Many think of Christmas and New Year’s Day as sister holidays. Historically, New Year’s Day is believed to be the world’s oldest holiday, predating the birth of Christ, which is the essence of Christmas. New Year rites of many pre-Christian societies and nations were undertaken for the purpose of repentance, expulsion of evil, indemnifying the past and purification before the arrival of the new year. This was considered important and necessary in many ancient societies because of the belief that an acknowledgement of failure and a commitment to change was a precondition of crossing over to the New Year, which marked a new cycle of time.

So, individuals’ New Year’s resolutions today have precedent going back to ancient times. But what should be the New Year’s resolution for the United States?  

People who are honest and well-informed know that America cannot continue and survive on its present trajectory. Economically, our nation is already bankrupt; not only do current liabilities exceed assets, but debt is now growing on a long-term annual basis at 8% or more, while assets are projected to grow on average at not more than 3% annually. Politically, our federal government is operating at ever new levels of dysfunction and corruption with less and less accountability to the Constitution in either the spirit or the letter of the law.

A few important examples of federal government dysfunction and corruption include:  the widespread failure of elected officials to uphold their oath of office; the political weaponization of the Justice Department and the FBI; the unequal two-tiered practice of justice and law enforcement; the flood of illegal immigrants and criminal enterprises into the United States as a direct result of willful federal government policy; and the violation of the First Amendment by federal agencies such as the FBI, DoJ, DHS, the CDC, and DoD, who have been directing traditional and social media to suppress views that dissent from preferred Deep State narratives, which include suppressing information and truths that affect elections. 

Americans are fed up with business as usual in Washington, D.C. where the two parties often play act as in Kabuki theatre -- talking about the nation’s problems but taking little or no action to change things and implement solutions.

With a new Republican-dominated U.S. House of Representatives that controls government spending, it is time for action and results. To get desired results, it’s necessary to come to grips with the cause of our dysfunction and corruption through discovery that is a primary purpose of public hearings. The House of Representatives is well suited for this because of the breadth of its committee structure and because it holds the purse strings that can withhold funding for government agencies who fail to be transparent and cooperate. In the interest of expediency, the House can conduct hearings on different areas of failure and corruption simultaneously, so that findings, prosecutions, and policy solutions can be undertaken and delivered to the public well before the 2024 election.

A good place to start this process is the violation of American citizens’ First Amendment rights. The recent release of the “Twitter files” has shown that the CDC had a secret portal to censor and ban dissenting social media posts, a practice that facilitated the unnecessary shutdown of the economy and cost the lives of many who were deprived of learning about low-cost effective therapeutic treatments for COVID-19. We have also learned that surprisingly high numbers of ex-intelligence agents became employees of Twitter, Facebook, and Google. And this is more than the usual revolving door of ex-government employees finding work with government contractor firms. The FBI was working so closely with the social media company Twitter since January of 2020 that it was viewed as a “subsidiary,”flagging and blocking numerous accounts for purportedly “harmful misinformation” before Elon Musk’s takeover.

In September and October 2020, the FBI actively suppressed social media coverage, creating a blackout on Twitter and Facebook of the damning facts revealed on the hard drive of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which helped seal the election of Joe Biden as President. It has also been reported that both the FBI and the DoJ have employed informants and agents to put forward specific directives to Twitter and other social media platforms. Then there are the leaked documents from the DHS that reveal that the agency has a portal connection for its officials to deliver backchannel instructions on content manipulation to social media engineers -- presumably working for all the social media platforms. 

Equal in importance to protecting Americans’ First Amendment rights, is the need to hold hearings and take action on the political weaponization of the Justice Department and the FBI and the unequal two-tiered nature of justice and law enforcement, which has been self-evident for the last fifteen to twenty years.

The full scope and numbers of illegal immigrants and the accompanying criminal and terrorist elements gaining entry through our southern border need to be examined through House committee hearings, with recommendations for impeachment of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for dereliction of his oath of office and his duty to protect the nation’s southern border from mass invasion.

The other critical factor for the survival and renewal of the United States is the restoration of public trust in its national elections, which have been rendered irrelevant because of the massive fraud and irregularities in the 2020 and 2022 elections. Out of control mail-in voting, ballot harvesting and curing of ballots to the tune of more than 35% of some 112 million ballots cast in November 2022 makes auditing nearly impossible. And while the irregularities are there for all to see, the political weaponization of the DoJ, the FBI, and the CIA together with their portals and penetration of the media have succeeded in blasting those who object to these radical ballot changes, extended ballot counting after election day and rigged electronic tabulation or to anyone who questions election results. On cue the media calls these “election deniers,” “democracy destroyers,” or even “insurrectionists.”

We will close in returning to the paramount importance of the First Amendment. The freedom to speak, read, hear, and view diverse perspectives protects all the other amendments and the Constitution itself. Getting at the truth is as essential for effective government as it is in business, and it emerges from free discourse and debate -- often more from the people with practical experience on the front line than from experts from the ivory tower or entrenched careers or other insiders compromised by politics and financial payoffs.

The CDC has been wrong in almost all its recommendations on dealing with COVID-19, causing devastating economic destruction and unnecessary deaths. The DHS has effectively aided criminal enterprises and betrayed the American people by ineffective border enforcement and then lying about the results. The Biden DoJ and the FBI have violated American citizens’ constitutional rights in countless and diverse matters revolving around First Amendment rights, even resulting in the unprecedented imprisonment of American citizens as political prisoners. The DoD blew America’s stature as a reliable ally by abruptly abandoning Afghanistan -- leaving behind thousands of loyal Afghan allies, some $80 billion in advanced military equipment and abandoning the largest air base in central Asia to the Chinese. And if this wasn’t enough, the DoD leadership under Secretary Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley during the last two years has pursued policies that have systematically weakened the American war-fighting capability in the face of rising overseas threats.

The mandate for the 2023 new year and 118^th U.S. Congress which will open the first week of January is clear: to indemnify the failures of the first two years of the Biden administration and to investigate, recommend penalties and prosecutions, and proceed with impeachments.

Scott Powell is senior fellow at Discovery Institute. His recent book, Rediscovering America, was #1 new release in history for eight straight weeks at Amazon (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1637581599). Reach him at scottp@discovery.org

Image: Public Domain