90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, December 26, 2019

If The FBI’s Contempt For The Law Is Not Reined In, Its Abuses Will Get Worse

The former CIA and FBI director’s article is a symptom of how the establishment media has become the propaganda arm of an increasingly robust U.S. authoritarian movement.

In 2018, the U.S. government filed 1,117 final applications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court for authority for the FBI to conduct electronic surveillance and physical searches. One application was withdrawn. One other was denied. The remaining 1,115 were granted.

Hours before the FISA court issued a December 17 order openly declaring that it could no longer trust any of the sworn statements the FBI had submitted to justify spying on Americans, The New York Times published an opinion article by William Webster, a former director of both the FBI and the CIA. Webster wrote, “Today, the integrity of the institutions that protect our civil order is, tragically, under assault from too many people whose job it should be to protect them.”

Gone are the days The New York Times worked to expose government abuse of power. The New York Times now defends power from truth.

No More ‘Dissent Is Patriotism’

Setting aside the very dubious propositions that the FBI and the CIA should be protected from criticism, let’s plumb the depths of the Webster/NYT argument. Who, according to Webster, has the job of protecting the FBI and the CIA? Webster explains exactly who he means: “I am deeply disturbed by the assertion of President Trump that our ‘current director’ — as he refers to the man he selected for the job of running the F.B.I. — cannot fix what the president calls a broken agency.”

Webster goes on to suggest that the FBI should operate as an independent agency and that he is outraged by the “president’s thinly veiled suggestion that the director, Christopher Wray, like his banished predecessor, James Comey, could be on the chopping block.” He adds, “The independence of both the F.B.I. and its director is critical and should be fiercely protected by each branch of government.” Webster goes on to make it clear that the “rule of law” is threatened by the president criticizing the FBI.

The article is a symptom of how the establishment media has become the propaganda arm of an increasingly robust authoritarian movement in the United States. This movement inverts constitutional principles so that it becomes the president’s job to protect the FBI from criticism and his threat to fire an FBI chief is a threat to the Constitution. This is the kind of thing that Vladimir Putin might have told Tass to publish as he sought to seize power from Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s.

Not Mistakes But Deliberate Abuse of Power

The legitimacy of the FBI is in free fall. But not its terrifying power. The biggest lie about the latest Office of Inspector General report is that it reveals “mistakes” made by the FBI. These weren’t mistakes. The FISA court used more accurate terminology, like...

What makes America exceptional?

Undoubtedly, most Americans would say our long-term commitment to self-government and the rule of law, and our extraordinary embrace of liberty.

Not so, according to The New York Times’ 1619 Project—named for the year in which African slaves were first brought to the English colonies in North America. The various New York Times authors apparently believe America’s unique quality is slavery.

The 1619 Project defines itself as an effort to “reframe” America’s history to define the nation’s “true founding” as one rooted—at its heart—in slavery rather than liberty.

It’s 1619 pitted against 1776.

America, according to this narrative, has been and always will be exceptionally and perhaps irredeemably racist.

As I wrote in my book, “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past,” this is a deeply misleading description of our history, but one that is becoming all too common in both popular culture and in American classrooms.

Yes, there was slavery and racism in our country’s history, and certainly the American people and our leaders have not always done the right thing. That’s something we should acknowledge and learn from, today and in the future.

And yet, America is still worth celebrating and taking pride in.

You don’t just have to take my word for it.

Historians from across the political spectrum have come out against the 1619 Project as bad history wrapped in a destructive ideology.

Allen Guelzo, a renowned historian and professor at Gettysburg College, called the 1619 Project a “conspiracy theory” based in part on the drive to “tarnish capitalism.”

In a recent appearance at The Heritage Foundation’s annual President’s Club meeting, Guelzo explained that the 1619 Project aims at rewriting the narrative of American slavery:

Not as an unwilling inheritance of British colonialism, but as the love object of American capitalism from its very origins. Not as a blemish, which the Founders grudgingly tolerated with the understanding that it must soon evaporate, but as the prize the Constitution went out of its way to secure and protect. Not as a regrettable chapter in the distant American past, but the living, breathing pattern upon which all American social life is based, world without end.

Guelzo is hardly alone in his criticism.

Two of the most prominent critics are Gordon Wood, a famed historian of the American Revolution, and James McPherson, a highly respected Civil War historian.

Both criticized the 1619 Project in...