“Stirred to fury and swayed by passion in all their counsels … the government will change its name to the finest sounding of all: free democracy; but will change its nature to the worst thing of all: mob-rule.” — Polybius, Histories, Book VIII
Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has reintroduced the “Protecting Our Democracy Act,” an initiative aimed at “fortifying the defenses of our democracy against any misuse of power by presidents or officials for personal benefits.” Schiff’s comprehensive partisan legislative package stands as a central plank of the Democrats’ “Democracy agenda” — a concerted endeavor to “safeguard, reinforce, and reestablish confidence in our democratic institutions.” Additionally, this bill is designed to complement the recently reintroduced Freedom to Vote Act, another weapon in the Democrats’ war against former President Donald Trump and all who support him and the unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral effort to persecute him by the de facto repeal of the rule of law.
On his official House website, Schiff explained the motivation and purpose of his new measure:
Over the last several years, many of our democratic norms and institutions have been weakened, and the fragility of our system has been revealed in ways not seen since Watergate. After Watergate, Congress responded by enshrining certain reforms into law and we must now do the same. No president should be able to abuse the power of the office they are entrusted with, or marginalize a co-equal branch of government. I was proud to see the Protecting Our Democracy Act pass in the House last Congress — and some of its provisions signed into law. Now we must finish the job. I’m committed to seeing the entire package enacted into law, and to strengthening and protecting our democracy for future generations.
Even those who dislike Donald Trump, if they’re being sincere, would admit that Schiff’s statement reveals that his bill is nothing more or less than an attempt to pervert the power of Congress to seek vengeance on Donald Trump. Notice the only presidential abuse of power listed by Schiff is Watergate.
As for marginalizing a co-equal branch of government, one wonders if Schiff ever spoke out against Bill Clinton or Barack Obama when the former lived by the “stroke of the pen, law of land” motto coined by one of his counselors, and the latter had an entire section of the White House website devoted to promoting the ways he was going to act without Congress to make “laws”?
While Schiff shied away from naming Trump as the target of the Democrat Party’s legislative attack, Nancy Pelosi — she of the invented title of Speaker Emerita — said the quiet part out loud:
In their great wisdom, our Founders designed a system of checks and balances which have safeguarded the rights of the American people for two and a half centuries. After the former President assaulted these guardrails, it is our solemn responsibility in the Congress to strengthen the rule of law, revitalize our system of checks and balances and restore our democratic institutions. Under the outstanding, patriotic leadership of Congressman Adam Schiff, House Democrats are proud to reintroduce our Protecting Our Democracy Act: sweeping, future-focused legislation to preserve the promise of American Democracy for generations to come.
Nancy Pelosi quoting the Founders is ironic given her penchant for violating the Constitution they created and given the fact that in an interview in 2020 she said she was “all for” considering tearing down the statues of Founding Fathers who owned slaves, adding that regardless of who they are we should “subject everything to scrutiny.”
Schiff and Pelosi (along with most other members of their party) tout “checks and balances,” yet are completely content to allow the current president to wage war without being checked by Congress, to pass gun “laws” without being checked by Congress, to “forgive” student loans without being checked by Congress, and to go so far as to “nullify” acts of Congress.
“Checks and balances” is simply a Democratic Party dog whistle for the millions of Americans whose understanding of the Constitution is based on the lies published in textbooks and taught by members of a teachers union that benefits from the ignorance they’re perpetuating.
By the way, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) is among the many organizations endorsing Schiff’s bill.
The Left has become obsessed with persecuting and prosecuting Donald Trump. Their behavior is not only bizarre and banal, but it is an example of a situation described by the inimitable Samuel Pufendorf, a German professor and thinker beloved by the Founding Fathers. In 1682, Pufendorf warned what happens when party matters more than principle: “Being divided into factions, they are more concerned to ruin their rivals, than to follow the dictates of reason.”
Has there been a more apt description of the Democratic Party’s pursuit of the ruin of Donald Trump and all those who oppose them in that abuse of power?
There is more to Schiff’s and Pelosi’s preference for calling the United States a democracy than meets the eye. Anyone who’s read The New American for any amount of time, or anyone who’s read the Constitution, or the Federalist Papers, or anything ever written by any of the Founding Fathers knows that democracy was nearly universally detested by that generation. Our Founders were keen scholars of history who knew that democracies were violent in their inception and in their destruction. Schiff and Pelosi surely recognize that, thus their use of their political power to see this union devolve into democracy.
Finally, there is nothing “democratic” about abusing Congress’ legislative authority to hound, harass, and harm a single individual. In fact, to the disinterested and intellectually honest reader, the text of Schiff’s bill smacks of being a bill of attainder, an act specifically prohibited by Article I, Section 9 of the U.S. Constitution.
For anyone interested, here’s the definition of “bill of attainder” published by Cornell Law School:
Bills of attainder allow the government to punish a party for a perceived crime without first going through the trial process…. The constitutional ban on bills of attainder works to uphold separation of powers principles by preventing Congress from assuming the functions of the judicial branch.
And here’s the preamble to Schiff’s ‘‘Protecting Our Democracy Act”: “A bill to protect our democracy by preventing abuses of Presidential power, restoring checks and balances and accountability and transparency in government, and defending elections against foreign interference, and for other purposes.”
The text of the bill and the “abuses of presidential power” specifically listed make it very clear that this legislation is no more or less than an attempt to humiliate Donald Trump and to find him legislatively guilty, regardless of the outcome of the judicial process.
