In 1835 the young French magistrate Alexis de Tocqueville published “Democracy in America”, his thoughts on the young United States of America he had spent several previous years touring. He published it simultaneously in French and English and it was an instant best seller in America and remains an electrifying classic today. I am slowly re-reading an new English translation and this morning a passage leaped out at me because of the current trial of Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha Wisconsin. This trial seems to me to be a fatal turning point in the life of the American federal union. It is the very knife edge of the existence of the Union and the law upon which it lives or dies. Tocqueville wrote:
"In the nations of Europe the courts of justice are only called upon to try the controversies of private individuals; but the Supreme Court of the United States summons sovereign powers to its bar. When the clerk of the court advances on the steps of the tribunal, and simply says, “The State of New York versus the State of Ohio,” it is impossible not to feel that the Court which he addresses is no ordinary body; and when it is recollected that one of these parties represents a million men, and the other, two million, you are astonished at the responsibility that weighs upon the seven judges whose decision is about to satisfy or to disappoint so large a number of their fellow-citizens.
"The peace, the prosperity, and the very existence of the Union are vested in the hands of the seven judges. Without their active co-operation the Constitution would be a dead letter: the Executive appeals to them for assistance against the encroachments of the legislative powers; the Legislature demands their protection from the ambitions of the Executive; they defend the Union from the disobedience of the States; they defend the States from the exaggerated claims of the Union. They defend the public interest against the interests of private citizens, and the conservative spirit of order against the fleeting innovations of democracy.
"Their power is enormous, but it rests upon public opinion. They are all-powerful as long as people agree to obey the law; they are powerless if the people have contempt for it. The power of public opinion is the most difficult power to exploit because its exact limits cannot be defined. Often it is just as dangerous to lag behind it as it is to race ahead of it. “
I am reminded of the decision of the US Supreme Court not to hear the appeal of the State of Texas, which was supported by almost half of the States, against the States of Michigan, Arizona and Georgia accusing the election officials of those states of defrauding the election. That petition was accompanied by evidence of election fraud which had not only been accumulated in documents and sworn affidavits, it had been literally broadcast to the nation and the world as hundreds of eye witnesses in all of these key states had testified before committees of these state legislatures to fraud they had witnessed. In refusing on a technicality to hear this case the Justices left public opinion without refuge. Now violence in the streets will decide the life or death of the Union.
Tocqueville said the very existence of the Union depended on the active co-operation of the seven Justices. There are nine Justices today. They still hold the Union’s very life in their hands. I don’t know when it was decided that the SCOTUS can decide not to decide a case. But the SCOTUS exists to defend the Constitution and the law. Refusing to do their duty as the Justices did has left the law, and the existence of the Union upon which it rests, to the mercy of the streets.
Now we see how much contempt for the law has grown. The federal court has been delivered into political hands, having stripped itself of its former independence by having based its decision not to act on nothing better than fear. Anyone who followed the issue could plainly see that the fear of public disorder, of riots, was palpable in Washington, and in the whole nation, in the summer of 2020.
Kenosha Wisconsin was one of many towns to be burned by armed, organized and directed rebels against the United States. Portland, Atlanta, LA, Minneapolis … all of these cities and more were attacked by street terrorists and the Democrat leaders of their states and the federal Democrats actively encouraged this rebellion while Republican leaders stood by silent. It was a civil war or, to put it more accurately, a civil massacre.
All of this outrageous dereliction of duty by legislators, this pulling down of the very fabric of the law, was done in order to prevent the re-election victory of President Trump. The Union was attacked from within and without. In the run-up to November 3, President Trump held rallies day after day packed with thousands of enthused supporters while Joe Biden hid in his basement issuing statements he could scarcely make coherent. So when over 70 million Americans voted to re-elect President Trump and 90 million votes were registered for Joe Biden it couldn’t have been more obvious that the election was a fraud.
Three days after the Democrats nominated the ridiculous and senile Biden and Kamala Harris – the most unpopular by far of the Democrat hopefuls – Biden, Harris and all the other Democrats practically ordered Kenosha Wisconsin to be used as a war zone to terrify the whole nation.
Now the terror is confident and brazen. The federal authority is out of the picture and the deciding power devolves onto the separate states. Five hundred Wisconsin National Guard troops now surround the courthouse in Kenosha because everybody knows the same traitors who burned Kenosha and the other towns that they burned, looted, raped and destroyed last summer are ready to do it again if the court dares to uphold justice by acquitting an innocent boy who is on trial for defending his life and his country against these criminal traitors.
Where is the federal authority now? Where is the so-called President? Joe Biden is having the kind of fun a demented man would have if he escaped from his care home. He was seen burning rubber in the new electric Hummer in the lot behind the General Motors plant.
Judge Schroeder in Kenosha, under siege by “protesters” demanding that he submit to their terror, has banned MSNBC from his courtroom because an MSNBC producer was caught running a red light in pursuit of the bus transporting the jury members in the effort to photograph them so they could be identified and threatened.
I knew this sort of thing would happen. Everybody likes to be right and I’m no different. But when you're right about something so terrifyingly wrong, it’s a horrible feeling to have at the age of 74, let me tell you. The world I grew up in is dissolving right in front of my eyes.