Rule of Law Demands One Set Of Rules
“Rule of Law” is more than just prosecuting lawbreakers. Rule of Law requires multiple elements, one of which is that the same laws bind all equally. When enforcers insist some variant of “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime,” that is not “Rule of Law.” That is Stalinesque authoritarianism. When Preet Bharara says of Dinesh D’Souza, “He broke the law, didn’t he?” that statement is only proper justification if D’Souza would have been treated exactly the same way — monitored identically, investigated identically, prosecuted identically, and sentenced identically — were he in then-President Obama’s political camp instead of holding Preet’s boss accountable through his media activities. Nobody who honestly assesses the details of Dinesh’s case believes he wasn’t targeted because of his political speech. This is not “Rule of Law,” and that means Dinesh D’Souza isn’t a criminal. He is — or more precisely was — a political prisoner, monitored and persecuted by minions of the world’s most powerful man for the crime of speaking agains that man. “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”
When laws are enforced against one political camp — in this case “conservatives” — but the other side glides by with light or no enforcement, this is the opposite of Rule of Law. In this case, Democrats are empowered to violate campaign finance laws, knowing that enforcement will be rare and light, while Republicans are effectively sidelined through vigorous enforcement. This one-sided enforcement weaponizes the justice system to create Democratic advantages both inappropriate and unfair in elections. D’Souza’s case perfectly illustrates one way that abrogation Rule of Law has eroded free and fair elections. You don’t need to stuff ballots to steal an election if you can just break every rule about funding your advertising & communications to the voters.
D’Souza, General Flynn, Scooter Libby, Ted Stevens, and many more, are/were political prisoners — not criminals. And it’s not only federal. Take a look at the prosecution of the McCloskeys in St. Louis for defending their home against a violent mob, and many other such cases around the country. Our justice system has clearly entered an era where pursuit of justice has been supplanted by political persecution. So how do we bring back blind Lady Justice? How do we restore Rule of Law?
The conservative camp still clearly values and yearns for true Rule of Law. The yearning is so strong that pockets of this camp even insist that we must ignore this weaponization of the justice system. If we merely hold our heads high stoically and behave as though Rule of Law were still the practice, then the other camp — the Left — will eventually be shamed into once more respecting Rule of Law. This is folly. This approach has been tried for decades, and the political persecution from those aligned with the Left, directed at the Right, has only increased. The stoic approach has failed miserably. So … What is to be done? How do we return to one set of rules, enforced evenly?
If we are to restore Rule of Law, we must turn the persecutors’ swords against them. The Right side of the aisle has been reticent to prosecute perjury, leaks and lying. This must end. The Left has weaponized exactly these tactics, precisely because they know adverse consequences will be few and far between. The Right must ensure that perjurers, leakers, and liars from the Left are investigated and prosecuted. The Left has weaponized process crimes to bankrupt, imprison and destroy political targets and their affiliates. When the Left legitimately violates — or appears to violate — those same processes, punishment MUST follow. The Left must feel pain according to their rules. If Rule of Law is to return, then this is a moral imperative. This doesn’t just hold for the James Clappers or Christopher Wrays who lie to Congress under oath, or liars who smear appointment nominees under oath. A certain pencil-necked Congressman, for instance, got a great deal of mileage out of leaking the contents of closed-door Congressional hearings. He has evaded prosecution for his felonies only because the Right side of the aisle insists that his leaks are lies. That’s irrelevant, under the weaponized system that he worked so diligently to create. He must be prosecuted for his leaks. If they were made up, let him assert that under oath. Let a court certify that his pants are fully on fire. Force him to submit legal briefs detailing how his bathroom break phone calls and his MSNBCNN hits are all fantasies. And then every time his giant head appears in another venue, just quote his own words back to him. Are you unsure that this is the system he created? Lil’ Pencilneck Liar subpoenaed his own colleagues’ phone records and then lied about which offices those records showed were called. This is his system; he must be forced to endure it. There can be only one set of rules if the Republic is to survive. We don’t like these rules, but the only way we’ll get better rules is if the Left learns to detest these rules as well.
The bureaucracy must also be held accountable. Weaponized leaks MUST be pursued. Fake news yellow journalists must be afraid to print these fabrications, and the leakers themselves must sweat in bed at night, for fear of being caught. The selective, one-sided, out-of-context leaking has reached existential threat levels precisely because it is not vigorously pursued. At least, it’s left unpursued when it’s aligned with the Right’s camp. Reality Winner was caught because she made errors that experienced IC leakers don’t. Perhaps also because she hadn’t been around long enough to have allies higher up. Every one of these leakers must be pursued vigorously, until their fate is the same as Winner’s. Every time a “journalist” colludes with one of these Deep State leakers, they must fear that this is another canary trap. They need to worry about joining Brian Ross in the career doghouse.
The Justice Department’s Southern District of New York office is especially deserving of opprobrium — and pushback. The SDNY had evidence sufficient to arrest, prosecute and convict Jeffrey Epstein years ago. The SDNY sat on Epstein’s case for a decade, while pursuing high-profile cases of questionable value or jurisdiction. How many other crony non-actions have they covered up by pursuing cases such as “We Build the Wall?” A thorough investigation MUST answer this question. The SDNY must become afraid to subvert Rule of Law in this, their signature fashion. And if the timing of these investigations happens to tie the SDNY’s hands and sideline them during an Administration they would otherwise be devoted to undermining? Then so be it. One set of rules is a moral imperative.
Which brings us to the rest of the Deep State. We need a bullpen of our own. We need a Rolodex full of Kash Patels to install in OIG positions. Right now, Inspectors General see their jobs as damage control — burying or minimizing scandals in their agencies. And for good reason — if you spend two years destroying careers and embarrassing an Agency, your career is effectively over and your professional network is likely to excommunicate you. An honest, aggressive IG — one who will pursue the Deep State leakers and abusers vigorously — needs a career path upon leaving the Office. If he’s done his job well — especially with the current Deep State viper pit — he’ll have burned most bridges in a natural career path.
This may feel like a dangerous code. It is. Half our society is hellbent on fighting dirty, tearing down norms, gutting institutions and pursuing witch hunts against their political adversaries. Pelosi, Schumer et al have sacrificed their values; their only remaining value is power. If we pursue their rules, might we hasten the slide into banana republic tyranny? Decades of stoically ignoring their new rules hasn’t stopped or slowed that descent. In fact, by insulating them from the consequences of their rules, we’ve only encouraged them to accelerate that descent. Failing to hold them to their rules earned us the Mueller witch hunt; the Kavanaugh confirmation debacle; the Ukraine impeachment hoax; and a summer of riots, just for instance. The Left MUST feel the pain of their rules. The only way to return to sanity is to convince them to return to sanity. The only way the power-obsessed will accept the constraints that make a stable Republic possible is if they learn to feel — and fear — the consequences of removing those constraints.
Force them to endure their rules. Make them beg for what we want. Make them plead for a truly blind justice system, free of political prisoners. Our moral imperative — our Republic’s only chance to survive intact — is to take the Left’s own rules and shove them down Leftist throats until those throats vomit those rules back up, no longer able to endure the taste. Only then can our Republic be restored.
https://redstate.com/diary/gabe-thomas/2020/12/25/rule-of-law-demands-one-set-of-rules-n299932
