Critical Race Theory apologists deploy the Anti-Tea Party playbook

Lie, slander, smear, gaslight. We’ve seen all this before.

posted by Dianny at Patriot Retort

If the attacks directed at opponents of Critical Race Theory sound familiar to you, it’s because we’ve been here before.

The Left is using all the same tactics it deployed against the Tea Party Movement eleven years ago.

For example, they claim that opposition to Critical Race Theory isn’t coming from the grassroots; instead, it is a phony astroturf movement backed by big-money donors.

That’s the same thing they said about the Tea Party.

As random folks from all walks of life and both sides of the political aisle joined together to protest Obamacare, the media accused them of being “astroturf” rather than from a grassroots movement.

And not just the media. Nancy Pelosi herself accused the Tea Party of being “astroturf.”

Here’s another example. Opposition to Critical Race Theory is motivated by racism.

Yup. Same thing they said about the Tea Party. Remember? The only reason the Tea Party movement began was because white people objected to having a black President. Remember that?

Speaking of Nancy Pelosi, in describing Tea Party protesters who descended on Congressional Townhalls during the Obamacare debate, Nancy put on fake crocodile tears and decried the threat from these moms and dads carrying homemade signs. Nancy went so far as to accuse them of “carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on healthcare.”

When the Tea Party converged on Washington to stop the passage of Obamacare, Nancy and her coterie of Democrat colleagues famously marched through the crowd laughing and smiling while delighting in how little they cared about the protesters’ concerns. Congressman John Lewis pushed the envelope even further by claiming he was called the N-word multiple times. Problem was, despite the overwhelming trove of video documentation of the event, not one ounce of footage gave proof to John Lewis’ spurious claim.

As they did during the Tea Party movement, CNN and MSNBC are once again taking the lead in accusing opponents of Critical Race Theory of being motivated by racism. And nobody has been more vitriolic than that loathsome bigot Joy Reid.

All the same slander, ridicule and attacks hurled at the Tea Party are being dusted off and deployed against those fighting to get Critical Race Theory out of their schools. And it is not at all surprising.

When there is a rising populist movement fighting back against the Left, the Democrats and the media pull out all the stops to destroy it. It’s what they do. It’s what they’ve always done.

No lie is off the table. No slander is beyond the pale.

They aren’t angry and upset because those opposing Critical Race Theory don’t understand what it is; they’re angry because we know exactly what it is and just how pervasive it’s become.

You weren’t supposed to know. Parents especially weren’t supposed to find out what kind of insidious and evil indoctrination their children are subjected to in the classroom.

And at the same time media outlets claim that CRT isn’t actually a thing, they are publishing news stories like this:

This is where things differ from the attacks on the Tea Party.

While the Left pretends Critical Race Theory is a “Right Wing Conspiracy Theory,” because racial identarian ideology is the only thing motivating the Left today, they can’t give it up. Because without it, they have nothing.

So they lie. They gaslight. They slander and attack. While at the same time they have to continue promoting the narrative that “whiteness” is the problem, and America is irredeemably racist.

The Left needs to spread their race-based divisions as far as possible and as fast as possible.

As Jesse Kelly often points out, it is a religion of domination.

Collective racial guilt is a central doctrine of this radical Left religion. They will no more give that up than the Christian Church will give up the doctrine of salvation through grace.

The Left’s tentacles reach into every corner of American life and culture. But the infiltration of public schools has been its crowning achievement. Parents waking up to what’s happening is the single greatest threat the Left has ever encountered.

The other parallel between the Tea Party revolution and the fight against CRT is a fascinating one.

The Left has grown accustom to keeping their opponents on defense. But both the Tea Party movement and the opposition to Critical Race Theory are offensive operations. They aren’t just holding their ground, they’re pushing back hard to take ground away from the Left.

Parents aren’t just sitting at home complaining about their children’s racialist class assignments; they’re showing up at school board meetings in exactly the same way the Tea Party people showed up at townhalls. They are pushing back and taking the fight to the Left.

Just like Tea Party people decided to run for office for the first time in their lives, those opposing CRT are running for school board seats to fight back from within.

Playing offense is such a surprise to the Left, they don’t know how to handle it. So they fall back to the only weapons in their arsenal. They call their opponents “racists” and “conspiracy theorists.” They slander and smear in the most derisive and vicious ways.

They will say anything, do anything, make any slanderous attack to maintain their grip on power – especially their power over public education. That is the one piece of ground they simply cannot surrender.

If you thought the attacks on the Tea Party were bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The battle to keep parents from meddling in the indoctrination of their own children is going to make the vilification of the Tea Party look like playground taunts.

But the end result of these attacks may also be similar to the Tea Party movement. Despite the constant drumbeat of slanderous smears, the Tea Party ushered in the biggest Republican House majority in over sixty years. But the victories weren’t just in Congress. Throughout the country Democrats lost hundreds of seats in state and local governments. 2010 was an electoral bloodbath.

The attacks against the Tea Party didn’t cow the Tea Party into silence; the attacks emboldened them. It made it crystal clear just how little those in power cared about the consent of the governed.

This is what I call “Operation Backfire.” The harder the Left pushes, the more powerful the pushback.

The Left’s decision to run the Tea Party playbook against opponents of Critical Race Theory just might cause the same kind of electoral bloodbath in 2022.

Refusing To Fight The Culture War Will Mean Pain For Those You Love

The left isn't going to nicely make compromises and exceptions for you, 

no matter how far the bench you're sitting on is from the field.

by Terry Schilling for The Federalist

In the political lexicon, a person who has been “red-pilled” — a reference to an iconic scene in the 1999 film “The Matrix” — has moved from the left to the right. At least from the right’s perspective, red-pilled people courageously shed their previous assumptions to realign from blissful ignorance to reality, often enduring significant social and professional consequences.

A related new term has emerged and quickly gained popularity on the right: “black-pilled.” While a red-pilled person typically finds conservatism unexpectedly, through a certain book or a particular professor, taking the “black pill” is fully intentional. Rather than prompting an exit from the matrix of leftist groupthink, however, taking the black pill means totally disengaging. 

Black-pilled Americans have concluded politics and culture are so corrupt there’s no longer any use in trying to save them. Think of the hundreds of thousands of Republicans who stayed home during the U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia. Instead, they believe the only viable course of action is to pull the plug and fade to black.

This is wrongheaded. It’s cowardly and selfish, abandoning our fellow citizens to woke chaos. And it’s a surefire way to lose the republic once and for all.

Black-pilling apologists insist the storm has to pass eventually — perhaps 10, 20, or 50 years from now — so it’s better to save energy. Such an assumption is incredibly naïve.

Rather than assuming the evils of the world will retreat on their own, conservatives must proactively engage the fight. No corner can expect to escape wokeism’s ever-increasing political and cultural power if left unchecked. Not content to simply let conservatives retreat, the left is sniffing them out in their schools, jobs, and suspended social media accounts. 

Take the example of leftist propaganda in public schools. Fed up with a barrage of wokeism and the diktats of self-seeking teachers’ unions, many parents over the past year have pulled their kids out of public education. In many cases, they’ve turned to homeschooling. Others have chosen private schools, religiously affiliated or otherwise.

There was recent reason to hope this would be an effective alternative to the public school’s propaganda-pushing. The Biden administration announced it would “vigorously” defend what had long been a commonly accepted position: religious schools should not be forced to contravene their theological beliefs, including those on human sexuality.

But it wasn’t enough for the left to win with an asterisk. LGBT activist Lauren Ober, for instance, described the religious exemption as “just a thinly veiled excuse for anti-LGBT hate and abuse.”

