N.S.: Colleagues of mine are obsessed with French political observers, these days.

By A Colleague

Sun, Mar 7, 2021 3:31 p.m.

A Storm Over the American Republic

Frenchman Alexis de Toqueville was an astute and sympathetic observer of and commentator on the early American Republic. "In Democracy in America, published in 1835, Tocqueville wrote of the New World and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing from the perspective of a detached social scientist, Tocqueville wrote of his travels through the United States in the early 19th century when the Market Revolution, Western expansion and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming the fabric of American life."

Perhaps it is fitting then that one of the most perceptive current commentators on America's decline and evolution into a one-party nation -- as Germany did in the 1930s and Russia did in the 1910s -- is another Frenchmen Guy Milliere whose recent on-target piece is below. Read at risk to your sanity, but it's long.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Gatestone Institute <list@gatestoneinstitute.org>
Date: Sun, Mar 7, 2021 at 2:16 A.M.
Subject: A Storm Over the American Republic

A Storm Over the American Republic by Guy Millière  •  March 7, 2021 at 5:00 am The atmosphere in the United States remains poisonous. Critics claim that stoking in the public is being done on purpose -- to create a false narrative that not only is Trump supposedly a "threat to democracy," but that his more than 74 million supporters are, too. Others, however, claim that the real threat to democracy is actually these serial liars, violators of the Constitution and falsifiers of information. The right to challenge and criticize, which is an integral part of the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment, appears seriously threatened. The right to defend oneself against charges also appears threatened, and the legal profession dangerous to practice. Expressing doubts about the November 3 election is now a liability. Substantiated reports show that it was far from perfect. The American economist Peter Navarro, in his private capacity, drew up three meticulous analyses: "The Immaculate Deception," "The Art of the Steal" and "The Navarro Report". They have been zealously disparaged -- many think unjustly. Some authors describe what is happening as a slide towards authoritarianism. They note that many Americans and corporations, while behaving in an increasingly authoritarian manner, accuse their opponents of being authoritarian -- in other words, blaming their opponents for what they themselves are doing. For more than three years Trump was accused, without any evidence apart from a fake "dossier", of being a Russian agent. The accusations eventually proved baseless, but not before $32 million of taxpayers' money were spent in what the prosecutors knew from the start was a fraud. They also tried to frame, incriminate and send innocent people to prison. The exercise was, at bottom, nothing more than an attempted coup d'état. Throughout his entire term, Trump was faced with threats, abuse of power and unremitting attacks. Even though Trump is no longer president, the war against him continues. If H.R.1 becomes the law of the land, it will entrench those "very things that made the election of 2020 such a mess". These include, among other things, the flooding of states with millions of unsolicited mail-in ballots, failure to verify signatures, no chain of custody of ballots, same-day voter registration, and ballot-harvesting -- many of which are invitations to commit fraud. As a bipartisan report in 2005 from the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III, concluded: mail-in ballots "remain the largest source of potential voter fraud." If H.R.1 is passed in the Senate, countless ways of demolishing election integrity will be set in cement. The atmosphere in the United States remains poisonous. Critics claim that stoking in the public is being done on purpose -- to create a false narrative that not only is Trump supposedly a "threat to democracy," but that his more than 74 million supporters are, too. Pictured: Members of the National Guard at a checkpoint on Capitol Hill on March 5, 2021, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images) January 20, 2021. President Joe Biden is sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. The scene, however, is devoid of any human presence. The streets of Washington DC are empty. People had been urged to stay at home and Americans throughout the rest of the country asked not to come. The city is under the protection of 25,000 members of the National Guard, heavily armed. High barriers topped with razor wire surround the Capitol area. In the streets planned for the new president's "parade", barriers separate the sidewalks from the roadway. The only people visible are men in uniform carrying rifles. A day that is usually a day of celebration in the United States is, this year, strange and sad. Continue Reading Article