Let me introduce you to the arena of this age: the courts.
Don’t like your political enemy? Sue them! Not for their political stance, of course. That would be too obvious and unwinnable. The courts don’t take up political issues.
And we can’t leave it to the people to hear the ideas, weigh them out, and then decide which is true. That would mean we would lose … probably. After all, Satan’s ideas are not always easy to sell in the marketplace.
Today, the solution for political opponents is to attack each other for things unrelated to their political stance in order to remove them from the public discourse.
The most obvious example is the many cases against former President Donald Trump. Do any of these cases have anything to do with his political positions? No. Most of them are not even winnable. And the one they did succeed on had nothing to do with his political ideology but his personal life.
It is important to note that most of these cases were initiated not when the alleged wrongdoings happened but after Trump announced his candidacy for re-election. The Grand Jury in the Stormy Daniels case was impaneled shortly after he announced his re-election bid, while the alleged crime occurred back in 2016.
Further, these cases were brought by prosecutors who ran their campaigns on the promise to “Get Trump.” Not to punish a certain crime, but to punish a person.
To be fair, the same thing is happening on the right to a smaller degree. This week, Hunter Biden was found guilty of illegally possessing a firearm while being addicted to drugs. Of all the crimes he committed, this is by far the lesser. But this is the right’s effort to expose the corruption of Biden.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Biden is as corrupt as a mob boss. But there are other ways for the right to prove that and get him out of office. One needs to do no more than send the average voter to the grocery store, buy some gas, and then watch Biden attempt to speak at an event.
But the right would be foolish to ignore the great political opportunity the Biden case brought out, namely the fact that this case proves the left truly does not care about gun laws. Indeed, Hunter Biden flouted gun laws people on all sides of the aisle agree on and still got a gun. And the president stands with him!
If this simple gun law did not work to prevent a drug-addicted son of a president from getting a gun, then I don’t know how the left thinks stricter gun laws are going to work.
And I don’t think they care for them to work. Otherwise, you would be hearing a statement from the president about how “no one is above the law” and “we must work to protect our Union from guns in the hands of drug addicts.” But not even the leftist media is banging that drum. They don’t want to protect the masses from gun violence. They want to leave you defenseless. This is made even more clear by the plethora of leftist prosecutors and judges letting people arrested for gun violence out on little-to-no bail.
On a lower level, if you don’t like the political advice a lawyer gives their client, sue them!! Infamously, the attorneys who advised Trump after he lost the 2020 election have been arrested or otherwise embroiled in legal battles. It is the job of a lawyer to give advice and we aren’t always right. But that is not a criminal action. Believe me, when I was practicing family law, I saw some straight-up crooked attorneys who gave terrible legal advice. But that doesn’t mean they should be arrested, no matter how much the judge wanted to do so. Thus, these lawsuits only serve to have a chilling effect on the practice of law. The message? Don’t take on a conservative client, for you may lose your license and your freedom.
Of course, as a lawyer, I have a duty to say this new form of debate is brilliant. After all, lawyers get paid by the hour, and politicians are making lawyers excessively rich right now. But we are destroying our political system by playing this game. It’s time to cool it down and find some other way of convincing people to elect a certain candidate rather than going after them in the courts.
Laura Clark is a wife, mother, and community activist. She currently serves as the interim president of Alabama Center for Law and Liberty, a conservative nonprofit law firm that fights for limited government, free markets, and strong families in the courts. Anything written by Laura for this publication does not constitute legal advice.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to Commentary@1819News.com.
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