I am astonished to see the National Review, of all places, calling for the dismanteling of the FBI. Yes, I know of the abuses. But I much preferred the old conservativism that critically supported law enforcement to the nihilistic populism of today.
— Thomas J. Main (@ThomasJMain) September 28, 2022
Well …
If you put it that way, I am onboard.
“Since then, I’ve changed my mind. I still favor all of these reforms, which, if implemented, would undoubtedly improve upon the status quo. But, having reflected a little more on the broader question, I now think that the FBI ought to be destroyed from the ground up. End it. Disassemble it. Dissolve it. Repeal its charter, evacuate its building, spoliate its budget and supplies.
It is possible, in theory, to construct an earnest brief in favor of an FBI-style police outfit that deals with matters of exclusive federal concern. But, in practice, that case doesn’t amount to a defense of this FBI. Bit by bit, year by year, case by case, the FBI has turned itself into a sort of unmoored Super Police Force, which, despite being nominally accountable to the executive branch, is “independent” from political control. In essence, the FBI’s pernicious tendency toward empire-building is of a piece with that exhibited by the rest of the modern federal government — which, on paper, is tasked with executing a limited and discrete set of national functions, but which has come instead to act as if it represented a better, more moral, more legitimate version of its equivalents in the states. Can that be fixed? Has it ever been before?
The result of this trend has been disastrous. In the heart of its capital city, the United States now has a bureau that intervenes with impunity in our ideological and partisan disputes; that has developed a massive, statutorily unwarranted intelligence-collection wing; and that has never managed to escape the paranoia and corruption of its execrable, tyrannical founder. Americans who are tired of it all ought to insist that it be dismantled wholesale, and that any replacement be approved only after a long, meaningful, sanctimony-free debate about the role of the government — and its enforcers — in our lives.”
I’m ready to join forces with Charles C.W. Cooke of National Review to abolish the FBI. This is what mainstream conservatives believe now. The FBI is the American Stasi.
Note: This has always been true. Ask Randy Weaver.
It is just now over the last two years and especially since Merrick Garland’s raid on Dump in Mar-a-Lago that conservatives have come around to our position on abolishing the FBI.
Gotta say I’m skeptical that finally the GOP has seemingly adopted most of our positions. I still don’t expect them to deliver on it though.
I saw the article and laughed.
Just a few years ago, they were calling on the FBI to crush us after the El Paso shooting. I guess the average normie conservative doesn’t see it that way and had gone in the opposite direction
From politicians, words are every bit as good as deeds to most normie conservatives. I’ve observed this for decades.
“Note: This has always been true. Ask Randy Weaver.”
Ask Matt Hale and countless others.
>countless others
The saps in the MI governor ‘kidnapping’ plot come to mind (link) — or the Catholic anti-abortion activist who was just arrested in front of his wife and kids (link) — not to mention all the Jan 06 people the FBI hunted down.
Of course the FBI isn’t going to be dismantled (although Thomas Main may learn how to spell the word) — this kind of blowhard rhetoric (‘Drain the swamp!’) is a way for faux ‘conservative’ grifters to throw red meat to their undemanding (in the sense they don’t demand actual results) supporters in order to gin up outrage and maybe get a few donations — it’ll all quickly blow over and then it’s on to the next do-nothing scam.
Remember Lon Horiuchi, the FIB hero of Ruby Ridge who gunned down Vicki Weaver? Well, maybe she had it coming. After all, she was carrying an assault baby in her arms.
How come nobody on our side ever confronted this Lon Horluchi? I’m sure there a solid ethnic Japanese all over the world who feel the way we do about him.
How about the Conservative case for blowing up Nord Stream:
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/who-will-rid-me-of-this-meddlesome-pipeline/
“The FBI is the American Stasi.”
Combined with the incompetency of Idi Amin’s “State Research Bureau”.
The FBI has long claimed it doesn’t target constitutionally protected activity. Nothing could be further from the truth. That’s been the case since its inception. It’s only become more obvious recently. This can be an incredibly bitter redpill for the naive to swallow. Luckily, the bitterest ones have the greatest effect on normal, hardworking people.
