The federal government does nothing these days, said Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech while hosting Fox News “Primetime” on Thursday night.
“Usually when people complain that the government does nothing, they just mean it didn’t do what they want. I mean it literally. I mean the federal government increasingly can do nothing,” he said. “Step back a bit from whatever allegiance, bias, or prejudice you have for a moment and see the spectacle of the federal government of the United States incapable of everything but nothing.”
As Domenech noted, this moment represents the first time in our history where the American people have seen the federal government in the District of Columbia capable of absolutely nothing it’s responsible for.
“The list of things the federal government suddenly cannot do is nearly a list of things absolutely everyone, left and right, Democrat and Republican, expects a government to be able to do,” Domenech said. “The federal government cannot win a war. The federal government cannot secure its own seat of governance. The federal government cannot ensure domestic tranquilities. The federal government cannot guarantee law. … The federal government cannot reflect and advance the values of its own people. The federal government cannot assert its own constitutional authority versus an upstart-larping, letterhead-bearing, western states pact.”
The federal government also can’t secure its own elections, establish justice, provide for the common prosperity or defense, secure the blessings of liberty, secure its own borders, prioritize its citizens, or handle a health crisis with any level of competence, Domenech said.
“What can the federal government do? Well, try not paying your taxes, or protesting an out-of-control school board, or sending a joke tweet, and you’ll find out. They will try, they will put every effort into trying, to crush you like a bug,” he added.
While many people like to believe the U.S.S.R. collapsed because of people’s desire for freedom, Domenech said it was actually the incompetence of government that led to its ultimate demise.
“Come the early 1990s, the average Soviet citizen lived in a country defeated in Afghanistan, shot through with endemic violence, stricken with radically empty grocery shelves, afflicted by an increasingly worthless currency, and ruled by an aging group of idiots whose governance veered between insane radicalism and lethal incompetence. It was a country like, well, like the one you and I live in today,” Domenech said.
While noting the challenges America faces, Domenech said the power to fix our current predicament rests within the states.
“If the swamp ticks grown fat and happy off the federal government won’t do their jobs, states must stand up and do it themselves,” Domenech said. “Treat the federal government like the angry, old relative sending all-caps emails. You want to impose unlawful mandates by email? You want to decide school policies where you have no authority? You want to control our travel and bully our businesses and pretend the 10th Amendment doesn’t exist? I won’t say the first part of the sentence I’m thinking because this is a family program, but it ends, ‘Sue me.’”
“It doesn’t have to be that way. But that’s the way it is. This incompetent, decrepit, federal behemoth wants to impose total control over how you live, indoctrinate your children, snoop on your transactions, monitor your opinions for wrongthink, and descend with their full might to ruin you as they see fit. And they can’t even keep track of border-runners or refugees or tell our friends from our foes,” he added.
"This incompetent, decrepit, federal behemoth wants to impose total control over how you live, indoctrinate your children, snoop on your transactions, monitor your opinions for wrongthink, and…ruin you as they see fit…And they can't tell our friends from our foes." @bdomenech pic.twitter.com/BLxbGcAMzG
— The Federalist (@FDRLST) October 7, 2021
Watch Domenech’s full monologue here: