At a speaking event four years ago, a man in the audience asked Charlie Kirk about when it would be justified to kill political opponents. Kirk shut him down. “We must exhaust every peaceful means possible,” Kirk said. It should not be lost on anyone that, at least for Charlie, that avenue has been forclosed forever; God rest his soul.
As this was written on 9/11, which requires its own separate remembrance, yet has parallels to the events of Wednesday, the 10th. The terrorists on September 11th had the same objectives as the terrorist yesterday; they did not simply wish to silence the debate, they wanted to shock the conscience of their enemy in the most dramatic and ghastly way possible, in a desire to see our Western society collapse.
Another frequent writer on American Thinker responded to a piece I wrote, itself a response to Andrea Widburg’s excellent comments on Charlie Kirk’s assassination, and asked me:
“Fine. So, who on the left is being targeted for revenge and retribution?
Do the bullets fly now because Kirk got gunned down by party or parties unknown, and since they got one on the right, the right takes out how many on the left?”
“They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.”
Is that the response?
My answer: Don’t let them dictate the terms of our engagement by reflexively saying “of course not.” You don’t have to advocate violence by not signing on to what amounts to a mutual death pact by maintaining the status quo. Responding in a politically correct manner has seen us lose much of our once civil society to the crazies, the anarchists, and the pseudo-intellectuals who think they have had us trapped over the last 30 years or so.
Greg Gutfeld, co-host of The Five on Fox, has a ready-made strategy he articulates for all those who think they have conservatives and Republicans on the run:
Greg’s argument about the “prison of two ideas” is a critique of binary thinking in political and cultural discourse. He describes how people are often forced into false dichotomies—oversimplified choices between two extremes—where nuance and complexity are ignored.
Debates are often framed as “either/or” traps.
He introduced the idea of an “idea warden”—a political figure or media personality whose views become the default for their followers.
The above thinking leads us to understand that we always have choices. The default choice is to continue with the same tired and ineffective actions and reactions that yield no change and frustrate us, trapped in a cycle of our own making.
There is a better way.
Educational elites, Marxists in our government and public institutions, leftist influencers (journalists), and a multi-generational criminal element composed of violent and non-violent individuals have achieved an ability to control our narratives. They have also been empowered by their ability to file frivolous lawsuits in friendly courts and jurisdictions, which has severely hampered the ability of our national leaders to govern.
Of all of the above, it’s the courts that have watched over, encouraged, empowered, and ultimately shaped our world today. Only Congress, not the President, can tackle this problem directly. And, with a divided electorate, we’ve been stymied. So, where do we go next?
It’s time for the nuclear option. If you believe, as I do, that Donald Trump may be the last and only hope for saving our Constitutional Republic from a complete rewriting of our future, we need a new emergency Constitutional Amendment along the following lines:
America faces the challenge of an evolving electorate that does not understand or care that we are a representative democracy and are inexorably tied to our Constitution, which is based on fundamental principles that cannot be waived for convenience or reinterpreted at will.
Yet, we have seen a much larger government corrupted through the use of the legal process to bypass the Constitution, employing clever and diabolical challenges that, bit by bit, eroded an Originalist understanding of the Constitution and have allowed for the intrusion of government into every facet of people’s lives.
While the system of checks and balances generally works, i.e., court decisions are frequently overturned on appellate review, the time and uncertainty of such a process cannot be underestimated, leading to unintended consequences far too often. And, of course, numerous issues should be overturned but aren’t, cumulatively chipping away at our constitutional protections year after year.
Therefore, to reduce the occurrence of wrongful or frivolous civil lawsuits, our country shall adopt the policy of loser pays. In criminal court cases, the new standard will be no plea deals, and sentences are to be served in full. Finally, a national three strikes and you’re out (life imprisonment) shall become the national standard for any combination of violent State and Federal felony convictions.
Crime is a consequence of permissiveness, not need. Civil disobedience today is rare on the right, but common on the left, regardless of the party in power. Why? The left is divided into three factions: the leaders who are constantly fighting for the next inch of give they can wrest from the other side, the true believers who are irretrievably anchored to their beliefs, and the greater masses who are easily manipulated by rhetoric and promises of justice, brotherly love, and free things.
The left found a new cudgel in the “Due Process” argument. America was created, in part, based on the belief that everyone is entitled to Due Process. Progressives and the courts have weaponized Due Process now as a weapon that swings in only one direction: to the left. We must go through a protracted period of rebalancing our legal system to account for all the damage that has been done over the last two generations.
If we fail to accept that the country is at a precipice, long in coming, the revolution many whisper about may very likely spring out with an intensity and rapidity that few people can imagine. We are a powder keg with only so much elasticity before it snaps, unleashing monsters and unintended consequences that no one can predict.
There’s a palpable feeling in the air that we must act now, while reasonable heads and divided interests can still be mended before it gets away from us. We should all consider the unthinkable before it becomes a reality when we least expect it.
God Bless America!
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