Reflecting On Legitimacy

It's a bad sign for the health of our political establishment that more and more articles are popping up with people writing about issues of legitimate governance. I don't think I've ever been naive about the American political order, but I'll be the first to admit I didn't think the country would ever sink to this level. Trump has revealed to all: The Empire's clothing is threadbare at best. And now serious people are asking: What comes next. That may seem extreme at this point, but events have a way of taking on a life of their own. Once a rock starts downhill it gathers momentum.

So I plan here to provide examples of the type of commentary that's out there, and increasing. First, however, I'll sketch out the traditional ideas on government in the Western tradition.

Aristotle's classical formulation of good and bad types of government has retained its usefulness. Aristotle came up with three categories, based on : Rule by one, by several, and by many, and divided each category in two: good and corrupt forms. Thus, there could be good or bad forms of government in any of the three categories (simplified): 

One:  Monarchy  Dictatorship

Several: Aristocracy  Oligarchy

Many: Timocracy  Democracy

Aristotle and other ancients were advocates of a governments in which all three levels of society were involved.

During the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas was also a strong advocate for a mixed constitution, in which all elements of society received representation under a strong executive. Aquinas presents his reasoning in favor of a mixed constitution in three elements, which explictly includes the idea of what we now term "checks and balances":

The Variant Scare And The Global Reset

Yesterday LifeSiteNews carried an article by Dr. Joseph Mercola regarding the ongoing attempt--using the supposed threat of Covid 'variants' or mutations--to scare the populace into continued compliance with unreasonable and unscientific restrictions of their freedoms. The overarching theme of Mercola's article is that the more freedoms we surrender in hope of an elusive 'safety' to be gained--a 'safety' the date for which continually recedes into an ever more distant future--the more freedoms we will end up surrendering. We will, in effect, wind up neither free nor safe--from a predatory soft totalitarian State.

Over-hyped COVID variants are being used as part of a campaign of fear to destroy freedom

At some stage, you must realize that the more you give in and obey, the more you have to give in and obey. There really is no end to what they can take from you, and holding on to the belief that your government would never [fill in the blank] is becoming more dangerous by the day.

First, Mercola provides a quote from two Yale epidemiologists dating to a year ago--near the beginning of the Covid scare. These two epidemiologists decry the "harmful" use of the supposed threat of mutations to gin up fear in the midst of an epidemic--or, for that matter, in the midst of a disfavored presidency:

Briefly Noted: Legal News--And Russia

I had occasion to point out yesterday (An Independent Judiciary?) that President Trump's (and Mitch McConnell's) strategy of concentrating on confirming appellate level federal judges is paying dividends. Not all is smooth sailing, of course. The 9th Circuit can still be a problem (as recently in a 2A case), but it's still far better than when Trump took office. A couple of cases on this relatively slow news day (so far) illustrate the impact Trump's appellate judges are having.

Since I mentioned the 2A just now, a case from New Jersey is a good place to start. Defense Distributed is a TX company that distributes various 3d print files for firearms and firearm accessories. New Jersey's Attorney General, Gurbir Grewal, sent Defense Distributed letters in TX attempting to restrain Defense Distributed from doing its business in NJ and threatening to prosecute Defense Distributed. The federal district court in TX agreed with Grewal that those letters were insufficient to provide the TX court with jurisdiction in the case. However, the Fifth Circuit disagreed. The SCOTUS has now--by declining Grewal's petition for certiorari--agreed with the Fifth Circuit.

The practical effect of this jurisdictional decision is that NJ will now have to justify its conduct to an unsympathetic federal court in TX. The Truth About Guns points out that the Fifth Circuit

has already made it clear that it believes that governmental efforts to restrict Defense Distributed’s distribution of 3D files have very serious if not fatal First Amendment implications.

This complicates anti-gun matters for crusading officials in anti-2A states. The SCOTUS undoubtedly knew this.

There's more good news from the 6th Circuit (which includes Ohio). You can read a longer account here:

The Global Threat

Yesterday we took a look at the way in which the Zhou Baiden regime is marshalling all the resources at its disposal to wage war against domestic enemies (We Will Crush You). Those resources include government resources--Congressional inquiries, prosecution through DoJ that will focus on conservative dissidents, and a purge of the military to ensure that our armed forces will be a loyal arm of the regime. The resources also include non-governmental entities that are being charged with the all important task of controlling the flow of information and of public discussion. After the fact government measures by means of law enforcement and prosecution working through the courts are too little and too late in the information war--non-governmental social media and tech companies such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Amazon can act more efficiently and flexibly without the delay involved with working through the courts. In that regard we quote Caitlin Johnstone regarding the Corporatist model of the regime:

In A Corporatist System Of Government, Corporate Censorship Is State Censorship

In all this we saw the consistent twin focus of the regime and its proxies, a focus that tells us that their immediate concerns are 

1) to safeguard instruments of social control represented by the Covid regime and its vaxxing campaign, and 

2) to safeguard the legitimacy of the regime by suppressing all questioning regarding Election 2020.

 

It's worthwhile to turn to anti-war activist Johnstone's prescient 2018 article for a reminder of how this works and, especially, for the role of the Deep State: