Where's the Great Conciliator?

Joe Biden's presidency was promised to us as a return to normalcy. The naifs among us translated "normal" to comity, civility, bipartisanship, "no mean tweets," and a more genial tone in politics, presumably because the Untethered Orange Id would be gone and with it the "TDS" that he induced.

Silly us.

The “normal” they meant included even higher levels of leftist rage. Dissenters, including those in their own party, being called filthy names and aggressed on the street. Institutions continuing to be degraded by rank partisans who don't care if they burn the building down as long as they get their way. The FBI knowingly using garbage "evidence" to act against undesirables. The CDC knowingly lying to us to induce behaviors they desire.

And, now, in the face of a monumental breach of trust in one of the last "clean" institutions, yet more rank partisanship.

The Supreme Court opinion leak's enormity cannot be overstated. It's a morally repugnant effort to coerce the Justices toward a desired outcome, and absent that end, to undermine the institution itself.

And it may very well work. We have borne witness to the Chief Justice succumbing to public pressure in his ObamaCare ruling, and the final opinion in Dobbs may indeed be influenced by the reaction to the leak.

Worse, we may never know how much.

What we do know is that the Administration has not condemned the leak, choosing instead to use it as an excuse to talk up its pro-abortion bona fides and fear-monger over other potential effects should the ruling emerge largely as leaked. In other words, it’s tacitly trying to influence the final version and encouraging the Left to keep the pressure up.

Nor has the Administration condemned the doxxing of several of the Justices: the publishing of their home addresses (even Google had the decency to remove a map showing those locations). And, when pressed, Biden's mouthpiece mumbled platitudes about wanting people to protest peacefully while declaring the Administration had no position on the matter. Tacit endorsement, again.

When Trump failed to condemn the January 6th rioters, the Left was (correctly) outraged. Where’s the condemnation of this atrocity?

This page ardently defends free speech rights, but it also fully recognizes the long-standing exceptions, which include harassment, intimidation, and incitement. Free speech is about the open and un-cowed exchange of opinions, information, and viewpoints in the marketplace of ideas. It cannot be deemed to exist when the government looks the other way as some of its own are threatened over their views.

Moreso, this is about the administration's promised role as uniter and conciliator. Biden should absolutely, 100%, be condemning any notion of harassing Justices, at their homes or otherwise, in order to alter the Court's decision. Anything less is an invitation to violence. And, if he and the Democrats are so bloody put out by the decision, they have the option of writing legislation to codify what Roe created out of whole cloth.

Alas, sputtering indignation, overwrought outrage, and all-in tribalism are Woke 101, and these behaviors have infested the halls of power to where Biden can't even bring himself to denounce that which must be denounced if the public's trust in the institutions of government is to be mended.

The great big joke, in retrospect, is that the people who actually created the atmosphere that elevated such as Trump to the fore are the people who we were told would calm things down and restore peace and harmony. The reality is that their version of harmony only exists with them in complete control and the rest of us bending the knee, shutting up, and acceding to their illiberal demands.

Something something something about fish rotting from the head.

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Yours in liberty,

Peter.