Opinion

What is the benefit to us?

Last week, we urged Republicans to think whether a second Trump presidency would be any different or better than the first. This week: Tell us, Joe Biden, how persecuting Trump will improve our lives.

By Matt Walsh
| 8:00 a.m. August 9, 2023

Longboat Key
Opinion

In this space last week, we challenged diehard Republican Trump supporters to think seriously about the consequences of a second Donald Trump presidency.

That was before the most recent trumped-up indictment of him, which, of course, made the diehard Trump supporters even more committed to him.

Responses to our commentary went along the line of the following, as articulated by a reader who told us he isn’t a fan of Trump’s narcissism, but the reader said: “Which of the other Republican candidates has the courage and guts to do what Trump did?

“The world was a safer place,” he said, “and therefore America was safer. World leaders feared what Trump might do and didn’t challenge him. Especially Russia and China respect strength, not weakness.

“America was a safer place because Trump believed in law and order in the streets. He would not put up with the mobs and theft we see today in our major cities.

“Our immigration policy was well under control because of Trump’s border policies. And his statements on immigration made common sense — we should allow in those people who are smart and will build the country and economy as legal immigrants, rather than those whose first act is to break laws.

“His unraveling of illegal and onerous regulations helped businesses and the economy grow faster than they had in the previous eight years, and that also was the catalyst to making the U.S. energy independent.

“Trump exposed the cult of Washington, D.C. The entrenched bureaucrats and establishment insiders didn’t want him changing the rules of their club, and that is why they fought him.

“Trump believes in America and fought for America first. He believed in a merit-based society not a woke society.

“I’ll take that again,” the reader said.

Same here. But isn’t it likely all the other Republican candidates would agree that all of those actions above should be repeated?

So the question for Republicans remains: Who best to execute those policies? Trump or someone else?

At this point, you cannot say whether any of the other candidates can and would do all that Trump did. They are untested in the presidential arena.

Their first test will be at the Aug. 23 debate. That will help reveal who has what it will take and who can make a convincing case that:

They have an agenda that presents a winning vision for all of the American people and the United States’ place in the world.
They have been tested in life to have experienced the grit, guts, determination and perseverance required to build, operate and lead the largest, most complicated enterprise in the world.
They have the trusting character, morals and likability that can win the hearts, minds and votes of not just Republicans, but also the large swath of independents and moderate Democrats who ultimately will determine the winner.

At this point, this is like watching a rookie NFL quarterback at training camp and in pre-season games try to prove he is ready, while, say, an aging Aaron Rodgers watches from the sidelines. The coach (voter) keeps thinking: Should I go with the old, proven guy or make the jump to the next generation?

But that choice may not even occur. The way Biden and his Justice Department hitmen are determined to imprison their most feared and hated rival via an outrageous, unjust prosecution and persecution, they are all but guaranteeing that Republican voters will nominate Trump.

Indeed, Trump’s most recent video surely will inspire many voters. Watch it.

Trump urges his followers “Just never quit.”

Trump will not quit. You know he is craving winning: 1) for vindication; 2) to defeat his D.C. enemies; and, 3) in his heart, to help save the American people from the progressive Marxist Jacobins.

With this war raging between Trump and the D.C. Democrats and subjecting Americans to endure it for the next 15 months, here is what may be the most pertinent and important question to pose to the Biden mobsters:

To what end the persecution of Donald Trump? Tell us, Joe Biden, King of Liars. Tell us how all of this effort (at taxpayer expense, mind you) is benefiting the American people. Tell us how the poor widows, poor families and average hard-working Americans will benefit from your persecution of Donald Trump? What is in it for us?

And don’t use the horse-manure that Donald Trump is an existential threat to democracy.

Explain to Americans what, specifically, is in Trump’s persecution that will make Americans’ lives better and make the United States better?

As far as we can see, there is nothing but bad. The people lose.

The persecution of Trump is sure to bring hate and wounds that rage beneath the skin, that fester like a sore ready to break open at any moment. The persecution of Trump is sure to bring thekind of hate and wounds that percolated for more than a century after the Civil War. This time the hate and wounds will divide, not regions, but Republicans and Democrats — and irreconcilably divide America.

For what benefit?

Here is the answer: To preserve your and your mob’s corrupted power.

This is all about power

The lust for power.

It’s insatiable, and as we are witnessing, it has no bounds to its pursuit.

One of the great historical explanations of this lust for power is found in the late Austrian economist Murray Rothbard’s 1973 book, “For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto.”

In his account of the roots of the American Revolution, Rothbard wrote of two men in London in the 1720s, John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, who wrote a series of newspaper articles called “Cato’s Letters.”

Everything they said then you can apply to Joe Biden and the D.C. Democrats today.

As Rothbard wrote:

Trenchard and Gordon pointed out that government always tended toward such destruction of individual rights.

According to “Cato’s Letters,” human history is a record of irrepressible conflict between Power and Liberty, with Power (government) always standing ready to increase its scope by invading people’s rights and encroaching upon their liberties.

Therefore, Cato declared, Power must be kept small and faced with eternal vigilance and hostility on the part of the public to make sure that it always stays within its narrow bounds.

According to Cato’s Letters:

“We know, by infinite Examples and Experience, that Men possessed of Power, rather than part with it, will do anything, even the worst and the blackest, to keep it; and scarce ever any Man upon Earth went out of it as long as he could carry everything his own Way in it …

“This seems certain, That the Good of the World, or of their People, was not one of their Motives either for continuing in Power, or for quitting it.

“It is the Nature of Power to be ever encroaching, and converting every extraordinary Power, granted at particular Times, and upon particular Occasions, into an ordinary Power, to be used at all Times, and when there is no Occasion, nor does it ever part willingly with any Advantage …”

“Alas! Power encroaches daily upon Liberty, with a Success too evident; and the Balance between them is almost lost.

“Tyranny has engrossed almost the whole Earth, and striking at Mankind Root and Branch, makes the World a Slaughterhouse; and will certainly go on to destroy, till it is either destroyed itself, or, which is most likely, has left nothing else to destroy.”