of these meanderings:
What would the Founding Fathers think of what the Biden Democrats, aided by the spineless Never-Trump “Republicans”, have done to the most elegantly created system of government ever known to man?
We all agreed that one of their very first reactions would be to cry in anguish and sadness and, yes, utter disbelief at the hellhole the current occupant of the Oval Office, assisted by “his” team of America-hating, socialist and Marxist true believers, are turning their beloved creation into.
I was awakened early this morning by thoughts prompted by Sue’s question and recalled so many essays, articles, and books written over the last nine months in particular, expressing incredulity — and alarm!— over various aspects of the dystopian shambles the Brandon Administration has turned the USA into, by scholars of the highest caliber. I include in that cadre of thought leaders, to use the au courant phrase of the day, such intellectuals as Victor Davis Hanson, Roger Kimball, Mollie Hemingway, Michael Anton, Conrad Black, among others, and I decided to draw upon those sources, as well as many others, for a listing of the grotesqueries our Founding Fathers would suffer the excruciating pain of witnessing should they arrange a visit to 2021 America. I have very little doubt their visit would be very short-lived as, after all, there is just so much deep grief one can stand. They very well may have returned to tell their colleagues in those Elysian Fields “I never dreamed I could ever see America turned into such a wretched, nightmarish landscape—we worked so hard to design a system which should have made it impossible for a “President” Biden to ever get elected!”
What, for example, would Dr. Franklin say when recalling the incident of the lady he spoke with outside Freedom Hall that fateful day when he answered her question “What kind of government have you given us?” with those famous words “A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it.” He might very well have seen the expressions of so many brilliant writers of our age asking the question “Is This the End of the Republic?”, to take just one of many recent examples. And, looking around at what is left of our Republic, he would surely be most justified in wondering if we have been able to keep it. Perhaps, if he stayed long enough, he might have read such pieces as that which appeared recently in American Greatness under the above title which opened with this succinct survey of what our Nation looks like today:
We have a border crisis, an economic crisis, an energy crisis, a supply-chain crisis, a health crisis, a crime wave, a labor shortage, inflation, and stranded Americans still in Afghanistan. All of these problems were not only preventable, but were caused, created, worsened, aided, and abetted by a man in the White House who’s an ailing, doddering, senile, cognitively impaired buffoon spewing lies and incoherent sentences practically every time he speaks.
One can barely imagine Dr. Franklin’s revulsion at the fact that his fellow citizens allowed “an ailing, doddering, senile, cognitively impaired buffoon” to become President- after all, his idea of a President was General George Washington.
He might say something along the lines of “How the mighty have fallen!” He surely would agree with the closing thoughts of the author, especially his closing sentence:
How much longer will we stand for this, and what is the remedy?
There is no easy solution, but one thing is certain. It is time for those who wish to end this pervasive leftist onslaught to get off the sidelines.
It will take far more than Republicans in Congress ranting and raving on Fox News. It will take more than righteous anger at school board meetings. It will take more than cops, nurses, teachers and factory workers refusing to be vaccinated. It will take all of those who wish to defend liberty, and freedom against tyranny to insert themselves into the arena, and say, “enough is enough.”
If we remain silent now, then it will be the end of the republic.
And, what would Gen. Washington think of the current desolate and dissolute crop of Military “leaders” after the years, some 80 years ago, when he had so many to be proud of in the ranks of General Officers: Eisenhower, Bradley, Patton, Middleton, Halsey, Nimitz. How sickening would it be for Gen. Washington to cast his lofty, regal gaze upon the likes of Milley, Austin, and Vindman, to cite only a few of the more “famous” utter failures in the ranks of our present-day military? Would he, perhaps, as the Father of Our Country, get on his knees and pray as he did at Valley Forge in snow and ice, for the future of the Republic upon reading, in an article appropriately entitled “America Gone Mad”, this description of the highest-ranking General Officer in the American military:
No one could have foreseen that the egregious chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley—who appears to have been stuffed into his over-decorated tunic and bears more evidences of military distinction than victorious five-star combat generals George C. Marshall, Douglas MacArthur, and Dwight D. Eisenhower combined—would promise his Chinese analogue that he would warn him if President Trump intended to attack China, that he agreed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) that his commander-in-chief (Trump) was insane, that he would proudly help institute “diversity, equity, and inclusion” lessons in the Armed Forces, and that he would inform a congressional committee while under oath that he had warned Biden about the dangers of his Afghan policy (warnings the president professes not to have received). We have now also learned that despite President Trump’s hugely expensive renovation of the American military, it now has no answer to Chinese and Russian hypersonic weapons.
