A Country We No Longer Recognize, a Coup We Never Knew

The title of this article by Victor Davis Hanson rings SO heartbreakingly REAL. I connected some other pieces here, too, that paint the picture of what’s happening to our country.

BS”D

This first part, by Victor Davis Hanson, which appeared in The Epoch Times, really struck a powerful chord in me. It’s from January, but sadly it’s as relevant as ever. I included almost the whole article. Please share.

A Country We No Longer Recognize, a Coup We Never Knew

Did someone or something seize control of the United States?

What happened to the U.S. border? Where did it go? Who erased it? Why and how did 5 million people enter our country illegally? Did Congress secretly repeal our immigration laws? Did President Joe Biden issue an executive order allowing foreign nationals to walk across the border and reside in the United States as they pleased?

Since when did money not have to be paid back? Who insisted that the more dollars the federal government printed, the more prosperity would follow? When did America embrace zero interest? Why do we believe $30 trillion in debt is no big deal?

When did clean-burning, cheap, and abundant natural gas become the equivalent to dirty coal? How did prized natural gas that had granted America’s wishes of energy self-sufficiency, reduced pollution, and inexpensive electricity become almost overnight a pariah fuel whose extraction was a war against nature? Which lawmakers, which laws, which votes of the people declared natural gas development and pipelines near criminal?

Was it not against federal law to swarm the homes of Supreme Court justices, to picket and to intimidate their households in efforts to affect their rulings? How then with impunity did bullies surround the homes of Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, John Roberts, and Clarence Thomas—furious over a court decision on abortion?

Since when did Americans create a government Ministry of Truth? And on whose orders did the FBI contract private news organizations to censor stories it did not like and writers whom it feared?

How did we wake up one morning to new customs of impeaching a president over a phone call? Of the speaker of the House tearing up the State of the Union address on national television? Of barring congressional members from serving on their assigned congressional committees?

When did we assume the FBI had the right to subvert the campaign of a candidate it disliked? Was it legal suddenly for one presidential candidate to hire a foreign ex-spy to subvert the campaign of her rival?

Was some state or federal law passed that allowed biological males to compete in female sports? Did Congress enact such a law? Did the Supreme Court guarantee that biological male students could use gym locker rooms with biological women?

When did the government pass a law depriving Americans of their freedom during a pandemic? In America can health officials simply cancel rental contracts or declare loan payments in suspension? How could it become illegal for mom-and-pop stores to sell flowers or shoes during a quarantine but not so for Walmart or Target?

Since when did the people decide that 70 percent of voters would not cast their ballots on Election Day? Was this revolutionary change the subject of a national debate, a heated congressional session, or the votes of dozens of state legislatures?

What happened to election night returns? Did the fact that Americans created more electronic ballots and computerized tallies make it take so much longer to tabulate the votes?

When did the nation abruptly decide that theft is not a crime, assault not a felony? How can thieves walk out with bags of stolen goods, without the wrath of angry shoppers, much less fear of the law?

BW: See illustration of this in Twitter link below.

Was there ever a national debate about the terrified flight from Afghanistan? Who planned it and why?

What happened to the once-trusted FBI? Why almost overnight did its directors decide to mislead Congress, to deceive judges with concocted tales from fake dossiers and with doctored writs? Did Congress pass a law that our federal leaders in the FBI or CIA could lie with impunity under oath?

Who redefined our military and with whose consent? Who proclaimed that our chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff could call his Chinese Communist counterpart to warn him that America’s president was supposedly unstable? Was it always true that retired generals routinely libeled their commander-in-chief as a near Nazi, a Mussolini, an adherent of the tools of Auschwitz?

Were Americans ever asked whether their universities could discriminate against their sons and daughters based on their race? How did it become physically dangerous to speak the truth on a campus? Whose idea was it to reboot racial segregation and bias as “theme houses,” “safe spaces,” and “diversity”? How did that happen in America?

How did a virus cancel the Constitution? Did the lockdowns rob of us of our sanity? Or was it the woke hysteria that ignited our collective madness?

We are beginning to wake up from a nightmare to a country we no longer recognize, and from a coup we never knew.

Link to original article: https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/the-coup-we-never-knew_4964793.html

Here is a shocking example of blatant crime being sanctioned. It is obvious to anyone that such a society is unsustainable.

https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1647995982049583109?s=20

When I saw the following piece by Attorney Bobbie Anne Cox last week, I realized it was a great follow up to Victor Davis Hanson’s cry. I included almost all of Bobbie’s article, and the link to the original is in the next paragraph.