The director of the “Religious Exemption Accountability Project” declared the administration was “aligning itself with anti-LGBTQ hate in order to vigorously defend an exemption that everyone knows causes severe harm to LGBTQ students.” Meanwhile, PinkNews filed its story about the administration’s announcement under the categories “Christianity” and “homophobia.”

The left has been rapidly moving toward this point for years. In 2019, Robert “Beto” O’Rourke, once considered a leading Democrat presidential candidate, said every place of worship that defined marriage as between one biological man and one biological woman should lose its tax-exempt status. Beto was only slightly ahead of the curve. Without a doubt, there will be more presidential contenders next time around eagerly willing to take the same position.

While Biden makes empty and untrustworthy promises to religious institutions, the left will continue its crusade against people of faith like the Little Sisters of the Poor, and Christian bakers in Middle America merely using their artistic talents to provide for themselves and their families.

That a “religious exemption” is even considered controversial by coastal elites ought to alarm every American who believes our First Amendment freedoms are crucial to liberty and prosperity. It’s a very dangerous idea to let faceless administrative bureaucrats decide whether a Christian school is allowed to adhere to Christianity, an Islamic school to Islam, or a Jewish school to Judaism. Even worse, the loudest voices in the Democrat Party believe the answer is “no.”

The most influential and energized segment of the left is willing to skewer its own party to seize control of your children’s future. Monopolizing the next generation’s minds is the sine qua non of their quest to permanently change America.

Conservatives must not delude themselves into thinking they can just disengage from the culture war. The battle lines are drawn. And the left isn’t going to nicely make compromises and exceptions for you, no matter how far the bench you’re sitting on is from the field.

The 10 Best Wars Of All Time

Babylon Bee🐝

A lot of people say war is bad and have condemned it ever since war was first invented by Bob War, but some wars have been pretty good — great even. Here are some of the best wars of all time — the cream of the crop of wars. 

Revolutionary War: While you want to avoid war as much as possible, those guys tried to make us pay taxes. The Revolutionary War stopped us from paying taxes for good.

The War on Drugs: The war on drugs is great because it's still going, like a really good TV show going into its 32nd season.

World War III on January 6, 2021: A brutal and devastating war on the Capitol when a few tourists walked around and took pictures.

Star Wars: The universe was much more peaceful after getting rid of the threat of Alderaan.

Civil War: Everyone loved this war so much that even the losers got a bunch of statues. Plus, it gives your uncle something to watch on the History Channel.

World War II: One of the few sequels considered better than the original, like Toy Story 2 or Empire Strikes Back.

The War of Jenkins' Ear: We don't know anything about this one but it sounds awesome.

War on Women: War is so much better when you're waging it against women. We hope we win this one so we can oppress women and turn the nation into The Handmaid's Tale!

The Punic Wars: Someone had to stop those Punics. Can you imagine us being ruled by a bunch of Punics? You can’t.

The Great Thumb War Between Billy and Johnny Hampton in the Backseat of Their Parents' Car In June 1998: An epic battle of thumbs, fingers, ninja kicks, and devastating maneuvers that ended in a narrow victory for Billy and Johnny crying to their mom.

Recent History Suggests FBI Involvement in January 6

Sadly, the FBI is one of the least trustworthy agencies 

in the federal government—and that’s saying a lot.

by Julie Kelly for American Greatness

Remember Christopher Steele?

The author of the infamous 2016 “dossier” was an impeccably credentialed former British intelligence officer who, we were assured, had the goods on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. Nearly every major news and opinion outlet vouched for his reputation and reliable sources inside the Kremlin.

Steele frequently was described as an “ex-spy” in charge of a well-respected global consulting firm in London; he was alternatively a victim of Trump’s public taunts and a hero willing to risk his life and reputation to spare America the election of a Putin puppet.

Steele’s work was validated not only by the news media and Democratic politicians who described the dossier as “raw intelligence” but it also served as the key evidence in a FISA application sought by James Comey’s FBI to spy on a Trump campaign associate and, by extension, the Trump presidential campaign.

