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Quote of the Day: When We Fail to Protest
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.” — Elie Wiesel
As our Constitution and our rights are continually challenged, Elie Wiesel’s words ring truer than ever. Our protests against infringement on the First and Second Amendments are passionate and ongoing. We must speak out for our right to be heard, or we will be silenced by those who hate what we say and believe. We must fight for our right to bear arms, or those who resent us will remove our ability to defend ourselves. Every day the media broadcasts stories of people who want to rewrite the Constitution to push their own power and agenda and disempower the rest of us.
We also must protest when we see illegal, immoral and despicable actions that are so outrageous that we simply can’t believe them: the betrayal of the United States by the intelligence agencies. Although I’ve seen Republicans delving into these violations of our own government, we must protest and investigate more than ever before. Don’t think that the Democrats are just adamant about continuing their investigations to take down Donald Trump. They are also prepared to take down Conservatives, Republicans, and our entire country if need be. They are relentless, but we must be even more relentless.
I’m counting on Devin Nunes, Lindsay Graham, and the Republicans on their committees (even though Nunes is not in charge) to fight ceaselessly to get to the truth. I’m appealing to AG Bill Barr to see that the criminals are brought to justice. These blatant attacks on our rule of law cannot go unpunished.
We must never fail to protest the attacks on our Republic, from within or without.
Published in Culture
Not speaking out against something can be seen as tacit approval. However, I’m worried if we have to depend on Republicans in office to clean things up. Congressional investigations rarely accomplish anything, other than providing a forum for Presidential candidates to show off to their voters. As for AG Barr, he should have demanded a special counsel to investigate Hillary and the Democrat party on day one of his job.
In that spirit, I’m going to cancel my subscription to the WSJ now that they have stifled their comment section. However, I’m not going to tell them why I’ve canceled. They don’t deserve to know.
As proof, look at all the voter fraud they have perpetrated throughout the years. Motor Voter, harvesting ballots in California, allowing illegals to vote, complaining about a proper ID, not updating voter registration, etc. And with modern electronic voting without paper trails, extra votes can suddenly appear to get the results they want.
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I agree, but the Left seems to see normalcy as injustice, and many of them have either endless energy, or large amounts of time on their hands… it would be very hard to keep up! Especially if one has — oh, a job? a life? a family?
as with many things, just because something is hard doesn’t mean it is not important…
Good point. And when you refer to something as not normal, that itself is an injustice and must be rectified.
I’m about to leave Ricochet for the same reason.
Excellent post, @susanquinn. Whether one is a gun owner or not (I am), we must strongly oppose the efforts to distort the clear meaning of the Constitution. If they are able to eliminate the 2nd Amendment, what Article will they come after next? The 14th Amendment is unpopular in come circles; as is the electoral college.
Once they (the Leftist) succeed in one goal, they immediately start on the next.
I agree, Stad. Only a couple of Republicans protest, and too often it’s against President Trump. Wrong priorities.
I find this very distressing, @vectorman. The abuses and potential abuses are unbelievable, and people just shrug their shoulders. This must be addressed or their will never be fair voting!
So very true, @nancyspalding. We don’t always have to participate in formal protests; we just need to speak out when we have the opportunity, rather than remain silent, giving the impression we agree. Yes, the Left has far too much time on their hands, don’t they?
I agree, @jimmcconnell. When you are working towards creating a perfect society, your work is never done!
My current subscription goes to the end of May. I resisted the inquiries on the phone as to why I was canceling. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing they’ve successfully marginalized another deplorable. But on the latest Best of the Web article I mentioned Ricochet as an alternative.
Democrats in Congress do not demonstrate that they recognize the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land.
Very interesting today as AG Barr was questioned regarding the DoJ’s position not defending what’s left of Obamacare in an appeal process after a court ruling that the statute is unconstitutional.
The life of an activist is a trying one. First of all, while the activist throws herself headlong into a cause, a million others come up that she realizes she cares about too, but she is stuck working on the one that bothered her the most two years earlier. :-)
Once you make a commitment, to succeed, you need to stay focused. And that’s difficult as other issues come and go.
The other problem for activists is geographical. We are needed at every level of government–local, state, and federal.
The one change I want to see made in this country is the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment, which made the U.S. senators popularly elected rather than being elected by their state legislature. Strictly from the organizational point of view, the structure of our government in terms of reporting and accountability was downright brilliant and convenient for activists. The U.S. senators would represent the interests of the state governments. It created a tier structure that was highly effective. Now there is a hole in our organization chart that we have never filled. The governors simply don’t have the time to fill that role.
Susan, I agree with you about protesting attacks on 1st and 2nd Amendment rights, but I disagree with Wiesel. There are times when protest will be productive, and times when it will not. Life is so darned complicated.
Should Oskar Schindler have protested? Should he have tried to start a public movement against the atrocity of the Holocaust? Would that have worked?
I don’t think so. I think that he would have received the Gestapo treatment, and we would never have heard of him.
Schindler was a Nazi party member and worked for the Abwehr intelligence service. He ran an enamelware plant using enslaved Jewish prisoners. When his plant was shut down, he relocated and switched to munitions manufacture. His list of 1,200 enslaved Jews included about 1,000 of his own workers, who he had transferred to his new factory by the Nazis. 300 of his female workers were sent to Auschwitz, and he used bribes and his Nazi influence to have them transferred to his new factory.