Our Constitution Was Written to Keep the GOVERNMENT In Check... Not to Keep the People In Check!

It is a true shame that civics is no longer taught in schools today.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines “civics” as, “the branch of political science that deals with civic affairs and the rights and duties of citizens.” It’s basically the study of how government works in relation to our society. I truly believe that if Americans understood the basic premise that We the People are in charge, not the government, our lives would be a lot more “free” than we are today.

As an attorney in the world of Constitutional Law, it is quite obvious to me that we have become a “Regulation Nation,” where we are governed by an “Administrative State”. What do I mean by that?  I mean that we are being governed by regulations issued by administrative agencies, instead of being governed by laws duly passed by our elected officials in our legislatures. 

Why does that matter?  Because agencies are run by unelected, government bureaucrats who are beholden to nobody but the person who appointed them.  They do not serve We the People. They don’t care what the voters think or want or don’t want.  They don’t have to care.  They don’t need your vote to stay in power.  They only need to appease the politician who appointed them. 

Something that I often explain when I am giving a speech or a presentation is that, our Founding Fathers wrote our Constitution to enshrine our rights, and then they built the government to protect those rights. The government is not supposed to control us. We are supposed to control the government. We do that through suffrage (i.e. voting). Here in New York, suffrage is so sacred, our state constitution lists it second only to our Bill of Rights.

Since I’m giving a mini civics class here in this article, there are a couple of other key points I want to stress about civics:

• The states created the federal government. The federal government did not create the states.

• Any power not specifically endowed upon the federal government in the Constitution is reserved for the people, or the states.

• The Constitution lays out our 3 co-equal branches of government and their enumerated powers (Legislative Branch, Judicial Branch, Executive Branch). The checks and balances set forth in our Constitution are there to prevent any one branch from becoming too powerful. This is the Separation of Powers doctrine. When one branch goes astray, it’s up to the other branches to put that branch back in its place.

In my opinion, the Separation of Powers doctrine is the most sacred part of our civics in this country. Why? Because if one branch of government is allowed to take the power of another branch, tyranny will certainly ensue. Sound extreme? It’s not. Think about it for a minute… if a governor or the president (Executive Branch) is permitted to take the law-making power of the state legislature or Congress (Legislative Branch), then the governor or president will be crowning themselves a monarch, at which point they would be judge, jury, and executioner, all in one. This is extremely dangerous to the citizenry, because you will have lost your voice (through your elected senators/representatives) in the law-making/governing process!

Let me give you a few real-life scenarios so it’s easier to digest.

For starters, my “quarantine camp” lawsuit is a perfect example.  What happened there is that the NYS Department of Health (DOH) issued an “Isolation & Quarantine Procedures” regulation.  The head of the DOH is Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett.  She is appointed by the Governor.  Everyone that works for the DOH is unelected. They do not need to listen to voter wants/needs. Quite presumably, if the Commissioner or any of the government workers below her don’t do the bidding of their “boss,” then their days at the DOH would surely be limited. 

So, what happened in my quarantine case is that the DOH created a wholly unconstitutional regulation that allowed them to pick and choose which New Yorkers they could lock up or lock down.  That could have meant forced isolation in your home, or they could have removed you from your home and put you into a quarantine facility of their choosing!  For however long they wanted. With no procedure for you to get out.  There was no age restriction, so they could have taken you, your child, your grandchild… Literally tearing families apart.  And they didn’t even have to prove that you were sick, or that you had been exposed to a communicable disease!

The DOH gave themselves this phenomenal power. If that is unclear what I mean there, I will explain. The DOH wanted this unbridled power to be able to control 19 million New Yorkers with the stroke of a pen, the legislature wouldn’t give it to them, so they just made it up and issued it themselves in the form of a regulation (10 NYCRR 2.13).  No legislative consent given.  No voter input had.  Zilch.  A clear breach of separation of powers.  A clear affront on our Constitution.  A perfect example of the “Regulation Nation”.

So, I sued Governor Hochul and her DOH on behalf of a group of NYS legislators (Senator George Borrello, Assemblyman Chris Tague, Assemblyman [now Congressman] Mike Lawler) together with a citizens’ group, Uniting NYS.  Our argument was clear: the DOH does not possess the power to make a law, and this was surely a law, despite the fact that they called it a “regulation.”  It conflicted with the Constitution. It conflicted with NYS law.  As Assemblyman Tague said at our press conference last year when we first filed the case:

“This policy’s aim to forcibly isolate law-abiding citizens is reminiscent of actions taken by some of the ugliest tyrannical regimes history has ever known. It has no place standing as law here in New York, let alone anywhere in the United States. Policies as dangerous as this should be debated and scrutinized in a public setting by elected representatives, not quietly slinked through regulatory approvals.”

