Commentary
I’ve spent 15 years of my life in a post-Communist country. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, I went to Hungary to work in the first freely elected Conservative government of that newly liberated nation, the country my parents had escaped from 37 years earlier.
I ended up living and getting married there, seeing my first children be born in Budapest, and then setting up an independent think tank. Throughout it all, I witnessed a nation struggle with the legacy of two generations of communist dictatorship—what systematic oppression does to the heart and soul of a once proud and independent nation.
Unbelievably, more than once, the Hungarian people elected the former communists back into power, politicians who had served the former oppressive regime and now called themselves “socialists.” Once, before a general election, they literally bribed the elderly population—who were more nostalgic for an era without the unstable vicissitudes of free-market democracy—by promising to give them all a 13th installment of their monthly state pensions. (Maybe this is where Andrew Yang got his idea to buy votes?)
None of these former communist apparatchiks would ever pay a price for crimes committed while they ran a prison state. Regrettably, after the glorious events of 1989, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, there was no equivalent to the Nuremberg trials that de-Nazified post-war Germany.
Not one Politburo member was charged with crushing the 1956 Revolution, not one secret police officer was arrested for having tortured former political prisoners such as my father, who had been given a life sentence at the age of 20 for resisting the Socialist oppression of the Kremlin’s Budapest lackeys.
This lack of any sense of justice for the crimes of the past led one Hungarian philosopher to coin the phrase, “Land of No Consequences,” to describe a post-communist Hungary where criminals went scot-free, where the former oppressor could change the name of his party and continue a public life free of retribution for lives that were destroyed or violently ended.
America has never been a fascist or communist dictatorship; we don’t have political prisons or the death penalty for ideological dissension. But we are slowly becoming a “land of no consequences” since President Barack Obama left office.
Think of all the crimes committed that have gone unpunished. From Obama-appointee Lois Lerner using the IRS to target conservative Tea Party groups yet retiring on a full pension, to Eric “I’m Obama’s Wingman!” Holder’s Department of Justice releasing weapons to Mexican cartels under operation “Fast and Furious” which led to the death of at least one federal agent, the unpunished lawlessness of the last Democratic administration knows no bounds. Then there is, of course, Obamagate.
Thanks to a handful of brave souls, who include Rep. Devin Nunes, Sara Carter, John Solomon, Sidney Powell, and the investigators at Judicial Watch, we have proof that:
- The Obama administration used a false dossier from a former British spy, paid for by the Democratic National Committee, to justify government surveillance on the Trump campaign.
- The resulting Operation Crossfire Hurricane was utterly unprecedented as, for the first time in America’s history, it brought together the FBI, CIA, and NSA for a joint operation to surveil a presidential campaign.
- As a part of Crossfire Hurricane, the CIA tried to entrap George Papadopoulos; the FBI illegally obtained secret FISA warrants to spy on Carter Page; and the identities of hundreds of U.S. citizens were unmasked in NSA signals intercepts read all across the Obama administration, in direct contravention of our Article 4 rights under the U.S. Constitution.
- And retired three-star Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, a combat veteran who had been fired by Obama for attempting to reform the DIA and speaking truthfully about the persistent threat of al-Qaida and groups such as ISIS, was targeted for entrapment and firing from his position as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.
Not one.
We have less than six months to go until the next election, one in which Trump and his team seek reelection. The closer we get to November, the less likely it will be that charges will ever be brought.
Unless Attorney General William Barr and U.S. Attorney John Durham bring federal charges soon, our republic will also become—like former communist Hungary—the Land of No Consequences.
Sebastian Gorka is former strategist to President Trump, the host of the nationally syndicated Salem Radio show America First (www.sebgorka.com), and author of “The War for America’s Soul.”
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
