It’s hard to know whom to trust. I remember when Donald Trump took office as president. He felt confident that a Republican Congress led by Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan would work with him on his program. That notion now seems as funny as bowler hats and corsets in jerky old silent films.

We now know that the establishment GOP worked fiercely to help Democrats cripple Trump’s populist policies. We saw these GOP swamp things nod drowsily at massive evidence of election fraud in the presidential race. They even accepted funny business in key Senate races that tipped the balance of power. A huge and powerful sector of the GOP and the conservative movement would rather see Democrats rule. Anything rather than cede lasting control of the Party to pro-life, populist, anti-mass migration conservatives.

That’s not just true of open Trump-haters like George W. Bush, Liz Cheney, or Kevin McCarthy. Or of their shadows in the chattering class, Jonah Goldberg, David French, Rod Dreher, and Michael Gerson. We’ve every reason to wonder about each Republican candidate, or conservative activist, who presents himself to us. Can we really trust him? Is he more attached to his social status, alumni network, big business funding, or other ties to the Oligarchy? Or to the principles he claims to share with us?

Here’s Your Litmus Test: January 6

I think I’ve found the acid test. It isn’t a social issue, a budget question, or even a claim about Donald Trump. No, it’s a question of honesty, independence, attachment to freedom, and finally the courage to face unwelcome facts. How he comes down on this issue tells us all we need to know about a person’s priorities, even his character. Want to know if candidate X or pundit Y is someone you can trust in a time of crisis? Or a fair-weather friend? Curious if this is person would be faithful in a foxhole, or might wave the white flag and betray you?

Here’s how to know the answer. What stance does he take on the events of January 6, 2021? Anybody who uses the word “insurrection,” or “treason” or other such hysterical swear-words deserves to be crossed off your list forever. Don’t trust that person with your houseplants, much less your country.

He has already proven himself the willing dupe and rattling echo chamber of the worst people in power, bad actors scheming right now to strip your basic freedoms. Is he lazy enough at this point, with all we know now, to go on parroting such rhetoric? Then he’s sleazy enough to sell you and your treasured causes out to our enemies. Forget him. Lose his phone number. Stop listening to his piffle. Inform him simply, “Sorry, but I don’t speak Vichy French,” and forget he ever existed.

Either a Turncoat or a Coward

In this article and the next two, I will explain why January 6 ought to be the litmus test you use to judge any claimant to right-wing bona fides. Anyone who at this late date still accepts and repeats the lame mantras of Establishment commentators has proven one of two things. Either he has

• Shut his mind and heart against his fellow conservatives. Or
• Shown himself incapable of the courage needed by serious people in dangerous times.

Such a person has switched sides during war time, or embraced a selfish pacifism. It doesn’t matter which, in the end. You just need to move along. Forgive this candidate, or magazine, or pundit, in the sense that you don’t carry hatred or bitterness. But you care too much about the larger things at stake, such as your ancestors’ heritage, and your descendants’ hope of a future.

Red Pill #1: Anarcho-Tyranny Is Real

Imagine that leading Democrats had gasped in genuine horror at the violence and destructiveness of the George Floyd riots. That they had rebuked a core element in their own electoral base — government-dependent residents of high-crime areas — for indulging in bitter, paranoid fantasies and thuggish, illegal demonstrations that culminated in looting.

Pretend that blue-city mayors and blue-state governors had insisted on orderly, genuinely peaceful protests, while protecting private property. In other words, pretend that the Democrats had acted in any way like Establishment Republicans on January 7 and after.

In that case, both parties and political factions in America would have been held to the same set of norms. Street violence, coercion, destruction of property and mass intimidation would ruled out of court in this country. It would be clear that mobilizing aggressive mobs was out of bounds, the ticket to political failure and vigorous prosecution in court. The U.S. would be operating properly, like a boxing match whose referee demanded that each fighter obey the Marquess of Queensbury rules.

Wait, Is This Really a WWE Match?

Instead, what we saw was much more like a fight where Contender A freely kicked and tripped his opponent, wielded chairs and jumped on him from the top rope, as if he were taking part in Worldwide Wrestling. Contender B dutifully kept to the traditional rules of boxing, until at the very end of the match’s very last round, he too decided to play by the rules of professional wrestling. At that point, the referee sanctioned him, deducted points, and threatened him with forfeiting the match — indeed, with getting forever expelled from the sport.

Would you believe in the good faith of fans of Contender B, or even of his coach, if they started booing their own man for finally playing by the rules as Contender A? Would you think the referee unbiased and trustworthy? Or would you decide that the fight was fixed, the system unfair, and Contender B’s so-called supporters were either traitors or cowards? What kind of partisan is willing to accept an unfair, biased playing field for his own team?

But that is precisely what most Republicans in Congress have accepted. The January 6 inquiry taking place right now has the atmosphere and structure of a Stalinist show trial, right down to the prosecutors picking the defense counsel. That’s exactly what it meant when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi broke House precedent, and refuse to let GOP leaders choose which of its members served on the committee.

Instead, she handpicked vocal opponents of Donald Trump and his movement, to serve as additional prosecutors. Meanwhile (as I’ll explore in Part 2) the defendants can’t even face their accusers. They’re languishing in a political gulag, GITMO on the Potomac, many of them in solitary confinement. Attorney General Merrick Garland has even interfered with Republican efforts to probe the events of January 6. As Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist reports:

The leading Republican tasked with his party’s investigation into the preparedness and response of the U.S. Capitol Police and other law enforcement agencies to the Capitol riot on January 6 is being blocked by President Joseph Biden’s FBI from gathering information, a new document reveals.

The FBI told Indiana Republican Rep. Jim Banks it would not provide Republicans the same information provided to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s hand-picked committee consisting only of Democrat-appointed members.

…

Democrats’ committee was ostensibly created “to investigate and report upon” the objective “facts and causes relating to the preparedness and response of the United States Capitol Police and other Federal, State, and local law enforcement” in the course of the Capitol riot as outlined by the committee’s establishing resolution. Yet Pelosi’s commission has instead targeted private citizens who exercised their constitutional right of free assembly by applying for and receiving a permit to hold a peaceful protest on the day of the riot. The constitutionality of the committee is in question, since Congress is not one of the branches of government tasked with investigating alleged crimes of private citizens.

How many hours of Congressional hearings have investigated the centrally coordinated George Floyd riots? Those killed a dozen Americans, caused a billion dollars in damage, and featured Antifa agitators traveling from city to city, staying in four-star hotels, and committing felonies in state after state without facing charges. Zero hours. We’re supposed to remember them, if at all, as “spontaneous,” “mostly peaceful” civil rights demonstrations. Instead, we should scapegoat the January 6 protestors, as if they were the only angry citizens to break any glass windows. 

If the Left Sets New Rules, Play By Them, Good and Hard

Refusing even to stand up and defend honorable citizens like Jake Gardner and Kyle Rittenhouse, or the protestors of January 6, sent the clearest possible signal to the left. That it could get away with mayhem, and the right would roll over and take it. Nobody concluded from the events of 2020 that the Right was more “principled” or high-minded — just weaker, less willing to risk mild discomfort in defense of anything whatsoever.

The fierce extremism that has taken hold in the White House and in Congress on the left since Biden’s inauguration is the inevitable result. We showed the left that brazen ferocity and blind refusal to reason were politically profitable stances, which we would meet with … craven surrender. That’s no way to save a country. It’s not the way people who actually care about a country — not just themselves — really behave.

For Part 2 click here. For Part 3 click here.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”