As we await the findings and conclusions of the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack, let’s take a moment and do our own soul-searc...
As we await the findings and conclusions of the House select committee on the Jan. 6 attack, let’s take a moment and do our own soul-searching about what is going on.
The select committee is engaged in Washington’s favorite pastime: looking for whom to blame. The sidelight of this pastime is the pretense that things that are very complicated can be made clear and simple. The other side of the coin in the search for whom to blame is the refusal to step up and take personal responsibility.
The latter, unfortunately, is increasingly becoming a hallmark of today’s culture and is exactly the opposite of the ethic that built America.
As I wrote in a recent column, it is a great error to equate the political process we call democracy with a culture that embodies the principles of a free society.
The triumvirate of the protection of life, liberty and property — the pillars of a free society — are all under siege. Unfortunately, the democratic process is, with alarming frequency, now used to undermine these pillars of liberty.
The vast expansion of government power through debt, taxation and regulation amounts to a direct assault on the private property of American citizens.
The storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6, regardless of if and how it was planned, regardless of the motivations of those involved, put on display a disregard for the principles of law and the protection of property that are more fundamental than the democratic political process.
What we learned on Jan. 6, 2021, is that the pathology producing this disregard is widespread, in all political streams, and not limited to the left.
The Capitol incursion was just the latest of many such incidents.
I am not the first to point out that exactly the same behavior was rampant across the country prior to Jan. 6, perpetuated by Black Lives Matter and other progressive groups and justified by the same leaders of the Democratic Party who are now driving the Jan. 6 witch hunt.
In July 2020, a mob toppled a statue of Christopher Columbus and threw it into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. When asked about this, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is from Baltimore, responded, “People will do what they do.” Reporters prodded Pelosi to condemn the mob’s action, but she refused.
The mob behavior and mentality on display on Jan. 6 had already been justified and encouraged by the leaders of the Democratic Party.
Suspicions of improprieties in the electoral process in 2020, which led to the Jan. 6 riot, were and are quite justified given the closeness of the election coupled with the track record of dishonest behavior in the Democratic Party.
Behind the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump was grossly improper and illegal behavior. The Steele dossier, which fabricated evidence of the Trump campaign conspiring with Russia, amounted to the FBI working with the Democratic Party to undermine a Republican president. Where is the investigation into this grotesque incident? All is quiet.
As the core values that served as the basis of America’s founding are undermined and purged, as eternal truths are displaced by politics, all sense of truth and meaning is lost. The result is a dangerous tendency to anarchy.
I call on Republicans to take responsibility for leading the nation back to its core values — and to advance these truths in our minority communities, where for years the left has replaced the message of freedom and personal responsibility with a message of blame and victimhood. Releasing these communities from the left will also release us from such close elections.
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