Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
Republicans want to hold the majority and co-exist with Democrats, while Democrats, under the influence of the Left, want to eliminate Republicans.
This fundamental difference between the two sides was on display during Biden’s fascist rant in Philadelphia where he denounced half the country as a threat to democracy.
And it would be a mistake to imagine that all the talk of a “threat to democracy” is mere rhetoric.
Another basic difference between the two parties is that Republicans are politically unserious. Politicians, pundits and influencers spend so much time virtue signaling that they think words don’t matter. Democrats are quite serious. The Republican refusal to take them at their word, to believe that their histrionic rhetoric represents a serious policy agenda, is why things are so bad.
Surely, Beltway GOP figures will reassure, Democrats aren’t serious about adding states, Supreme Court seats, a trillion dollar coin or using unlimited dictatorial executive authority.
But what if they are?
Biden’s speech was the tip of a much more dangerous iceberg.
After Biden took over, Democrat activist groups began a push to disqualify Republicans who had participated in the Jan 6 protests from elected office based on the 14th Amendment. Adopted after the Civil War, it’s mostly notable for abolishing slavery. But Section 3 also banned anyone from holding elected office if they have “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” or “given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” Aimed at Confederates, most would have considered this a dead letter, but the Left excels at digging up obscure legal fossils and making use of them.
The insurrection lawsuits have targeted members of congress, Senator Ron Johnson and local officials. But by defining anyone who questioned the 2020 presidential election results as an “insurrectionist” or having provided “aid and comfort”, the scope could be vastly larger.
A New York Times article lists “147 Republicans who voted to overturn election results”. Lists like this are proliferating in time for the midterms and they are meant to be actionable.
The criminalization of the Republican Party achieved its first real win when a New Mexico judge removed Otero County Commissioner Couy Griffin from office over his role in the Capitol riot using Section 3. But there were more troubling developments earlier this year when the 4th Circuit ruled in a case involving the disqualification of Rep. Madison Cawthorn that the 1872 Amnesty Act did not nullify Section 3. A Georgia federal judge ruled similarly in a case involving an election challenge to another House member, though that case later collapsed.
The Section 3 campaign lost in Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Arizona, but it’s still alive.
The wording of the Amnesty Act is quite clear. It states that, “all political disabilities imposed by the third section of the fourteenth article of amendments of the Constitution of the United States are hereby removed from all persons whomsoever”. But an Obama judge argued that “pure common sense” showed that Section 3 still applies. Her ruling would have been dramatically different if conservatives were applying this to Kamala Harris who helped bail out BLM rioters.
But the law matters less than the agenda. Some of these efforts have run into legal roadblocks, but they have also seen some success in using Section 3 to establish a political test for office.
That political test is allegiance to Biden and the Democrat Party.
During the Cold War, efforts to criminalize and remove Communists operating within the Democrat Party and its allied cultural institutions were abandoned. The Communists don’t intend to be so generous to their old enemies now that they run the Democrat Party.
The legal counterarguments are obvious. The amnesties of 1872 and 1898 had been intended to nullify Section 3. But because the Constitution was never actually modified, that may not matter. Section 3 was arguably unconstitutional to begin with. But which Supreme Court justice will be ready to take a red pencil to a key civil rights amendment? There was no actual insurrection, and no insurrection prosecutions or declarations holding any legal status. But these are legal arguments that will have to be ruled on by judges. And they’re a poor guarantee of what is really at stake here which is the right of political opposition. Or the First Amendment.
A Congressional Research Service paper on disqualifying Republicans suggested that a presidential or congressional declaration would be enough. And that anyone who provided “words of encouragement, or the expression of an opinion” could have engaged in insurrection. Alternatively, “a simple majority” could be used to refuse to seat House or Senate members.
Last year, CREW, Common Cause, MoveOn, the Constitutional Accountability Center, and other leftist activist groups wrote an open letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer urging the use of Section 3 to prevent Trump from holding office. But their scope is much wider than that.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which is a 501(c)(3) and is supposed to be non-partisan, was behind the successful New Mexico disqualification lawsuit
“Section 3 of the 14th Amendment can and should be used to bar anyone who engaged in the insurrection,” its leader argued.
How is “engaged” defined? In the case of Trump, there is the false insistence that he bears “responsibility” for violence during the Capitol riot even though he was opposed to it. The Constitutional Accountability Center quoted an opinion suggesting that anyone who engaged in any “overt act for the purpose of promoting the rebellion, may well be said . . . to have engaged in rebellion.” Both CAC and the CRS paper promotes the idea that the “expression of an opinion” is enough.
These are some of the reasons why future presidents and legislators hurriedly dismantled the emergency Civil War era measures that were grotesquely unconstitutional to such a degree that they would have outlawed the existence of any political dissent. But they did so in a clumsy and incomplete fashion and those measures, along with even more clumsily written Civil Rights era legislation pose an existential threat to civil rights and political freedom in this country.
And long after the end of the Civil War, Section 3 has been revived by the former Confederate party turned Communist that has the country’s most consistent track record of treason with the aim of overthrowing the Constitution.
Leftists didn’t oppose McCarthyism. They just wanted to be the ones dispensing it.
Beltway Republicans shrug at this sort of thing as posturing. They refuse to believe that this is a serious statement of intent. And even if it is, they privately argue, it won’t go past a few state officials, some fringe House members, or Trump at worst. They’re sleepwalking into disaster.
This particular bid to outlaw the Republican Party may go nowhere, but if so it won’t be because of Republican opposition. It will be because leftist groups decide to prioritize their resources on more immediate programs rather than launching a dramatic moonshot. But it remains part of the agenda. And Biden’s speech shows that the agenda is being entertained by the White House.
The midterm and the next presidential election are being defined not in terms of policies and issues, but as a response, in Biden’s words, to a “threat to this country” posed by a “Republican Party” that is “dominated” by “MAGA Republicans”. That’s rhetoric, but among Democrats, unlike Republicans, rhetoric is a political program, not just fundraising text messages.
Democrats and their allied non-profit groups have laid out a political program for reviving Section 3 to bar most Republicans from holding office. They have spent money on it, field tested it in courts, gotten Obama and Biden judges, along with prominent legal experts, to sign off on it, and only fools would assume that they don’t seriously mean it. Or that they just thought of it.
Republicans couldn’t bring themselves to bite the bullet during the Cold War or 9/11 and respond to a global conflict and abetted by the domestic Left by cleaning house. Conservatives missed the most important point about the Left’s hysteria over the fairly minor Cold War investigations of Communism or the Patriot Act’s light touch on Islamic terrorism.
How was it possible to seriously accuse mild-mannered men like Eisenhower or George W. Bush of being fascist dictators in complete contrast to their unambitious domestic programs?
The Left wasn’t making bad faith arguments. Talk to a leftist and you will see that leftists genuinely believed that Republicans were prepared to use national emergencies to wipe them out of existence. Why did they believe that? Because it’s what they would do in their place.
Now they’re actually doing it.
Wellington says
Daniel Greenfield raises three interesting matters. One, did the 1872 Amnesty Act pertain only to past actions or, as well, to future actions? Two, did the 1872 Amnesty Act effectively nullify Section 3 of the 14th Amendment? Three, was Section 3 of the 14th Amendment arguably unconstitutional to begin with?
As to the first matter, reasonable minds can differ since ambiguity does exist here. Respecting the second, it seems highly unlikely that an act of Congress can override a constitutional provision. With regard to the third matter, the question can be asked how can any constitutional provision be unconstitutional since some other part of the Constitution would have to take precedence but where is it written that one part of the Constitution is superior to other parts of the Constitution?
Finally, I wish to register my complete disgust once again with the modern Democratic Party which, along with other powerful entities like the educational establishment, the MSM and woke big businesses (including many professional sports franchises) is presently in the process of destroying America.
PMK says
Regarding Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, what qualifies as an ‘insurrection’? Who gets to define it?
What about ‘aid and comfort’? Doesn’t that mean providing material support? It could be said that some Dems and most media figures provided aid and comfort to BLM and ANTIFA. On that basis, Kamala Harris should never hold public office again. She should be barred from running in 2024.
milo minderbinder says
Good points!
With the left, the issue is “never” the issue, it’s the narrative that matters.
The strategy being employed by the left can be found in books like:
The Art of War – Sun Tzu, Rules for Radicals – Saul Alinsky, The Communist Manifesto, The Cloward-Piven Strategy, etc.
The following information is from The Glenn Beck Program/The Blaze: Common Core and Education:
YouTube April 22, 2013 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz7XOKcyRE0
The Road We Are Traveling, 1914-1942; Guide Lines to America’s Future*
By Stuart Chase (March 8, 1888 – November 16, 1985)
*Glenn Beck states that Franklin D. Roosevelt included many of the ideas from this book in his speeches.
“The Free Enterprise System once we get out of this war (WWII) we will have to change a few things, we will have to change Capitalism and the Free Enterprise System to System X.”
