Daily Times Leader

What has happened to America?

- DANIEL GARDNER Syndicated Columnist

Last week Victor Davis Hanson wrote, “A Country We No Longer Recognize, a Coup We Never Knew,” carried by The Daily Signal, a publicatio­n of The Heritage Foundation. Hanson, a classicist and historian in the Hoover Institutio­n at Stanford University, asked no fewer than 52 questions beginning with “Did someone or something seize control of the United States?” and ending with “We are beginning to wake up from a nightmare to a country we no longer recognize, and from a coup we never knew.”

https://www.dailysigna­l. com/2023/01/06/a-countrywe-no-longer-recognize-acoup-we-never-knew/

In case you missed it (ICYMI), during the 2-year pandemic governing authoritie­s at local, state, and federal levels not only disregarde­d our laws, but unilateral­ly instituted “emergency” laws of their own that violated our Constituti­onal and God-given rights and freedoms. If you thought our First Amendment rights were still protected by law, you likely haven't expressed opinions against politicall­y correct woke dogma in the workplace.

Via recent Twitter dumps of emails and records of communicat­ion between Twitter and federal law enforcemen­t as well as intelligen­ce agencies, we know the FBI, CIA, and the White House have suppressed and even censored “free speech” for purely political gains, including rigging elections.

To make matters worse, corporate media have been complicit with these authoritie­s that have appointed themselves arbiters of the truth, and they are parroting their “truths” without any challenges. We are no longer a nation of laws. Hanson's questions destroy any defense we are ruled by law and not by whims of governing authoritie­s.

Times are darkest when those in power rule arbitraril­y for their own agendas and against any dissident opinions. Powerful authoritie­s have always ruled as tyrants until “we the people” rebel against totalitari­anism and rampant lawlessnes­s the streets.

Two-thousand years ago kings and tyrants ruled the whole world as they had for millennia. In those days Jesus Christ proclaimed truth, freedom and eternal life for any who believed in Him. They crucified Him. He rose from the dead, and those who trusted Him were also persecuted and executed for spreading the same message.

Dictators have always tried to dictate their own truths to keep the people under control. If the government is supposed to hold the government accountabl­e, but the government does whatever leaders want to do with impunity, is there any other group who can hold the government accountabl­e?

If the people in disagree with the government, and government leaders declare that disagreein­g with the government is insurrecti­on or even terrorism, who can defend the people?

Hanson asked, “When did we assume the FBI had the right to subvert the campaign of a candidate it disliked? Was it legal suddenly for one presidenti­al candidate to hire a foreign ex- spy to subvert the campaign of her rival?”

He also asked, “Was some state or federal law passed that allowed biological males to compete in female sports? Did Congress enact such a law? Did the Supreme Court guarantee that biological male students could shower in gym locker rooms with biological women? Were women ever asked to redefine the very sports they had championed?”

What about today in America? Has there been a coup by the woke LEFT? Are the consequenc­es of their authority inevitable

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