The train of abuses.
Today marks, for practical purposes, the beginning of a four-day holiday that culminates in Tuesday’s celebration of the Declaration of Independence, which was ratified by the Second Continental Congress and read to the assembled crowd in Philadelphia for the first time on July 4, 1776.
Most of us know, because it was well taught when we were in school, the money quote from that document:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
Maybe at bit less well-known is the passage a bit further down that says,
…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…”
That’s the passage we might better focus our attentions upon as we mark Independence Day 2023. Because the train of abuses is long and getting longer.
It’s now obvious that the current president has taken millions in bribes from America’s strategic adversaries. It’s now indisputable that his son, Hunter, has evaded taxes on millions of dollars of income.
Yet, the same government that would impeach a similarly compromised Republican president while imprisoning his tax evading son is studiously ignoring the bribery while letting the wastrel son off with a wrist slap.
We now know beyond doubt that Joe Biden took classified documents with him when he left the vice presidency. We know that he stored them in unsecured locations all up and down the Eastern Seaboard.
In 2016 it was beyond dispute that then-candidate Hillary Clinton had committed multiple felonies with respect to her handling of classified material during her tenure as secretary of state. It subsequently became equally clear that Mrs. Clinton obstructed justice and destroyed evidence connected to the government’s investigation of those felonies. Yet unlike Hunter Biden, who is at least being convicted of a couple of misdemeanors, Mrs. Clinton was let off scot-free.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the political aisle, former President Donald Trump stands indicted on 37 felony counts related to classified documents in a case that, from the outside, doesn’t look a lot different from Joe Biden’s classified documents case. Former Trump aides and associates Roger Stone, Gen. Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos were all convicted of process crimes and all served at least some time in jail.
Beginning in 2016 and continuing to this day, the FBI and the Department of Justice have brazenly sought to substitute their judgement as to who should be president for that of the American people.
It’s clear that in 2023 we’re no longer created equal. A small number of the wealthy and well connected in the ruling class enjoy privileges and immunities that are unavailable to you and me — the very thing for which the Founding Fathers and American colonists were willing to take up arms against the mighty British army.
The ‘train of abuses’ in the late seventeen hundreds became long enough to spark the American Revolution.
The question that should frighten every American in 2023 is, how long before this current train of abuses sparks a second one?
“The train of abuses”; right on the money
From time to time the tree of LIBERTY must be watered from the blood of Patriots has fallen by the wayside. For far too long we have allowed the “elites” to run rough shod over us by taking what they have dished out. I can only guess, by the conditions of today, what Gen George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Ben Franklin would have to say about what is going on today. Think Ben Franklin saw into the future with his remark we now have a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC if we can keep it. Think he would say today that though it has lasted a lot longer than he envisioned it would, it’s demise is at hand if something isn’t done soon! Ben Franklin was a visionary in his day and in his way tried to warn us of what was to come if we didn’t stand strong protecting our GOD given RIGHTS under the laws of this CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC…his words “IF WE CAN KEEP IT” should ring in all our ears come this July 4th as we consume hot dogs, hamburgers and watch the beautiful display of fireworks. If it weren’t for our forefathers bravery and staunch belief in our GOD given RIGHTS there would be no FOURTH OF JULY to celebrate!
As usual, another great article Paul. Will b e sending it to friends and relatives in Georgia where they have to contend with two liberal senators.
Paul, you say, “A small number of the wealthy and well connected in the ruling class enjoy privileges and immunities that are unavailable to you and me.” Such a two-tiered system of justice represents a profound threat to our democracy, and just such a system exists in totalitarian nations such as China.
I agree with Linda that, “From time to time the tree of LIBERTY must be watered with the blood of Patriots.”
But in this day and time, indeed, in this war of hearts and minds, the best bullets we have are those fire at the ballot box. Only by electing men and women who understand the glorious accomplishment our Founding Fathers, will we have leaders who will take us off the road to a very dark oblivion.
Grifters like Joe Biden and his crime family are the norm within the government of China. We don’t need more of that here.