The important thing to recognize here is, although the DOH called it a “regulation,” it was actually a law, and laws are supposed to be made by the legislature, not the governor and her agencies. The court struck it down as unconstitutional, breach of Separation of Powers, but the governor is now appealing. If the appellate court overturns that ruling and reinstates that “regulation”, then the governor will have law-making power through her agencies, plus the power to enforce that law, through her agencies, law enforcement, police, etc… I hope you understand how dangerous that is, to place all of that immense power in the hands of one person. It would be a stunning display of tyranny.

On the Federal level

This dangerous “regulation nation” has a few different names. I call it usurpation of power. Also known as breach of separation of powers. Some call it government overreach. Whichever tag you use, it gets us to the same place: our Constitution is under attack! As a result, attorneys like me have to then bring lawsuits against the Executive branches to get the Judicial branches to put the Executives back into their lane. This is happening at the state level, in states across the nation, as well as at the federal level.

Indeed, there have been some recent United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decisions that positively tackled the same “Regulation Nation” problem.  Here are a few, with just a bit of detail:

• Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), an agency in the Executive Branch under the President, made a regulation limiting power plant emissions. The regulation conflicted with the federal Clean Air Act. The EPA did not have the power to make that “regulation”. Last summer, SCOTUS struck down the regulation as unconstitutional.

• Biden’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), an agency in the Executive Branch under the President, made a regulation requiring all employers in the US with 100 or more employees to require those employees to get the C19 shot or mask/test in order to go to work. OSHA did not have the power to make that “regulation”. Last year, SCOTUS struck down the regulation as unconstitutional.

• Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an agency in the Executive Branch under the President, made a regulation imposing a nationwide eviction moratorium whereby prohibiting landlords from evicting tenants due to non-payment of rent. The CDC did not have the power to make the “regulation”. In the summer of 2021, SCOTUS struck down the regulation as unconstitutional.

These are cases, like my quarantine case, where the Constitution won; which is wonderful of course. However, this model is not sustainable. Meaning, we can’t just keep bringing lawsuits to put the overreaching, totalitarian Executives back in their lanes. It’s akin to playing whack-a-mole… you never really catch up. Why not? Because lawsuits take time. A lot of time. They take money. They take resources. They require lawyers willing to go against the grain to take up the fight. The lawsuits aren’t easy because all of the above-noted ingredients are rare commodities, especially funding. I am handling our quarantine camp lawsuit pro bono, which means I am doing it for free. But that is not sustainable either! We must stop the government’s perilous “Catch me if you can” attitude. We must go on the offensive, by electing those who honor the Constitution and who will establish once again a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Attorney Cox wrote another article with some encouraging news on April 16. I’ll include some of the beginning:

In a shockingly rare occurrence, the United States Supreme Court (SCOTUS) on Friday had a unanimous ruling… in favor of the Constitution!

… the challenge was against the ever-growing administrative state (i.e. agency power). I was on America’s Voice Live to discuss the dangers of the overreaching, ever-present administrative state, and you can watch that interview here. I have also written on separation of powers, and more specifically the importance of keeping the power-crazed administrative state in check, numerous times in the past: The Constitution Is The Answer; Regulation Nation; Our Constitution Was Written to Keep The Government In Check, Not The People; Catch Me If You Can

And to end off with, here are some excerpts from a substack called Simulation Commander on April 9, which I found powerful:

Destroying Society Is Easier Than Building It

Previously we discussed how voluntary transactions in a free market allow a society to progress from broke to living a life of luxury unheard of even just a few decades ago. By allowing the “invisible hand” of the market (really just millions of people making their own decisions), resources find their optimum use and society gets wealthier.

But the free market system can be broken just like any other, typically by ignoring or subverting it.

George Bush zapped up billions of dollars and handed them to the banks in 2008, but his abandonment of the free market (and Constitutional) system was made possible by Richard Nixon’s abandonment of the free market (and Constitutional) system, which was made possible by Woodrow Wilson’s abandonment of the free market (and Constitutional) system. But as terrible as the 2008 bailouts were, the 2023 version is much, much worse. For starters, the 2008 Congress actually had to write and pass a bill, which was then signed by the President. In 2023, Fed Chair Janet Yellen simply decrees that Silicon Valley Bank depositors will be made whole, along with other depositors in banks that would create a “systemic risk” if they failed:

As Senator Lankford notes, this only further solidifies terrible policies that are sure to backfire — while the Federal Reserve openly states that it will decide which banks are worth of “backstopping” and which will be allowed to fail.

