As virtue declines in our land, we more and more become a nation not of laws but men. This has been called the “Third Worlding” of America, a phenomenon whereby, for one thing, power is increasingly used to destroy political opponents by any means necessary. This reality is well illustrated by a very troubling story that has gotten precious little exposure.
As the Los Angeles Times reported:
In March of last year, California National Guard members awaited orders from Sacramento headquarters to make preparations for any civil unrest that might arise from the outbreak of the coronavirus.
The members expected directives to ready ground troops to help state and local authorities respond to disturbances triggered by resistance to stay-at-home rules or panic over empty store shelves.
But then came an unusual order: The air branch of the Guard was told to place an F-15C fighter jet on an alert status for a possible domestic mission, according to four Guard sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
Those sources said the order didn’t spell out the mission but, given the aircraft’s limitations, they understood it to mean the plane could be deployed to terrify and disperse protesters by flying low over them at window-rattling speeds, with its afterburners streaming columns of flames. Fighter jets have been used occasionally in that manner in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan, they said.
Of course, California National Guard leadership denies that such a deployment was ever considered by Governor Gavin Newsom, their commander in chief. But the Times’ sources say otherwise.
“It would have been a completely illegal order that disgraced the military,” one source told the paper. “It could look like we’re threatening civilians.”
“‘That’s something that would happen in the Soviet Union,’ said a second of The Times’ sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation from their superiors,” the news organ continued. “Our military is used to combat foreign aggressors.”
That’s perhaps part of the issue, too: Our Left and Right are currently so polarized that they’ve become foreign to each other. Moreover, what’s considered the true American spirit is also now foreign to the Left.
Of course, no nation is ever perfect; there will always be double standards and hypocrisy. But it’s the degree that determines how civilized a land is, whether it has what we call “First World” or “Third World” status.
This said, we didn’t reach our current state overnight, as Independent Institute policy fellow K. Lloyd Billingsley pointed out Friday. After reminding us that last year, “Gov. Newsom readily deployed California Highway Patrol troopers in full riot gear to prevent Californians from protesting at the state Capitol in Sacramento,” he wrote:
If an F-15C had made a sortie, it would not have been America’s first use of military force against civilians. During the Ruby Ridge standoff in 1992, the Federal Bureau of Investigation deployed Army sniper Lon Horiuchi, who shot Vicki Weaver in the head as she held her infant child. Snipers are trained carefully to “acquire” their target, so the government’s claim that the killing was accidental might well be doubted. In the 1993 siege at Waco, Texas, the FBI deployed M1 Abrams tanks, a military weapon of awesome firepower.
In January, as CBS News reported, approximately 2,000 armed troops ringed the U.S. Capitol. According to the Defense Department, the National Guard planned to bring 20,000 troops to Washington, D.C., to protect against “insurgents.” If civilians saw that as a military occupation, it would be hard to blame them.
Note here that when President Trump considered using the military to quell the past year’s violent left-wing riots — which grew to more than 600 in number — he was portrayed as a dictator pondering the beyond-the-pale. There even was talk that top military brass might disobey such an order. Yet stationing troops in the Capitol in a trumped up “insurrection’s” name is a-okay.
This is the point, too: As our moral decline intensifies, it’s almost ridiculous to speak of “double standards” because they are now the standard. They are a feature, not a bug, of an establishment governed by the credo “Whatever works for you.”
Examples abound. Ex-intelligence figures Jim Comey, John Brennan, and James Clapper can lie before Congress — a felony — with impunity. Meanwhile, wizened and white-haired Trump confidant Roger Stone not only was targeted with a nonsense charge of lying to the FBI, but was arrested shock-and-awe style in a pre-dawn raid meant to intimidate. Perhaps the fear was that he’d be particularly troublesome if he’d taken his Geritol.
Then there’s how politicians from Gavin Newsom to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D-Chicago) and beyond visit onerous COVID-19 regulations on the people while violating those very regulations themselves. And “leaders” such as Governor Phil Murphy (D-N.J.) prohibited peaceful anti-lockdown demonstrations — citing health imperatives — but then turned around and rubber-stamped sometimes violent Black Lives Matter protests.
Our social laws (codes) are now applied ever more selectively, too. Just consider how a teen American Idol contestant recently had to leave the show because of a three-second video, from when he was 12, in which he was seated next to a child who was wearing something resembling a KKK hood. Meanwhile, a college picture had emerged of Governor Ralph Northam (D-Va.) either wearing a full Klan outfit or standing next to someone who was, and it’s “Nothing to see here; move along.” He’s still in office.
Again, though, a thousand other examples could be cited, and you’ll have a thousand more to cite in the not-too-distant future. The point is that it’s hard for even principled people to consistently apply standards given our flawed human nature. But “standards” won’t be applied at all by people who can’t really believe in standards, fairness, justice, or anything else beyond their own wants because they don’t in the first place believe in principles, properly understood. For at issue are moral relativists, and relativists will ultimately make everything relative to their own desires.
Really, what’s occurring in America isn’t surprising. We’re just experiencing regression to the mean — to the historical norm of tyranny. The Founding Fathers, in contrast, were abnormal, in the sense of being anomalies.
If we want to MAGA, we must become anomalies, too. We must become the only type of people who could restore freedom because they’re the only type who deserve it: a moral elite.
