Guest Editorial

By Lawrence Sellin, PhD   |  DECEMBER 16, 2015

The political-media establishment is the enemy

The 2016 election is not a contest between the Democrat and Republican ideologies, nor is it a choice among various approaches to address the nation’s problems, but something far more fundamental.

It is a battle between the entrenched power of the bipartisan political-media establishment versus the rights and liberties of the American people.

It is a conflict between those who want to adhere to the Constitution and the rule of law and the party leaders and a biased media, who wish to continue the practices of political expediency and crony capitalism.

It is a decadent system the political-media elite created and continues to nurture, one that benefits a few at the expense of the many.

There are only two issues that matter for the 2016 election: the political-media establishment is hopelessly corrupt and, although we have elections, we no longer have representative government.

It is a system, not incapable of, but largely unwilling to solve pressing national issues like illegal immigration, a moribund economy or the threat from radical Islam.

It is because solutions benefitting the American people conflict with the financial or ideological interests of the oligarchy, the Democrat and Republican establishments, the media and their financiers, who every four years hire a President.

It is a system that, through benign, if not criminal neglect, made possible the two-term Presidency of Barack Hussein Obama, who, if he continues unopposed, will fundamentally transform the United States from a capitalist republic based on Judeo-Christian democratic principles into some kind of Islamo-Marxist totalitarian perversion, a permanently weakened and fragmented America.

It is now but a tiny step to Obama’s “America” from that which the oligarchy has already shaped, a composite government of J. L. Talmon’s “totalitarian democracy” and Sheldon S. Wolin’s “managed democracy.”

That is, a political system in which lawfully elected representatives rule a nation state whose citizens, although granted the right to vote, have little or no participation in the decision-making process of government; a country where citizens are politically uninterested and submissive - and where elites are eager to keep them that way.

Thomas Jefferson feared that it would only be a matter of time before the American system of government degenerated into a form of “elective despotism” (1785), now fostered by corrupt politicians, enabled by wealthy special interests and facilitated by a compliant press.

“They should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when a corruption in this, as in the country from which we derive our origin, will have seized the heads of government, and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people, and make them pay the price.”

Is it not true that members of Congress seek election, not to uphold the Constitution and serve the American people, but to obtain power, and to use that power to accrue professional and financial benefits for themselves and their major supporters?

Is it not true that all the traditional means for the American people to seek the redress of grievances have now been blocked by a self-absorbed permanent political-media elite unaccountable to the American people?

Is it not true that the current tenant in the White House leads a dishonest and lawless cabal of anti-American ideologues, who engage in activities and foster policies that risk the survival of the American republic, undermine the security of its citizens and abrogate their unalienable rights?

Is it not true that when the blatant and outrageous lies of the political-media establishment are no longer sufficient to soothe the electorate into complacency, such a government must begin to curtail liberty and oppress the people in order to remain in power?

Is it not true, as Thomas Jefferson predicted that corruption has seized the heads of our present-day government in a manner similar to that which sparked the American Revolution?
Ladies and gentlemen, we are now on our own.

Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is a retired colonel with 29 years of service in the US Army Reserve and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. Colonel Sellin is the author of “Restoring the Republic: Arguments for a Second American Revolution.” He receives email at [email protected]