Oh no, we are not going to forgive and forget. There is a time for forgiving, but it’s not now. If we’re going to forgive, we need to get something out of it and see some contrition. You don’t just give it away because you’re nice. But there are a lot of nice Republicans out there who think that we should just let bygones be bygones. They want us not to deport, prosecute, or otherwise sanction the illegal aliens who haven’t been yet caught committing any crimes after they committed the crime of being here illegally, those who imprisoned us for being their political opponents, and those who abused us with censorship and COVID decrees. We’re supposed to give them all a pass for some reason.
How about a hard pass instead?
No, they need to pay. I am not sure when the conservative principle of righteous retribution – punishment – for wrongdoing suddenly became unfashionable. I certainly wasn’t consulted. I believe wrongdoers should be punished, and that includes criminals who happen to be part of the regime media, the bureaucracy, and the Democrat Party. They abuse us, and they need to answer for it. You can’t be the party of law and order if you shrug when your enemies break the law and engage in disorder. But the media and the Democrats are demanding that we forgo holding them to account. We must tell them, in no uncertain terms, to go pound sand. They’re going to pay. They have to, or it will happen again.
I don’t know why I have to repeat it to fellow Republicans, but punishment serves important purposes. For one thing, it deters future misbehavior. You're less likely to do it if you know you’ll be punished for it. However, if you reward wrongdoing by allowing the wrongdoer to benefit from it, whether it’s some Third World peasant who snuck into the United States being allowed to stay or a fascist prosecutor who persecuted innocent political prisoners keeping his job, you’re going to get more of it. If you want to relive the atrocities of the last few years, make sure nobody ever gets held accountable for them.
Punishment is an essential component of justice. We need to see justice happen after wrongdoing has happened. The people demand it. You cannot have a free society that doesn’t provide justice, and you cannot be a leader of free people if you do not dispense justice. Your supporters will desert you, and rightly so. They will find someone else to do justice, and he might not be nice. As I’ve said many times, Trump is not our last chance. Trump is our enemies’ last chance.
Justice is not revenge. It is not vengeance. It is righteous retribution, and that is key to a functioning society. Yes, there are times when you forgive your opponents, give them amnesty, or let them off. But those situations are unusual. Those wishing to do so must establish that it is to our benefit to do it. You just don’t give forgiveness away. When you propose to allow illegal aliens to stay here, whether labeled “Dreamers” or whatever, the first question has to be, “What’s in it for us?” How does it help America? I don’t care if it helps the wrongdoers. That’s not a consideration. Nor is it being a nice thing to do a good enough reason. They weren’t nice when they broke our laws and disrespected us. They haven’t earned it. Niceness is too often just the vice of weakness dressed up as a virtue.
A minimum requirement for earning forgiveness is a confession of wrongdoing. The Democrats and their allies are now terrified that they’re going to be held to account for their hideous wrongdoing, but are they admitting that they were wrong? Have you seen any of them concede that maybe it was a bad idea to use the government to censor and oppress their political opponents? Are any of them saying, “You know, it was wrong of us to manipulate the justice system to create two tracks, one for leftists and another for Trump-affiliated defendants, with the Trump-affiliated defendants being denied bail, tortured in jail, and sentenced to lengthy terms based on shaky legal theories, while leftist were not even charged?” Where are the Covid people admitting that they were totally wrong? They aren’t doing that. That’s because they don’t think they did anything wrong.
And that means they’ll do it again, given the chance. So, we must demonstrate that it’s wrong, and the way to do that is through the pain of punishment. Again, when did Republicans stop thinking that criminals should suffer the consequences of their crimes? And that goes for political opponents. No one is saying frame them – it’s holding them to account for framing us among other crimes. They are afraid because they know they broke the law. We would be prosecuted if we broke the law. We were prosecuted even when we didn’t break the law. Why do they get off scot-free?
Is prosecuting political opponents optimal? No, but it’s the New Rule. The norm was to lean over backward to avoid using government power, including the justice system, against political enemies. Well, that norm has been tossed out the Overton Window and it’s fallen like Hans Gruber from Nakatomi Plaza.
If you want to reestablish a norm, you do that by imposing consequences for violating it. No accountability, no norm. The wrongdoers have not earned their forgiveness, and if we give it to them for free, they’re just going to do the same thing again, given the chance. So don’t.
Make them pay.
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