What Is To Be Done? Part 2 - Lawfare

When an army suffers a crushing, but not total, defeat, a wise commander will attempt to regroup and take stock of what forces he has left.  If the army has been annihilated, of course, surrender is a mere formality and the war is over for good.

After what we believe to be the blatant theft of the 2020 presidential election, conservatives may feel like defeat is total, and there's nothing left but to meekly don the chains and march onward into the slavery of socialist tyranny.  Fine - we've had a week to nurse our wounds.  Now it's time to snap out of it and fight.

And fight we can - for our defeat is by no means total.  Joe Biden's "victory," if indeed such it even is, is marginal at best.  He had absolutely no coattails - Republicans, even conservatives, pushed back the forces of the Left in just about every other arena save the Oval Office.  We still have political forces that can be deployed to stop the enemy advance... if we have the guts to use them.

We don't even have to use much imagination, for the Left has been telling us what we have and showing us how we should use it for a long time now.  What was the biggest source of shrieking for lo these many months?  The hundreds of conservative judges that President Trump and Mitch McConnell have placed on the Federal bench.  Pretender-President Biden cannot remove them; without the Senate, he can't impeach them, or even pack the court.

As conservatives, we don't believe that judges should be legislators; making law from the bench is not their job.  The Left, of course, has no compunctions of doing this: there never was a Constitutional amendment to make abortion or homosexual unions a right, they were simply created out of thin air by activist judges.  We can't, and shouldn't, do that.

But it is the job of a judge to enforce the law - yes, even the Constitution - when he's presented with a case that calls for it.  Thanks to the Trump era, we have a vast array of judges who'd be inclined to do so if only we give them the opportunity.  Let's look at a few things that can be done, even in the current environment - not pipe dreams or wishful thinking, but actual practical steps we can take starting today.

Consent Decrees

Passing the most lunatic of laws is easy in California - Democrats control all statewide elective offices and command 2/3 majorities of the legislature.

The rest of the states aren't anything like as far gone - yet leftism continues to make strides, even when they cannot pass their agenda as actual laws.  How is this done?  Through artful usage of opportunistic legal rulings called "consent decrees."

Consider the possible outcomes of a civil lawsuit against the government.  The judge may decide you're full off it and dismiss your case.  Or, he may decide that the government has wronged you and you are entitled to damages.  But there's a third option: there can be a negotiated settlement, where the government will agree to do things differently in the future to address your concerns, and the judge will enter it as a legal ruling with the force of law.

If you are Governor and want something done but can't pass it in the legislature, get a friendly nonprofit to sue the state demanding it, in front of a friendly judge.  Settle the case, agreeing to do it.  Now you have a Court Order requiring it to be done, with the force of law!  This is how all manner of corrupt deals have been struck behind the back of the lawmaking process, most notoriously to cripple law enforcement, but also to get rid of anti-election-fraud measures and expand environmentalist rules past any original intent of the laws as passed.

It's time for us to fight fire with fire.

To begin with, there is a longstanding Constitutional principle of equal justice under law - that is, people who do the same thing are supposed to be treated the same no matter who they are.  So every false and wrongfully-counted ballot is a civil rights violation against the genuine citizen voters whose votes were diluted.

If we can't gather mountains of solid proof of illegal voting, we deserve to lose.  Nothing will be done in Democrat states with this evidence, of course; but Georgia has a Republican governor and no doubt plenty of conservative judges.  Why can't a conservative legal nonprofit sue the state of Georgia for violating the civil rights of Georgia's voters, carefully selecting the venue?

Then, when the case comes before the judge, the state can plead guilty, acknowledge the truth of the evidence presented, and plead for a consent degree to do what is right.  The plaintiff, judge, and defendant can agree on a court order to defend the civil rights of all Georgians by... well, let me count the ways:

• Requiring government ID and proof of citizenship to vote
• Require affidavits under penalty of perjury by all bureaucrats in charge of voting registrations, that the lists have been duly cross-checked against other official lists of people who've moved or died, and purged before every election.
• Requiring and enforcing the strictest standards for non-physical voting - e.g. full complete addresses, witness signatures, comparing voter signatures with records, etc.

It may be impossible to pass these into law, but no matter - all it takes is an agreeable nonprofit, a source of funds, a suitable venue with the right kind of judge, and a cooperative governor and attorney general.  Do it where we can, while we still can, and make it harder for Democrat cities in Republican states to steal elections in future without risking hard time.

But that's merely defensive, and one of the great lessons of the Trump era was how much the Right loves to "own" the Left, and how badly they deal with it.  "Equal protection" applies to all kinds of things...

Surely somewhere in Atlanta, there's a black transsexual lesbian immigrant who's been grievously beaten and hospitalized by their pimp, which could have been prevented if only they possessed the same rights to own a firearm that are enjoyed by Billy-Bob in Hazzard County?  Surely there's a path to a judge who'd see the argument as one of justice and equity for the winner of the intersectionalist trifecta, and strike down Atlanta's gun-control laws as unconstitutional, not on Second Amendment grounds, but Fourteenth?

Now, the Left might appeal... or, they might not.  Who will they be appealing to?  That's right - the Federal courts, stuffed full of Trump appointees, and the Supreme Court even more so.  Do they really want to find out what Justices Thomas, Barrett, et al have to say about this, and see it enforced nationally?  Wouldn't it be fun just to try?

Follow the Rules

Saul Alinsky is well known on both sides of the aisle for his Rules for Radicals, in which he explains how to take down an establishment.  Of course, Alinsky was a far-leftist - but his Luciferian views have now won, and the Left is the establishment.  We're the radicals, so his rules have relevance.

Lawfare is all about Alinsky's Rule 4: "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."  Not all the rules were in fact written by the enemy, but that doesn't mean they don't matter.

One of the most useful rules we've barely scratched the surface of making the enemy live up to, is the Freedom of Information Act.  This longstanding law requires most government agencies to disclose all kinds of internal documents and data about their decision-making, much of which is damning... if only somebody bothers to ask for it and, when ignored, files suit in court to force agencies to follow the law.  Judicial Watch is the gold standard of FOIA attacks, but it is inexcusable that they're just about the only one.

Every conservative organization, at any level or in and jurisdiction, that has any kind of pretenses to political relevance, has a duty to know and daily use the FOIA laws or their state equivalents.  Again, this leverages the Trump effectiveness in putting in conservative judges who'll follow the law and enforce it against corrupt leftist bureaucracies if somebody troubles to ask them to.

The Left may hate FOIA, but without the Senate they can't get rid of it.  Even if they could, they can't get rid of the state equivalents.  So use them!

As effective as lawfare is, though, it requires a certain level of organizational and institutional competence.  Conservatives have never done well in that area, and our institutions will be under assault as never before.  We'll look at that in the next article in this series, and consider ways to prepare defenses.