Weaponization of Politics, an American Tradition
By Ron Paul | June 26, 20234
President Donald Trump is hardly the first political figure who has had the legal and policy processes weaponized against him. In fact, there is a long and shameful history of US politicians and bureaucrats weaponizing governmental powers against their political opponents.
The First Amendment was not even a decade old when fear of influence on America by French agents was used to support the passage of the Alien and Sedition Acts. This outlawed “false, scandalous, and malicious writing” against the US government, Congress, or the president and made it illegal to conspire “to oppose any measure or measures of the government of the United States.”
The weaponization of politics is another example of how hysteria over alleged foreign threats leads to less liberty. The claim that opponents of US government policy were serving interests of France is an early example. Sadly, critics of US government policy have been smeared for spreading disinformation to benefit hostile foreign powers many times since.
During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln oversaw the shutting down of newspapers and even the arresting of state legislators. After the US became involved in World War I, Congress passed a new Sedition Act banning “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” toward the military or US government. This act was used to imprison Eugene Debs, who then ran for president as the Socialist Party nominee while in prison.
Opponents of US involvement in World War II were accused by supporters of US military intervention of being a “fifth column” for Germany’s government. Later, opponents of wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and other countries where the US intervened were subjected to government surveillance and harassment.
Critics of US foreign policy may be the first critics of the US government targeted for opposing government policies, but they are not the last. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover targeted the civil rights movement and wiretapped and harassed Martin Luther King Jr. Hoover also kept files on those he deemed subversives, including even the pop music group The Monkees.
Presidents of both parties have used the IRS against their political enemies. As an IRS agent told the head of a conservative organization who was being audited after calling for the impeachment of then-President Clinton, “What do you expect when you target the president?”
The drafters of the Constitution knew those with power would always be tempted to use the power against their opponents. Hence, they created a limited government where power was diffused and checked. Unfortunately, American politicians gave in to the temptation to weaponize the law against their opponents in the early days of the Republic.
Since then, the growth of government has led to the growth of an unelected and unaccountable bureaucracy that plays an important role for the deep state. The deep state pursues its own agenda regardless of the wishes of the people. The deep state works to subvert those who oppose its agenda, using tactics up to and including assassination in the case of President Kennedy.
A lesson of this history is that people who desire liberty should not trust the US government to advance liberty. Instead, they need to be vigilant in ensuring the government acts within the limits stated in the Constitution. Making sure the government is pursuing a policy of peace and free trade abroad is also essential to promoting liberty at home.
Copyright © 2023 by RonPaul Institute
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The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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“Enemies foreign and domestic” was not intended to mean law-abiding US citizens who express an opposing view of government policy. Only a hand full of today’s House members and a scant few in the US Senate, oppose what is being done to silence opposition. President Biden has shown himself to be “totalitarian” to even the most die-hard Democrat. Sending FBI agents to investigate and intimidate Parents of school age children, who dissented against what they correctly perceived to be very harmful teachings on Critical Race Theory, exposed the naked totalitarian abuse of power this administration is willing to impose on American citizens.
Lincoln’s drastic measures were argued as necessary to quell existential threats to the Unity of the United States. The Union’s enemies were real in 1860, not imagined. The British Empire under Palmerston and Napolean III’s France were behind the Southern Confederacy. They both provided logistical support and political intelligence through their network of spies. (James Bullock, Teddy Roosevelt’s uncle, and mentor for one).
Lincoln’s first priority was to save the Union! Lincoln felt that if he had to sacrifice liberties in order to defend and protect the Union from being destroyed by threats from within and from without, he would do it. Lincoln faced down supporters of the Confederacy in the federal government, but also in northern state governments. Lincoln was intellectually and morally equipped to put down armed insurrections and jail supporters of the CSA where ever they were. He ordered the arrest of an armed bunch of military officers in New Jersey who were planning to overthrow his government. But first, he suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus. Then he had them all arrested for armed sedition. Did the end justify the means? Yes. Lincoln swore an oath of office to protect and defend the United States from enemies foreign and domestic. He faced half the country ceding from the Union while armed supporters of the CSA were ready to roll against his government. Had he not done what he did the United States would be no more and France and Britain would have claimed victory of their arch-enemy, the United States.
President Wilson sought and received Congressional passage of the Sedition Act before he called out the National Guard to put down draft rioters protesting US involvement in WWI. Was he justified? Hardly. Wilson revived the KKK by holding a private viewing in the White House of the Klan movie “Birth Of A Nation”. His government passed a National Banking Act that chartered the Federal Reserve Central Bank. A banker’s bank that was owned lock stock and barrel by private financial interests. Also passed was the Federal Income Tax law that was intended to finance US participation in WWI. It was never repealed. Also passed was a bill that funded the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a federal police force that would later be used and abused by future administrations like the present one.
FDR abused also abused the principle of defending the US from enemies foreign and domestic, when he ordered Japanese Americans interred after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. In the heat of the moment, passion and paranoia trumped rationality and Federal Constitution. Elenore Roosevelt is on record opposing her husband’s decision.
Putin’s Russia was threatened by the external advances of NATO, right up to its borders for over two decades since the fall of the USSR. NATO claims to be a Defensive Alliance, but it set up missile batteries in Poland and Romania NATO said would be used to repel aggression from Iran. This turned out to be a bald-faced lie. The US sponsored a coup in Ukraine that overthrew the duly elected President, Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. For the next 8 years, the Russian-speaking residents of the Donbas mining region were attacked, bombed, and intimidated by the Government of Ukraine. The arming of Ukraine by NATO costs the lives of 14000 people killed by Ukraine’s military forces which included the Nazi-infested Azov Regiment. Putin ordered the SMO after the United States ignored his demands for security guarantees in Dec. 2021. Putin and Xi Jinping of China signed peace and security accords in February 2004. That should have signaled to the United States that their intransigence toward Russia and China came with a price. But the funny funny boys from Harvard and Yale who populate government departments involving US Security and Foreign Policy ignored the obvious message Russia and China were sending. Russia and China were now united against what they perceived to be the same potential existential threat coming from the West, particularly Great Britain and the United States. The US is trying to recover diplomacy with China but its too late unless the US changes its attitude and foreign policy to cohere with China’s. Unfortunately, the US is saddled with Blinken and Biden when what it needs is a John F Kennedy.
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