An old adage plays out
The older I get, the more I see it in real life. And it starts with the FBI.
For many years, whenever the chance occurs, I bring up an old saying which I am convinced is the unvarnished, practically Biblical truth: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” It’s part of a sentence credited to Lord Acton, which reads, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” That phrase, in turn, has its origins credited to William Pitt the Elder, who said, “Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.” Given the shorter phrase is easier to remember and gets the point across, I seldom hesitate to use it when the appropriate opportunity for comment comes up.
So I was listening to a snippet of the Dan Bongino radio show yesterday, as is my guilty pleasure on Fridays where I’m out running errands after work, and he was talking about how the FBI was making criminals out of average people who have issue with how the government is conducting itself because the agency has put an emphasis on white supremacist crime and, since there isn’t a KKK to kick around anymore, they stick their nose into the business of the parent questioning a school board, an average Joe wearing a MAGA hat, or a pro-life adherent with a door to (“nearly”) break down. Writer Jakob Fay explains that situation well:
Joe Biden and his attorney general Merrick Garland have made one thing clear: everyday Americans who stand in the way of the radical Left are the greatest threat to our country. Biden has no problem with taking extreme measures (that is to say, wielding the FBI) to stop people like you and me from… doing what exactly?
It’s not entirely clear why the president and his cohorts are so scared of middle America or why Biden won’t stop rambling about the apparently very concerning rise in "extremism." If anything is getting out of hand in this country, it isn’t the patriots at your local tea party or the moms at a school board meeting – it’s the government’s unhinged response to those people.
Week after week, new stories surface about the overdramatic – yet no less serious – steps the president is taking on his journey to becoming, well, quite frankly… an authoritarian. And after the latest story, I can reasonably say we’ve hit an all-time low.
Last week, an armed FBI SWAT team reportedly conducted an early morning raid, barging into a private home, rifles in a firing position to arrest… a dad. Not a terrorist dad. Not a dad with a terrible criminal record. No, just a dad. A pro-life dad.
For all I know I’m on some sort of watch list because I’m one of those uppity people on the conservative side of the political spectrum who writes about abuses of authority sometimes. If I had gone to the J6 rally, even just to cover it as a journalist like I did the 9/12 TEA Party rally or other D.C. based events back in the day, I’ll bet the FBI would have been knocking on my door, too.
We initially intended to set up our system of government in such a manner that there would be several branches to divide the power as well as check and balance the others. But when you have legislative branch abdicating its oversight of the executive branch, instead assuming the judicial branch will clean up the messes (and acting surprised when the executive branch figures out a workaround) - well, we have an issue. This idea of letting Executive Branch regulators write law is why all of us supposedly commit three felonies a day.
On a similar note, the FBI is supposed to fight crime, but in our Lavrentiy Beria nation we’re getting the crimes fitted to those who don’t quite work and play well with their elite betters. If you’re on the wrong side of the ledger, you get 20 armed agents beating down your door for a simple allegation of assault, but if you’re in the favored class you get to destroy incriminating evidence without so much as a day in court. That’s an issue when the idea was equal justice under the law and smarter people than me came up with Article III and the fourth through eighth amendments to the Constitution.
So I’m not quite sure what the best approach is in addressing the FBI’s overreach. There are some who say we need to start from square one, defunding the FBI totally, but I can’t say I agree with that. However, that’s not to say there’s no need to completely gut the leadership and start that portion over. There must be some FBI agents who are out to catch bad guys who are really bad guys; the ones who rob, rape, murder, sell narcotics, and so forth. We learned to love the FBI when it was taking out mobsters back in the day but they began to lose our support when their sledgehammer tactics led to incidents like Ruby Ridge or the destruction of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. They’re a bit more subtle about entrapping their marks now; still, three decades later after what’s happened to J6 defendants and the recent Houck incident the FBI’s trustworthiness is down there with used car salesmen and members of Congress. It doesn’t matter how many jingoistic network TV shows they have, some people want the FBI cleaned out.
When you have a group of people who don’t mind bending the law on a regular basis to enforce it, to me that’s an indication of absolute power corrupting absolutely. There are too many good people in law enforcement who take their oath to the Constitution seriously to allow that to stand.