But it turned out the public profile of Christopher Steele was as credible as the series of memos bearing his name. Steele was a political operative, paid six figures by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee through a party-connected law firm.

It also turns out Steele was a longtime FBI source, a revelation confirmed by then-House Intelligence Committee chairman Devin Nunes’ February 2018 memo.

While Steele was being paid by the Clinton team and DNC in 2016, Comey’s FBI was paying the British citizen for his Trump-Russia collusion sleuthing. Further, Steele had easy access to the upper echelons of Barack Obama’s State Department, top staffers to both Republican and Democratic senators, and the C-suites of corporate newsrooms.

The central figure in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, a sting operation intended to discredit Trump’s presidential campaign and then sabotage his presidency, was an FBI asset and Democratic flack disguised as a respected international business consultant. His dossier was garbage, no evidence of collusion was found, and the FISA court later determined the FBI’s applications, which relied almost exclusively on it, were illegal.

The Steele saga is just one recent example why the Federal Bureau of Investigations does not deserve the benefit of the doubt when considering its potential involvement in the January 6 protest at the Capitol. In fact, the entire Russiagate scandal—whose high-level perpetrators remain unpunished to this day—should be a stark reminder of the extent to which the nation’s top law enforcement officials will go to take down anyone they perceive as political enemies.

Speculating that the FBI possibly infiltrated groups on the FBI’s naughty list then provoked criminal activity on January 6 is a “conspiracy theory,” according to pundits on the Left and putative Right. A carefully constructed exposé at Revolver News published last week and amplified by Tucker Carlson on Fox News is stoking outrage from the usual suspects. 

Jim Acosta, a reporter at the cable network that perpetuated bullshit tales of Trump-Russia collusion for years, said Carlson deserved a “Bullshit Factory of the Month” award for suggesting several unindicted coconspirators are FBI operatives.

“Tucker Carlson takes a great leap of faith here when he says that FBI agents were involved, therefore they were operatives therefore they organized it,” one self-proclaimed expert told the New York Times. “There’s just no evidence of that.”

But the great leap of faith, of course, is to assume the FBI played no role in an event now used as a pretext to authorize government agencies, from the Justice Department to Homeland Security, to pursue Americans on the political Right. This especially includes people FBI Director Christopher Wray calls “domestic violent extremists,” code for Trump supporters. Every FBI field office, Wray brags, is involved in the nationwide manhunt to find and arrest anyone who participated in the January 6 protest, including those who did nothing more than allegedly trespass on public property.

If the past is prologue, there’s no reason to consider the FBI’s involvement a “conspiracy theory” rather than a solid likelihood. How many times have we been down this road over the past five years—assured that claims about the FBI’s malfeasance and abuse were “conspiracy theories” only later to learn they were true?

We were told the FBI did not use spies to infiltrate the Trump campaign. They did. We were told the FBI didn’t ambush and frame former National Security Advisor Mike Flynn. They did.

We were told the FBI would not mislead the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. They did. We were told the FBI wouldn’t doctor official reports or correspondence. They did. We were told the FBI would never use a sketchy Russian national to bolster the collusion case against Trump. They did.

Sadly, the FBI is one of the least trustworthy agencies in the federal government—and that’s saying a lot. The stench of Jim Comey’s deceitful reign has irrevocably tarnished the reputation of the FBI for tens of millions of Americans. 

The similarities between Russiagate and the Capitol “attack” are becoming increasingly clear. The initial narrative about what happened that day has steadily crumbled over the past five months.

We were told Officer Brian Sicknick was killed in the line of duty. He wasn’t. In fact, the FBI itself changed its story a few times about its “investigation” into his death. Sicknick died of natural causes, not at the hands of fire extinguisher-wielding Trump supporters or as the result of a reaction to chemical spray.

