The American system is facing a real crisis.
The prospect of a former president being indicted in four different jurisdictions—New York City, Atlanta, Miami, and the District of Columbia—by Democrat prosecutors is a spectacle of enormous danger to the future of the American Republic.
Colleen McCullough captures the danger of politics degenerating into violence, imprisonment, and retaliation in her brilliant series of novels about Caesar and the end of the Roman Republic. Caesar crosses the Rubicon with his army and finishes the collapse of the Republic because he knows if he returns to Rome without his troops he will be put in jail by his enemies.
Theodore White captured the dilemma of trying to preserve the Republic while trying to remain free in his remarkable small book, “Caesar at the Rubicon.” In White’s version, Caesar keeps sending emissaries to negotiate his freedom without war and they get decisively turned down. In the end, Caesar realizes he can surrender and die or he can fight. Callista and I visited the Rubicon at the site where Caesar crossed. It is a stunning reminder that constitutions are hard to create, challenging to maintain, and easy to destroy.
“President Trump is 76 years old. If the Department of Justice gets its way, he will die in federal prison .... They don’t want to just win elections. They want to take control of this country. They want one-party rule, and they have used the Department of Justice and the FBI to get what they want.”
Here are some sobering paragraphs from the speech.
“[I]t won’t stop with me. They will not hesitate to ramp up the persecution of Christians, pro-life activists, parents attendings school board meetings, and even future Republican candidates, which they do. ... It’s very simple. They wanna silence me because I will never let them silence you. They want you silenced.”
Contrasting with the Biden-Democrat effort to lock up their most dangerous opponent, consider what President Gerald Ford said in pardoning President Richard Nixon to avoid the same crisis we are now facing.
“I deeply believe in equal justice for all Americans, whatever their station or former station. The law, whether human or divine, is no respecter of persons; but the law is a respecter of reality.
“The facts, as I see them, are that a former President of the United States, instead of enjoying equal treatment with any other citizen accused of violating the law, would be cruelly and excessively penalized either in preserving the presumption of his innocence or in obtaining a speedy determination of his guilt in order to repay a legal debt to society.
“During this long period of delay and potential litigation, ugly passions would again be aroused. And our people would again be polarized in their opinions. And the credibility of our free institutions of government would again be challenged at home and abroad.”
It isn’t too late to stop this threat to our Republic, but the clock is ticking. The threat of deep hostility and punitive use of government grows every day.
