Punishing political enemies has a storied, shameful history

The Friday Letter / No. 497 / Jun 17, 2022

Christians even vaguely familiar with Martin Luther and the Reformation know that Luther somehow escaped burning at the stake even though he had posted his 95 theses on the Wittenberg Schlosskirche (castle church) door.

In case you aren't up to theological speed, Luther's bold act of Oct. 31, 1517, offended the pope. Lore has it that Luther was the first to challenge church authority, but the real story, told by Eric Metaxas in Luther's biography, is that reformers like Reuchlin and Erasmus who came before Luther were spared. Others weren't so fortunate.

Johannes Hilten was a Franciscan monk who dared to criticize the church. He was imprisoned in the Eisenach monastery, where died in 1500 at the age of 75.

Thankfully, today's Roman Catholic Church is a bit more tolerant. The point is that the 16th century Church was the government. Galileo Galilei had to grovel before his former friend Pope Urban VIII and mutter an insincere apology to keep his britches from catching on fire. Galileo had dared to point out that the earth actually revolves around the sun, something Urban and the Church had actually known for a very long time. But the Bible is infallible, in this case inconveniently so.

The sun also ariseth, and sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose – Ecclesiastes 1:5.

That's a problem, or at least it was for Galileo. (It didn't help that Galileo had called Urban a simpleton in his book on planetary motion. But that's a story for another day. Back to Luther.)

One of Luther's beefs was Pope Leo X's scheme to sell indulgences to raise money for a makeover of St. Peter's Basilica. Luther saw this as government corruption at its worst.

(It was also bad PR, like when Mrs. Lincoln used 7,000 taxpayer dollars to redecorate the White House while some Union soldiers had no shoes. Abe righted this wrong by paying the bill from his own salary.)

But Leo's corruption was no worse than corruption in our government today with one set of rules for the elite and another for the proletariat.

“These popes and the papacy were at that time as much worldly principalities as anything else,” Metaxas writes in Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World. Metaxas describes Leo as “one of the most egregious six popes of that period – that murderers' row of troublemakers. . .”

What Luther called “theses” are now known on the left as non-negotiable demands. Overturn Roe v. Wade and we will murder you. Put Trump in chains and let him to rot in prison, that sort of thing. What's lacking now in civility is made up for by an utter ignorance of our rule of law.

Some will say that most leftists are atheists, but that is not true. Everyone worships something. The Left's god is government.

The Left has seen government as the source of most goodness and problem-solving for a very long time, going back more than a century to Woodrow Wilson. Whether government or individuals are best equipped to deal with the human condition is a debate we can have. Government's role is at the heart of every election.

But a caste system is intolerable. That is what we have today. The corruption in our government today is no more defensible than the corruption in Martin Luther's day 500 years ago.

Without going into a lot detail, let's just note that our two-tiered criminal justice system ignores violent criminals who burned our cities in 2020, corrupt FBI, CIA officials, and a Democrat's presidential campaign who lied to federal judges for the purpose of overthrowing the duly elected government, an attorney general who refuses to indict a vice president's son who sold access to his father for millions of dollars, a U.S. Senator who threatened the lives of Supreme Court Justices, and a Capitol Police lieutenant who murdered an unarmed citizen. All escape indictment.

On the other side, a 73-year-old former presidential advisor is publicly put in chains and thrown in jail because he refused to appear before a Star Chamber proceeding and violate the confidentiality of presidential executive privilege. The Biden-Rice Justice Department's political arm FBI tracks down parents who show up at school board meetings to question school policy, calling them domestic terrorists. SWAT police break down the door of an elderly and utterly harmless if loud-mouthed man because he supports President Trump.

And a Minneapolis police officer who committed a foolish act that resulted in the unintended death of a violent, drug-crazed convicted felon is sent to prison for 22½ years, convicted of first degree murder by a cowardly, racially-biased jury.

Last week on his Sunday Fox News Channel show, former prosecutor and former congressman Trey Goudy said the only benefit of a congressional hearing is the truth that emerges in cross examination. Congress itself has no police powers but only those enumerated in Article 1 of the Constitution, namely to collect taxes, fund the government, and protect the rights and safety of citizens. Clearly the all-Democrat Jan. 6 committee is an unconstitutional sham.

(To borrow from Mark Levin: There, I said it, all-Democrat committee.)

This kangaroo court's only purpose is to prevent President Trump's return. There is no cross examination because every committee member is on the same team. Every one of them nods in agreement like CNN and MSNBC stenographers parroting the party line that comes from the daily talking points memo.

A new Republican-controlled House will take over next January. One of its first acts will be to shut down the Court of Star Chamber proceeding that is one of Congress' most shameful acts ever, calling it what it is, the third impeachment of President Trump.

Short takes on the news

The NBC News online newspaper carries the story of a Salvadoran woman who served more than 10 year in prison for the spontaneous abortion, or miscarriage, of her baby, warning that similar draconian laws could be coming to the US if Roe v. Wade is overturned. Although the coming SCOTUS decision has only been leaked and not issued, court watchers expect the Court to return lawmaking on abortion to the states, as a 10th Amendment right.

