Do not insult our collective intelligence by suggesting that Donald J. Trump abused the Constitution and the office of president in a way that would have been unthinkable to Barack Obama.

Obama was not impeached not because he did not do things that Donald Trump did, but because his opposition in the House did not do what Democrats later most willingly did: attempt a coup to remove a president without cause

By Victor Davis Hanson    March 1, 2020

New Impeachment Rules Would Snare Obama

amgreatness.com/2020/03/01/new-impeachment-rules-would-snare-obama/

March 2, 2020

Barack Obama’s eight-year tenure was detrimental to the United States, but like most of his nonbelievers, I harbor no animosity for his person.

Few critics that I know advocated that Obama be impeached, much less removed from office, before his reelection bid—even amid his worst scandals and dangerous policies. But we are now in a new age, whose protocols might have made it impossible for the Obama Administration to have finished two terms. 

Remember, his administration ran some 2,000 guns to Mexican cartels in some hare-brained scheme to monitor violence spilling into the United States. Under the new customs, he should have been impeached for instructing Attorney General Eric Holder to refuse to testify to Congress about Fast and Furious, or at least for not handing over subpoenaed documents. Imagine a Trump gun-walking scheme in Mexico.

It was bad enough that Holder was the first attorney general to be held in contempt of Congress, well aside from the embarrassment of his unhinged outbursts about “my people” (hint: his “my” did not mean Americans of all races and creeds). We all remember Holder’s lunatic dismissals of his own country as “a nation of cowards.” (Imagine Bill Barr referring to “my people” or calling Americans cowards)

Fine—politicians and bureaucrats misspeak. It is no surprise that radical progressives like Holder are both partisans and tribalists or that they don’t always have positive thoughts about America, past or present. But Obama won the election. So voters had ample warning from his past that he would likely put as many leftists as he wished into government. He had the legal right and political rationale to do so, without his opponents inventing crimes to remove them. 

At least he did before the Trump hysteria.

Criminalizing Politics

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The Second Amendment Sanctuary Movement Isn’t Going Away

The media smears them as ‘white supremacists,’ but thousands showed up in Richmond, Va., Monday

A rally against gun-control measures in Richmond, Va., Jan. 20. PHOTO: MIGUEL JUAREZ LUGO/ZUMA PRESS

Middletown, Va.

Troy Carter, 49, says that, other than voting, he’d never been involved in politics. That changed late last year, when he heard that a county board of supervisors in Virginia voted to become a gun sanctuary. On Monday he was one of an estimated 22,000 people who gathered peacefully at the Capitol Square in Richmond, Va., to support gun rights. Many of those attending were visibly armed.

Ninety-one of Virginia’s 96 counties have passed sanctuary measures to resist proposed state gun regulations. Last year Democrats took control of both chambers of Virginia’s General Assembly for the first time in nearly three decades. They, along with Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam, have stood firm on their campaign pledges to enact stricter gun control, partly in reaction to a shooting last May in Virginia Beach.

For Virginians like Mr. Carter, the effort has brought about a political awakening. He learned to shoot when he was six years old. Guns are a normal part of his life, like fishing or going to church every Sunday, and something he considers vital to protecting and providing for his family. Mr. Carter choked up as he described a tradition of safety, protection and providing taught to him by his grandfather—and his grandfather before him. When he discovered the sanctuary movement, he decided to go to a meeting two counties away to learn more.

Becoming a Second Amendment sanctuary means a locality won’t use law enforcement resources to prosecute the proposed antigun laws. Whether such resolutions have any teeth depends on local officials’ resolve, but at the very least these measures are a reflection of regional sentiment on gun control.

This grass-roots movement is largely composed of people like Mr. Carter, who aren’t otherwise political but strongly believe in the importance of the Second Amendment. At his first meeting, he encountered massive support, “I just couldn’t believe the amount of people that showed up.”

Mr. Carter soon found himself attending another gathering in another county, and then another. When it finally came time for his county supervisors to take a vote, he spoke at the meeting. They passed a sanctuary measure.

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“American citizenship is eroding”

November 2019  • • Victor Davis Hanson

The following is an abridged version of a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 2, 2019, during the College’s 175th anniversary gala. Videos of this and other speeches delivered during the gala are available at fourpillars.hillsdale.edu.

Today many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.

The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.

American citizenship is eroding in three ways.

First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today—the largest absolute number we’ve ever had. There’s no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship—although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.

But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship—the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases—are being blurred.

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What is going on with the unending Brexit drama, the aftershocks of Donald Trump’s election and the “yellow vests” protests in France? What drives the growing estrangement of southern and eastern Europe from the European Union establishment? What fuels the anti-EU themes of recent European elections and the stunning recent Australian re-election of conservatives?

Put simply, the middle classes are revolting against Western managerial elites. The latter group includes professional politicians, entrenched bureaucrats, condescending academics, corporate phonies and propagandistic journalists.

What are the popular gripes against them?

One, illegal immigration and open borders have led to chaos. Lax immigration policies have taxed social services and fueled multicultural identity politics, often to the benefit of boutique leftist political agendas.

Two, globalization enriched the cosmopolitan elites who found worldwide markets for their various services. New global markets and commerce meant Western nations outsourced, offshored and ignored their own industries and manufacturing (or anything dependent on muscular labor that could be replaced by cheaper workers abroad).

Three, unelected bureaucrats multiplied and vastly increased their power over private citizens. The targeted middle classes lacked the resources to fight back against the royal armies of tenured regulators, planners, auditors, inspectors and adjustors who could not be fired and were never accountable.

Four, the new global media reached billions and indoctrinated rather than reported.

Five, academia became politicized as a shrill agent of cultural transformation rather than focusing on education — while charging more for less learning.

Six, utopian social planning increased housing, energy and transportation costs.

One common gripe framed all these diverse issues: The wealthy had the means and influence not to be bothered by higher taxes and fees or to avoid them altogether. Not so much the middle classes, who lacked the clout of the virtue-signaling rich and the romance of the distant poor.

In other words, elites never suffered the firsthand consequences of their own ideological fiats.

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Why Won’t Left-Wing Sanctuary Cities Welcome The Diversity Of Asylum Seekers?