Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Last week was the most difficult and discouraging first week of any new year in my lifetime — maybe just about any week in memory. And I have been alive for almost 25% of the years since the American Revolution.
Emerging from a very difficult year on all Americans, especially those whose lives and/or livelihoods were devastated by the ChiCom Virus pandemic, and a year with disastrous presidential political results, we entered 2021 with a glimmer of hope that Republicans would retain the Senate and thereby blunt the threat to Liberty posed by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
Unfortunately, the Democrat Party’s strategy of bulk registration and bulk-mail ballots swamped Georgia Republicans, who were still trying to play by the rules.
A day later came the massive rally hosted by Donald Trump in Washington and a follow-up rally planned on the Capitol grounds. Unfortunately, a split fraction of 1% of those who went to the second rally staged a brief but ugly occupation of the Capitol building. Some of the occupiers violently battled police, and one casualty of that violence was a Capitol Police officer, Brian Sicknick, though the circumstances of his death are unclear. Another casualty was Ashli Babbitt from San Diego, who was shot by a Capitol Police officer as she attempted to climb through a broken window within the Speaker’s Lobby.
Brian Sicknick and Ashli Babbitt had several things in common: They were both American Patriots who were devoted to Liberty, they were both military veterans, and they were both Trump supporters.
Regarding the Demo and Beltway talkingheads’ questions about why the Capitol Police were unprepared, the answer is simple: The real reason Capitol Police were not prepared and the National Guard was not on standby is that everybody expected the Trump rally supporters to act like they always have — with civility and respect. What happened on the Capitol grounds Wednesday was unprecedented for a Trump rally.
Given the upbeat and lawful tenor of ALL previous Trump rallies across the country over the last four years, there was no reason to believe that a tiny element of last week’s rally attendees would resort to the riotous thuggery associated with “peaceful” leftist protests — heretofore the standard modus operandi of so-called “Black Lives Matter” racists and so-called “antifa” fascists.
Notably, those who battled with police outside and inside the Capitol building, by both action and appearance, certainly do not represent any even marginally mainstream contingent of Trump supporters. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, who is resigning, noted: “Violent confrontations from the start. They came with riot helmets, gas masks, shields, pepper spray, climbing gear, explosives, metal pipes, baseball bats. I have never seen anything like it in 30 years of events in Washington.”
Nor has anyone ever seen anything like it at a Trump rally.
The Capitol riot met with unequivocal condemnation from conservatives, but there was no such condemnation from the Left or their Leftmedia propagandists regarding the burn, loot, and murder mobs across the nation over the last seven months. The Demo/Leftmedia Capitol condemnation has, of course, been colossally disproportionate.
As my libertarian college-age son noted, “Apparently, a few hours of angry disruption in the headquarters of the nation’s largest business (Congress) is far more important than months of rioters destroying small businesses nationwide, costing thousands of Americans their livelihoods and some, including police officers, their lives.”
Predictably, before the Capitol dust had settled, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and soon-to-be Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) were calling for Trump’s resignation and setting up another impeachment charade just a year after their previous fake impeachment farce.
Stand by for more absurd leftist political theater, including the 25th Amendment play, as the Demos attempt to keep the Capitol riot front and center until the day Trump leaves office and beyond to darken that stain of shame on all elected Republicans, federal and state, and all conservatives who have supported Trump.
Demos are using the Capitol riot to consolidate power and as fodder to cancel anyone who ever backed Trump. They are fomenting more division, anger, and violence, which they can continue to hang around Republican necks ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
As political analyst Matt Walsh notes: “If Trump’s speech on Wednesday rises to the level of ‘incitement’ then many Democrats are guilty of the same during the BLM riots. How about this deal: all of the Dems guilty of ‘incitement,’ by their own standard, resign. Then we’ll listen to the impeachment case against Trump.”
As if the week had not been bad enough, on Friday the Left’s Big Tech henchmen used the Capitol outrage as a smokescreen to unleash a surge of conservative purges across various social media platforms and the financial institutions and vendors who support conservatives.
What started as a trickle turned into a flood, first with the Facebook and Twitter cancelations of President Trump’s accounts, which severed his ties with almost 90 million followers. Mark Zuckerberg claimed that his Facebook and Instagram applications will be blocking Trump indefinitely: “We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great.” A day later, Twitter also canceled Trump. (Remember when Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey insisted, “Twitter stands for freedom of expression. Twitter stands for speaking truth to power”?)
No word on when they will be blocking the accounts of leftists who have been serially guilty of violating the same platform policies.
If claiming an election was stolen is grounds for canceling social media accounts, then why was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi not canceled in 2017 after posting this comment on social media? “Our election was hijacked,” she asserted. “There is no question.” Her post included the hashtag “ProtectOurDemocracy.” Democrats have repeated that theme ad nauseam over the last four years, but with no takedowns.
