{"id":1661322,"date":"2022-09-28T03:17:59","date_gmt":"2022-09-28T07:17:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1661322"},"modified":"2022-09-28T03:20:31","modified_gmt":"2022-09-28T07:20:31","slug":"why-the-fbis-raid-on-a-christian-family-is-its-most-dangerous-abuse-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-the-fbis-raid-on-a-christian-family-is-its-most-dangerous-abuse-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"Why The FBI\u2019s Raid On A Christian Family Is Its Most Dangerous Abuse Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhy-the-fbis-raid-on-a-christian-family-is-its-most-dangerous-abuse-yet%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1661322&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><div><\/div>\n<p><em>Watch the below piece, plus an interview with The Federalist\u2019s John Daniel Davidson, here.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The left doesn\u2019t need orders from the top. Indeed, more often than not the left is governed from the bottom up.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t easy for conservatives to understand. Most of us, by disposition, respect hierarchy. A father at the head of the family, a boss at the head of a company, a president at the head of a country, a pope at the head of a church, and so on. So it\u2019s natural for us to imagine that everyone looks at the world this way.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s one reason why when we see some new left-wing front open up in the culture war, we try to find the hidden hand controlling it \u2014 the George Soros, or the Michael Bloomberg, or Joe Biden.<\/p>\n<p>But most of the time, the left doesn\u2019t think this way. More importantly, the left doesn\u2019t act this way.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This phenomenon of ground-up left-wing governance can be seen all around us.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s happening in corporate America, where far from leading the charge, left-wing CEOs increasingly find themselves held captive to radical employees.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s true in the federal government, too. President Barack Obama didn\u2019t need to call Lois Lerner to ask her to crack down on conservative organizations applying for nonprofit tax statuses.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s true for the left\u2019s countless local political \u201cmachines\u201d as well. They don\u2019t operate with the push of a button or the pull of a lever, but rather live with everybody simply doing their parts. In the words of one Philadelphia Democratic insider who <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2020\/11\/06\/american-hustle-party-insiders-tell-the-true-story-of-how-philadelphia-elections-work\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">spoke to The Federalist<\/a>, their machine is more like a \u201cliving organism\u201d that doesn\u2019t need instructions \u201cto know how to breathe.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s even true in the once-famously <a href=\"https:\/\/dailycaller.com\/2012\/02\/13\/inside-media-matters-david-brocks-enemies-list\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">top-down<\/a> nonprofit world, which has become so hobbled by ground-floor activism it <a href=\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/2022\/06\/13\/progressive-organizing-infighting-callout-culture\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">can barely function<\/a> anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Finally, it\u2019s true in the FBI.<\/p>\n<p><span><strong>Last March,<\/strong> <strong>the FBI raided<\/strong> the home of pro-life activists connected with efforts to expose infanticide at a nearby abortion facility. President Biden didn\u2019t have to order that raid.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Similarly, it\u2019s very unlikely he told the FBI to investigate parents concerned about rape, transgender propaganda, and critical race theory in Loudoun County schools.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, we can be virtually certain Biden had no involvement in last Friday\u2019s FBI raid on Mark Houck\u2019s home. Houck, you\u2019ve maybe heard by now, is a Catholic pro-life activist and father of seven in Philadelphia, who got into a minor shoving match outside an abortion mill a year ago after an activist intimidated his 12-year-old.<\/p>\n<p>Pro-abortion campaigners sought charges at the local level and failed. They tried to sue Houck in civil courts but failed there as well. So finally, last week, they got a few dozen armed federal agents to raid Houck\u2019s home, and then charged him with the federal crime of \u201cinterfering with a provider of reproductive health care.\u201d He faces up to 11 years in prison if convicted.<\/p>\n<p>Biden didn\u2019t have to order that raid nor those charges. They didn\u2019t trickle down from the top. They bubbled up from the bottom.<\/p>\n<p>That doesn\u2019t mean much to Houck, who was loaded into a squad car while his kids cried, his frightened wife rushed to try to get his rosaries, and armed federal agents milled about sheepishly on his front porch.<\/p>\n<p>But the bottom-up tyranny of the left will have real consequences for all of us. Possibly deadly ones.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>What we\u2019re seeing in the FBI is two old storm systems colliding with a brand new one.