After last month’s election, it seemed things were finally coming into focus, i.e., that the lines between the rule of law and abject political maneuvering were becoming much clearer. Indeed, especially after most of President Donald Trump’s cases were either dropped or delayed, it seemed as though we could make the necessary and welcome pivot – not necessarily to the right, but toward reason and sanity – to a world where law is law, and politics, politics.
This notion proved woefully premature in light of the Hunter Biden pardon, however. For, despite everything that’s happened – in the recent election, yes, but also in the details of the Hunter Biden case itself – many in the media decided that, you guessed it … the pardon is Trump’s fault.
Jonathan Karl from ABC provided a quick and early measure to what is becoming a familiar drumbeat.
“Frankly, it doesn’t come as a surprise to me,” said Karl. “But look, this is the president’s son. It comes on the day after that Donald Trump has announced that Kash Patel would be his FBI director, a move that signaled that Donald Trump’s administration would be taking seriously the idea of retribution on his political enemies….”
Others made similar observations, including the Biden administration itself.
This moves away from a stated adherence to the Rule of Law (i.e., Law with a capital L, a virtue heralded by the Biden administration until only recently) and toward a system dominated not by the great ideals of the past but by narrow, petty political obsessions reveals that, despite their public claims, these actors were never really that committed to classical values to begin with.
This kind of political relativism is a greater setback to peace and prosperity than might initially be assumed. It’s akin to the rule by rabble that Edmund Burke warned about in “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” a condition in which objective standards for truth have been replaced by virulent tribalism. A rigid orthodoxy accepting only its own narrow, subjective truth (truth with a lowercase t), it is paralyzing to the citizenry, as they are never able to adjust to new realities as they emerge, forced, as they are, to abide by what might be called the sub-truths of the mob.
Arguably, it is this lack of philosophical foundation that brings about the indecisiveness witnessed in so much of the current administration’s attitudes and policies. The Middle East comes to mind, as the Democrats lost a considerable amount of support among both Jews and Muslims in the recent election, likely because the party wasn’t at all clear on which side they were on regarding the ongoing conflict in the region. Further evidence can be seen in the Biden administration’s border policy, as it assured us for most of the last four years of its commitment to a controlled southern border, even as illegals continued to pour into the country.
For a long time now, the left has existed in a vague never-world in which its identity stems more from what it’s against than what it’s for, and lately, what it’s against is Donald Trump. These voices are still active today, among Democrats as well as the left-leaning media, but the unfolding of recent events is serving to highlight just how narrow their mindset really is. This fact should be highlighted and used to promote a return to the classical virtues, for, in doing so, we will be not only returning sanity to the minds of confused multitudes but possibly saving our country as well.
Along with his father, Allen Keller runs a lumber business in Stevenson, Alabama. He has a Ph.D. in Creative Writing from Florida State University and an MBA from University of Virginia. He can be reached for comment at allen@kellerlumber.net.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News.
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