October 10, 2018 at 4:32 p.m.
Living in the age of impeachment
Living in the age of impeachment
No, none of it has to do with enacting policies that help Americans live better lives. Democrats actually prefer policies that grow government power, and thus help make the lives of Americans worse, but even those will be on the back burner if the Democrats win next month.
They have bigger fish to fry. That is, they apparently plan to impeach everyone they disagree with. That's a lot of impeachments coming down the pike.
For example, Democrats have been salivating over the prospect of impeaching President Donald Trump ever since November 2016, when he stood in the way of an encore performance of the Clintons renting out the Lincoln bedroom in the White House.
In the eyes of Democrats, Trump's victory made him an illegitimate president because, well, just because. Just because the Democrats say so.
Since 2016, this illegitimate president has negotiated fair trade deals for middle America for the first time in at least two generations; he has lowered unemployment to its lowest level in 50 years, and lowered black and Latino unemployment to their lowest levels ever; he is boosting the stock markets; he is boosting wages, too, which jumped 2.9 percent in August alone; he has slashed regulations, particularly for small businesses, the lifeblood of Main Street; and he has, from the courts to immigration, restored the rule of law in America.
Not bad for an illegitimate president. You know, illegitimate just because. So let's impeach him the moment we can.
Now fast forward to Brett Kavanaugh. He has been confirmed, and that makes him, according to Democrats, illegitimate. In this case, he's illegitimate because two "legitimate" women came forward and accused him of sexual assault.
Unfortunately, while the women in question might be credible, worthy citizens, in this case their stories were not legitimate in any sense of the word. The most credible story, that of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, was riddled with inconsistencies, lack of detail, and uncorroborated by those she said were at the scene of the crime, even by her best friend.
There was no probable cause, nor could the story even pass the standard that Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she followed - that it had to be more likely than not. It wasn't.
To Democrats, none of that matters. No one is entitled to due process. You must surrender to the ruination of your life because someone accuses you of high crimes without a shred of evidence. You know, just because. So let's assume Kavanaugh lied about his sexual activities and impeach him for perjury.
Oh, let's amend that. Democrats do believe in due process ... for Democrats. If people will remember, Democrats opposed impeaching President Clinton for lying about his sex life. Perjury was the issue there, too, but somehow due process was much more important back then.
How deep is the double standard? We wonder. If we were to run a front page story in which someone, without any evidence, accused Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tony Evers of sexual assault - much like The New Yorker did about Kavanaugh - would liberal Democrats believe us and demand that he withdraw from the race?
More likely we would be sued for libel, and deservedly so.
However, if we ran the same story about Gov. Scott Walker, no doubt liberals everywhere would be demanding his removal from the race and calling for an immediate investigation. The governor surely doesn't deserve due process, and the accusers must be believed. What great journalism.
So, if they win the House, the Democrats are going to be out there trying to impeach the president and trying to impeach justice Kavanaugh, but that's not all. A growing number of liberals and Democrats want to impeach justice Clarence Thomas, too.
Say what?
That's right, they want to impeach Thomas for lying about the alleged sexual harassment of Anita Hill during his confirmation hearings 27 years ago. Jill Abramson, the former executive editor of The New York Times, even wrote an article about it for New York Magazine earlier this year, laying out the case that Thomas perjured himself with his denial.
Never mind that there's no more credible evidence in 2018 than there was 27 years ago - when there was none - we must impeach him. You know, just because. He doesn't deserve due process.
For those who don't remember Ms. Abramson's stint at The New York Times, she was fired in 2014 for lying both to the publisher and the paper's chief executive. Still, despite this slight problem with the truth, she must be believed.
She's a liberal, and justice Thomas does not deserve due process.
What's all the more frightening about this is that advocates of this kind of thinking are preparing a broader campaign. Everywhere, liberals are saying, the Kavanaugh case must be a platform from which to launch a movement to hunt down and root out and ruin those accused of sexual assault, all without requiring any evidence.
In this atmosphere, the talk of coming impeachments is the talk of coming political lynchings, by any other name.
To make clear, this movement is much different from the MeToo movement, which has brought to justice many true offenders, which has given powerful voice to those actually assaulted and abused, and which had actually held out the possibility, by exposing the politics of power and domination behind sexual assault, of a sea-change in social thought and structure.
Now it is in danger of being taken hostage by a partisan mob intent on using it to persecute political opponents. As we have written before, this takes the nation down the slippery slope of sexual McCarthyism.
The core notion of McCarthyism is just that: Political opponents do not deserve due process, and the fact that we have a legitimate problem in the country justifies a witch hunt to track down and destroy those accused, the innocent as well as the guilty.
Again, today's liberal conduct is all too reminiscent of the original McCarthyism, McCarthyism Classic, when the witch hunters found communists under every other bed.
In that age, communism was a real problem. Communists had in fact infiltrated some levels of government, and we were engaged in a brutal Cold War that threatened our very survival.
But those who exposed real communists were soon overwhelmed by the imposters, the followers of Joe McCarthy, who exaggerated the issue absurdly and pursued and hounded his political opponents with false accusations.
And so we have arrived at that doorstep. Today, the very real problem of sexual assault and abuse has been exposed, but now a political mob is using it to justify a witch hunt to track down and destroy its political opponents.
Here's how liberal Alan Dershowitz, who fears this new movement, puts it: "It's rampant McCarthyism at its worst, reminiscent of what I experienced when I was a student at Brooklyn College in the 50s when professors were fired because it was suspected that when they were 17 or 20 years old, they might have been members or fellow travelers of the Communist party. We just have to put an end to this, and these kinds of vengeance inquisitions have to stop."
In other words, if this movement is allowed to succeed, none of us are safe, and the true gains of the MeToo movement will be washed away. Who would be the next to be impeached? Who would be the next to have their reputations and careers ruined without any evidence?
Maybe you?
Since they cannot hope to get a two-thirds majority in the U.S. Senate on any of these ghostly and ghastly allegations, Democrats must be playing to the crowd with this impeachment talk, with hopes it will energize their radical base in the mid-term elections.
To those of us who understand the dangers of living in a nation where the moral imperative is "no justice needed" rather "due process required," who understand the dangers of living in a nation built upon the rule of the political mob rather than upon the rule of law, let us hope the energy is flowing in the opposite direction.
For, as history shows, McCarthyism never sleeps. It is always wide awake, and waiting for the next opportunity.
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