The atheist Cooke still does not get it, it is not just the FBI ,the whole of American society is corrupt top down, bottom up and side to side. God is searching for one honest man in America and he still has not found him.
An aside, really you could say liberals and progressives have been dominant on both the left, and the right in the US since the New Deal in 1933 and in the commonwealth since ascendency of the Labour Party in 1922.
Their power was further cemented shortly after WW2.
What passes for conservatism in the Anglosphere?
Neoliberalism, which peaked under Reagan and Thatcher in the 80s, and Neoconservatism, which peaked under Bush and arguably Blair in the 00s.
Both movements were founded by Jews.
They came up with a form of conservatism that was acceptable to them, a Kosher, token conservatism.
It was a liberal, progressive and Zionist conservatism.
They kicked paleoconservatives and other sorts of conservatives out of the republican party and the Tories.
Nixon’s ‘war on drugs’, Reagan’s tax cuts and W’s ‘war on terror’ were permitted, but otherwise conservatism didn’t have a positive agenda.
At best it could occasionally say no to liberals and progressives, never yes to itself, it played defense, not offense.
So really, we’ve had a liberal progressive order since the mid 20th century.
In the mid 20th century, it was fiscally progressive and socially liberal, able to appeal to many working class Americans and Birts, by the early 21st century it was fiscally liberal and socially progressive, able to appeal to many upper middleclass, college educated moms and cat ladies.
With the rise of Trumpism for what it’s worth in the US and Brexit in the UK, actual conservatism been able to make a bit of a resurgence.
This is a western wide phenomenon, perhaps even world wide, Orban in Hungary, Meloni in Italy, Putin and Lukashenko in Russia and Belarus, Bolsonaro in Brazil and so on.
So what will the outcome of all this be?
WW3, civil war, secession?
Or just a peaceful decline of liberal progressivism?
Where it has little, if any power.
After all the USSR fell.
Or will both liberal progressivism, and Marxism make an unfortunate comeback?
This 6uild 6ack 6etter/Great Reset/NWO of theirs sounds like full blown Neomarxism, a corporate friendly Marxism.
If the far left wins, perhaps this time around we’ll wind up with Marxism in America and the west and mere liberal progressivism in Russia and the east.
I think of conservatism wants to win it has to appeal more to the working class.
On the one hand, paleoconservatism is too capitalist, on the other fascism and Nazism are too radical.
White and Christian nationalists and social conservatives need to do more for the working class and families, this is how they can cement their victory over the left.
Be socially conservative, and fiscally populist.
Gloominary, southern nationalist’s, are good too the working class, we are the only one’s, telling them the truth…….
Hunter,
As a follow up to this very good article, I’d like to write a blog about the FBI and the Italian Mafia – why J Edgar Hoover insisted that “There was no such thing as an Italian Mafia organized crime syndicate”.
Is that OK?
Abolish the FBI! I bet cover-up inc., er I mean the FBI had “informant” activists pumping the defund the police bullshit during the fentanyl Floyd riots. Who would have the means to covertly place pallets of bricks on street corners? OT, in the garbage TV show dedicated to the FBI, all the villains in the show are exclusively White men trying to do this or that to the of colors or bombing the Government plots. It’s pretty surreal that the show is just straight up propaganda promoting the American White extremists are the real big bads conspiracy theory.
I once read that J. Edgar Hoover would have dinner with celebrities such as Lucy and Desi Arnez and then put information obtained from those dinners into their FBI files. The Bureau has always been too powerful and unaccountable. Kudos to NR for recommending its abolition. I wonder what William F. Buckley Jr. would have to say about that?
None of these so called intelligence agencies are in the constitution, the founding fathers didn’t want a national police force, they didn’t want a large standing military either. I suppose the government needs some sort of spy network, keep naval or army intelligence, abolish the rest of them, including the FBI. I can’t recall anything positive the CIA or NSA has ever done, there lot of terrible things that are part of historical record, like assassinations, drug experimentations of civilians, germ warfare against innocent people.
The ‘intelligence’ networks are a not a separate branch of government, nobody voted for them, they are just glorified cops, if that good. And the police don’t get to operate in secret and say that the shit they do is national security.