RUTHFULLY YOURS

James Downton is the pen name of a Federalist contributor who is contractually prohibited from writing publicly about politics under his real name.

It’s nearly incontrovertible that a slow-motion coup d’etat is now taking place. Since November 9, 2016, forces within the U.S. government, media, and partisan opposition have aligned to overthrow the Electoral College winner, Donald Trump.

To achieve this they have undermined the institutions of the Fourth Estate, the bureaucratic apparatus of the U.S. government, and the very nature of a contentious yet affable two-party political system. Unlike the coup d’etat that sees a military or popular figure lead a minority resistance or majority force into power over the legitimate government, this coup d’etat is leaderless and exposes some of the deepest fissures in our system of government. This coup d’etat represents not the rule of one man or even many, but by the multitude of our elites.
This article outlines the mechanisms, institutions, and nature of this coup d’etat; not in defense of President Donald Trump — who has proven himself bereft of the temperament of a successful president — but in defense of the institutions of our republic that are now not just threatened, but may very well be on the verge of collapse.
‘1984’ Is An Apt Comparison, But Not As the Left Thinks

Shortly after the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States, a sort of “meme” appeared among activists on the political left comparing the status of the United States to that of George Orwell’s “1984.” “Think pieces” from The New Yorker, CNN, The Atlantic, and Salon drew comparisons between President Trump and the brutally authoritarian future Orwell envisioned. In April of this year, screenings of the film version of Orwell’s dystopian novel were hosted around the world. “1984” surged up Amazon’s bestseller list. The tragedy of this exercise was that the comparison was very apt, but for different reasons.

The villain of “1984” isn’t a “man” but an entity — a bureaucracy with an authoritarian impulse. Big Brother isn’t so much a man or a leader but a symbol of the omnipotent reach of the bureaucratic state that dominated the dystopian future. The fear of an elected leader turning into a tyrant — as the political Left and some on the political Right feared in Trump — doesn’t play into the narrative of the novel. Rather, it is the fear of a nearly faceless administrative state; a state that has achieved a near totality in terms of tyranny.

This fear of the administrative state was a key feature among at least two individuals writing at the Claremont Review of Books, Publius Decius Mus and professor Angelo Codevilla. Decius’s “The Flight 93 Election” essay acted as a sort of rallying cry for some conservatives and small-“r” republican intellectuals against the very real fear that a Hillary Clinton victory would cement the totalizing power of the administrative state — that is career bureaucrats and administrators who view the virtues of the republic as something to be washed away and remade in their own “progressive” image. Decius writes:

If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed “family values”; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere—if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe—mustn’t they?—that we are headed off a cliff.

New Orleans — Robert E. Lee lost again.

The statue of the Confederate Army’s general in chief vanished Friday from atop a 60-foot-tall column in the middle of Lee Circle. This work is the fourth of four Confederate-oriented statues that the city of New Orleans has removed in recent weeks, amid considerable and well-deserved controversy.

During my annual pilgrimage to the Crescent City early this month, I saw Lee rise above well-tended grounds, including grass and flowers, although the concrete at his monument’s base was badly broken. Interestingly enough, the man who led one side of the Civil War to defeat stood just two blocks north of the spectacular National WWII Museum, which chronicles a unified America’s triumph in that mammoth struggle.

Along the landmark’s side, a graffito demanded: “Take It Down Now.” That ultimately victorious sentiment was popular around here, but not unanimous.

“They should leave it,” said Marquis, a black man in a white T-shirt. A couple of weeks back, he sat at the statute’s base and listened to music on a small speaker wirelessly connected to his cell phone. He breathed a whiff of disgust at those who wanted Lee toppled. “As someone said, ‘Ain’t no blood in him.’”

Marquis took a drag off of his cigarette and continued. “He’s just standing there. So, they’re going to take him down. And who are they going to put up there? Donald Trump?”

Even then, Lee was not long for the circle that bears his name.