We are told anywhere from five to seven people, including Sicknick, died as a result of the chaos that day. In fact, only one person, Ashli Babbitt, died by homicide that day. We were told it was an “armed” insurrection. It wasn’t. We were told rioters caused $30 million in damages to the Capitol building. They didn’t.

We were told Capitol Police didn’t let protesters into the building. They did.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden’s Justice Department, working in tandem with the FBI, is prosecuting roughly 500 Americans in connection with January 6, many for misdemeanors such as trespassing or disorderly conduct. Prosecutors continue to ask the court to keep defendants behind bars awaiting delayed trials; dozens languish in solitary confinement conditions in a D.C. jail.

For years, the FBI has made no secret of its contempt for Americans on the Right, particularly supporters of the president whom the agency attempted to destroy. Suspecting their integral role in what happened on January 6 isn’t conspiratorial, it's essential.

Woke Billionaires Keep up Their Hypocrisy

posted by Charlie Kirk in Newsweek

The ominous trend of left-wing billionaires and woke corporations telling us how to think or what to say is only intensifying. Hiring standards are shifting, free speech is eroding and meritocracy is in retreat. The billionaires and CEOs have sent a clear message—unless we wish to be cancelled, labeled extremists, banned from social media and branded as unemployable, we dare not question their prevailing wisdom on a host of issues ranging from critical race theory to transgender rights to matters of climate and energy.

CNBC reported a good example last week. Under the headline, "James Murdoch spent $100 million to help fund political causes during 2020 election cycle," it reported that according to 2019 tax returns, James, who last year was driven out of the Murdoch family business due to "disagreements over certain editorial content," and his wife Kathryn donated $100 million in Disney stock to their 501(c)(3) Quadrivium, for the purpose of funding various political and activist activities.

CNBC reported that the "$100 million donation marks the couple's largest known contribution to their foundation or any political effort." With James fully clear of his family business responsibilities, it is reasonable to conclude that they are just getting started.

This project seems to fit nicely under the couple's new woke banner. Kathryn has also joined the Aspen Institute's Orwellian-sounding "Commission on Information Disorder." Its mission? To tell us all what's wrong with how Americans get and share information.

What expertise does Kathryn bring to such a noble-sounding project? Her only experience with news or disinformation campaigns appears to be funding one. According to Capital Research Center, a think tank which tracks nonprofit spending in politics:

Kathryn Murdoch is a top donor to one of the most notorious disinformation operations in the country....

Kathryn donated half a million dollars to PACRONYM, which is part of an elaborate left-wing influence operation. PACRONYM is a political action committee, but it's closely tied to the 501(c)(4) social advocacy group ACRONYM, which in turn funds and controls Courier Newsroom, one of America's most sophisticated disinfo machines working to elect Democrats.

To be clear, a billionaire who funds liberal fake news operations is going to lead a commission that's supposed to address the problem of how information is distorted and shared. We should not be shocked when this commission, stacked with figures like Katie Couric and Prince Harry, inevitably pins the blame on conservatives and recommends that Big Tech double down on its censorship campaigns.

Make no mistake—billionaires James and Kathryn Murdoch are coming for conservatives, and they are using their liberal allies and the Aspen Institute as means to that end. As is typically the case with these powerful and connected liberals who write society's new rules, we can safely assume that they have no intention of living by them whatsoever. Sins are only sins if committed by a conservative.

For example, James and Kathryn are also prolific environmentalists. Among their many donations is an $11 million contribution going to an extreme climate change group called the Environmental Defense Fund. With concern for his carbon footprint size thus noted in his progressive credit score, James is now shielded from scrutiny over the fact that over his last 10 years at Fox, he ran up a $2.2 million tab using the corporate jet.

