Must See TV: J.P. Sears explains the Restrict Act

J.P. Sears lays out with humor the horrifying reality that could be coming our way if this is passed.

Do you ever get the feeling that the Democrats are trying to make the Nazis look like amateurs? Sadly, it seems like they want to go way beyond the Eight Startling and Uncomfortable Ways the Democrat Party Emulates the Nazi Party. From being worse than the Nazis on gun confiscation to using the nation’s socialist media as their go-to propaganda organ of choice with a disturbing obsession with Guillotines thrown in just for good measure.

Naturally, this kind of truth-telling will send the sinister set into spasms of outrage at the challenging of one of their most cherished and biggest lies, promulgated by 80 years of BS.   But the facts are the facts, no matter how much they try to bluff their way to silence anyone who dares question their big lie that a National Socialist German Workers' (Nazi) Party wasn’t National SOCIALIST German Workers' Party

Normalcy bias tends to make us think that this can’t happen here.  

That we could lose all of our freedoms in a flash with the passage of this kind of legislation and severe control measures such as a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), but they’re already talking about the latter - despite the usual denials whenever the fascist far left is up to something nefarious. But our focus here is the Restrict Act!

"The Restrict Act! Totalitarianism is Good For You"

This is supposedly a ‘Tik Tok Ban’ except that it doesn’t mention Tik Tok, it only has reams of vague language that would be perfect fodder for unelected bureaucrats to clamp down on the free speech of their political opponents.

This unconstitutional abomination is described as Orwellian in scope as described by Ohio GOP Rep. Warren Davidson interviewed Wednesday on the John Solomon Reports podcast.

Beware of 'Orwellian' bill banning TikTok, warns Ohio Rep. Warren Davidson

…an emerging bipartisan coalition of civil libertarians on the right and the left warns the legislation is a Trojan horse. In empowering the Commerce Department to crack down on TikTok, they fear, the bill would give the federal government sweeping new authority to surveil and punish — largely free of public scrutiny or accountability — digital communications or transactions posing vaguely defined "undue and unacceptable risk" to national security or public safety.

Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul, for example, tweeted out an article headlined "Prepare for the Patriot Act for the internet."

"It gives the ability really with almost no due process whatsoever for somebody to be fined a million dollars and imprisoned for 20 years," Davidson said. "And that's if they get caught violating things like downloading software that the government doesn't approve of."

The RESTRICT Act would, among other things, criminalize the use of virtual private networks, or VPNs, relied on by millions of internet users to protect their data when browsing the internet.

So, if you are like many who already use a VPN to work remotely or stay safe on the internet, you are already in violation of the Restrict Act.  

We certainly wouldn’t want people to remain sovereign or employed on the internet while making it difficult for the government to monitor what they are doing. After all, you might be looking around at those ‘dangerous’ sites like the National Archives with those subversive founding documents with things you’re not supposed to know about like freedom of speech or the common-sense civil right of self-defense.

As JP Sears points out in the video,

“The RESTRICT Act, also known as the Tik Tok Ban bill - even though it doesn’t mention Tik Tok anywhere - would protect US citizens from a Communist Party spying on them by having another Communist Party spying on them instead and then throwing them in prison. That certainly sounds like an improvement, doesn’t it?”

You have to love how specific they are when they talk about the enforcement of this law:

“The Secretary, in consultation with the relevant executive department and agency heads, is authorized to and shall take action to identify, deter, disrupt, prevent, prohibit, investigate, or otherwise mitigate, including by negotiating, entering into, or imposing, and enforcing any mitigation measure to address any risk arising from any covered transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States”

These mitigation measures include punishing you with fines, jail time, and civil and criminal forfeiture:

(b) Civil penalties.—The Secretary may impose the following civil penalties on a person for each violation by that person of this Act or any regulation, order, direction, mitigation measure, prohibition, or other authorization issued under this Act:

(1) A fine of not more than $250,000 or an amount that is twice the value of the transaction that is the basis of the violation with respect to which the penalty is imposed, whichever is greater.

…

(c) Criminal penalties.—

(1) IN GENERAL.—A person who willfully commits, willfully attempts to commit, or willfully conspires to commit, or aids or abets in the commission of an unlawful act described in subsection (a) shall, upon conviction, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than 20 years, or both.

(2) CIVIL FORFEITURE.—

…

(i) IN GENERAL.—Any property, real or personal, tangible or intangible, used or intended to be used, in any manner, to commit or facilitate a violation or attempted violation described in paragraph (1) shall be subject to forfeiture to the United States.

…

(3) CRIMINAL FORFEITURE.—

(A) FORFEITURE.—Any person who is convicted under paragraph (1) shall, in addition to any other penalty, forfeit to the United States—

(i) any property, real or personal, tangible or intangible, used or intended to be used, in any manner, to commit or facilitate the violation or attempted violation of paragraph (1); and

And the great thing is that the section on ‘TIMING’ states:

(D) TIMING.—The term “covered transaction” includes a current, past, or potential future transaction.

Note the words ‘current, past, or potential future transaction.’ So, you could have already violated this law before it’s even been brought up. We’ll finish this up with what is probably the most appropriate quote from Ayn Rand from the book Atlas Shrugged:

Do you think that we want those laws to be observed? We want them broken. There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power the government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.

Remember, this places a lot of enforcement power in the hands of unelected and faceless bureaucrats that could decide that your use of a VPN or something else violated this law. Manufacturing criminals far beyond the dreams of totalitarians of the past.

Originally published on the American Thinker