And the initial bans last week have launched a much broader purge of conservative platforms and affiliates, including the Big Tech collusion between Apple, Google, and Amazon to eliminate a social media competitor, Parler, prompting an antitrust lawsuit. They are even going after citizen journalists.
This comes after the Demo social- and mass-media collusion to defeat Trump in November, most notably the massive and unprecedented coordinated cover-up of Joe Biden’s corrupt ChiCom dealings in the weeks ahead of the election.
Remember 2016, when the mainstream media eagerly lapped up the claim by the Obama/Clinton co-conspirators and their Deep State operatives that Russia had something on Trump?
As Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned this week, the ChiComs are “inside the gates,” and as I have noted, they are just days away from being inside the White House.
Here’s what you need to know about the Big Tech and Wall Street efforts to cancel conservative voices.
First, given the fact Democrats are coming to power, the Big Tech conservative purges play right into their favor. They are assured of no meaningful Demo challenges to their Section 230 protections — which clearly pose a direct threat to our Constitution — and they will not be subjected to congressional anti-trust hearings and litigation.
Second, and of more grave significance, the social media and corporate assault on free speech constitutes an abject civil rights violation of the First Amendment rights of all Americans — and a model for the coming civil rights violation of Second Amendment rights.
When Americans are targeted because of their constitutionally protected political and/or religious views, leading to coordinated efforts to deplatform and then defund those individuals and businesses when financial institutions selectively refuse services, it constitutes a new form of “redlining” in violation of their most fundamental civil rights.
As you may recall, financial institutions once used redlining to ensure that blacks living in certain areas did not get loans. This coordinated systemic discrimination excluded financial and other services based on race and ethnicity rather than one’s particular merits for receiving services.
Thus, when institutions discriminate against people because of their views despite the fact they meet the same qualifications as others being served, it constitutes a brazen violation of their civil rights. The “private company” defense for discrimination does not apply.
When considering this Big Tech and Wall Street assault on First Amendment assurances of freedom of speech, religion, the press, and assembly — and the coming assault on the Second Amendment, the “palladium of the rights of the Republic” — understand that this is the Left’s contemporary version of redlining.
So egregious is this collective assault on the First Amendment that even the ACLU is taking note. The ACLU’s legislative counsel, Kate Ruane, notes: “It should concern everyone when companies like Facebook and Twitter wield the unchecked power to remove people from platforms that have become indispensable for the speech of billions — especially when political realities make those decisions easier.”
To Ruane’s point, there was an astounding display of hypocrisy this week in a Twitter Public Policy notice ahead of a Ugandan election: “We’re hearing reports that Internet service providers are being ordered to block social media and messaging apps. We strongly condemn internet shutdowns — they are hugely harmful, violate basic human rights and the principles of the #OpenInternet. Access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections.”
Meanwhile, in the United States, the Democrats’ support for Leftmedia and Big Tech suppression of free speech is their key strategy for establishing a permanent majority.
When Joe Biden and Kamala Harris take office on January 20th, they and their congressional ilk will do nothing to reverse these violations — and in fact may provide cover for the acceleration of this unlawful redline purge to continue. They know that the Big Tech purges are the best way to advance their deceptive BIG Lie political agendas.
Finally, an observation regarding our coverage of the events last week: The comments we received from some angry readers asserted we were too “anti-Trump,” though others claimed we were too “pro-Trump.” But we are not beholden to any person or party. Our core mission is, singularly, to be pro-Liberty, which is to say, “to support and defend” our Constitution and the Rule of Law it enshrines. Our team endeavors to pursue this mission even in the most difficult seasons.
We take a long view of Liberty, which is not defined by one week or one presidential cycle.
As I wrote to our supporters earlier this week, we follow the steadfast example of George Washington ahead of the harsh Valley Forge Winter of 1777, when he and the future of Liberty faced what seemed to be insurmountable challenges. He wrote then, “We should never despair, our Situation before has been unpromising and has changed for the better, so I trust, it will again. If new difficulties arise, we must only put forth new Exertions and proportion our Efforts to the exigency of the times.”
And together, we will put forth “new exertions” to meet “the exigency of the times.”
Fellow Patriots, let me encourage you again in this difficult season: Stand fast and firm. Remain vigilant, strong, prepared, and faithful!
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Pro Deo et Libertate — 1776
Please join us in prayer for our nation’s Military Patriots standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, for their families, and for our nation’s First Responders. We also ask prayer for your Patriot team, and our mission to, first and foremost, support and defend our Republic’s Founding Principles of Liberty, and to ignite the fires of freedom in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.