by Ben Shapiro
THE WILLING ACCOMPLICES
And yet the media seem not to care. That’s because we are watching the death of the modern media, slain by their own hand; as they watch their Juliet, President Obama, slay America’s democratic process on the altar of liberalism, they prepare their own suicide Romeo-esque capsule. At all costs, they have decided, they must defend the Obama administration, which pledges to dismantle inequality, “level the playing field,” and make the world an all-around fairer place. President Obama has the support of the media in ways his predecessors would have found astonishing. If President Reagan was the Teflon president, Obama is the BAM president—aluminum magnesium boride, one of the most slippery substances on the planet. How else could Obama maintain such high personal approval ratings at the same time he holds such low policy ratings?
In 2011, political science professor Tim Groseclose of the University of California, Los Angeles concluded that if the rest of the media was as biased as the New York Times in 2008, they were worth 8 percent to Obama.15 That’s an understatement. Not a single major scandal of the Obama administration has been broken by the mainstream media. Benghazi has been actively buried by virtually everyone but Jake Tapper of CNN and Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News—and Attkisson came under attack from her own network. The media was far more concerned with Mitt Romney’s comments about Benghazi than the Obama administration’s conduct before or after the September 11, 2012, attacks. That’s because the media believes in Obama’s vision of foreign policy, involving a diminished America on the world stage.
The Fast and Furious scandal only found the light of day thanks to the conservative blogosphere, including Katie Pavlich of Townhall and Matthew Boyle of Breitbart, and the tenacity of Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA). Members of the media were unwilling to undercut Obama’s credibility on two of his key political issues: open borders and gun control.
The media downplayed all questions about IRS behavior under Obama for years, instead declaring over and over that conservative nonprofits were gaming the system. Only when the IRS itself admitted discrimination did coverage come—and even then, the media attempted to downplay the revelations.
The NSA scandal broke only after American media rejected the stories—Edward Snowden went to the Washington Post first with slides about the PRISM program, and only after the Post rejected him did he give all his material to Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian.
Justice Department targeting of journalists, including members of the Associated Press, wasn’t broken by the Associated Press—the department broke that scandal itself in a letter to the AP. As to the Obama administration’s regular pattern of pro-administration leaks, the media largely grinned and took the scoops without questioning the inconsistency of an administration targeting some journalists but rewarding others.
Coverage of Obama administration bribery and corruption has been notoriously absent from mainstream media reports, at least until prompted by conservatives monitoring that corruption.
And as for Obama’s manipulation of the justice system, the media have been particularly eager to jump on Obama’s bandwagon—it was members of the media who pushed forward the Zimmerman trial, ignored the New Black Panthers, and treated Gerald Walpin as an old nut rather than as an effective inspector general. The media also allowed Obama to pass himself off as an Occupy Wall Street man of the people all the while paying off his Wall Street buddies.
Media malfeasance has reached new heights under this administration. No wonder the Obama syndicate has gotten away with its crimes.
CLOSING ARGUMENT
If we had an honest attorney general, President Obama and many of his subordinates would find themselves at the defendants’ table. Senator John McClellan (D-AR), the moving force behind the RICO bill, said while introducing it, “The problem, simply stated, is that organized crime is increasingly taking over organizations in our country, presenting an intolerable increase in deterioration of our Nation’s standards. Efforts to dislodge them so far have been of little avail. To aid in the pressing need to remove organized crime from legitimate organizations in our country, I have thus formulated this bill.” The goal was to blot out the “cancer” of organized crime “by direct attack, by forcible removal and prevention of return.” That is the case against the Obama administration in a nutshell: an administration that has put itself above and beyond the law, that has perverted the mechanisms of government to enrich itself and the mechanisms of justice to protect itself.
The Obama administration has motive: transformation of the American ideal.
It has means: the government.
And it has the opportunity, provided to it by an American people kept ignorant by media lapdogs about the nature of its lawless overlords.
We can continue to deny that any of this criminality exists. We can channel J. Edgar Hoover, telling ourselves that there is no mafia. We can blind ourselves to the loss of our government, to the destruction of our constitutional system. We can tell ourselves it’s all a myth, a dream, a nasty attempt to take down the nation’s first black president.
Or we can tell ourselves the truth. Consolidated government means consolidated power; consolidated power means consolidated corruption. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Notes on the State of Virginia, “Mankind soon learns to make interested uses of every right and power which they possess, or may assume . . . our assembly [should not] be deluded by the integrity of their own purposes, and conclude that these unlimited powers will never be abused, because themselves are not disposed to abuse them. They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the head of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.”
Jefferson concluded, “The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold of us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and claws after he shall have entered.”16
We didn’t stop the wolf. It runs our government.
So what do we do about it?