<\/p>\n<p>First, the old: The FBI has been political <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/08\/29\/the-short-life-and-amazingly-fast-death-of-the-fbis-mar-a-lago-play\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">for most of its history<\/a>. When you notice a lack of investigations and prosecutions of Antifa members, Jane\u2019s Revenge terrorists, or Catholic church arsonists, you\u2019re noticing the same trends Congressman Richard Nixon noticed all the way back in the \u201940s.<\/p>\n<p>Because of this, Nixon famously declined to share his evidence of Soviet spies in the Truman administration with the FBI. He knew that while Congress might expose and convict those spies, the feds would prefer to bury the embarrassment. Politics, you know.<\/p>\n<p>Another constant is what one former DOJ staffer describes as \u201cthe G.I. Joe effect.\u201d Federal field agents often lack common sense on optics and have a love for shock-and-awe force. They like looking like badass superheroes, even when the \u201cbad guys\u201d they\u2019re taking down are just middle-aged dads who protest outside abortion facilities.<\/p>\n<p>These two desires \u2014 looking macho and hiding embarrassments \u2014 are both regrettable but constant aspects of human nature. When you combine them with a groundswell of left-wing activism, you\u2019ve got something dangerous on your hands, a perfect storm of sorts.<\/p>\n<p>Because when people see family men \u2014 fathers of seven, Christians, and pillars of their local community \u2014 cuffed in dawn raids in front of their wives and children, they see red. Regular people \u2014 normal people \u2014 see red.<\/p>\n<p>When the FBI raided former President Donald Trump on a flimsy pretext last month, we knew it was bad. But most of us know that this latest show of brute force is even worse.<\/p>\n<p>The raid on Trump was wrong in an intellectual sense; we can use reason to see how harassing former presidents damages our republic. But rounding up ordinary men who are a threat to nobody? That\u2019s evil. We feel it in our gut. This could happen to us, and we know it.<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s bad for more than just short-term political reasons. This isn\u2019t some political intrigue or Machiavellian statecraft. This is tyranny \u2014 brute-force tyranny, pure and simple.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have the guns, and you don\u2019t. And even if you did have your guns you wouldn\u2019t dare.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is political brinksmanship, not with Soviet subs or Chinese destroyers or Mexican cartels, but with us: everyday Americans.<\/p>\n<p>To put it plainly, this is very, very dangerous stuff. It\u2019s a form of political aggression that invites retaliation and risks a cycle of escalation that only ends when this republic is destroyed completely.<\/p>\n<p>In one of his many prescient speeches, a 28-year-old Abraham Lincoln warned of what happens when bad men escape justice. When \u201cthe lawless in spirit\u201d go unpunished, he said, they are \u201cencouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread punishment, they thus become absolutely unrestrained.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand \u2014 and even more deadly than this \u2014 Lincoln predicted how good men respond to this.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGood men,\u201d he said, \u201cwho love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and \u2026 who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country, seeing their property destroyed, their families insulted, and their lives endangered \u2026 and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better, become tired of and disgusted with a government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is how things come apart. Not actions far removed, in distant Washington or London, Brussels or Mar-a-Lago \u2014 but those that take place in our bedrooms, in our living rooms, and on our front porches.<\/p>\n<p>These are dangerous times. We must be immensely careful and keep firm control of our passions.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<div class=\"article-author-description fst-italic\">\n  Christopher Bedford is a senior editor at The Federalist, vice chairman of Young Americans for Freedom, a board member at The Daily Caller News Foundation and National Journalism Center, and the author of &#8220;The Art of the Donald.&#8221; His work has been featured in The American Mind, National Review, the New York Post and the Daily Caller, where he led the Daily Caller News Foundation and spent eight years. A frequent guest on Fox News and Fox Business, he was raised in Massachusetts and lives across the river from D.C. Follow him on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/CBedfordDC\">Twitter<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Watch the below piece, plus an interview with The Federalist\u2019s John Daniel Davidson, here. The left doesn\u2019t need orders from the top. Indeed, more often than not the left is<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":574,"featured_media":1661324,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1661322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/574"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1661322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1661322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1661324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1661322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1661322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1661322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}