In what seems like a major act of virtue signaling, New Orleans’ Democratic mayor Mitch Landrieu led the effort to purify the Big Easy of these four Confederate-era artworks. The first honored a bloody white rebellion against the city’s biracial government during Reconstruction. Workers then swept a depiction of Confederate president Jefferson Davis from a pedestal on Jefferson Davis Highway. Tuesday saw General P. G. T. Beauregard’s retreat. And now, Lee has achieved his rendezvous with obscurity.

This exercise is reminiscent of former Governor George Elmer Pataki (R., N.Y.). In his own massive act of virtue signaling, he secured federal funds from G. W. Bush’s EPA to dredge up and remove PCBs that had sat quietly for decades at the bottom of the Hudson River. This noxious industrial runoff was from General Electric factories in upstate New York. Rather than let sleeping toxins lie, Pataki had the riverbed vacuumed. The result? PCB levels shot up, and the Hudson’s relatively clean waters were befouled anew.

Likewise, this episode has stirred up the relative tranquility in New Orleans, with long-healed wounds being scratched open. Just blocks from the ever-delightful New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, which I savored for the 23rd consecutive time a few weeks ago, a group of Confederate sympathizers waved the South’s Battle Flag beside Beauregard’s striking statute at City Park. A year ago, Beauregard sat in splendor beneath the sun, all alone. Confederate flags were nowhere in sight. This year’s display of Rebel sympathies and banners did not signal progress. And now, Beauregard has been scraped from his pedestal and whisked to an undisclosed location.

This episode has stirred up the relative tranquility in New Orleans, with long-healed wounds being scratched open.

Say what you will about these statues, they tend to be excellent works of art. Despite the horrors at their roots, they beautifully capture the human physique and, very often, the equestrian form. If nothing else, they added vivid, dramatic images to this lovely city.

Robert Mueller’s investigation will be incomplete if he does not deal with and resolve the competing narratives about what has transpired. Narrative one is that Donald Trump and/or one or several of his entourage colluded in some manner with the Russians over election 2016. Narrative two is that Democrats and much of the media have not accepted the results of the election and are smearing Trump to drive him from office or seriously wound him to the degree that he will accomplish nothing.

Although it is possible there is an element of truth in both narratives, it is more likely that one or the other is what we could call the “prevailing truth.” To get at this truth, three areas that are inextricably tied together must be investigated. They interweave like story elements in a novel and form what might be called the über-narrative of American politics over the last several years. For Mueller to separate them or to disregard any of the three will mean his investigation is essentially a useless charade. They are:

One: the matter of the Hillary Clinton email server. This has resurfaced dramatically in the firing of James Comey, reasons for which are laid out in Rod Rosenstein’s memo. Whether he wrote this memo before or after Trump decided to get rid of Comey is immaterial since the Deputy AG has now stated he stands behind its contents. Further to this portion of the narrative is the overall question of putative Russian government hacking into the Clinton campaign. So far we have seen no public evidence that this is true. We have actually seen circumstantial evidence (the Seth Rich murder) to the contrary. Mueller must also explain why the DNC refused to open its servers to the FBI after it was supposedly hacked by the Russians and why the FBI, incredibly, acquiesced in this. The questions here are endless—including why the FBI gave immunity in so many cases and allowed for the destruction of evidence. If Mueller seeks to resuscitate the reputation of the agency, he’d better provide us full explanations for all this. At this point, declaring key evidential material “top secret” will only be met by justifiable disdain.

Two: the matter of government surveillance of Trump and his people. The president famously complained in a tweet of being “wiretapped” by Obama. Despite endless criticisms of his language when he actually put the word in quotes, the possibility of this obviously high-tech surveillance and the various attendant unmaskings is by far the most serious question that must be dealt with in this investigation. If the massive intelligence capabilities of the NSA and the CIA are being used for internal political purposes, the United States of America, as we know it and the Founders envisioned it, no longer exists. We are a post-modern totalitarianism and the Russian collusion scandal was just an excuse to impose it—or, more scarily, to cement what was already there.

