Cal Thomas: The real history of presidential power

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Thursday, October 23rd. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: And I’m Lindsay Mast. We end today with commentary from Cal Thomas…who says last weekend’s protestors need a history lesson.

CAL THOMAS,: People who are protesting and complaining that President Trump is behaving like a dictator apparently skipped history class. Either that, or they took the subject from liberal professors who have re-written the subject to conform to their worldview.

Someone who is trying to reverse that trend is author, and syndicated radio and television host Mark Levin. Last weekend, he reminded his audience that past presidents—who are regarded as some of our best—did things far worse than what Trump is accused of doing.

Levin reminded listeners that John Adams, one of America’s Founding Fathers, imprisoned several citizens under the Sedition Act, including four journalists. The Insurrection Act was used by Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and many others to call up the military to achieve political and social objectives.

According to Levin, here are a few other historical events to remember:

Abraham Lincoln “shut down pro-peace newspapers, or papers thought to be sympathetic to the Confederacy during the Civil War. He suspended habeas corpus. Only Congress can do that.” Lincoln also “confiscated printing materials and sometimes imprisoned reporters, editors and publishers.”

Lincoln isn’t alone. Levin reminds us that Woodrow Wilson—a favorite of many liberals—was “a racist and a bigot. He believed in eugenics. He also passed the Espionage Act in 1917 and a Sedition Act in 1918, so opponents of Wilson were charged and imprisoned on a scale never seen in American history…” upwards of 2,000. More than half of those were imprisoned. Among them “the Socialist candidate for president of the United States.”

Levin isn’t finished. He explains Franklin Roosevelt’s “war against the press.” FDR established the Federal Communications Commission in 1934 and reduced the length of broadcast radio licenses from three years to six months to make sure they “abide(d) by the policies of the government.”

That’s not all. FDR “appointed a political confidant to run the IRS. He would order this director to conduct audits on political opponents and newspaper publishers.” He also “ordered the IRS to lay off a young congressman they were investigating.” That congressman was Lyndon Johnson. On top of that, “At FDR’s direction,” says Levin, “Senate Democrats subpoenaed tens of thousands of telegrams from Western Union because they… thought it was run by Republicans.”

Levin’s history lesson continues. John F. Kennedy “appointed a loyalist to be IRS Commissioner and he would routinely read tax filings of political opponents.” Not because they were truly under investigation, but in Levin’s words: just “for the fun of it.” Many of those documents were then leaked to Ben Bradley, who wrote for Newsweek magazine and later became editor at The Washington Post.

Back to Lyndon B. Johnson for a moment. Levin mentions how he “used the IRS, the FBI, the CIA…and went after his political opponents, businesses, publishers. He spied on the Goldwater campaign and had bugs by the FBI placed in the Goldwater headquarters.” Johnson also ordered the phones of Martin Luther King Jr. and other Black civil rights leaders to be bugged

Fast forward to Barack Obama…about whom so many say was free of scandal…Levin reminds us that Obama had his Justice Department subpoena and seize “20 Associated Press phone lines used by 100 reporters…and communications between reporters and the CIA.”

Levin chronicles so many more actions ordered by mostly Democrat presidents that taken together, or individually, pale in comparison to President Trump’s efforts to uphold the law. Levin says it’s not hard to really see who the real authoritarians are. In his words, “They’re the ones who reject the outcomes of elections…they’re the ones who seek to change the citizenry of this country because they don’t much like the way that we vote and that way they can pick up more congressional seats…”

They’re also the ones lobbying to get rid of the Electoral College. If that happens, only the 11 or 12 most populous states—mostly controlled by Democrats—will then control the country…yet they have the audacity to claim they’re the ones “protecting democracy.”

I wonder how many history teachers today, if they get around to the subject, are prepared to call any of these former presidents “dictators?” Not many.

I’m Cal Thomas.

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