Schindler did not protest. He participated in the atrocity, apparently. But he spent his personal fortune to bribe SS officials to leave his enslaved Jewish workers alone, and to provide them with food and other necessities. He saved hundreds because he did not protest.
It is annoying that the world is so complex that we can’t rely on a set of simple rules.
Agreed. Sometimes the best way to affect change is to infiltrate the institutions and work on them from the inside — as the Left has very ably demonstrated over the last fifty to one hundred years.
After watching Peter’s latest Uncommon Knowledge, I realized what a challenge it is to find conservatives to serve in government, because they’d so much rather be doing more productive things (ahem, Donald Trump). But, if we leave government to the power-mad Left (redundant), we will end up with tyranny. We badly need liberty loving conservatives to step up and hand power back to the people.
‘I do not speak because I have the power to speak; I speak because I do not have the power to keep quiet. ‘
– Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen Kook
I have a longer list, but the repealing the 17th is on the top. We already dealt with one of the unholy four progressive amendments. I think the 17th has to be ripped out before we can deal with the 16th.
At that point I’d probably take 3/4 of a loaf and leave the 19th alone.
Yes, conundrum. We need some of these tech billionaires to turn conservative quickly. I don’t think Donald Trump thought about this deeply until his last campaign, even though he doodled around the edges for decades. Turns out he has many conservative instincts and clearly sees America as the greatest country.
If they are billionaires, they won’t be conservatives for long.
Yet another way feminists are ruining the country. By denying women’s natural inclination to seek out men for protection and provision, we’ve fooled ourselves into believing that’s what government is for. This is why women tend to vote Democrat — especially the ones who can’t attract or keep a (good) man. They’ve “married” Sugar Daddy Government, and they think everyone else should have that option, too.
I have thought that where the feminists have gone on the issue of abortion, and perhaps on masculinity as well, dishonors all those women of the past who have borne and reared children. Why would today’s women have a view of that being unworthy?
Jerry, you made a mistake that many people make about general statements. I believe that there were hundreds of thousands of people who protested once the holocaust results were learned; but prior to that time, no one protested. I don’t believe he was saying that every person must protest, but rather that people must protest. Because so many people were silent for so long, millions died. One could also say that Schindler’s was a silent protest, by doing all the amazing things he did. He silently and cleverly fought the system, which was his best way to fight it.
I think that we might consider broadening the meaning of protesting. For example, many of us write articles to protest a particular topic. You’ve done that yourself, Jerry. You don’t remain silent. Neither do I.
If they push the progressive agenda hard enough, they won’t be billionaires for long either😛
Susan, thanks. I agree with this.
Two things have to be done at the same time:
DOJ must aggressively investigate and prosecute California election officials. Find a legal theory and start hammering away.
Califonia Republicans must use the rules, as they now are, just as aggressively as the Democrats. Why are they not out harvesting ballots twice as hard as Democrats? If you are at a registration disadvantage and a media disadvantage, why not go help people see the truth and help them vote accordingly? Cowardice, cowed, or a colluding organization pretending to be a real political party?
Same holds for every other state.
@cliffordbrown, as long as people harvest ballots, we should, too. But I wouldn’t support discussing candidates with people and trying to sway them. Wasn’t it in Georgia that some idiot was harvesting illegally/ (I probably have that wrong.) We should use the system to our advantage to the max, but there is a max for a reason, and just because they won’t follow it, I’m not sure we should violate it. I do appreciate the sentiment, though!
Yes, and, in California the Democrats moved the bar on the max by legalizing vote harvesting.
This cost us 6 House seats in California and it cost a quarter million votes in Orange Counity alone. It is legalized fraud, so California Republicans were without excuse in refusing to defend their strongest districts with an even bigger ballot harvest. This was as bad as the dopes in Florida sputtering about the 2018 ballot counting shenanigans when Republicans had 18 years to fix their laws after the hanging chads disgrace. Florida could and should have led the nation in election integrity reform. The Republican Party chose not to, and nearly lost both top races in 2018 to fraud their negligence enabled.
I’m in my winter escape to sun in Colombia. Colombia was the freest country in the Hemisphere even when it was guerrilla wracked and a murder capital before Uribe with some help from us, hit the guerrillas and drugs, driving them to Venezuela, Central America and Mexico (another story) but it’s gotten worse again. When I lived here 50 and again 40 years ago, everyone I knew owned and carried guns. Not so now. Only very dangerous folks have them, the marxist guerrillas, and the cooks. Even very poor crooks have to rent guns on the short term to carry out their robberies and murders so the laws have obviously made guns more expensive. Folks don’t seem to be bothered by the rule because the US leftist press supports gun control. So if they own guns they don’t admit it. They are way ahead of us on this one but the police and military who are still probably the best in the hemisphere, can’t deal with the crime or guerrillas so it’s all growing quite rapidly. They have the advantage of living next to Venezuela and absorbing Venezuelan refugees daily, but I’m not sure the leading class in Bogota understands why Venezuela gives them insights into where they’re headed if they don’t get it all sorted out. We must not let the Democrats win this one. Thanks for your article.
I believe you’re referring to the 9th district in NC. The incumbent Representative was ousted in the primary by an evangelical minister who hired the “consultant” responsible for the vote harvesting. What’s not usually reported is that this “consultant” had previously worked for Democrat campaigns for a few decades before becoming a MAGA supporter.