Eleven thousand John Brennans believe that the American intelligence apparatus should be allowed to spy on an opposing political campaign.  That's how this works, right?

Eleven thousand scientists say we must keep our cholesterol down.  Eleven thousand future scientists say higher cholesterol is linked to longer life.  As long as the number is big enough, then we can be told eggs are bad but good, carbohydrates great but terrible, the planet cooling but warming but really producing tornadoes in New York City.  So if 11,000 card-carrying members of the Deep State were to say intentional and willful contravention of executive authority is laudable and beneficial to a free country, we would be expected to nod in agreement and find nothing at all frightening in such a declaration.  This is how the federal government justified using the broad powers of its surveillance infrastructure to spy on Mr. Trump's campaign.  These people can obfuscate and lie for years to come, but at the end of the day, members of our law enforcement and Intelligence Community decided that their personal dislike for a candidate for the United States presidency was sufficient for them to justify using powers never given to them and outright hostile to the foundations of a free society.  

The salient fact that emerged from the Mueller Report is the one fact that the media hide from us daily: there was no collusion or coordination by the Trump campaign with a foreign country.  So how did the federal government determine to infiltrate and spy upon a political campaign of the party not in power?  Common sense tells us that any justification should be not just persuasive, but overwhelmingly so.  To take active measures against our very system of elected government is extraordinary and requires an extraordinary foundation.  And yet whatever probable cause or reasonable suspicion was used to justify spying on Mr. Trump's campaign, according to the Mueller Report, is not based in reality.  Our government and our press ignore this obvious cause for alarm, and to this day, many of the very people who conducted this operation against President Trump refuse to acknowledge and understand the harm they've inflicted on our country.   

Government actors who have substituted their collective will for that of the American voter have destroyed the illusion of self-government, maybe permanently.  In the State Department and the halls of Congress today, this casual recklessness with the unity of our nation continues.  What Brennan and Comey and the NeverTrump rump have effectively done is open the eyes of the average person to a government to which consent was never given.

For a hundred years, the federal government has, through various expansions of judicial fiat and administrative power, imposed its will against the desires of most Americans, but the illusion of self-government kept the nation intact.  With the illusion destroyed, inherent legitimacy goes with it, and we are left staring at a bunch of naked power-hungry Rasputins who have swindled us out of our God-given inheritance.  Defenestration is the order of the day, and there aren't enough windows to sate the fury to come.

The permanent U.S. government "in resistance," Democrats, and NeverTrumps have been engaged in coup-peachment since the morning after the election.  They have cried wolf so many times that their proclamations seem hysterical to all but themselves.  Eleven thousand John Brennans may believe that taking down an elected American president by any means necessary is quite justified.  Once esteemed "conservative thinkers" may feel no shame in publicly calling for the Deep State, and not the elected president, to lead our government.  But 63,000,000 voters chose the president, and most of us think the Deep State is an abomination and direct threat to the Constitution and legitimate rule of law.

Unelected bureaucrats keep setting fires but inexplicably presume they will never get burned.  Their cavalier disregard for the voter and for the institutions that bind us is the most shocking revelation of the last few years.  By their hand and their hubris, they threaten the American project and American republicanism.

Image: NTNU via Flickr.