Three: Trump and the Russians, of course. It’s clear from his campaign statements that Trump wanted better relations with Russia and Putin. This was nothing new. Several American presidents have sought the same thing at the beginning of their administrations only to be blindsided by reality. Obama seemed particularly desperate when he got caught on camera naively whispering to Dmitry Medvedev that he would have more to offer Putin after the election (as if Vladimir didn’t know). The rest, including the failed “red line,” Iran on the rampage, and the endless Syrian civil war, is history. The question now is to what extent Trump and his people may have colluded with the Russians and whether this “collusion” meant anything. In the case of Manafort, as it was with John Podesta, this seems to have been no more than normal (and somewhat repellent) greed. In the case of the Uranium One and the Clintons, it may have been a great deal more (attention, Mr. Mueller). In the case of Mike Flynn, the problem might have more to do with the Turks than it does with the Russians. We shall see. CONTINUE AT SITE

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s appointment on Wednesday likely marks the nadir in the spring of the Republicans’ discontent. The GOP has failed to repel the Democrats’ relentless, evidence-free insistence that President Donald J. Trump is Vladimir Putin’s puppet. Left-wing journalists and activists constantly bemoan Trump’s every statement and action, including — literally — his ice-cream consumption. Rather than resist, self-enfeebled Republicans are adrift at sea.

How can Republicans escape these doldrums? Govern.

Among any president’s greatest strengths is the power to change the subject. President Trump should change the subject daily, from the Left’s obsession du jour back to his agenda. He should rally Americans across the country to pressure Congress to approve his program. Trump will need to spend time in Washington to corral Republicans behind key legislation and to welcome foreign leaders to the White House, in all its majesty. Beyond that, however, policy-driven road trips will benefit Trump, his priorities, and the nation.

After he returns from his first overseas presidential voyage on May 27, Trump should escape the Potomac’s fever swamp, early and often.

He should visit Obamacare’s victims and let them tell their stories as White House correspondents capture their pain.

He should tour businesses and work sites and let entrepreneurs forecast how many more jobs they could create with a 15 percent corporate tax.

He should inspect the southern “border” and let locals describe the horror of illegal aliens, drug smugglers, and unidentified Middle Easterners trespassing across their property and heading north into the American homeland without permission.

Trump should call on the coal patch, where Americans whom Obama and Hillary disdain are returning to work now that Trump has ended the War on Coal. Let miners who are enjoying signing bonuses tell traveling network news crews what it’s like to regain their dignity rather than endure Democratic scorn.

Trump also should remember that personnel is policy. He needs to get much busier naming energetic conservatives and free-marketeers to fill almost 4,000 federal sub-cabinet and agency-level vacancies. Also, he recently nominated ten well-received candidates for federal judgeships. Great start! That leaves just 119 judicial slots to fill.

Trump needs to get much busier naming energetic conservatives and free-marketeers to fill almost 4,000 federal sub-cabinet and agency-level vacancies.

For its part, Congress should cancel its intense vacation schedule and spend this summer enacting Trump’s agenda.

The Senate must shift out of first gear and confirm Trump’s executive-branch and judicial nominees. It should work morning, noon, and night to do so. Fill the Senate water coolers with Red Bull!

According to a portion of a memorandum the New York Times has reported on but not seen, President Trump told then–FBI director James Comey, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go” — an apparent reference to the FBI’s criminal investigation of retired general Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national-security adviser. The president is said to have made this remark in a private meeting with Comey at the White House on February 14 — the day after Flynn resigned under pressure.

The Times report has the predominantly anti-Trump media in whirling-dervish mode, leaping to the conclusion that the president is guilty of obstructing justice. As I’ve countered, this is not just premature, it is wrong.

The president has denied appealing to Comey on Flynn’s behalf. Trump denials have a way of, um, evolving, but even if we assume that this snippet of conversation happened just as the Times alleges, there would be no prosecutable obstruction case. On its face, the statement is an expression of hope; it does not amount to a corrupt undermining of the truth-seeking function of an FBI investigation. Comey, a highly experienced former prosecutor and investigator, knows the law of obstruction cold. He clearly did not perceive himself to have been impeded — he neither resigned nor reported a crime up or down his chain of command. In Senate testimony on May 3 — i.e., nearly three months after the St. Valentine’s Day chat with Trump — Comey averred that never in his experience had the FBI been instructed to drop an investigation for political reasons. Trump, ever his own worst enemy, has stirred the pot with the timing and conflicting explanations of his May 9 firing of Comey, but a president does not need a reason to fire an FBI director. Trump’s rationale may have had both worthy and unworthy elements, but the decision was his to make, and even ardent Russia-conspiracy theorists are apt to doubt that he did it over Flynn. More to the point, neither Trump’s alleged remark nor Comey’s firing has had any apparent effect on the Flynn investigation, which has continued (a grand jury in Virginia has issued subpoenas).