Downplaying the threat. Authorities have yet to explain how the California man who tried to murder Justice Kavanaugh was able to fly thousands of miles from his home with burglary tools, a gun, ammunition, and a pair of special boots with outer soles that allow stealth movement inside a house without arousing the suspicion of TSA agents.

Bullets work, every time

Alabama has an idea worth considering on how to prevent school shootings. Police in the Gadsden area put the idea to a test last week. They confronted a man who was trying to break into the school resource officer's car and then tried to take the officer's weapon. He was unable to enter the locked and occupied elementary school. It worked out pretty well, though not for the criminal. Police shot him dead right there in the parking lot. End of story.

Let's briefly summarize this: Uvalde, Tex., school unlocked, door open, 21 dead victims, timid police. Gadsden school locked, bold, aggressive police, 0 dead victims. We need to get our crack Friday Letter investigation team on this one. There might be a correlation.

Let's not waste time, however, carping about leftist Democrats who are moving aggressively to disarm private America. It's the squishy Republican Senators who are enabling them, led by the squishiest of them all, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Rather than examine existing laws in all 50 states to see what works and what doesn't, Republicans fall for Democrat demands that we “do something” about gun violence. We are all for that: Keep guns from the hands of psychopaths. Existing law everywhere provides for that.

We don't need to explain for the umpteenth time that confiscating the guns of law-abiding Americans won't keep psychopathic killers from having guns and using them. Only the naive – the base of today's Democrat Party – could believe otherwise.

Some of the proposals may make sense, such as strengthening school security and tightening background checks on convicted domestic abusers (a matter for the states, not the federal government). But Democrats and their Republican enablers openly admit that the proposal under consideration is an act of incrementalism.

“This is a good start,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. You don't need to be a genius to understand the meaning here. On cue, Majority Leader Schumer mouthed the exact words. The ultimate goal is complete disarmament. Pick off our rights gradually and we won't notice.

“The principles they announced today show the value of dialogue and cooperation,” McConnell said in a statement quoted at ABC News. Important to remember is that “dialog and cooperation” means complete capitulation to the Democrat position. McConnell, a play-along, get-along anti-Trumper, is all too willing.

Most threatening to the Second Amendment are the so-named red flag laws, described in the ABC News story as “laws to remove firearms from people who are a danger to themselves or others.” That's nice, except that when you look into who gets to determine the danger, the only take-away is alarm. This could be partners in a bitter divorce, the police, an unhappy neighbor, a fired employee, anyone out for revenge. It would be the beginning of a clear path to total confiscation.

The proposed gun-grab law will get every Senate Democrat vote and probably 20 Republicans. Here are the Republicans who so far have announced support:

Where they stand: 26 pro gun-control Republicans

Running for re-election in November:

Murkowski (Alaska), Boozman (Ark.), Rubio (Fla.), Crapo (Ida.), Young (Ind.), Grassley (Iowa), Paul (Ken.), Kennedy (La.), Hoeven (N.D.), Lankford (Okla.), Tim Scott (S.C.), Thune (S.D.), Lee (Ut.), and Johnson (Wis.).

Incumbents not up for re-election

Moran (Kans.), Cornyn (Tex.), Cassidy (La.), Collins (Maine), Graham (S.C.), Romney (Ut.), Tillis (N.C.).

Retiring incumbents

Burr (N.C.), Portman (Ohio), Toomey (Pa.), Shelby (Ala.), Blunt (Mo.).

Today's top link

“The Ten Worst Men in America”

Dan Gelernter at American Greatness

Gelernter speaks for millions with his disgust at the cowardly behavior of police at the Texas school massacre in May. In only 615 words, with the brevity and clarity that define great writing, he explains why the 2nd Amendment is indispensable to our survival as free society. His opening paragraph:

“We may have been shocked to see the Uvalde cops protecting a school shooter from parents (and that is what they were doing) but we shouldn’t be surprised: It will always be easier, when you have a gun, to point it at someone who doesn’t have a gun. That goes for school shooters, policemen, and everyone else – including the government.”

The “ten worst” reference is the 10 GOP Senators who signed up for the Democrats' gun control scheme. The list has since grown, including 14 incumbent Republicans facing voters this fall.

Print this one, tape it to the refrigerator. It's the most important civics lesson your child will ever get.

Dirty money at work

Paid Friday Letter subscribers received a special report this week on how dirty money is propelling a faux conservative to the U.S. Senate from Alabama. Her campaign has received millions of dollars from political action committees with fake Alabama names that actually come from a home address in Texas. Here is an excerpt:

Katie Britt paints herself as a devout Christian conservative, but her opponents in the May primary tell a different story, her pretending to be a down-home hunter and farmer for the benefit of Alabama's big rural population. She gets the – probably grudging – support of Al.com, Alabama's online consortium of major newspapers, including the hyper-liberal, white supremacy theorist Birmingham News. They all understand that Alabama's new Senator will be a Republican.

Al.com ran a fawning, 2,326-word piece on her just before the May primary, in which she placed first ahead of Brooks. They will meet next Tuesday in a run-off, and odds makers give her the lead, even though Brooks' two conservative opponents in the primary have endorsed him.