IRS Scandal: A Warning

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_UigYevxE4[/youtube]

Hattip to CDR M at Ace of Spades.  Once you have governments using their resources against political adversaries the results can be dire indeed.  From the proprietor of the blog War News Update:

I know that this news story is not a defense/war/conflict post …. but many are asking for my opinion …. and so here it is.

While Benghazi is important because 4 Americans died …. and the American people have a right to know
what happen even though many in Washington and the White House are trying their best to close the book …. it is the IRS scandal that is catching my attention. Even the New York Times is now acknowledging that the White House was aware that the IRS was targeting conservatives back in June 2012 …. but choose
to do nothing about it. As to acting IRS commissioner Steven T. Miller’s testimony today …. it is obvious that he knew what was happening …. but did not care.

I am not an American …. just a Russian national who is now a Canadian citizen looking from the outside in …. and I am just shaking my head. There is something terribly wrong in the U.S. right now …. when the IRS has been politicized to go after a specific political group, it does not take a ‘political scientist and historian’ to know that you are entering a very dark place …. and being one who grew up in such a place (the former Soviet Union) …. trust me on this one …. it is a place that you do not want to find yourself living in.

Politcal scandals come and go, but I think one reason the IRS scandal will resonate is the reaction of some of the left to it.  They have no problem with the IRS discriminating against conservative groups.  Some comments from a Ross Douthat column on the scandal:

For the life of me, I do not understand why there was a need for an apology from the IRS. These unpatriotic entities that have all but declared war on the U.S. government, threatened to secede from the union and made not-so-veiled threats against the president of these United States, deserve hyper-scrutiny. The very least that the government should do is scrutinize the taxes of such organizations to make sure their funds aren’t being used to stockpile munitions to overthrown a duly-elected government.

•  

  I can find on the Internet, and so can you, comments from thousands of Americans who do not believe the administration of Barack Obama is a legitimate government.  True, they are deluded and hanging on to the last atoms of denial they can manufacture five years after the election of Barack Obama, but there they are.  Now, on behalf of the IRS:   if I read a comment from a web site administrator or “Tea Party”  cell  whose whole basis of existence was  their claim the  president is a fake, a Manchurian Candidate: he  was actually  born in Kenya and is  a Muslim and beholden to Allah and wanted to destroy America and  the tens of millions of dollars spent by the  ’08 McCain/Palin campaigns and the ’08 Hillary Clinton campaign and the ’12 Romney campaign and the Breitbarts and the Koch Brothers and the Trumps that had determined nothing had not found out the real  truth,  that you know as a patriotic American is still out there ; all  that and he is  sending BlackHawk helicopters to land on your roof and take your guns,  right now!   and I was the IRS,  I  would want to investigate whether or not this group/site/administrator/followers was willingly following the laws of the  United States. 

  • May 12, 2013 at 9:36 a.m.
  • Recommended60
  •  
•  

   

  Ironic, if the IRS was fully funded they could go after EVERY tax dodger with equal ferocity. Until then… It makes sense to target those whose often stated objectives are to not pay their fair share in taxes!  Tea Party slackers just don’t want to pay taxes – they brought this on themselves.

  • May 12, 2013 at 9:32 a.m.
  • Recommended92
  •  
•  

   

  Ahem. Comparing the “Brown Scares” to the actual horror of the Red Scares is ridiculous, especially when you don’t include the only real example of an overreaction to fascism, Japanese internment in WW2. Alleged conflation of the militia movement with terrorism and using it for political gain didn’t lead to much repression of the actual militia movement, which is alive and well. Repression of the Right during the Cold War was non-existent, as the successors to the KKK were not only left alone, but courted by Nixon and Reagan as part of the Southern Strategy. Repression of the Left, on the other hand, came in the form of COINTELPRO, extrajudicial assassinations like that of Fred Hampton Sr., and the steady marginalization of any radical movement trying to challenge the status quo. Give me a break, Mr. Douthat. The Right is the establishment, and has never been oppressed.

  • May 12, 2013 at 9:32 a.m.
  • Recommended68

 Now these are not the only comments and some are much more reasonable, but there is a strong, and I think growing, element on the left today in this country that views political oposition to their goals as illegitimate and wicked.  The attempt to paint all opposition to Obama as racist is a common meme on the left, as is the assumption that conservatives need to be suppressed and not debated.  Speech codes on campus, something that the Obama administration gave strong impetus to last week, is a sign of the closing of the leftist mind.  This is a development largely new in American history, although there are elements resembling the debate over slavery prior to the Civil War.  Let us pray that we are not heading to some violent upheaval in which all Americans, whatever their political beliefs, will lose.