Cameron Brown: A tangled web

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” It's a line worthy of Shakespeare but penned by Sir Walter Scott who hailed from that same small country that gave us David Hume, Adam Smith, and Francis Hutcheson, all part of the Scottish Enlightenment that influenced Thomas Jefferson and ultimately Jefferson's writing of the Declaration of Independence.

Who better than Walter Scott to know about entangling webs of deceit and deception? Although known by most as a playwright, poet and novelist, he was also a historian, judge and legal administrator. He observed human nature in all its complexity — the good and bad.

His famous line of a "tangled web" from his 1808 poem "Marmion" gives a fine point to the narrative playing out in America today. Like a net of darkness, a web of deceit has been cast over America dividing the nation and families, infecting public duty and public discourse. It is an entangling, pervasive and pernicious web that is tied to power for power's sake, the consequence of which has enslaved the nation. It's not a Kumbaya moment or time for happy talk in America but a time for discernment. Our problem is fundamentally spiritual, not political.

The conclusion of Special Counsel John Durham's report shows corruption at the highest levels of our nation's law enforcement establishment, something now documented for latecomers to see. What is most alarming about Durham's report, however, is the lack of consequence with no modicum of apologia from the overseers of those who perpetrated the fraud.

And then there is the active suppression of information vital to informing the voting public about a most consequential national election, which is not only wrong but election interference, and it is criminal. The actions of our intelligence agencies are not mistakes, but deliberate illegal actions that warrant indictments and prosecution. Where is Lady Justice? And what do we say to the young people of America? In his passionate "Letter from Birmingham Jail," Martin Luther King Jr. articulated a maxim as old as Magna Carta and as relevant as the swirling revelations coming to light today — "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

Compare the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence with the 51 signers of the letter suggesting the contents of Hunter's laptop might be Russian disinformation. What is the difference? The answer: "sacred honor." The former had it, the latter did not.

We stand on the shoulders of giants who birthed the nation and crafted a plan to preserve and protect our freedom and God-given rights — the Constitution. Where would we be without it! And yes, the Founders were flawed and imperfect people like humanity itself, but on their "imperfect" shoulders, we can look beyond the tangled web to sunlit uplands where our freedoms and liberty and truth itself are honored and restored.

— Cameron S. Brown is president of the Kalamazoo Abraham Lincoln Institute and a former Michigan state senator. Follow him at HistoryFrontiers.blog.

This article originally appeared on Sturgis Journal: Cameron Brown: A tangled web