Louis Brandeis, who served on the United States Supreme Court from 1916 to 1939, once warned, “Our government teaches the whole people by its example. If the government becomes the lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy.”
The temptation of each generation of those who value truth is to say that the leaders in power at that moment in time must be the most corrupt ever to rule. The blight of progressivism had its root in the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. Those who opposed FDR and his power grabs of the 1930s saw the roots of communism, one of the scourges of the world at that time, in much of what he did. Richard Nixon was considered by many at the time to be the most lawless president of our time. And Bill Clinton’s attempts at undermining the Constitution were only exceeded by his loutish behavior and perjury before a grand jury, which led to his impeachment.
But all these instances of duplicity pale in contrast to the serial mendacities of Barack Obama and his administration over the last four and a half years. From his breathtaking lies about immigration, gun control, the stimulus bill, government-sanctioned theft from the legitimate bondholders of General Motors to prop up the United Auto Workers, the corruption of Solyndra, murder along our southern border due to Operation Fast and Furious, the $20 billion shakedown of BP after the Gulf oil spill (where did all that money go?) and, of course, Obamacare, this president has taken deceit to a whole new level.
But if the press finally does its job — and I realize that’s a big if — Obama’s lies about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, could be the ones that finally bring him down.
For weeks after that attack, Obama, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, and a host of others, tried to convince the world that a cheaply made You Tube video trailer was the catalyst behind the destruction of the American Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, and the murder of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. We were supposed to believe that spontaneous protestors were armed with hand-held rocket propelled grenade launchers and automatic weapons — and that this spontaneous protest just happened to occur on the anniversary of September 11.
The Romney campaign apparently trusted the press to get the story out. Of course, under this president the American media have become the equivalent of Pravda, the old Soviet state-controlled news agency. Consequently, they dutifully circled the wagons and helped the president bury the story long enough to get re-elected.
Now, with testimony coming forth in the halls of Congress, the ugly truth is spilling out. Despite the panic at the White House to contain it and the ongoing determination of the mainstream media to ignore it, courageous whistleblowers are telling the tale as it actually occurred, and it does not correspond to the version the White House and the State Department have been peddling for the last eight months.
Why did the President of the United States, his Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense allow our ambassador and three brave Americans trying to defend him to be murdered? Why did they lie to us about the cause of the attacks? What was Ambassador Stevens doing in a dangerous place like Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of 9/11 with little or no security? Was this another administration sanctioned gun-running operation, like Fast and Furious? Were we, as has been alleged, supplying arms to Syrian “rebels” (really terrorists) through Turkey?
But the two most pertinent questions are these: Will the media tell us the truth about government law-breaking and cover-up? And do the American people care? Time will tell.
For more info contact Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.
American pravda, a nation of lawbreakers and Benghazigate