Milley and the rest of his over-promoted cabal were too busy politicizing their apolitical offices and confusing the ranks with their historical revisionism to assure the comprehensive defense of the United States, consult normally with allies serving at American request in the mission in Afghanistan, or to demand a sane evacuation plan when the commander-in-chief determined to scuttle the 20-year Afghan deployment.
And there are simply no words to even imagine what Gen. Washington would think upon seeing the same number of stars which once adorned the epaulets of George Patton or “Bull” Halsey now awarded to a creature the Great General could hardly conjure up in his worst nightmares—how, he might say, can this abomination wear the stars of my military?
And, what might Publius, in this case James Madison, one of the authors of that magnificent series of essays we know as the Federalist Papers, think of recent writings by the most accomplished and very serious scholar Victor Davis Hanson in his book “The Dying Citizen”? In Federalist 51, Publius had this to say about citizenship:
The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is no doubt the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
However, Professor Hanson has written an extensive analysis of the assaults on American citizenship which should be read by every citizen and, in view of his well-known erudition, has likely been read by Mr. Madison as well, from what he terms the unelected, the revolutionaries and the globalists. As noted by one reviewer, he explains how “we’re reversing course, through a deliberate attempt to dilute and eventually erase national identity, sovereignty, borders and the meaningful content of citizenship itself.” What must Mr. Madison make of how much “the elites” of our time hate America considering that in his time, it was “the elites” who created America?
How aghast would Mr. Jefferson, author of one of the most elegant and ageless documents in the history of man, be at the uncivil, ruthless, mindless, soulless mobs of cretins occupying not only our streets today, but our very halls of government, not least of which the Congress of the United States. It is incomprehensible what the man who wrote these words, now inscribed around the crest of the Rotunda of his Memorial in Washington, would be thinking if he returned today:
I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility to any form of tyranny over the mind of man.
What could the author of the Declaration of Independence comprehend when he learned of the unanimous decision of the New York City Council to remove his statue, which had been in the Council Chamber for a century, because it represented “the disgusting and racist basis on which America was founded.” What thoughts would this most learned and classically educated man have upon seeing the mass, wholesale destruction of historical monuments, often, if not most of the time, by hooligans who have no earthly idea why they are tearing down history and how he would surely have identified with these thoughts by one of the Nation’s leading historians about this time:
The removal of the statue isn’t just an attack on Jefferson, though. As Princeton historian Sean Wilentz put it: “The New York City Council hearing on Monday to remove a statue honoring Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence — a serious blow, especially to the most vulnerable among us, for whom Jefferson’s cry of equality is the last best hope.”
Sidelining these historical figures — however problematic they may be — also sidelines, or diminishes, the ideals they came to embody and the many Americans who feel a deep and abiding connection with them.
What would our Founding Fathers make of the near-complete obliteration of the doctrine they drew upon Pericles and Thucydides and others to create as one of the bedrocks of our Republic: the assurance that all citizens are entitled to equal justice under the law?
How must they struggle if they returned, as we do, with the glaring conflict between that timeless credo and the many examples of our America refusing to honor that principle? They would likely mourn, as we do today, the persecution- that word is very deliberately used here- of the January 6 defendants, many if not all due solely to their ideologies and the almost total absence of any action taken against the street thugs of the riots of 2020-the “Summer of Love”- again due to ideology, the “right” ideology of Social Justice. Or the fact that Hillary Clinton, James Comey, William Brennan, James Clapper, Andrew McCabe, Peter Sztrok, Lisa Paige, etc., etc., etc., are still at liberty and the January 6 defendants are being subjected, in many cases, to the most extreme cruel and unusual punishment. Or the apparent eagerness with which the Judges of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia seem to impose those punishments-due to their “thought crimes”, also known as supporting President Trump. Or the Chief Judge of that Court making public statements comparing the “good” riots of 2020 (extensive property damage approximating 30 billion dollars, 30 deaths, and many injuries) with the “bad” riot of January 6 (4 hours, one murder of a Trump supporter, minimal property damage, shooter of victim not charged). The Founders might wonder about the reasoning of this Judge in light of the prosecution of a 17-year-old boy in Kenosha who had the audacious temerity to defend himself against criminals trying to kill him:
“The goal of a lot of protests in 2020 was to hold police accountable and politicians accountable for police brutality — and murder, in George Floyd’s case — and to improve our political system. What happened on Jan 6 is in a totally different category from that protest. It was to stop the government from functioning at all to stop the democratic process and it worked,” Howell said. “They’re not comparable.”
***
[Judge Tanya] Chutkan, an Obama appointee, said that in fact, Jan. 6 rioters are arguably treated more leniently than those arrested over the summer of 2020. Police did not arrest them on the spot, she noted, and prosecutors have allowed many of them to plead to “petty offense” misdemeanors and to Zoom into court proceedings from their homes.
“The treatment of [Jan. 6] rioters … has been far more lenient than other defendants who frequently appear in our court,” Chutkan said. “To compare the actions of people protesting, mostly peacefully, for civil rights to those of a violent mob seeking to take over the Congress is false equivalence and ignores the very real damage the Jan. 6 riot poses to the foundation of our democracy.”
And if they were able to view video images, especially Alexander Hamilton, founder of the New York Post, might wonder how a person entitled to a lifetime appointment could possibly make such a statement in view of all the fires being set across the country to buildings, including Federal Courthouses. Might Mr. Hamilton say: “How could a member of our ‘least dangerous branch’ be so brazenly dishonest?”
What might our visiting Founders think of a “President” who orders the citizens, as a condition of employment, to have medicine injected into their bodies whether they want it or not or whether they need it or not, or a “President” who forces citizens to expend untold fortunes to have a Court decree what so many knew to be true: that this “staggeringly broad” mandate was very probably an unconstitutional abuse of power and needed to be stayed pending a further study of the legal and constitutional issues raised by this totalitarian mandate. Or a “President” and a “scientist” who order children to wear a mask long after there was any legitimate reason for doing so. Or an administration which, in effect, imprisons its own citizens and shuts down its own economy for reasons which will appear later to be, at best, questionable and maybe even fraudulent.
What if the Founders were joined on this trip to view the carnage by some of the early Colonial leaders like John Winthrop, who, according to Mollie Hemingway’s excellent dissection of the 2020 election “Rigged”, abolished public voting in 1634, moving to paper ballots in the interest of greater voting integrity? What would Gov. Winthrop and his colleagues from our first days think of the maelstrom of corruption which made the 2020 election very probably the most dishonestly conducted election in American history? And how shocked would the Founders be to learn that their cherished tradition of free speech had been so bastardized by modern thinkers- described as “woke”, surely one more bit of puzzlement for the Founders- that one would be severely criticized, and maybe worse, if one even suggested that there was an argument in favor of the proposition that the election was stolen from the incumbent President, Mr. Trump. And what if they actually read, unlike most present-day citizens, the Hemingway study and thereby gained a deep and abiding certainty of the rot that was that election, would they despair at the future of the Republic they so heroically bequeathed us?
And, can one possibly imagine what the Founding Chief Justice, John Marshall, would make of the top law enforcement officer of the land sending out the National Police Force (FBI) to hunt down parents who had the unadulterated audacity to get involved in what their children’s schools were teaching them, those parents to be known henceforth as “domestic terrorists”? The National Government being sent to hunt down and possibly criminally charge its own citizens!
John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United States.
Finally, to use the words which may best sum up their probable astonishment and revulsion at so many features of our present-day America, what kind of pure contempt must these men feel for some – most? – of those we refer to as our “leaders” —pathological liars such as Biden, Schiff, Schumer, Pelosi, Nadler, the Clintons- considering the fact that they were the men who wrote these thrilling words for all time:
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Would they cry at what their creation, the greatest experiment in freedom and liberty ever created by the mind of man, has become? Would our Founding Fathers have some proposals for how the wreckage can be put back together, or would they decide we are too far down the road to perdition for any real hope?
Most tellingly, perhaps, would they wonder if there are any citizens left who would “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor”?
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