SYDNEY WILLIAMS ON IMPEACHMENT
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“Impeachment is a distraction to a people who must decide what sort of country they want – Socialism, with its costs in dollars and lost freedoms, or free market capitalism, which offers the social and economic escalator of opportunity that takes people up and down. For all of our sakes, I hope they choose the latter.”
The American journalist and satirist H.L. Mencken once wrote: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the people alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.” And the granddaddy of all hobgoblins is impeachment, at least here in the fourth quarter of 2019, a year from a presidential election that will see the most vilified President we have ever had run against one of the most far-left leaning candidates ever nominated. “Fasten your seat belts; it’s going to be a bumpy night,” said Bette Davis in the 1951 movie “It’s All About Eve.” For us Americans, it will be a bumpy year.
Cynicism fills the air. Politicians live by scruples known only to themselves. Their concern is their own welfare and that of their party. Their goal is power. That end justifies whatever means or processes are felt necessary to achieve it. Yet, they wrap themselves in cloaks of righteous indignation. “Every member should support allowing the American people to hear the facts for themselves…this is nothing less than our democracy.” Stirring but hypocritical words spoken by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as she allowed Adam Schiff, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee to conduct impeachment hearings – hearings held in secret, where Republicans were not allowed to call witnesses and to which Mr. Trump’s lawyers were banned from attending. Schiff and the media have made much of diplomats fired, like the former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. Do they forget that elections have consequences? Foreign policy is the responsibility of the President and changing ambassadors is expected and common.
The imbroglio of impeachment reminds one of Alice’s adventures in court over the case of the missing tarts. When the King asked the jury to consider their verdict. “No, no said the Queen. Sentence first – verdict afterwards.” What we are witnessing is a farce, but one with sobering consequences that, at best, will rebound to impale she (or he) who wields the sword when party leadership next changes, and at worst will damage our democratic Republic. In a recent op-ed in “The Hill,” Alan Dershowitz wrote that a foresighted Alexander Hamilton had warned that the decision to move forward with impeachment will be “more regulated by the comparative strength of parties than the real demonstrations of innocence or guilt.” John Durham, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Connecticut and now investigating the special counsel’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, spoke in March 2018 at the University of St. Joseph in West Hartford, CT: “One thing that I try to bear in mind, and try to encourage in new young prosecutors, particularly those who are making their bones or cutting their teeth, is an awareness of the incredible power that is wielded by law enforcement, and perhaps federal law enforcement in particular. Issuing a subpoena can destroy someone’s reputation. It can damage their business, hurt their families. It is an awesome power that we have, that should only be used in appropriate instances.” Wise words that should be heeded by powerful agencies like the IRS, the Justice Department and the EPA, as well as by members of Congress, especially the latter, as they satiate a lust for revenge that had its genesis in hatred.
In the recent vote to formally launch an impeachment investigation, the fact that not one Republican voted with the majority suggests that Hamilton’s concern is real. Looking at the three previous impeachments – Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton – two were acquitted (Johnson and Clinton) and Mr. Nixon resigned, as he likely would have been convicted, as his was a crime that could be deemed nonpolitical. The attack on Mr. Trump has been political from the GetGo, as the Resistance began before he took office. The Russian probe came to naught, as did attempts by Stormy Daniels and others to discredit him. The odor from Ukraine has more of a Biden smell than a Trump aroma. Unlike some Republicans when attacked, Mr. Trump fights back, a response that has surprised a Left used to submissive opponents.
The Left would have us believe that any defense of Trump is a “defense of the indefensible,” a phrase that has a nice ring, but one which has no applicability in this instance, as the aggressor has been for three years the Resistance, comprised of those who do not believe Mr. Trump deserves the Presidency, that he did not win fairly, that he is dangerous and unqualified, a potential dictator. What these detractors fail to see is their own, undemocratic behavior – using intelligence bureaucracies to find dirt on Mr. Trump, conducting closed-door meetings to which Republicans are barred, denying freedom of speech on social media and in universities, curtailing freedoms of religious expression. A government that wants to regulate one’s behavior is one that is dangerous to liberty. Which Party wants to provide Medicare for all, free college and cradle-to-grave care? As attractive as those programs sound, they come with a cost, not just in dollars, but more importantly in freedoms foregone. As Kimberly Strassel wrote in her new book Resistance: “Tyrants don’t get rid of rules; they pile them on.” Love him or hate him, President Trump has rolled back regulations, providing more freedom to individuals, not less. It is not he who is a threat to liberty.
There will always be extremists in a nation of 330 million people – psychos that represent the far right and the far left. They need to be watched, but they don’t represent the real risks to our democratic Republic. It is when extremism infiltrates mainstream thinking we have to worry, and that is what we are seeing in the resistance to Donald Trump. I have often expressed my dismay at Mr. Trump’s character, his Tweets, his rudeness and his profanity. But he does not represent a threat to our Country. If coarse language speaks louder than positive deeds, then criticism of Mr. Trump is warranted. But if mellifluous words disguise odious actions, then it is the Left that bears watching. The media have their eyes Right, leaving the Left unguarded. They are enamored by the “wokeness” of progressive politicians, with their political correctness and identity politics, by the charisma of Hollywood and late-night TV talk-show hosts, and with ivory tower-ensconced social justice warriors in our universities.
Impeachment is but the latest attempt to destroy the man who was elected in 2016, the most investigated President we have ever had. In hanging Russian collusion around his neck in January 2017, the Resistance thought they had him. Two years later, the Mueller Report found no collusion. The whole idea that Putin would have preferred the mercurial Donald Trump whom he did not know to Hillary Clinton whom he knew well and whom he had handled successfully never made sense. That Mr. Trump is boorish lent credibility to the belief he was chauvinistic, but, again, nothing incriminating was found. The conversation with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, while Trumpian, was harmless and not unlike conversations other Presidents have had with their counterparts over the years. Albert Einstein defined insanity as “doing the same thing over and over.” That seems to define Democrats in Congress today, in their search for a grail that contains evidence implicating Mr. Trump in some impeachable offense.
Impeachment is a distraction to a people who must decide what sort of country they want – Socialism, with its costs in dollars and lost freedoms, or free market capitalism, which offers the social and economic escalator of opportunity that takes people up and down. For all of our sakes, I hope they choose the latter.
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