I wish I could master French. Not just to read in the original novels by authors I love like Mauriac and Camus. If I were fluent in French there’s something I’d like to write. A tragedy in fact. I’d like to write the story of Joseph Darnand. He was an ardent, almost fanatical French patriot, who served with conspicuous valor in both the First and Second World Wars fighting the Germans. He became a leader in several right-wing, ultranationalist organizations between those wars, urging greater military preparedness against Germany.

And yet, after France fell in 1940, Darnand decided to collaborate with the hated Germans. He came to see Communism as a greater threat than Nazism, and threw in his lot with Petain. By the end of the war, this German-hating, German-killing French ultra-patriot was commander of the Milice — a brutal band of thugs devoted to wiping out the Resistance and deporting Jews. Darnand, the French war hero, took a personal oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler and joined the Nazi SS. At war’s end, he died by firing squad.

I think of Darnand, and Petain, and the other men like him whenever I see longtime conservatives throw in their lot with the left, allegedly to preserve some sacred conservative “principle” from the “threat” of Trumpian populism. That’s why I dubbed one Christian writer David “Vichy” French. Bill Kristol is perhaps an even better representative of this tendency, but dozens more prominent Republicans and conservatives fit the bill. So does the one-time benchmark conservative outlet (now gay-led) National Review.

Running Errand for the Oligarchy

While pro-Trump conservatives saw that the U.S. is now ruled by an intolerant Oligarchy whose regime threatens basic liberties, the Vichy-Cons decided to stick with the Establishment. As Jesus said of virtue-signaling Pharisees, “They already have their reward.” When MSM publications deign to mention conservatives — except in fevered hit pieces — it’s the Vichy Cons whom they feature.

When the Democrats in Congress who bailed out Antifa terrorists want to persecute January 6 protestors, the only Republicans allowed on the committee are Vichy Cons. When big money donors like the Koch foundations or the Chamber of Commerce back a candidate, he’s always a collaborator. On issue after issue, from the Russia Collusion Hoax to the 2020 election steal, these people offered “bipartisan” cover to the left’s most tyrannical acts.

The Ethics and Public Policy Center for Collaboration with the Oligarchy

So I was merely nauseated and not surprised to see the latest from the Ethics and Public Policy Center. This neocon thinktank heavily backed our pointless, genocide-enabling invasion of Iraq, even hiring Catholic theologians to argue that a pre-emptive attack based on speculative evidence (later proved false) met the Church’s criteria for a “just war.”

When COVID panic hit, and a public health dictatorship descended on America, EPPC didn’t disappoint. It duly provided a detailed argument on why a vaccine made with or tested on aborted baby parts wasn’t immoral. It even published speculation that the fetus used to create the relevant cell lines might have been miscarried, not aborted. This was medical nonsense, as The Stream revealed.

What’s more, it contradicted the direct, sworn statement of the researcher involved. He’d told the FDA under oath that the baby had been aborted. Even when it emerged that the NIH was funding dozens more abortions for COVID research, with babies being dissected while still alive to pirate their organs, EPPC’s stance didn’t change. It did its job again: to provide intellectual cover for conservatives acting like leftists, obeying the regime.

EPPC Joins the Gun Grabbers and Constitution-Shredders

Now the EPPC is helping the gun-grabbers to trash our God-given gun rights, guaranteed by the Second Amendment as surely as our rights to free speech, jury trials, and the free exercise of religion. Patrick Brown, a fellow of the EPPC, has a new op-ed that suits the Vichy-Con program perfectly. It offers lip service to core conservative principles in theory, while helping to dismantle them in practice.

Instead of examining the actions of Uvalde, Texas police — who did nothing to stop a school shooter for an hour, while handcuffing and threatening parents who wanted to rush in and save their kids — Brown helps spoon-feed conservatives the narrative of the left. Namely, that there is a mass shooting crisis in America, which means we must surrender crucial gun rights. Brown writes, misleadingly of such shootings:

In 2001, the U.S. averaged about one every other month. A decade later, it was once a month. Last year, the average was more than one active shooter event per week. Waiting for the next city unlucky enough to become shorthand for anguish should be unacceptable. The Republican Party has been increasingly billing itself as the parents’ party and is starting to take seriously what a policy agenda that put families first might look like.

Now you might wonder about all the school shootings you haven’t heard about. But they didn’t happen. Brown is conflating shoot-outs in crime-ridden cities like Chicago, which are incessant, with rare but horrific events like the Uvalde massacre. Of course, the blue cities where mostly non-white Americans kill each other in horrifying, tragic numbers already have virtual gun bans — far stricter than anything the Democrats claim will solve the school shooting problem. It has no effect, except to disarm law-abiding Americans, leaving millions of vulnerable, non-white citizens stripped of their right to self-defense.

We Don’t Need No Stinking Constitution

None of the measures Brown signals support for would have prevented the Uvalde shooting. All of them would have helped to limit the gun rights of the parents who waited, helpless, outside while do-nothing cops restrained them. The worst idea Brown supports is Red Flag laws. These laws essentially repeal the Second Amendment altogether.

Under such laws, law-abiding citizens, with no felony record or history of psychiatric commitment, can have their homes raided and their guns seized by cops. All on the strength of a single phone call, perhaps from a bitter ex-spouse or disgruntled former employee or vengeful political operative. Then it’s the citizen’s burden of proof to demonstrate that he’s innocent, and “safe” enough to reclaim his own guns, to a likely liberal judge — who probably opposes all private ownership of firearms. And he’ll have to pay his own legal fees; no public defender provided.

No other Constitutional right is subject to such arbitrary suspension. Imagine you could strip someone of her right to vote, or practice religion, or have a jury trial, on the strength of a single phone call. Red Flag laws essentially nullify the Second Amendment, and treat the right of gun ownership as a privilege, like piloting an airplane.

The Vichy Cons Aren’t Our Friends

Brown backs other bad, unconstitutional ideas in his op-ed, and opines that Christian conservatives are likely more gullible than others, subject to emotional appeals that make them surrender their rights.

With “conservatives” like these, who really needs leftists?

What the world really does need is a Shakespearian tragedy on the life of Joseph Darnand. Maybe I’ll ask the EPPC to fund me to write it.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or co-author of ten books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. He is co-author with Jason Jones of “God, Guns, & the Government.”