• Strong Central Government
• Strong Executive Arm, stronger than the Legislative or Judicial Branch
• Government control of Banking, Credit and Security
• Underwriting of Food, Medical and Housing
• Deficit Spending to Finance Underwriting
• Abandon Gold for the Managed Currency
• Heavy Taxation of Estates and the Income of the Wealthy
• Youth & People Dedicated to the Government Ideology
From Wikipedia: Free Enterprise into “X”
On pages 95 and 96 of The Road We Are Traveling, under the heading of “Free Enterprise into ‘X'”, Chase listed 18 characteristics of political economy that he had observed among Russia, Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain between 1913 and 1942. Chase labeled this phenomenon “… something called ‘X'”. Characteristics include the following:
1. A strong, centralized government.
2. An executive arm growing at the expense of the legislative and judicial arms.
3. The control of banking, credit and security exchanges by the government.
4. The underwriting of employment by the government, either through armaments or public works.
5. The underwriting of social security by the government – old-age pensions, mothers’ pensions, unemployment insurance, and the like.
6. The underwriting of food, housing, and medical care, by the government.
7. The use of deficit spending to finance these underwritings.
8. The abandonment of gold in favor of managed currencies.
9. The control of foreign trade by the government.
10. The control of natural resources.
11. The control of energy sources.
12. The control of transportation.
13. The control of agricultural production.
14. The control of labor organizations.
15. The enlistment of young men and women in youth corps devoted to health, discipline, community service and ideologies consistent with those of the authorities.
16. Heavy taxation, with special emphasis on the estates and incomes of the rich.
17. Control of industry without ownership.
18. State control of communications and propaganda.
Wellington says
Good questions, PMK. Trump engaged in no insurrection nor did the vast amount of people who entered the Capitol on J6. All they did was walk around and some sat down. Many were waved in by Capitol police. As for those who committed violence at the Capitol, if this constitutes insurrection then the question must be asked why is harming the Capitol building insurrection but severely harming a federal building in Portland, burning down a police precinct building in Minneapolis and defacing many public statues on public ground not insurrectionary (never mind all the private property destroyed)? Where is it written that one government building is more equal than other government buildings and other property on government land? I detect rank hypocrisy.
And I would add to the list of “insurrectionaries” many Democrats. Two others than Kamala Harris come to mind. The first, Nancy Pelosi who said in the Summer of 2020, “I don’t know why there aren’t more uprisings. Maybe there will be.” And Chuck Schumer who stood before the Supreme Court and said that “If people like Gorsuch and Kavanaugh rule the wrong way on abortion they won’t know what hit them.” Oh yeah, rank hypocrisy on display. Big time. Courtesy of Democrats whom I have come to loathe.
milo minderbinder says
+1
I contacted my congressman, in the House of Representatives, a Democrat, during the 2020 riots, to inquire why, in the all the newsletters that emanated from his office, he never once mentioned the issues that you have articulated here.
I regret not keeping a copy of his response, in anger, I deleted it. In a nutshell he said something like, “my heart is broken, when I see these peaceful demonstrators, exercising their Constitutional rights, attacked by the police with tear gas and shot at with rubber bullets.”
Wellington says
Thank you for your reply, milo. I’ve lost all faith in Democratic politicians and the same with RINOs.
somehistory says
schumer, pelosi, waters and others should have already been standing before a judge to hear their sentences and to be behind bars sweating it out.
And aoc and others protesting on the steps of the Supreme Court to force a change under threat to the Justices if they did not do so…is breaking of a Federal Law.
it’s all a one-way with them, just as with their cohorts, rabid mozlums who want it all their way. The enemy masses as one.
John ..Smith says
True Somehistory there are a lot of Dems that should be behind bars including the Clintons, Obama and Biden. In recent years the Demonrats have moved so far to the left that some of their policies ( in particular the snuggling up to islam ) can only be described as being evil.
somehistory says
thank you, John.
gravenimage says
Crazy reply you got, Milo–but I can’t say I’m surprised.
milo minderbinder says
gravenimage says
Sep 11, 2022 at 11:03 pm
Crazy reply you got, Milo–but I can’t say I’m surprised.
…………………………………….
Neither was I.
I hesitated contacting this Congressman and, at one point, I trashed the word document that I had prepared. My thought was, why, why go through this useless exercise? Then I thought, why stand on the side lines? We the people, need to take a stand, we should be contacting our elected officials, letting our voice be heard. The other side certainly do, they know how to play the game, they are experts at it.
Based on previous correspondence with this individual, I was somewhat prepared for the response that I received. Still, I was shocked when he said, “his heart was broken!” What!
Again, I regret deleting his response, I allowed my emotions get the better of me, always a bad thing, to make decisions from an emotional base. There was so much more leftist terminology in his response, that one would have to read it to appreciate what, “we the people,” are fighting against.
“Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that don’t have brains enough to be honest.”
– Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
milo minderbinder says
+1
As usual, a comment that is articulate and to the point. Thank you.
milo minderbinder says
“Is the FBI is hiding embarrassing information about Jeffrey Epstein?”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/is_the_fbi_is_hiding_embarrassing_information_about_jeffrey_epstein.html
Is it possible that Biden was one of Epstein’s clients, as he seems to like very young girls?
Did Epstein commit suicide or was he taken out because of the dirt he had on very powerful people? What about Ghislaine Maxwell, will she be taken out? How much dirt does she have on the rich and famous?
Inquiring minds wants to know.
Another article that exposes the hypocrisy of the left.
“Karen Bass, a gun-control leftist, had her guns stolen.”
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/09/karen_bass_a_guncontrol_leftist_had_her_guns_stolen.html
milo minderbinder says
“Flashback: Creepy Joe Biden Was Pawing a Little Girl When He Took a Photo with Kids on 9-11 Anniversary (VIDEO)”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/09/flashback-creepy-joe-biden-pawing-little-girl-took-photo-kids-9-11-anniversary-video/
milo minderbinder says
“Republicans want to hold the majority and co-exist with Democrats, while Democrats, under the influence of the Left, want to eliminate Republicans.”
– Appeasement never works.
“And it would be a mistake to imagine that all the talk of a “threat to democracy” is mere rhetoric.”
– Amen
“Another basic difference between the two parties is that Republicans are politically unserious.”
– Absolutely! The Republican Party has been infiltrated and watered down by the “global elite.”
“Biden’s speech was the tip of a much more dangerous iceberg.”
– Yes! Much like Hitler’s, Mein Kampf, he told the world what he was going to do, and the world sat on the sidelines and enabled him.
“The Left wasn’t making bad faith arguments. Talk to a leftist and you will see that leftists genuinely believed that Republicans were prepared to use national emergencies to wipe them out of existence. Why did they believe that? Because it’s what they would do in their place.”
– Absolutely, right on target!
milo minderbinder says
“IN STATE AFTER STATE… Democrats Are Running as Republicans to Get Into Office – They Even Have a Name for It – They Call it “Secret Sleepers”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/09/state-state-democrats-running-republicans-get-office-even-name-call-secret-sleepers/
somehistory says
I don’t know if others can see what I see, but I see satan the devil and his demon army behind all of these evil works. The demon snake is short on time and long on great anger. He is moving and manipulating humans who listen to him…some without knowing they are listening to him…like pawns on a chessboard.
somehistory says
A couple of days ago, I posted a story about e. warren and d. feinstein telling credit card companies to begin tracking gun and ammo sales and labeling them and then reporting them to the government.
Now, this I saw late last night:
“(Bloomberg) — Visa Inc., Mastercard Inc. and American Express Co. will take steps to implement a new merchant code that could improve tracking of firearm purchases. ”
““Following ISO’s decision to establish a new merchant category code, Visa will proceed with next steps, while ensuring we protect all legal commerce on the Visa network in accordance with our long-standing rules,” the company said in an emailed statement Saturday. ”
fascism at work
milo minderbinder says
somehistory says
Sep 11, 2022 at 2:09 pm
A couple of days ago, I posted a story about e. warren and d. feinstein telling credit card companies to begin tracking gun and ammo sales and labeling them and then reporting them to the government.
………………………………………………..
Thank you for the information.
It seems to me, that when Joe Biden was inaugurated as the fraudulent President of the United States of America, our country officially became a Banana Republic. The next logical step, is to become a Police State, and the next logical shorter step, is to become a Totalitarian Regime.
It appears, that we have made the transition from a Banana Republic, to a Police State, and now we are in the process of becoming a Totalitarian Regime.
History has shown that Police States and Totalitarian Regimes have at least three things in common.
They take control of the media in all its forms; it is imperative for the regime to control the narrative. That’s why this current regime, tried and will try again, to create a Bureau of Disinformation Management.
They must, in order to eliminate armed resistance, disarm the population. The left will never quit until they have achieved their goal of taking away all the guns.
They must take control of the children, the younger the better. It’s easier to shape and mold their minds, especially at five years old or younger. Remember Obama’s plan for early education. Right out of the Marxist playbook. They “global elite” want to create obedient “citizens of the world.”