First, Americans should, if they can find enough evidence, pursue litigation against the federal government. Holder’s Justice Department will never sign off on a RICO prosecution of the Obama administration under any conceivable scenario, but that does not mean that the administration must go without repercussion. RICO provides for civil lawsuits, designed to turn American citizens into “private attorneys general,” according to the Supreme Court, “undertaking litigation in the public good.” Successful RICO plaintiffs win triple damages.17 Historically, the courts have found that RICO actions against the government should not be allowed for a wide variety of reasons—but action against specific government agents has been allowed. Charges of bribery have been particularly successfully against particular government officials. It has been successfully argued before that specific branches of government also constitute “enterprises” for purposes of RICO.18
Second, we must elect enough congresspeople who are willing to hold the Obama administration accountable for its sins. Impeachment of the president is not on the table. But forcing him to fire and prosecute the lower-level officials on whom the president shifts blame would be a good start. The first to go should be Attorney General Eric Holder, whose Justice Department has been a fetid swamp of graft, fraud, and venality.
Congress must also pursue legislation to fills the massive gap that exists in the law to combat public corruption. A criminal administration can do virtually anything, without any sort of real consequences. Impeachment is rarely used—in the entire history of the United States, there have been just nineteen House impeachments, and just eight of those ended with full removal after a Senate trial. No doubt the founders intended impeachment to be utilized far more often than it has been—as Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 65, “The subjects of its jurisdiction are
those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men, or, in other words, from the abuse or violation of some public trust.” But in practice, impeachment has been a failure. And we have seen that the executive branch cannot police itself. Every lame-duck president therefore has the ability to be as corrupt as he or she wants to be, given that he or she is not subject to reelection.
Congress should therefore expand the jurisdiction of RICO lawsuits to allow legal remedies against the executive branch. This would be hotly debated, and no doubt would be seen as compromising the power of the commander in chief. But the balance of power between the people and the executive branch has grown so skewed that there is little choice but to make the executive branch far more subject to direct action by the people. Why shouldn’t the family of Brian Terry be able to lodge a RICO suit against the Obama administration? Why shouldn’t the families of the slain from Benghazi, or the Americans spied on by the Bush and Obama administrations, or the organizations targeted by the IRS be given leeway to use the power of discovery—within rational national security limits, naturally—to bring public officials to some form of justice?
The alternative is an unanswerable government in which corrupt bargains between corrupt officials predominate, protected by the barrier of plausible deniability. The American people are left out in the cold.
Finally, Americans should recognize that much of the corruption of the Obama administration is endemic to the business of unchecked government. A government this large cannot be controlled. It is bound to run roughshod over the ordinary citizen. The Founders knew that; that’s why they counted on checks and balances to stop the growth of government. But over the centuries, our form of government changed; those checks and balances fell away. Now we face the specter of naked power, and we should not be surprised to find that it is arbitrary and cruel.
The current state of the country is the most damning indictment of the Obama administration. And that administration will be repeated ad infinitum unless the American people stand up and seize their liberty. The Founders put their belief in representative government in the notion that men were neither good nor evil; as Hamilton wrote, “This supposition of universal venality in human nature is little less an error in political reasoning, than the supposition of universal rectitude. . . . [T]here is a portion of virtue and honor among mankind, which may be a reasonable foundation of confidence; and experience justifies the theory.” But in a representative democracy, that portion of virtue and honor must begin with us. If we wish our representatives to be honest, we must be honest enough to dispense with the notion of a government that gives us everything without costing us our souls.
For at root, it is the soul of the nation that is at stake. “The government is us,” President Obama is fond of saying. He’s wrong. But if we allow our government to become ever bigger and ever more corrupt because we want it to be bigger and demand that it be more corrupt, Obama becomes right. And the victory of Obama’s ideal of government—unaccountable, unscrupulous, and unending—would mean that we all stand guilty for the destruction of the country itself.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am blessed in my life to be surrounded by wonderful people who provide me the strength, aid, and inspiration to fight every day.
On a professional level, my agent, Frank Breeden, is a calming voice and a professional bulldog; my editor, Mitchell Ivers, is a grinding stone who constantly sharpens and perfects. David Limbaugh has been a lifelong friend and an incredible source of advice.
David Horowitz and all the folks at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, especially Mike Finch and the members of the board, are not only wellsprings of information and support, they are life guides whose fighting spirit infuses the center with purpose and cause. Thanks also to the staff of troopers at TruthRevolt, who engage in the war for American ideals around the clock. Winning is all that matters, and they are dedicated to victory.
If David was one of my intellectual godfathers, Andrew Breitbart was the other. Larry Solov, Steve Bannon, and Alex Marlow of Breitbart News have gallantly carried on the task of pushing forward Andrew’s legacy.
