Article by J. Robert Smith in The American Thinker
Save Washington, D.C.
D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser must think she’s clever. Maybe she’s just desperate. After weeks of lawlessness in D.C., she’s “pleading” with Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin to lower the boom on not-so-peaceful protesters. In typical Democrat fashion, the violence and destruction plaguing a city -- in this case, a very special city -- isn’t the mayor’s fault.
Voters aren’t buying this pap. By Election Day, they really won’t be buying it.
Ask conservatives why mobs are running D.C.’s streets, and the typical answer is that Bowser isn’t doing her job. They’re right about that. Say conservatives, if D.C. can’t handle the mobs, Bowser should request help from the president. Trump is ready to intercede. Law and order could be restored in hours.
But President Trump doesn’t have to wait for Bowser to make a request. What’s holding back the president now is mostly politics. Yet the time soon approaches when Trump will need to secure D.C.
Washington, D.C. isn’t Portland or Seattle or Minneapolis or Chicago or New York or Kenosha. It’s the federal city, the country’s seat of government. The District of Columbia isn’t a state. It’s a unique jurisdiction; constitutionally mandated, no less.
What Bowser does or doesn’t want is, finally, irrelevant under federal law.
Per the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17), D.C. falls under the express authority of Congress and the executive. It’s the obligation of both to attend to law and order in the district. Washington city government operates within a scope according to congressional legislative mandate. In other words, limited home rule is a privilege, not a right.
James Madison, Federalist Paper No. 43, offered this rationale for a federal jurisdiction, in part:
''The indispensable necessity of complete authority at the seat of government, carries its own evidence with it. It is a power exercised by every legislature of the Union, I might say of the world, by virtue of its general supremacy. Without it, not only the public authority might be insulted and its proceedings interrupted with impunity; but a dependence of the members of the general government on the State comprehending the seat of the government, for protection in the exercise of their duty, might bring on the national councils an imputation of awe or influence, equally dishonorable to the government and dissatisfactory to the other members of the Confederacy.
The District of Columbia exists to guarantee the integrity of the national government. In matters of security -- keeping the federal city safe and unhindered from prowling mobs -- Bowser and the D.C. city council have no vote.
Since the Constitution was written and adopted, Washington’s meaning has grown past its utility. The nation’s capital is woven into the fabric of American life, civic, and cultural. Mob violence there is an assault on America. Patriots everywhere should be outraged.
Portland’s destruction is awful, but it’s not home to our national government’s institutions -- the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. It’s not the repository of much of the nation’s storied history. Think of the Smithsonian and many other museums. How about all the revered monuments, now loathed by Democrats and the left, but visited annually by millions of families and schoolkids? Consider the famous July 4th celebrations on the Mall. Washington, D.C. is America’s city.
Right. The Swamp must be drained. Obama and the Deep State conspired to destroy Donald Trump. Congress is never short of scoundrels. Nancy Pelosi is a vindictive shrew. Who needs “progressive” Supreme Court justices making up the law as they go? Wags may be tempted to say, “Who cares about D.C.? Good riddance.”
Politicians and appointees come and go (yes, the bureaucrats remain), but here we aren’t primarily focused on persons. We’re focused on the Constitution, and the system of government and the institutions it created for the purpose of republican rule. As patriots, we’re focused on a reverence for what D.C. stands for.
Last Thursday evening, after President Trump’s nominating speech at the White House, Americans saw mobs gather outside White House barriers. That’s okay, because protesters have 1st Amendment rights, we’re told ad nauseum. That rote invocation is testament to the deceit and moral muddle dominating our times.
Despite the gaslighting by the AP and other MSM, we watched the video of Senator Rand Paul, his wife Kelley, and party being menaced. But they weren’t the only ones. Dan Bongino and his wife were targeted, too, as they walked to their hotel. We’ve seen statues defaced and toppled. In a sign from Heaven, Andrew Jackson’s statue refused to go down.
This past Saturday night and into Sunday morning, mobs were at it again. Reported WUSA9 (the D.C. CBS affiliate):
Police said five individuals were arrested after 'a group of individuals, who were intent on damaging property and injuring Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers, began engaging in riotous behavior at Black Lives Matter Plaza and throughout the city.'
Then on Sunday, in Joseph Goebbels fashion, Democrats fanned out on news shows. With straight faces, they spun the same line: President Trump is responsible for the violence roiling blue cities across the country. That includes D.C.
Democrats are trying to bait the president. Get Trump to order federal law enforcement and National Guard into blue cities. Then brand him a tyrant for doing so without agreement from governors and mayors. Then stage incidents. You know, “peaceful protesters” brutalized by merciless feds. And always cry racism, particularly in D.C. How dare the president override Bowser and the majority black city council?
Pre-election politics favor restraint by the president. Why give Democrats excuses to distract from the critical choice voters must make on November 3? But come Election Night, that calculus must change.
The chatter is that the left plans new rounds of unrest on Election Night and thereafter. Blue cities will erupt. D.C. is likely to be front and center. A re-elected President Trump (confidence in this outcome grows daily) must then act decisively to quell mobs and riots, beginning in the nation’s capital.
There’s a lot not to recommend about Washington, D.C. It has a horrific homicide rate. Crime has plagued the city for decades. Many of its streets are unsafe in the best of times. A governing class, influencers, and fixers -- affluent thanks to tax dollars -- make D.C. metro their permanent home. Big government is a curse.
But Washington, D.C. belongs to us. Not to mobs, haters, and leftist agitators. The monuments, the White House, Congress, the repositories of our magnificent history… our epic successes and great beliefs and traditions are bound up in that city. Our capital city. The time fast approaches to take it back for the people.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/save_washington_dc_.html