This is a predictable consequence of ruining the value of the currency via printing. Soon, the “real” economy of voluntary goods and services is taken over by the “fake” economy of being buddies with the people who run the literal money-making machine. Why go through all the trouble of setting up a real service that does real things when you can just get your paid-off Crony in Congress to hand you a sweet government contract or grant?

When these types of people fail to perform their basic functions, government as a whole fails.

In Washington DC, almost 70% of cases were never prosecuted in 2022. And after a major rail disaster spewed chemicals into the air for days, our Secretary of Transportation couldn’t be bothered to visit.

But since all of these people exist outside of the free market system (instead existing in the political system), they face little consequences for their actions.

Of course, after you name goes on the Persona Non Grata list, the media swings into action to defend the establishment — even if that means attacking fellow journalists revealing true but embarrassing information about said establishment. In this way, the media is just the PR arm of The Swamp, heaping praise upon its denizens while lashing out against any who threaten its existence.

So we have a media that covers up for the incompetence of government, while also backing up government’s claim that GOVERNMENT MUST DO MORE. And every single thing that government does is another chance for graft and corruption.

Of course, at no time have we seen the devastating effects of central planning more than during the covid years. From terrible incentives to emergency powers to outright censorship, government has spent the last few years completely circumventing the free market and the ability to make an informed choice.

Perhaps the best example involves Andrew Cuomo and ventilators. Remember very early in the pandemic, Cuomo demanded 30,000 ventilators from the federal government. He even went on TV and basically accused Donald Trump of murdering New Yorkers because he didn’t send enough ventilators: (This is especially ironic considering NYC’s vent stockpile had previously been auctioned off.)

Of course, at the time we were already getting data showing the vast majority of people who went on ventilators never came off. (The number got as high as 90% in NYC, which had a “vent early, vent hard” strategy.)

When watching the press conference in which Cuomo told Trump to pick the 26,000 people who are going to die, I already knew that if the governor got those 30,000 ventilators, HE would be choosing the 26,000 who die. (Hint: It would be the people put on vents.)

But of course, this was never mentioned by the media. They loved that Cuomo was attacking Trump and being a “strong leader”. So even while TIME was explaining why ventilators weren’t working, the media never questioned the ventilator math and still fawned over New York’s governor — who would make the situation much worse the very next day by mandating a covid outbreak in every nursing home. (See the effects of that here!)

Murdering your own citizens is bad enough (though not bad enough to get you removed from office), and having plans that would murder more of them is worse still. In the end, we’re lucky Cuomo never got those ventilators. But what happened to the ones he DID get is the rotten cherry on this turd sundae: many were sold for scrap.

City officials auctioned off nearly $225 million worth of surplus COVID-19 medical equipment and safety gear for just $500,000 — or a paltry 0.2 cents on the dollar, according to a stunning report Tuesday.

The bargain-basement sales included nearly 3,000 mechanical ventilators that cost taxpayers $12 million but were unloaded as “non-functioning medical equipment for scrap metal” at a rock-bottom price of just $24,600 on Jan. 24, according to nonprofit news website The City.

And that’s simply one aspect of the response. How much did New York waste on “Test and Trace” programs? How much on vaccine passports? How much worse off is the state after it forcefully shut down the economy and forced citizens to flee? How much better off would the state (and the country) be if the “leaders” had simply offered advice — as is proper in science?

Voluntary transactions build a strong, stable society. Central planners take away stable planks for political reasons, replacing them with unstable edicts. And the more government does, the quicker we’ll get to the inevitable conclusion of central planning.

BW: I would add that all this is true because the government is G-dless and therefore does not truly seek the benefit of the people, but only their own benefit. They do not fear Heavenly retribution; therefore they are untrustworthy.

In the words that Abraham said to King Abimelech in Genesis 20:11:

And Abraham said, “For I said, 'Surely, there is no fear of God in this place, and they will kill me because of my wife.”

Or, we can put it this way: Because the government has forgotten G-d, they have also forgotten the critical importance of the basic commandments that He gave to all of humanity to enable a beneficial society. For example, the precept of establishing courts for justice, and the prohibitions against theft, murder, and adultery.

Link to above article:

Destroying Society Is Easier Than Building It

With prayers and hopes for society to return to awareness of and fear of G-d.