We are living in unprecedented times. Already for the year of 2023, we have seen a House Speaker ousted, now we have witnessed the political persecution of Donald J. Trump. As of right now, Colorado’ Supreme Court had barred Mr. Trump from the state ballot. In plain speech, no Colorado citizen can vote for Trump.
I have to ask, how is any of this legal? I’m not concerned with Mr. Trumps politics. I’m not concerned about the Republican Party. This is a serious issue for all Americans, conservative and liberal alike. According to the Colorado Supreme Court, they have invoked section three of the fourteenth amendment to prove that Mr. Trump is disqualified from running for President. This is extremely troubling, because the fourteenth amendment was passed as part of the Reconstruction Acts. A group of post-Civil War laws designed to try to fix the damage done by the gruesome war. Specifically the fourteenth amendment applies to the Confederacy. It meant that Jefferson Davis or Robert E. Lee couldn’t run for political office.
If Colorado’s Supreme Court wanted to claim that Mr. Trump perhaps had committed some sort of tax fraud, or perhaps had some sort of suspicious international activity, then this would be a different discussion entirely. Those would absolutely be illegal activities that would disqualify a candidate. But to invoke something so completely off base is troubling to me. I believe strongly in American freedom, which means everyone deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the law. Including Mr. Trump.
When we read books like “The Gulag Archipelago” by Alexander Solitzken, we learn that freedom is fragile. Tyranny is always standing right on the outside of freedom. Always ready to squeeze our liberties away from us. We would do well to learn from the lessons of history, learn from the lessons of Stalin’s Russia, Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany. We somehow think that because this happened in a different generation, we are somehow immune. But this is not true. Tyranny does not respect time or humanity.
What does this have to do with Mr. Trump specifically? If someone like Mr. Trump can be legally implicated, in such an illegal fashion, then what do you think can happen to you? Devoid of his millions and army of lawyers? Look at it in this way, when any person is given unlimited power, they will always abuse it. Every. Single. Time. No exceptions. Look at Adolph Hitler. Joseph Stalin. Bernie Madoff. The Lehman Brothers. Sam Bankman Fried. Senator Palpatine in “Revenge of The Sith”. We can keep going. History is replete with people who treated their influence as license,
Mr. Trump is extremely controversial, even managing to divide conservatives. That makes him an easier target. It makes it easier to mobilize the media and the minds of the masses against him. When Colorado’s Supreme Court make such a blatantly illegal move, no one seems to care. to so many in the media, it doesn’t matter whether this was legal or not, Trump is ‘getting what he deserves’ so to speak. We cannot afford to be blind in this area.
When a police officer pulls over a criminal, why do they read out their rights? The whole, ‘you have the right to remain silent, right to a jury’ all that? I remember in middle school having to write a 250 word essay on whether such laws were to protect the innocent or the guilty? (I only vaguely remember the essay being comprised of directionless intellectual meandering. I had to come up with a way to turn “I don’t know” into 250 words) The point of the school project was to teach me that we have laws to protect the innocent, insuring even the guilty get a fair trial. Wouldn’t you agree that taking someone charged with a speeding violation and then accusing them of murder would be wrong?
Wha the Colorado Supreme Court has done is to show the law a complete and blatant disregard. It’s wrong, and American citizens should not stand for this. I reject the authority of any court to decide who I can and can’t vote for. This is integral to my rights as an American. The right to a free and fair election.
I wan to stress something, put aside your opinions about Donald Trump, whether positive or negative. I’m not asking you to approve of the way he did business, the way he treats others or of his administrations policies. Forget all of that. I don’ care what you think of Mr. Trump as a person, in this context, that’s irrelevant. That does not give the Colorado Supreme Court the right to simply make up charges out of thin air just because they don’t like his persona. It’s wrong.
I sincerely hope that the Supreme Court of the United States will overturn this nonsense. This is a gross travesty of justice, and I hope to see this resolved in the biggest court in the land. Never forget this lesson, it wasn’t that long ago we had Jim Crow laws. Black people couldn’t even sit on the same bench as a white person. It was morally wrong and frankly disgusting. But because no one spoke out, this travesty of justice continued for years. It wasn’t that long ago that Africa offered from horrific apartheid laws until men like Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu took a bold stance against it, risking their very lives. King George III tried to nullify the rights of the colonists until they decided that ‘enough is enough’ and boldly rebelled, creating the United States of America, the greatest nation on earth. What if people were silent in all fo these key times in history? What if no one said anything? After all silence is always easier, it’s more comfortable at any rate. Freedom isn’t comfortable, it’s dangerous. Speaking out is always risky, it’s never comfortable. But it’s the only way to keep tyranny at bay. The only way to keep our freedoms is to never let dictators, never let tyrants have an inch. That’s what freedom costs us at all times.
Today it seems that we have lost sight of this in America. Freedom is never free. Our rights are never guaranteed. No matter what times we live in, evil is like the dark lords, Morgoth and Sauron in Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”, always trying to destroy life and liberty. The moment we stay silent, the moment we stand by, then evil will darken over the entire world. Our rights, the liberties we all enjoyed that we take for granted so often, are vulnerable. I think we forget this sometimes, I really do. I don’t think we always value our liberties as much as we ought to. Maybe we have the idea that we are entitled. That just because we’re more affluent than other places, then surely all the terrible things that happen in African countries, or in Syria, the Sudan, we think the we are immune to their social woes. But that’s not how things work. I would argue the opposite actually, it is because of our high status, it is because of our affluence that makes us even more susceptible to a would be dictator.
