Defining 'insurrection' down

[Borg warner]

Defining 'insurrection' down

Washington Examiner Eitorial staff
 | December 29, 2021 12:01 AM

An Oregon father of four cheerfully told President Joe Biden, “Merry Christmas, and let’s go Brandon!”

This may not be our country’s proudest moment, but it is not exactly a threat to the republic either. Still, it has some in the liberal media freaking out beyond anything rational.

When Jared Schmeck called into the NORAD Santa Tracker on Christmas Eve, as he does every year with his children, he was not expecting to be connected directly to the president nor did he know his call was being livestreamed by the White House. At the end of the brief conversation, however, after, Biden told him his children had to be in bed by 9 or Santa wouldn’t come, Schmeck said, “Merry Christmas, and let’s go Brandon!" The latter half of that sentence, of course, is a popular and amusing catchphrase disparaging Biden.

Was the statement juvenile? Yes. Uncivil? Sure. But was it an act of violence? Well, The Atlantic’s Ron Brownstein seems to think so. Asked about the call on CNN, Brownstein said, “I don’t think it is about incivility. I think it is fundamentally about insurrection.”

So it is now treason to insult a president. Funny — where was this idea in 2017?

“Insurrection” has become the Left’s popular catchphrase for the Capitol riot of Jan. 6. For the Left, the Capitol riot is not an isolated incident but just one manifestation of a much larger conspiracy to overthrow our constitutional republic — by armed violence if necessary.

The threat of this insurrection is so great that it keeps Vice President Kamala Harris up at night. Asked by CBS’s Margaret Brennan, “What do you see is the biggest national security challenge confronting the U.S.? What is the thing that worries you and keeps you up at night?” Harris responded, “Frankly, one of them is our democracy. … We are embarking on a new era where the threats to our nation take many forms, including the threat of autocracies taking over and having outsize influence around the world. And so I go back to our ... point about the need to fight for the integrity of our democracy.”

By “fight for the integrity of democracy,” Harris means the slew of voting reform laws passed in mostly Republican states that basically return state voting systems to how they worked before COVID. Georgia, most famously, extended early voting hours, established the use of drop boxes by statute, added a voter identification requirement for mail-in ballots, and decreased the number of days voters have to request a mail-in ballot.

The vast majority of voters view each of these, especially voter ID, as common sense. For Harris, however, this law “destroys one of the most important pillars of a democracy, which is free and fair elections.” That is why she is pushing for a new federalization of election law. “This is literally about our standing in the world. It's about the integrity of our democracy,” she told Brennan. Harris has become hysterical. Georgia’s election law in no way threatens “the integrity of democracy,” and the only people kept up at night worrying about it are lunatics. Similarly, an Oregon father speaking irreverently to Biden is not an insurrection. It is free speech and, at worst, a joke, albeit a tasteless one. (but one that would have been celebrated with great acclaim if the same sort of joke were on Trump rather than Biden)

With inflation soaring, the border in chaos, and Biden’s legislative agenda dead, the Democrats are getting desperate. Their need to invent fake threats to talk about is understandable, but they shouldn't expect any actual voters to be persuaded.