So, what we currently know falls woefully short of a prosecutable obstruction offense, even if we stipulate that Trump created a situation that was awkward and inappropriate.

But should we so stipulate?

I ask because I have been highlighting the fact that, on its face, Trump’s statement was not an order that the Flynn investigation be closed. Yet, to assert this fact is to raise an important question: If Trump had ordered Comey to close the investigation, would that have amounted to obstruction of justice?

To hear Democrats and other Trump detractors tell it, there are only two possible answers: “Of course” and “How could you ask such a stupid question?” In reality, it is not so cut and dried.

In our constitutional system, police powers are executive powers. They may not be wielded by any other branch of the federal government. This is why, to take a topical example, Robert Mueller, the newly appointed “special counsel” who has taken over the so-called Russia investigation (which includes the Flynn probe), is not an “independent counsel” — he answers to the president and reports to Justice Department leadership.

A professor at Orange Coast College in California banned the school’s Republican Club from attending a public African American/Women’s roundtable discussion in March — apparently over “safe space” concerns.

Jessica Alabi, a sociology professor, apparently e-mailed three campus officials announcing that she would not allow the students to attend. The e-mail, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Examiner, stated:

Hi Kevin. I just told the Republican club that they could not come to the Curl Talk event. This event is an African American / Women’s round table discussion. I asked Vincent why was he doing this and I was very upset. He brought five people who kept saying that they were told that they could come to women’s history month events.

I just want everyone to be advised that the African American female students had and still have an expectation that this is a safe space event. If the college will not stand up to the Republican club, I have decided to stand up for myself and other students. Just wanted to keep you informed.

Yes, that’s right. Alabi considers banning students from a public event to be “standing up” for herself. Sorry, Alibi, but that’s not called “standing up for yourself;” it’s called “being a totalitarian nightmare.”

Thankfully, OCC agrees with this logic — the Washington Examiner reports that OCC president Dennis Harkins spoke with Alabi and informed her that she had no right to ban students from the event.

The club members, though, said that they didn’t think this conversation would do any good — that Alabi had done this kind of thing in the past and would probably continue to do it again in the future, regardless of what the college president told her. The members issued a letter with the following demands to stop such “discrimination” in the future:

1. That an investigation be opened, or reopened, into Jessica Alibi discriminating against Republican club members, and conservative students as self-reported by her via public email to you.


2. That upon the completion of the investigation if it’s proven that Professor Alabi discriminated against students on the basis of their ideological viewpoint and party affiliation that, at the least, she be suspended from teaching for two non-intersession semesters at Orange Coast College, and if possible as well as the Coast Community College District, and be permitted to return after that suspension once she’s attended an in-depth training on student’s rights and preventing viewpoint discrimination, as well as be required to write a one page long apology letter to the OCC Republicans and the members effected [sic] by her actions.


3. That President Harkins write a letter to the Board of Trustees supporting the revision and ratification of board policy changes proposed by our club in early April to the Board of Trustees that would amend current district policies to protect students from discrimination on the basis of political affiliations and ideological beliefs .


4. That Orange Coast College will take measures to start, or improve, training for faculty and staff on how to respect students’ rights, viewpoints, and be trained on what viewpoint discrimination is to prevent future instances.

Now, I don’t know anyone involved in this situation personally, but I’d have to say that I certainly understand the students’ concerns that talking to Alabi won’t do any good. Why? Because I have enough faith in Alabi’s basic intelligence to believe that she already knew that what she was doing was against the rules. After all, the idea that public events are supposed to be open to the public is not exactly a hard concept to understand. In all likelihood, it wasn’t that she didn’t understand what the rules were, it’s that she thought she was above them.

