The Salem Witch Trials (Feb. 1692-May 1693) turned on what was called “spectral evidence.”

That was testimony from witnesses—either malicious or hysterical—who claimed the accused had assumed the form of a black cat or some other devilish creature and had come visiting in the night in order to torment the witness with bites and scratches, or to rearrange the bedroom furniture, or to send the baby into paroxysms.

Susannah Sheldon, aged about 18, testified that the defendant Sarah Good’s apparition—not the actual Sarah Good, but her spirit, her specter—“most violently pulled down my head behind a chest and tied my hands together with a whale band and almost choked me to death.” Other witnesses blamed Good for the mysterious deaths of cows or for causing a broom to fly up into an apple tree.

The judge, William Stoughton, admitted this nonsense into evidence. Hysterical fantasies had real consequences: Sarah Good and four other defendants were hanged on July 19, 1692.

Three hundred twenty-six years later, an anonymous woman—a spectral and possibly nonexistent woman, for all that one knew when the story emerged—accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her 36 years ago, when he was a high-school student.

It seemed as if the American constitutional process might be drawn back to the three centuries-old neighborhood of Salem, Mass.

If Senate Democrats and their media allies manage to destroy Brett Kavanaugh, they will bring America one step closer to a new, liberal style of totalitarianism.

I don’t use the “T”-word lightly. I’ve spent years pushing back against those who fling it about in free societies like ours. But totalitarianism doesn’t require cartoonish, 1984-style secret police and Big Brother. The classical definition is a society where everything — ethical norms and moral principles and truth itself — is subjugated to political ends.

By that measure, the Democrats’ campaign to block Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, based on a hazy, uncorroborated, decades-old assault allegation, is further proof the totalitarian society is their goal.

Certainly, it has many of the elements of abusive politics that Americans normally associate with foreign lands untouched by the light of liberty and reason:

[This editorial was published in today’s Sept. 18 edition of the Wall Street Journal --JW]

The woman accusing Brett Kavanaugh of a drunken assault when both were teenagers has now come forward publicly, and on Monday (9/17) it caused Republicans to delay a confirmation vote and schedule another public hearing.

Yet there is no way to confirm her story after 36 years, and to let it stop Mr. Kavanaugh’s confirmation would ratify what has all the earmarks of a calculated political ambush.

Ms. Ford’s story is simply too distant and uncorroborated to warrant a new hearing or to delay a vote. We’ve heard from all three principals, and there are no other witnesses to call. Democrats will use Monday’s (9/24) hearing as a political spectacle to coax Mr. Kavanaugh into looking defensive or angry, and to portray Republicans as anti-women. Odds are it will be a circus.

GOP Senators should understand that the political cost of defeating Mr. Kavanaugh will likely include the loss of the Senate. Democrats are already motivated to vote against Donald Trump, and if Republicans panic now their own voters will rightly be furious. They would be letting Democrats get away with the same dirty trick they tried and failed to pull off against Clarence Thomas.

Homer’s Muse sings of the rage of Achilles, brought forth from his tent by the death of his friend Patroclus to engage the Trojan hero, Hector, in mortal combat.

But Achilles’ anger solves nothing; although he kills Hector, he then desecrates the body by dragging it around the walls of Troy, thus violating the laws of warfare and sealing his own fate.

His determination to avenge his friend thus becomes “the accursed rage that brought great suffering to the Achaeans.” In the end, it’s not the rage of Achilles that wins the war for the Greeks, but the trickery of Odysseus that finagles the wooden horse inside the impregnable gates of Ilium.

We are witnessing a similar self-destructive rage today: the rage of the American Left against the Trump Administration in general and the president in particular.

What besides a profound, educationally inculcated, and emotionally juvenile hatred for the United States motivates them to such paroxysms of hysteria?

This past week I asked a friend at the White House about how the president was holding up against the onslaught of media attacks. "They didn't even deliver a glancing blow," was the response. It wasn't for a lack of trying.

Has any president in modern times been the target of such a Blitzkrieg of orchestrated assaults -- from John McCain's funeral turned anti-Trump scrum, to Bob Woodward's discredited new book trashing the president, to the media infatuation with the anonymous New York Times op-ed by a disgruntled federal employee who hates President Trump?

Here we go again. Trump is (for the umpteenth time) characterized as dangerous, deranged, delusional, infantile, racist and amoral. But Trump is like Muhammad Ali playing rope-a-dope while George Foreman (the media) is flailing away and punching himself out.

For the bottom line is the surging Trump economy is the news story of the decade, for which the president is personally responsible no matter how much the media deny or ignore it.

[The fate of America is at stake on November 6. We can achieve a Red Wave in the Senate by having outstanding pro-America candidates like Josh Hawley of Missouri defeat Democrat incumbents.--JW]

My grandfather was the first generation of our family born in the United States. His parents came to this country from Norway and became farmers, which is what my grandpa did too until the day he died.

Grandpa was fiercely proud to be an American citizen. He once told me his father wouldn’t teach him Norwegian because “this family is American now.” Grandpa never forgot it.

I haven’t forgotten it either. When you come to this country, you join a family – the American family. And in America, we stick up for one another, believe in one another, fight for one another.

Unfortunately, our ruling elite has given up on all that. They’ve become globalists first and Americans second. If you want to see Exhibit A, look at Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who I am running against in the November election.