Throughout history, authoritarian rulers have used the apparatus of the state to punish political opponents.

 

But the American experiment has not been entirely immune from this practice. For example, historians have lamented that in the post-Civil War era, the federal bureaucracy was used, beyond any norms of decency, to punish political enemies and reward allies. Yet such abuse in America was subject to ebb and flow, kept somewhat in check by resistance from the targeted party.

 

Much changed more recently. It has long been known that Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon used the IRS to harass political opponents. Yet Obama took the practice to unprecedented heights. Whereas Nixon's "enemies list" was comprised of a few dozen individuals, Obama deputized the IRS to attack some 200 to 400 conservative groups, whose total membership was some unknown thousands, and whose influence extended even further. Obama did so to improve his re-election chances in 2012.

 

When this abuse was exposed, Obama pretended to find it "outrageous," but when the imbroglio died down, he declared that there was not a "smidgen of corruption" in it.

 

What happened next was pivotal.

 

The Left's accomplices in the media and academia took as their marching orders: wipe the issue out of the political discourse. Emboldened, the Left saw how easily they could get away with even the most egregious forms of weaponizing government.

 

The Biden/Harris regime then further raised weaponization to levels never even approached in American history. Disclosures keep coming revealing just how wide and deep that weaponization occurred throughout the entire government. Many more revelations can be predicted.

 

Thank goodness the issue remains front and center. Even if some of the perpetrators are immunized by Biden pardons, there still needs to be a thorough investigation of this pattern of abuse. Only if the outrages are fully documented, piece by disgusting piece, can the American people be reassured that there is much less chance of this existential threat to our democracy recurring in the future.