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American Captial Building.
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Moral Authority — the Secret Weapon to Restore America

Originally published at Townhall

As hard as it is to face, America has come to resemble a banana republic in so many ways. For starters, Americans’ unalienable rights as defined in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights are in shambles, being violated as never before. Corruption and political weaponization of the Biden Justice Department has impaired the Constitution’s Bill of Rights for about half the country, which includes those whose primary political orientation is patriotism. If this insanity prevails long enough,  America will cease to be America.

You know just how detached and corrupt the ruling class in Washington, D.C. is when in a recent June 5 interview former director of the FBI James Comey tells MSNBC host Jen Psaki that looking ahead to the November 2024 election, “It has to be Joe Biden…[because] it has to be someone committed to the rule of law, committed to the values of this country.”  Comey continued, “The President must be someone who abides by the law and our Constitution… and there is no one else but Joe Biden.”

Do Washington insiders, like Comey think for a moment that most Americans don’t see and abhor what is clearly a two-tiered justice system in America, and also the travesty of what’s taking place at our southern border? Polls show that Americans do not trust Joe Biden to put Americans’ interests first or believe that he is committed to the rule of law and the Constitution. Nor do polls show or suggest that Biden provides any semblance of being the best choice to lead the nation in these troubled times. 

Here are a few inconvenient facts: During his eight years serving as vice president in the Obama administration, Joe Biden’s family secretly received $31 million from various Chinese entities with connections to the CCP. On his Presidential inauguration day, January 20, 2021, Joe Biden lost no time in reneging on his oath of office to protect America and its people against enemies foreign and domestic. It started with a barrage of actions taken that very first day,  such as Executive Order 13767 that halted the construction of the border wall, and Executive Order 13992 that undid Trump’s expansion of immigration enforcement. 

The result? A record surge of six to seven million illegal entries into the United States during Biden’s first two and third years that comprise not only people seeking more opportunity, but also enemies of America that include terroristsChinese active measures operatives, and human, child, sex, and drug trafficking cartels—all of which inflict enormous harm on American citizens and families by overwhelming law enforcement, schools, and the healthcare system, but more gravely by threatening Americans’ safety. This has become clearly visible in unprecedented increases in crime rates in cities across America. So much for Joe Biden being a candidate of  law and order. 

For the first time in American history during peacetime, a U.S. President and his Department of Justice has incarcerated over 1,000 domestic political prisoners—from the January 6th capital protest to “stop the vote steal”—suspending their Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth amendment rights. So much for the Biden administration’s respect for Americans’ Constitutional rights. 

Other inconvenient facts: On the domestic front, the Biden Justice Department has politically weaponized law enforcement in wholly unprecedented ways. War has been declared on parents who disagree with what is happening in their local schools. The FBI raided the former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and methodically hunted down Trump confidantes and many members of his former administration team, arresting some and seizing their computers and cellphones.

One can’t help but remember Stalin’s secret police chief and deputy premier, Lavrenty Beria, who bragged that he could prove criminal conduct on anyone, even the innocent: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” 

Many prominent people investigating vote fraud and election irregularity have received similar and even worse treatment by federal law enforcement. It is also troubling for America when corruption, payoffs, and compromise within some states’ judicial institutions and political machines become so impenetrable as to make adjudication on the integrity of an election — the sole mechanism providing the nation’s legitimacy — impossible. 

What so many of the “ruling class” dismiss and deny is the role that moral authority plays in the U.S. Government’s spawning trust and good will from its citizens but also in facilitating success in all areas of U.S. foreign policy. 

The chief sources of moral authority for America are its Judeo-Christian heritage, the Constitution, and the people who give legitimacy to their government through their vote. And that empowers their government to deter enemies, motivate allies, and negotiate favorable treaties and trade deals. It’s not just that free and fair elections provide the people with the means of voting out corrupt government, it is also that free and fair elections give legitimacy to government and enhance its moral authority.

There is such contrast between how America is perceived in the world today under Biden and how America was  perceived during the Trump administration. And few doubt that America’s stature in the world has declined in direct proportion to the destruction of the nation’s moral authority that has taken place with the Biden administration, its agencies, and its deep state supporters.

Recovering prosperity and peace—the predominant condition characterizing most of our 243 years as a constitutional republic—starts with restoring our moral and spiritual authority, which will help reorient the country and correct so many of its problems, including the  restoration of election integrity. 

There is simply no substitute for victory in the fight to restore and protect the honesty of our electoral system. Election integrity is the indispensable firewall to keep America a free nation. 

Scott S. Powell

Senior Fellow, Center on Wealth and Poverty
Scott Powell has enjoyed a career split between theory and practice with over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and rainmaker in several industries. He joins the Discovery Institute after having been a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution for six years and serving as a managing partner at a consulting firm, RemingtonRand. His research and writing has resulted in over 250 published articles on economics, business and regulation. Scott Powell graduated from the University of Chicago with honors (B.A. and M.A.) and received his Ph.D. in political and economic theory from Boston University in 1987, writing his dissertation on the determinants of entrepreneurial activity and economic growth.