President Trump had every right to jerk John Brennan's security clearance. Brennan and the Obama intel-team don't deserve security clearances. The tradition of permitting the leaders of the preceding administration to retain those clearances is an archaic courtesy they prove daily, in public, that they're incapable of using as intended.
A neglected feature of that hoary old tradition of letting stars of a previous administration keep their security clearances requires that the recipients of such courtesy behave as though they were still active in that capacity. Appearing daily on left-wing TV to denounce Trump as unfit for his office and even guilty of treason and then pocketing big bucks for trashing Trump on TV and radio and at dinner parties hardly fulfills that requirement. Once upon a time, Americans were capable of losing an election and living with the consequences with civility. No more!
All that has been achieved by the continuation of this absurd policy of helping the assassins plant the knife in just the right place has been to trigger a tsunami of misguided sympathy from some shallow thinkers in support of those who deserve it least, most notably John Brennan.
Trump should defuse this high-explosive by looking for some intel workers who support him but who've been careless with security, and withdraw their clearances. That would quash accusations of "trying to silence opposition views" and would disfellowship John Brennan and others as card-carrying experts on "how Trump is leading us into war."
I'll get over it by the time football season really gets underway, but at the moment I'm still smarting over the massive insult to our national intelligence the left has just delivered. I can handle one stupid leftist lamenting with another equally stupid leftist about Trump's "assault on our freedom of speech!" But Brennan and his legions of fellow-travelers – all of whom should damn well know better! – splashing crocodile tears about how the withdrawal of a security clearance is tantamount to the deprivation of freedom of speech, or that Trump would want to cancel freedom of speech, or that he could even pull it off in a country as contentious as America, are more than any thinking person should have to bear.
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You doubt me? Go say something bad about Trump and see what happens to you. It won't be nearly as bad as saying something good about Trump, which won't be too bad either unless you really wanted to go to that dinner party! That's what's wrong with America. Too many people spend too much time worrying about losing their right to burn the flag in a crowded theater!
All this talk about security clearances and their use as a weapon takes me back to my days in the Army. I was detached to a branch of intel, and I found the following interesting. The boys who were plain old American, who never left Ohio until they were drafted, got their clearances pronto. I, however, was a complicated case.
As a Jewish American, my gratitude to America for turning the tide in World War II was full-blown. Churchill described a fanatic as someone who can't change his mind and refuses to change the subject. I was (and remain) that kind of American patriot.
Not so fast with that security clearance, though. None of my parents or grandparents had ever been in a Communist country. But all four grandparents were born in countries that became Communist after they immigrated to America. To complicate matters, at that early age of 22 I'd spent six weeks in Yugoslavia, which was a Communist country – on our side, but a Communist country nonetheless. I explained that in college I was a roving ambassador for the National Student Association. (I'd also been to Brazil, which was not a Communist country and didn't interest the authorities.)
I did not get a full security clearance. I got what they called a "partial" clearance, which enabled me to do my work, but my necklace ID indicated, with a diagonal slash-mark, that I had only a partial security clearance. Some men have had more success in explaining drug charges and incarceration to their dates than I did trying to explain to the other boys in the barracks what the hell I'd been doing in Yugoslavia!
One thing I did was come up with a plan that may have saved my life. After returning from Communist Yugoslavia I devised the idea of building a more patriotic America by sending every high-school graduate, for two weeks, to the Communist country of his or her choice. I promise you that the likes of John Brennan would have a hard time drumming up support in an America where everybody knew firsthand the difference between the jerking of a security clearance and the absence of freedom of speech – or anything else, either!
What was the life-saving aspect? A world-famous surgeon, who had been unavailable to implement a needed procedure, heard my plan on the radio (I was filling in for Sean Hannity) and liked it so much he volunteered to return early from vacation and perform the surgery for me!
Let's see if John Brennan gets any offers like that!