When character counts, Joe Biden is off selling his office to Ukraine, China, and Romania. When solvency counts, Democrats sell your children’s future for votes. When crime stalks, progressive prosecutors let felons walk. When 2024 comes…America needs election integrity and an accountable majority. The bell tolls, for us. Democracy without accountability is tyranny.
Wrote Jefferson, in a stern warning to future Americans about the tendency of government to grow, until it consumes the freedoms it was meant to preserve: “Tyranny” is when acts are “legal for the government but illegal for the citizenry.”
Refining Jefferson’s sentiments, author of the Declaration of Independence and our third president, are words from his lifetime friend, Constitutional Convention recorder, and fourth president, James Madison.
Said Madison, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
And as you sit back and assess the state of America, what have we now? A president who, as vice president and still, boldly models dishonesty, no accountability, raw political corruption.
More than this, he uses language of the French and Bolshevik Revolutions, both violent in the extreme, to describe half our nation – now more than half – which have no faith in him, many of whom never did.
He calls them “enemies of the people,” disparaging those of faith, pushing atheism and divisive “social engineering,” then boldly targets – as Richard Nixon never did – his political enemies.
These are tactics, phrases, and historically recorded patterns tied to abuse of office and power aggregation along the trail to tyranny. They are dishonest, dissembling, and low demagoguery.
Breathtaking is the only word for Biden’s actions – and those supporting him – along with the complicity of senior officials at Justice, the FBI, State, the White House, and on the Hill.
Danger signs should be flashing for anyone who believes that accountability is the key to “keeping the Republic,” integrity in office and responsibility for those who fail the line, an idea that started with the Magna Carta, is woven into our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
Famously, on the last day of the Constitutional Convention, September 18, 1787, a lady asked Benjamin Franklin whether the future would be as a “republic or a monarchy,” code for tyranny at the time.
Franklin said, as the Library of Congress records, “…a republic, if we can keep it.” What Franklin meant, quite obviously, was “if future generations of Americans can keep it, or keep the government accountable to the people.”
And who are those people? They are us. The main points are these. Evidence of profound corruption and dishonesty mount, dating back to the Obama Administration. An FBI Director, flirting with contempt, and Attorney General appear complicit in the cover-up.
As the Biden administration stonewalls Congress and the American people, reprehensibly pursuing indictments of a former president and current political opponent, America is at a critical juncture in history – one compounded by non-coincidental indictment of a former president.
We will either hold these individuals accountable for profound constitutional, statutory, ethical, and moral abuses of power, or regret not doing so for as long as we – and future victims – live.
In short, the lessons of history are forgotten at peril, especially grave peril to the Republic, a self- governing form of rule premised on honor, integrity, and accountability. It is as simple as that.
If we cannot – in 2024, perhaps before – find a way to keep this government accountable, we lose control over the future, and will regret forget that we did not speak, demand accountability, and assure that integrity of this constitutional government remains intact.
We should, even at this moment, do all we can to keep these leaders accountable, using every constitutional right provided for this purpose. But for certain, we need to focus. In many ways, it is 2024 or bust.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.