Hypocrisy and self-righteousness are typical traits of today's woke limousine liberal. These attributes in the young Murdochs, as reported in the CNBC story, indicate a larger point—that while the average American voter may still associate wealth and privilege with the Republican Party, these traits, in truth, are now inextricably linked with the elites who peddle cultural Marxism, at least when they donate their money or speak in the public square.

In private, however, these rich radicals continue to fly around in private jets and enjoy all the privilege that comes with the wealth that an economic system that couldn't be further from Marxism in its nature allowed them to produce.

I wonder how Kathryn's new Aspen commission will suggest that such information be shared with the public.

Democrats Are Turning ‘Homeland Security’ Into A Political Weapon

At the behest of partisan Democrats, the organization created to 

protect us all from another 9/11 will now turn its forces 

and energy on American civilians.

by Bob Anderson for The Federalist

When a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence says directly into a camera that fighting terror may now mean arresting members of Congress, the blood sport of politics has been taken to a new and more dangerous level.

Speaking on MSNBC recently, Frank Figliuzzi opined to Chuck Todd that: “Arresting low-level operatives is merely a speed bump, not a road block. In order to really tackle terrorism … and this time domestically … you’ve got to attack and dismantle the command-and-control element of the terrorist group, and unfortunately, and I know this is painful to hear … that may mean people sitting in Congress right now, people in and around the former president.”

It is the stuff of banana republics when political opponents are locked up, and this was urged not by a fringe activist on an obscure YouTube channel, but by a former high-ranking U.S. intelligence official on the second-most-watched cable news network, with no gasp from the host. Is this what “homeland security” has become?

Clearly, much has changed since 9/11, when President George W. Bush instituted a new office to “secure the United States from terrorist threats of attacks” that eventually became the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). With a $40 billion budget and more than 240,000 employees, it is now a behemoth eclipsed in size only by the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs.

Although established with noble purpose, there is growing evidence that its focus has evolved in a direction those voting for its creation never imagined. Those with the secret clearances and shiny badges are increasingly scrutinizing our homeland, not for external attackers, but our own people. 

In his first address to Congress, President Joe Biden cited “white supremacist terrorism” as the “most lethal terrorist threat to the homeland today.” This scripted message is being driven by other key Biden administration officials, including Attorney General Merrick Garland, who testified to the Senate Appropriations Committee that: “Domestic violent extremists pose an elevated threat in 2021 and in the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat we face comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.”

Joining him in that assessment was Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the primary official charged with protecting our nation from terror. Neither official mentioned the race riots involving Black Lives Matter and Antifa last year that cost a record $2 billion in estimated insurance losses. Nor did they voice concern over the incessant “death to America” chants from the Middle East, the region that produced the 9/11 attackers. No, suddenly whatever Democrats consider “white supremacy” is our number one security threat.

It would be easy to chalk this phony claim up to mere political rhetoric. After all, racial strife has long been a favorite tool of the Democrat Party, and their calculus has been consistently simple: create more anger to drive voters to the polls. But this isn’t politics as usual. Their comments belie a much deeper and insidious intent, now evidenced by concrete policy actions.

Here’s Who Democrats Consider ‘Domestic Terrorists’

The White House just released its “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” a four-pillared approach to identifying and eliminating domestic violent extremism (DVE) threats. Despite its stated claim of protecting civil liberties, there are clear risks within. 

The press release notes that “private sector partners” will be used to identify early threats via “credible non-governmental analysis.” Who are these partners? We don’t know. Perhaps the Southern Poverty Law Center, armed with their list of “hate groups” that has routinely included well-known Christian organizations such as Family Research Council and the American Family Association for their stance on LGBTQ issues. Could Black Lives Matter be a partner in identifying white supremacists?

Will Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg will help out with the plan to “address online terrorist recruitment … through increased information sharing with the technology sector,” offering up lists of radicals who lean the wrong way on Second Amendment rights, abortion, or the integrity of the 2020 election? How exactly will they “foster digital literacy, ” and is that a euphemism for content control?

