More Petty Unlawful Firings

Posted on May 17, 2020

Friday we suffered more petty and unlawful firings by an insecure President who is afraid that his wrongdoing and his unfitness for office will continue to be exposed by honest, duty bound civil servants whose loyalty to the Constitution is suspected to be greater than their loyalty to the President.  This latest firing of Steve Linick, the State Department Inspector General, is against our laws (but, so were the previous retaliatory firings).  It is also against the spirit of the Constitution.

Trump’s actions are tyrannical and un-American.  There are no other words to describe such corrupt, despicable and unsavory behavior.  One more feather plucked towards dismantling the guardrails intended to protect our government institutions and maintain the integrity of their operations.

No conservative goal justifies Trump’s behavior nor does it justify ending credible oversight.  Oversight is the necessary ingredient in a free nation wanting to be confident that their leaders are not abusing their power and that those cogs in the wheels of government are abiding by the laws of that free country.  Any true, secure, confident American leader would welcome that oversight.  Only the criminally inclined would show any amount of disdain for that idea.

You only have thousands of years of history with plenty of examples to educate yourself regarding what happens when you allow these types of unacceptable events to happen going as far back as to the Ancient Roman Republic and even before.  Our country is at a critical junction point. We can choose the despotic path like so many banana republics and Putin’s Russia has chosen to take or we can choose the path of freedom, liberty and prosperity to be that country that stands up to tyrants and bullies around the world; to be that “Shining City on a Hill” where freedom rings loud and strong. The strength of that ring is backed-up by the credibility that only our checks and balance systems can provide.

It is the “Shining City” that President Reagan often mentioned but most notably referenced in his farewell address on January 12, 1989 when he said: “if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”  But, as we have seen lately, when that city becomes corrupt, there are no doors, just walls, large, tall ones, closed, isolated, caged, unthinking, science adverse where discoveries dwindle, the enlightenment, abandoned, the guardrails come off and as we have already seen with this pandemic, that choice can be absolutely deadly when that wrong path is taken.