RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/09/ruling_regime_locks_up_george_washington.html

A Missouri man walked into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, dressed as George Washington.  He caused no damage, engaged in no violence, and was even recorded peacefully speaking with police before leaving.  For daring to dress as America’s pre-eminent Founding Father and symbolically rebuking our corrupt ruling class, Isaac Yoder was surveilled for seven months, eventually arrested, fined, and sentenced to a year in prison.  Welcome to the Imprisoned States of America, where patriotic love of country is condemned and political persecution flourishes.  

At a time when the Biden regime is trying to imprison President Donald Trump for the rest of his life, Yoder’s story seems particularly poignant.  If the American War for Independence were being fought today, there is no doubt that the D.C. despots squeezing the life out of the American people would enthusiastically take sides with the British.  As soon as dishonest and nefarious lawmakers, police officers, prosecutors, and judges decided to treat the J6 protest against election fraud as an “insurrection,” the miscreants who imperiously occupy D.C. made clear that they have fully rejected both the spirit and the principles of 1776. 

If Americans cannot assemble to petition their government for redress of grievances without fear of being labeled “insurrectionists” or “terrorists,” then there is no First Amendment protection remaining.  If the American press corps can stand back and watch this political persecution unfold for years without being bothered to point out the deceitfulness in portraying an unarmed crowd of ordinary citizens as engaging in “rebellion,” then there is no institutional organ outside government extant to fight today’s oppression.  It makes sense that Mr. Yoder would be targeted for especial FBI harassment; if George Washington, Sam Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were alive today, the FBI would be busy hunting them down, too.  Liz Cheney, Adam Schiff, Merrick Garland, and Mitt Romney would be calling them “traitors.”  And the news media would be breathlessly reporting about how our Founding Fathers’ fight for liberty is really about their love for slavery and the “patriarchy.” 

Joe Biden joins Russia’s Putin, Nicaragua’s Ortega, Venezuela’s Maduro, Brazil’s Lula, China’s Xi, Iran’s Khamenei, and Turkey’s Erdoğan as another twenty-first-century tyrant with no qualms about locking up his political opponents.  There was a time when both the elected officers and the entrenched bureaucracy in the United States would have universally condemned foreign leaders for their efforts to undermine freedom of speech, dissent, and political self-determination abroad; now it is the United States that follows the example of the world’s worst authoritarians.  And just as every brutal dictator proclaims that he faithfully serves “the people,” America’s ruling regime will continue to insist that its illiberal displays of force, rampant censorship, and political targeting are all necessary to “protect our democracy.”

Across language and geography, ruling regimes throughout history have used a strikingly similar label to demonize their political adversaries: “disloyally affected person.”  The British used the term to lock up members of the Irish Republican Army.  Both Lenin and Mao used the phrase to justify mass executions of anti-communists.  Castro’s Secret Police used the alleged offense as an excuse to imprison and torture political opponents in Cuba.  Now the U.S. government throws around this spurious charge — disloyalty to the State — as if dissent against the permanent ruling class were the height of criminal activity.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/was-trump-an-officer-of-the-united-states-constitution-14th-amendment-50b7d26?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Apart from the four criminal indictments brought against Donald Trump, those who would end his campaign for the presidency by means other than an election seem to be putting increasing faith in Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, known as the Insurrection Clause. That faith seems to be seriously misplaced.

To the extent its text is relevant here, the section in question denies to a discrete category of people—including those who have taken an oath “as an officer of the United States . . . to support the Constitution of the United States”—the right to serve as a “Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office . . . under the United States” if they “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against same.”

A good deal of attention has focused thus far on whether the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was an “insurrection or rebellion” and, if so, whether Mr. Trump “engaged” in it. Those questions, however, need not be answered until two preliminary questions of law are addressed: Is the presidency an “office . . . under the United States,” and was the presidential oath Mr. Trump swore on Jan. 20, 2016, to support the Constitution taken “as an officer of the United States”?

The latter question is easier. The use of the term “officer of the United States” in other constitutional provisions shows that it refers only to appointed officials, not to elected ones. In U.S. v. Mouat (1888), the Supreme Court ruled that “unless a person in the service of the government . . . holds his place by virtue of an appointment . . ., he is not, strictly speaking, an officer of the United States.” Chief Justice John Roberts reiterated the point in Free Enterprise Fund v. Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (2010): “The people do not vote for the ‘Officers of the United States.’ ”