I am blessed to work with Phil Boyce, Terry Fahy, Chuck Tyler, and all the executives at Salem Communications, as well as my extraordinarily talented cohosts, Brian Whitman and Elisha Krauss, every morning on KRLA 870 AM in Los Angeles.
Thanks to Jason Antebi for believing in me enough to put me on in a terrific market like Seattle. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to fight for conservatism 3–6 p.m. every day on KTTH 770 AM.
On a personal level, I could not be luckier than to have a best friend like Jeremy Boreing, who is not only a dramatically underappreciated asset to the conservative movement, but a brilliant thinker and filmmaker who, with any justice, won’t be underappreciated for long.
My in-laws, Shmuel and Sima Toledano, are pillars of strength for me and my wife and child. Their enthusiasm gives us an example to follow in celebrating God with joy.
My sisters are all stars in their respective fields, and I couldn’t be prouder to be their brother. More than that, their constant good humor and warrior spirit is a tribute to my parents and to the American and Jewish people.
My parents are, simply put, the greatest parents on the planet. Whether they’re cooking Shabbat meals for us when we’re too tired to move or babysitting so that Mor and I can go to a movie, whether they’re giving us advice or listening to us complain, I couldn’t be more blessed by God than to have them in my life each day.
Finally, my wife is a true aishet chayil, a woman of valor. She somehow achieves the impossible, balancing not only her own ambitions as a future doctor with being the best mother in the entire world, but somehow balancing both of those with being my partner in this exciting, irritating, and ultimately deeply rewarding battle. Without her, I could not push forward. With her, I cannot fail to do so.
And as for my baby, Leeya Eliana—God has blessed me and my wife more than we ever thought possible. She was born during President Obama’s State of the Union address, ignoring his prevarications and instead bringing light to the world—and getting me out of covering that monstrosity in the process. If her birth is any indicator, she’ll keep standing up for truth.
Thanks to God for my life, my wife, my child, and my mission.
BENJAMIN SHAPIRO, editor-in-chief of TruthRevolt.org and editor-at-large of Breitbart.com, entered UCLA at sixteen and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 2004 with a BA in Political Science. He graduated from Harvard Law School cum laude in 2007. His five previous books include the New York Times bestseller Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans. Shapiro is the host of The Ben Shapiro Show on KTTH 770 in Seattle and the cohost of The Morning Answer on KRLA 870 in Los Angeles. Follow him on Twitter @benshapiro, or visit benjaminshapiro.com.
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NOTES
Introduction
1. “Well, Time to Go Out in Front of a Bunch of People and Lie to Them,” TheOnion.com, June 25, 2013.
2. “Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney, 7/23/2013,” WhiteHouse.gov, July 23, 2013, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/07/23/press-briefing-press-secretary-jay-carney-7232013.
3. In re Yamashita, 327 U.S. 1 (1946).
4. Nathan Koppel, “They Call It RICO, and It Is Sweeping,” WSJ.com, January 20, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487048
81304576094110829882704.html.
5. Ibid.
6. Donald J. Rebovich, Kenneth R. Coyle, and John C. Schaaf, “Local Prosecution of Organized Crime: The Use of State RICO Statutes,” U.S. Department of Justice National Institute of Justice, October 1993.
7. U.S. Department of Justice, “Organized Crime and Racketeering,” U.S. Attorneys Manual, http://www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/110mcrm.htm.
8. Annulli v. Pannikkar, 200 F.3d 189, at 200 (3d Cir. 1999).
9. “Kwame Kilpatrick Ran Racket as Detroit Mayor with Extortion, Bribery, Kickbacks, Jury Decides,” Detroit Free Press, March 11, 2013, http://www.freep.com/article/20130311/NEWS0102/303110133/Ex-mayor-Kilpatrick-Ferguson-guilty-racketeering-conspiracy-extortion-?odyssey=mod%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3Edefcon%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3Etext%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3EFRONTPAGE.
10. Agency Holding Corp. v. Malley-Duff & Associates, 483 U.S. 143, 151 (1987).
11. Gregory P. Joseph, “RICO Enterprise after Boyle,” JosephNYC.com, 2009, http://www.josephnyc.com/articles/viewarticle.php?64.
12. “Policy Statement of the Department of Justice on Its Relationship and Coordination with the Statutory Inspectors General of the Various Departments and Agencies of the United States,” Department of Justice Criminal Resource Manual Section 934, www.justice.gov/usao/eousa/foia_reading_room/usam/title9/crm00934.htm.
13. Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist No. 70, Independent Journal, March 15, 1788.
14. Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration,” Political Science Quarterly, July 1887, http://www.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/woodrow-wilson-on-administration.