“Major credit card companies are making it easier to track gun sales.”
https://knpr.org/npr/2022-09/major-credit-card-companies-are-making-it-easier-track-gun-sales
somehistory says
I read an article last night and it included the information…with sources…that the cia has been controlling the news media for decades. Not entirely, of course, but with plenty of operatives within the organizations one would normally believe to be actually reporting the news for a news company…not what the cia wants people to hear and believe. Makes what we hear more understandable…knowing the source of the lies.
milo minderbinder says
somehistory says
Sep 11, 2022 at 3:10 pm
I read an article last night and it included the information…with sources…that the cia has been controlling the news media for decades.
……………………………………..
Have you seen the movie, Three Days of the Condor (1975) with Robert Redford? At the end of the movie, that seems to be the message, the CIA can control what does and does not get reported.
I have heard rumors that Anderson Cooper might be a CIA operative.
https://www.biography.com/media-figure/anderson-cooper
somehistory says
I did see that movie, but it was when it first came out, so I only recall that they were after him…and he had not known what all was “up” to realize that they would go after him. I may have that wrong, but that is what I have in my brain.
the article I was reading began regarding the sting in Florida that included some Disney World employees…again…caught in a trafficking ring. It had a link to the article I referenced above and included stuff about disney and his connections to the fbi, the cia, other government entities and pedo.
milo minderbinder says
somehistory sayy,
I did see that movie, but it was when it first came out, so I only recall that they were after him…and he had not known what all was “up” to realize that they would go after him. I may have that wrong, but that is what I have in my brain.
………………………….
You are on the right track.
He, Turner (character played by Redford) uncovered a sinister plot by a high-ranking U.S. Government Official, who had to kill everyone in Turner’s unit, to prevent the plot from being discovered. Turner was out getting coffee and donuts, otherwise he too, would have been taken killed.
somehistory says
thanks, milo.
John ..Smith says
Even this photograph of the smug git Biden hiding behind his shades, sends shivers down my spine. He is such a horrible, horrible man.
somehistory says
Yes, a horrible, horrible, creature. People often wear shades to hide what or who they are. He isn’t hiding anything at this late date.
milo minderbinder says
Off topic
“The Biden Effect: Taliban Now Controls More Territory in Afghanistan Today than They Did on 9-11 21 Years Ago”
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/09/biden-effect-taliban-now-controls-territory-afghanistan-today-9-11-21-years-ago/
gravenimage says
The Coming Outlawing of the Republican Party
………………………………….
God help us, it seems like things are leaning that way, with Biden ranting that anyone who voted for Trump–about half of voters in 2016–constitute a “threat to the country”. Just chilling stuff.
That Biden did this at his disturbing speech with the podium lit up in red and black was even more concerning.
Walter Sieruk says
A new appropriate title for that horrible pseudo US “president” would now be “Joe Biden the demented and dangerous.”
Likewise, if Joe Biden best defined by being compared to Hitler of Vladimir Lenin he’s still a menacing threat.
Nevertheless whichever dictator “Big Brother Biden” is more fitting to describe Joe Biden , he is, in essence, a tyrant. Biden even has political prisoners from the January 6,2021 pro-Trump patriot rally.
It’s a Biden gulag for those patriots who are treated just as terrible as in the old Soviet political prisons or the twenty-first century political prisons in Red China under the dictatorship of Xi Jinping.
So it’s no wonder that Joe Biden has policies that always favor Communist China because must admire that system of tyranny and strives to use it as a model for the American government.
Biden in that spite and malice- filled rant that he called a “speech”
condemned “political violence.” Biden was speaking .as disingenuous as he always is. For his being against political violence he a double standard. of allowing violent actions of Marxist of Communist organizations and violent jihadists engaging in Islamic terrorism get off the hook , “scot -free.”
To elaborate on this statement ,when he spoke about “political violence” Biden was speaking about the mayhem that occurred on January 6, 2021, Biden even said that, and slanderously called the American patriots” insurrectionists” who had been framed in that leftist set up, but he said nothing about the most horrendous political violence carried out, repeatedly in different cities by the violent lawless criminal and malicious and even, at times, murderous Marxist, of Antifa and BLM.
Furthermore, Biden didn’t condemn the political /religious violence, many times over, by Muslim terrorists. As one of the major characters in Iran’s Islamic revolution in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini had, rightly, declared, “All Islam is politics.” [1]
In addition, Biden completely failed to condemn all violence, not only “political violence.”
For the horrible reality is the there is much non-political violence ranging from bands of Criminal gangs, as the most heinous and evil MS-13 to domestic home violence.
That speech delivered by Joe Biden was terrible and so is he.
[1] THE ISLAM IN ISLAMIC TERRORISM by Ibn Warraq page 332
James Lincoln says
Biden needs to get a BLUE ballcap stating:
MCGA
“Make Communism Great Again”