What’s more, the fact that Alabi apparently did this under the guise of protecting “safety” is completely ridiculous. Having the Republican Club at the event may have made some people uncomfortable, but it would not have made anyone unsafe. And there’s a huge difference: We do have a right to be safe in public spaces; we don’t have a right to be comfortable.

At a moment in history when the ACLU is quickly becoming a partisan left wing advocacy group that cares more about getting President Trump than protecting due process (see my recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal,) who is standing up for civil liberties?

The short answer is no one. Not the Democrats, who see an opportunity to reap partisan benefit from the appointment of a special counsel to investigate any ties between the Trump campaign/ administration and Russia. Not Republican elected officials who view the appointment as giving them cover. Certainly not the media who are revelling in 24/7 “bombshells.” Not even the White House, which is too busy denying everything to focus on “legal technicalities” that may sound like “guilty man arguments.” Legal technicalities are of course the difference between the rule of law and the iron fist of tyranny. Civil liberties protect us all. As H.L. Mencken used to say: “The trouble about fighting for human freedom is that you have to spend much of your life defending sons of bitches: for oppressive laws are always aimed at them originally, and oppression must be stopped in the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” History demonstrates that the first casualty of hyper-partisan politics is often civil liberties.

Consider the appointment of the special counsel to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump.” Even if there were such direct links that would not constitute a crime under current federal law. Maybe it should, but prosecutors have no right to investigate matters that should be criminal but are not.

This investigation will be conducted in secret behind closed doors; witnesses will be denied the right to have counsel present during grand jury questioning; they will have no right to offer exculpatory testimony or evidence to the grand jury; inculpatory hearsay evidence will be presented and considered by the grand jury; there will be no presumption of innocence; no requirement of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, only proof sufficient to establish the minimal standard of probable cause. The prosecutor alone will tell the jury what the law is and why they should indict; and the grand jury will do his bidding. As lawyers quip: they will indict a ham sandwich if the prosecutor tells them to. This sounds more like Star Chamber injustice than American justice.

And there is nothing in the constitution that mandates such a kangaroo proceeding. All the Fifth Amendment says is: “no person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury.” The denials of due process come from prosecutorially advocated legislative actions. The founding fathers would be turning over in their graves if they saw what they intended as a shield to protect defendants, turned into a rusty sword designed to place the heavy thumb of the law on the prosecution side of the scale.

Have you visited a mosque lately?

“Meet Your Muslim Neighbors,” “Ask A Muslim,” “Coffee, Cake, and Islam.” These are some of the welcoming names for these events you may have seen advertised recently, events at which local imams and other Muslims promise to tell visitors “the truth about our faith.”

These events are highly scripted — and highly predictable. What they actually deliver: a well-practiced lecture that sanitizes Islam, confirming the rose-colored, politically correct concept of the religion that dominates the political Left.

The event ordinarily begins with a fulsome welcome. The Muslim hosts mention being thrilled that so many have come out to “meet your Muslim neighbors” because “so many of you, I know, want to learn more about our faith.” Most importantly, “you are probably confused by all the stories in the media, so we thought we’d try to set the record straight. For there can be no better way to learn about Islam than by meeting Muslims themselves to tell you what it’s all about.” Then a short lecture is given, with a Q and A afterwards. And — an important part of the charm offensive — generally some amazing Middle Eastern food is laid out to end the evening, leaving everyone sated and content.

The lecture generally begins with the declaration by the hosts that “Islam means peace,” and this is flatly false. Any Arabic speaker would know that Islam means “submission.”

But who would be impolite enough to take issue with a welcoming Muslim telling you that he believes Islam means peace? Probably, some guests may think there’s room for doubt in translation, but in any case, why would they cause a fuss already when they are all trying to get along?

Then it’s on to the Five Pillars of Islam, which are always given pride of place: the Shahada (profession of faith); Salat (the five canonical prayers); Zakat (the required charitable giving); Sawm (the fasting at Ramadan); and Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca that a believer should make, if he can afford it, at least once in his life).