The Biden administration’s abuse of power to target pro-life Americans is on full display once again.
In 2022 alone, the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) charged 26 pro-life individuals with FACE Act (Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act) violations. The FACE Act targets pro-life protestors by prohibiting “threats of force, obstruction and property damage” to stop individuals from entering abortion clinics.
One of the men charged was arrested by FBI agents at gunpoint, while his family was watching. The overall disparity in prosecution between peaceful pro-life protestors and violent pro-abortion protestors is shocking.
What is the American public supposed to make of such an aggressive legal pursuit when violent attacks are committed against pregnancy resource centers and Catholic churches, and the perpetrators of those crimes are too often left untouched?
This is just one example of a growing and dangerous phenomenon. The impartial rule of law is the cornerstone of a free people, but the institutions that carry out justice are being twisted to fulfill explicitly political ends. The DOJ is being wielded against pro-lifers. The FBI is targeting Trump voters all while former President Donald Trump is having a myriad of dubious charges thrown at him in state and federal courts.
It’s no wonder Americans are losing faith in American institutions. Biden is using the federal government’s law enforcement and regulatory powers against those who dare to oppose his political program. The institutions designed to ensure equal justice and that political conflicts serve the common good — and not end in civil war or outright tyranny — are being perverted and used to suppress opposition rather than to harness it.
This destructive and self-serving sort of behavior was, of course, anticipated by the Founders.
“Among the numerous advantages promised by a wellconstructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction,” James Madison begins in Federalist 10. “The friend of popular governments never finds himself so much alarmed for their character and fate, as when he contemplates their propensity to this dangerous vice.”
Our nation was framed with the intention of preventing the tyranny of one political alliance over others. It was framed to pit factions against each other, which — when freely and civilly held in conflict — would eventually serve to advance the common good of the nation and protect the rights of its citizens.
This is how “faction” ought to be understood: Two or more politically legitimate groups opposed perhaps in passion or interest but united by the common rule of law and the common good of the nation.
The Madisonian revolution in political theory was that multiple factions and their ensuing conflict within a strong union is the fruit of liberty and an essential part of the American republic. For that reason, the “cure” for such faction is “worse than the disease.”
“There are two methods of curing the mischiefs of faction: the one, by removing its causes; the other, by controlling its effects,” he states. “There are again two methods of removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence; the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.”
The Biden administration’s behavior is not the behavior of one faction pitted against another, as the Founders envisioned. It’s an attempt to criminalize political opposition, eliminate factions that stand in the way of progressive interests, and force citizens to publicly affirm the same political dogma.
It’s an attack not only on our fundamental rights as American citizens, but on the structure of our nation itself.
“Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires,” Madison writes. “But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.”
Using the FBI, the DOJ and similar government bodies to persecute political dissenters doesn’t just deprive Americans of important rights. It deprives us of the institutions capable of preserving the rule of law and ordering political conflict toward the common good.
Weaponizing these institutions is an attack on the vision of American liberty. We cannot allow dissent to become a criminal act.
Timothy Head is the executive director of the Faith & Freedom Coalition.