Will Google help “develop new multilateral solutions to eliminating terrorist content online,” and how will “safeguarding the freedom of online expression” be achieved? Inquiring minds want to know.

Scrutinizing Retired Veterans

The White House also instructs the Department of Defense to incorporate “training for servicemembers separating or retiring from the military” to ensure they aren’t susceptible to recruitment by “violent extremist actors.” Who are these violent groups? Again, they don’t say. 

We have a hint, though, as white supremacists and “anti-government or anti-authority violent extremists” are cited as the “two most lethal” threats. Although the only white supremacists most Americans will ever see in action are the ones jumping off a bridge ahead of the Blues Brothers’ speeding car, there’s no doubt which political group generally holds views critical of the government. Conservatives, beware—veterans, in particular.

The press release also references the goal of “stemming the flow of firearms to individuals intending to commit acts of domestic terrorism.” How will we know who is “intending” violence? Could it include those dangerous folks deemed “anti-government,” the ones pissed off about open borders, high taxes, crazy spending, and countless other issues—opinions once covered under the First Amendment? Better think twice before putting that “Don’t Tread on Me” sticker on your truck.

Domestic Surveillance for ‘Domestic Terror’

DHS previously announced a new Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3) that will fit hand in glove with the Biden plan. With help from Big Tech and academics, it will conduct behavioral assessments on American citizens—without their knowledge.

As unbelievably surreal as it sounds, a pattern of political posts on social media, monitored and reported by government contractors, may soon put offenders under federal scrutiny for suspicious activity. As Harsha Panduranga of the Brennan Center for Justice noted: “A lot of these characteristics that we’re talking about are shared by millions and millions of Americans: social isolation, having a grievance, whatever that means … It really could capture broad swaths of the US population.”

Monitoring the U.S. population, searching for those with grievances. It’s hard to imagine a more open door for a Pandora’s box of civil rights violations. At the behest of partisan Democrats, the organization created to protect us all from another 9/11 will now turn its forces and energy on American civilians.

The political inquisition has also been pushed by Democrats in Congress who sought a “January 6 Commission” in the style of the “9/11 Commission” to investigate what they’ve termed an “insurrection.” Federal law enforcement has already pursued every man, woman, and perhaps a few dogs and cats that entered the Capitol that day, with more than 500 arrested thus far under a “shock and awe” approach that has left many confined in maximum security conditions, including some who simply entered the Capitol.

But Democrats wish to craft the image of their political opponents as radicals more dangerous than the Islamic fundamentalists who hijacked four airplanes on 9/11. Senate Republicans were able to kill the bill, but not its ultimate goal. Democrats won’t give up. And they won’t spare any group from ideological scrutiny, not even the military or DHS.

Never Centralize Powers the Left Might Obtain

Surely, none of this was contemplated by President Bush when he signed the legislation making DHS a federal agency. How could he have known that our most powerful law enforcement and intelligence agencies would one day be employed for political purposes? Who would’ve guessed that FBI, CIA, and DNI chiefs empowered to protect our nation would use those powers to attempt to remove a duly elected president with an elaborate hoax?

We’ve had warnings. In 2013, former CIA employee and National Security Agency subcontractor Edward Snowden exposed the NSA’s abuse of powers entrusted to it under the Patriot Act. The agency’s mass surveillance of private citizens and companies was stunning.

Was it all for national security? Not even close. The agents were found spying on their love interests, a tactic affectionally called “LOVEINT.” They also tracked the personal and sexual activities of people they called “radicalizers,” to discredit them.

“Homeland security” has quickly become a system that can neither be trusted to enforce nor obey the law, nor be penalized for its own malfeasance. Its apparently unfireable leaders carry on with impunity, despite perjuring themselves before Congress, falsifying documents for a FISA court, unmasking communications without clear justification, and illegally spying on American citizens without a warrant. Perfect knowledge and unrestrained power have made a dangerous cocktail.