Criminalizing Dissension

A Democratic senator sought Justice Department and IRS Criminal prosecutions of conservatives in 2013, newly-released federal documents reveal.

The Department of Justice documents reveal email conversations between its officials and the staff of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat, about possible criminal prosecution of tea party groups for alleged violation of IRS rules, says Judicial Watch, a government watchdog which obtained the material.

The conversations were in preparation for a briefing by Justice Department officials for Whitehouse’s staff and for a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism hearing.

In one exchange, Whitehouse says:

“I would urge that the Department and the Service get together and rethink whether in these two specific areas, which I think bear little resemblance to traditional tax violations and are in fact very plain-vanilla criminal cases …”

This is really, really troubling. Not from a Republican or conservative point-of-view, but from an individual rights point-of-view.

One of the reasons for not having an IRS in the first place is so government may not use it as a way to threaten or throttle dissenting opinions.

What’s been going on with the Obama administration, and also with the Congress (even when supposedly run by Republicans), has been a blatant violation of the right to dissenting opinion. Senators like Whitehouse wish to use vaguely worded or contradictory laws (or even mere regulations) to tell people that they will be prosecuted and jailed if they speak out too much. They do so by hiding behind IRS or other government regulations that provide bureaucrats and government prosecutors with broad discretion in determining who has or has not broken the law. If you doubt this, then consider the fact that virtually all of the attempts to prosecute violations have been against conservative groups, Tea Party groups (the most vocal) first and foremost. All of this has happened when a Democratic president has been in power and a Republican Congress has run the show mainly at the behest of Democratic priorities.

To those of us who still value Constitutional freedoms, this latest revelation about Senator Whitehouse is a genuine scandal. But it’s not a scandal to most Americans. Most Americans are still more concerned about getting more benefits and services from an already bankrupt, lying federal government. “Where’s my college tuition? Where are my health care subsidies? Give me my bailout!” The cries for liberty and rights that heralded the start of America are now drowned out by demands for goodies, goodies, goodies. We can’t go on like this.

If you think this attempt to suppress dissension is over, you’re badly mistaken. Our politicians are watching. If Hillary Clinton is elected, it will send a message that all these actions on the part of the Obama administration are acceptable. And even if she’s not elected, it’s no guarantee they will stop.

America has lost its moorings. People no longer think in principle. When you think in principle you say, “Wow, even if I’m a Democrat, I don’t want the federal government using the IRS to single out Tea Party groups or anyone who disagrees. We are all equal under the law.” But that’s not how most people seem to think, not anymore. So long as it’s their guys doing the prosecuting and it’s not their guys taking the hit, they’re fine with it. It’s a war of all against all. The only solution is to seize power and then try to hold on to it. Power is what fills the vacuum when principles are no longer important.

Today’s dissenters could be tomorrow’s mainstream. Today’s dissenting opinions are often the wisdom of tomorrow. That’s how societies, like individuals, grow, evolve and change. But with our own American government increasingly throttling and silencing the opinions of those who criticize its officials, we’re becoming no different from the rest of the world. America is no longer special, because most of us don’t know (or even care) what made our system of individual rights so important in the first place.

The wonderful news is that we can always change course. But to do so, more of us will have to start thinking in principle, not just power politics. If American liberty ever experiences resurgence, this will be the only way it happens. Otherwise, we’ll wake up one day and it will all be gone.