It is time to call these two partisan operatives in the guise of professors what they are: hypocrites, hacks, abusers of authority and totalitarian enablers. Naturally, they are Harvard government professors, my college and my major. I already have my Harvard diploma turned face to the wall and on the floor; there’s not much else I can do is burn it. But I consider these two unethical academics—they shouldn’t be called “scholars”—and insult to me, and any readers who are capable of non-Trump-Deranged thought. The New York Times is complicit by repeatedly giving them a platform to sell books and mislead the public.

But that’s the Times: an institutional ethics villain assisting two individual ethics villains. Nice.

I’ve been flagging the indefensible dishonesty and scholarship-as-propaganda of these two since 2018, when they were lionized by the Axis of Unethical Conduct (“the resistance,” Democrats and the mainstream media) for their Big Lie launching book, “How Democracies Die.” They’ve published more similar screeds since. I wrote in part (If you like, skip to the end of the long quote, but this is necessary perspective for the rest of the post):

The authors of the book, Professors Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, were the most credentialed of the “resistance” attack dogs sicced on Donald Trump to carry a core message of the movement: unlike any other President, this one was willing to discard tradition, established practice, and “democratic norms.” The New York Times wrote about it; so did the Atlantic and others. The theme began emerging when the President fired James Comey. Yes, yes, the critics said, a President can fire an FBI chief, but Presidents don’t because of the importance of keeping law enforcement apolitical. Well OK, Bill Clinton fired one, but that was special. All right all right, every President from about 1945 to 1972 SHOULD have fired J. Edgar Hoover since he abused his power outrageously–that’s five Presidents—but Trump doing it proves he’s a dangerous authoritarian! This talking point comes from the quieter Siamese Twin of Fake News, Fake History. Every President defies previous norms, or makes up new ones, and the stronger the Presidents involved are, the more norms they shatter. Andrew Jackson threatened to lead an army into a state and hang a Senator, John C. Calhoun. No President had ever done THAT before. He openly defied the Supreme Court. he set out to kill a powerful government institution, the Bank of the United States, and did. This is only a sample of Jackson’s norm-denying conduct, but he was a transformational President, and he didn’t leave the democracy in tatters.

John Tyler defied the consensus regarding what the Constitution meant about Presidential succession when a President died. Everyone told him that as Vice President, he was just a place-holder until a special election could be held. Tyler said, in essence, “I’m President now, so bite me. The next election will be in four years.” Abe Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus and locked up a newspaper editor for publishing critical editorials. Andrew Johnson openly defied a law passed by Congress as unconstitutional.

Much of the caterwauling about Trump’s “authoritarian” defiance of norms issues from his idiotic tweeting and use of the social media platform to attack individuals and the news media. There are no “norms” regarding social media. Other Presidents didn’t use Twitter this way because, of course, there was no Twitter. I once made a list of the past Presidents who would have eagerly reported to Twitter to fight the press and critics, or reach the public directly. A conservative list would be John Adams, Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, A. Johnson, Teddy, Wilson, Coolidge (a limit in characters wouldn’t bother Cal at all), FDR, Truman, LBJ, Nixon and maybe Clinton.

Meanwhile, Woodrow Wilson shattered a norm when he addressed Congress directly with his State of the Union message rather than just submitting it in writing. Franklin Delano Roosevelt paid no attention to “norms.” He defied the two-term tradition. He defied the norm of not locking up American citizens because of their heritage. He defied the norm of not trying to change the size of the Supreme Court. He defied the rather crucial norm of not secretly plotting behind Congress’s back to send aid to combatants in a foreign war. He defied a norm by dictating who would be his Vice President. One of his Vice Presidents, President Truman, then defied a norm by personally attacking a newspaper columnist as President. Jack Kennedy ignored a norm by appointing his own brother as Attorney General, and also broke one of decorum, allowing citizens to see him, indeed touch him, while he was in a bathing suit.  LBJ showed his abdominal scar to the world. Both Nixon and Clinton, trying to stave off impeachment, broke with multiple norms in their claims of executive privilege. Gerald Ford became the first President to pardon a predecessor. Jimmy Carter, in my personal least favorite norm defiance, met with ordinary citizens on TV and asked them how they would run the country. ( Carter violated a crucial Presidential norm by being a weenie.)

Believe me, this is just a sampling; I could go on and on. The point is that Presidents break norms, and norms are made to be broken…unless they are broken by President Donald J. Trump. Then doing what all strong leaders do is proof of dangerous authoritarian motives…

The Levitsky- Ziblatt ahistorical hit job became Big Lie #6 in the Ethics Alarms Directory. Wouldn’t it be just self-preservation, as self-proclaimed guardians of “democratic norms,” for the two professors to express book-length alarm at the wild defiance of basic democratic norms by the Biden Administration? You know, like…

• Making key political appointments based on color, gender and ethnicity rather than merit, talent and experience?
• Not firing agency and department heads who have proven to be incompetent?
• Empowering a purely partisan committee to stage years long hearing aimed at vilifying and imprisoning members of the opposing party?
• Using government power to intimidate dissenters in local school board meetings?
• The executive branch impugning the integrity of the Supreme Court?
• An administration actively pressuring public forums to censor opinions and posts that oppose its policies?
• A President obviously in serious cognitive decline being manipulated and shielded by unelected officials?
• The justice system being politicized in an effort to eliminate a political rival via “lawfare”?
• An individual being nominated by the President’s party without any primaries or democratic processes at all?

Nah, the esteemed professors didn’t care about any of that. You see, when Democratic Presidents shatter “norms,” its obviously a good thing. When Trump was President, however, the twin Harvard hacks issued “Why Republicans Play Dirty (They fear that if they stick to the rules, they will lose everything. Their behavior is a threat to democratic stability.)”as a Times op-ed.

Now they have really gone off the deep end, and are fully committed to Axis Operation Desperation and Panic. The column is “There Are Four Anti-Trump Pathways We Failed to Take. There Is a Fifth.” It’s underlying presumption is that Trump is Hitler, because that’s the remaining Axis strategy: it isn’t even pretending that Harris has a positive argument for her Presidency. Read it. Even with Harvard being as rotten and inept as it has become, the university should be humiliated to have this vomited out in public.

Here are the five anti-Trump measured these leftist totalitarians endorse:

1 Militant or defensive democracy. Ban Trump from ballots.

2. The 14th Amendment. Yes, these profs think that the provision designed specifically to apply to Confederate officials applies to Trump, because the January 6 riot was an “insurrection” even though it wasn’t, and obviously so.

3. The Republicans should have impeached Trump in Partisan Impeachment #2, even though the Democrats held no hearings. allowed no defense and followed no due process procedures—you know, norms.

4. “Containment, in which politicians from across the ideological spectrum forge a broad coalition to isolate and defeat the authoritarians. Building a multiparty coalition requires that politicians temporarily set aside many of their short-term ambitions and policy goals. Such sacrifice is arguably in their long-term interest, because without democratic institutions, politicians’ ability to pursue their short-term ambitions and policy goals will be undermined.”

Hilarious! Democrats have demonized the opposing party, used their journalist allies to feed anti-Republican propaganda to the public, and these guys think the GOP should united with Democrats to defeat the one member of their party who has the fortitude and the support to foil progressive ambitions for permanent national control.

And what is Number 5? The “pathway” they feel remains and recommend? Read it. I translate #5 as “Riot!” My sense is that if they thought they could get away with “assassinate him,” that would be #6.

How democratic! I’m being sarcastic. But capitalizing the “D” makes it accurate.