While I of course agree with you, Buddy, that “…the best bullets we have are those [we] fire at the ballot box,”, my fear is that we have reached the point that “ballot box warfare” may prove insufficient.
Earlier this year in April I wrote:
An unholy alliance has formed between and among entrenched Washington politicians, the permanent Washington bureaucracy, the marquee names in media and show business and CEOs of once proudly capitalist and pro-American companies. The goal of this alliance has been and continues to be the accumulation of wealth and power at the expense of ordinary Americans – that is, the people in the derisively named “flyover country” who go to work every morning to feed their families, cover the mortgage payment and pay their taxes.
This alliance exists largely outside the reach of the ballot box [emphasis added] and is mostly exempt from the critical scrutiny that a properly functioning news media would provide.
I remember from when I was a kid the time that Congress got the bright idea to withhold taxes earned on interest from bank deposits rather than wait for that interest to be declared on April 15 and the tax paid then. The result would have been to reduce the income from interest paid on deposits because the effect of compounding would have been dramatically reduced by the real-time withholding.
The howling from the American people was immediate, loud and intense. The phones in the offices of members of Congress almost melted. The proposal to withhold taxes on interest was dropped like a hot rock. As we were watching the evening news coverage I remember my mother explaining it to me and saying, “You can push the American people so far until one day they’ve had enough. Then, Katy bar the door.”
I believe that “draining the swamp” will take more than just electing Trump or DeSantis or Moses or any other politician or leader, no matter how capable and well motivated. I believe that it is going to take a “Katy bar the door” outcry from the American people again — one that will be heard and clearly understood by politicians, bureaucrats, corporate CEOs, blow-dried media talking heads and untethered-from-reality show business grandees — if there is to be any hope of cleaning up an even more corrupt, even more entrenched and even more contemptible Washington establishment than existed when I was a kid.
Back in 2021 I wrote a piece about “Working America.” In that piece I said:
Away from the media enclaves in New York and Washington is a vast and rich continent populated by the muscular labor and skilled practitioners that feed us, protect us, heat and cool our homes, tend our wounds, take out our garbage, fix our machines, patrol our streets, light the darkness and stock the shelves.
Call this giant cohort “Working America.” It’s population numbering in the scores of millions and, in stark contrast to the coastal media elites who have become ubiquitous via our phones, it consists of men and women who without fanfare produce economic output of tangible value. These are the people who could ill afford to sit out the pandemic by idling at home while the country at large could ill afford that they might.
When “Working America” finally gets enough, I believe that it will again be “Katy bar the door.”
I regret the necessity of that day coming. But I nevertheless look forward to the day that it does.
Thanks Buddy, as always, for reading and commenting.
PLG
No way I can argue with your points, but opportunities to fight back abound, and we the public are discovering those opportunities.
Paul, there is more than one way to deliver a bullet and there is more than one kind of ballot box. Bud Light and Anheuser-Busch, more broadly, are an example of what an aroused public can accomplish by voting not to buy a product. As we watch the beer giant cut down to size, big business corporate elites are watching as well. All are learning that corporations would do well to stick to their knitting, and not put themselves in stark opposition to a broadly held moral perspective.
Along with the ballot box, free speech, if it can be preserved (and boycotting is a form of free speech), will win out in the end.
I love reading “You Tell Me Texas” and the replies, but I think one main point is being missed. A large percentage of the US population either likes what is happening or too stupid to understand or just brain dead. The can has been kicked so far down the road that I don’t think we can return it without a lot of pain.
Points well taken!
At the risk of being too opinionated and wearing out my contribution to “You Tell Me Texas”, there is an incredible article, “The Coup We Never Knew,” from January by Victor Davis Hanson that a friend sent to me yesterday that “says it all”. It is too long to quote in its entirety but it is definitely worth reading at the following link. He (optimistically?) concludes that “We are beginning to wake up from a nightmare to a country we no longer recognize, and from a coup we never knew.”
May God, somehow, bless America in spite of the “country we no longer recognize” and guide us with the courage and wisdom to rapidly regain control of our Republic before it disappears into a dystopian hell.
https://victorhanson.com/american-coup-we-never-knew/