We Now Live In A Police State

I had a comment from an anonymous reader on the post I wrote entitled Eric Swalwell:Tyrant Wannabe that bitterly noted he might get into a firefight with police who showed up at his house to take his guns. I advised that it might be better to settle the matter in court than to fight it out with police on the spot. But, from my comments you might think I am sympathetic with so called "Red Flag" laws. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe these laws to be Unconstitutional on several grounds. Of course, as always, others seem to write what I am thinking more succinctly than I can, so I present William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism piece entitled "Red Flag Laws": Rights Cannot Be Suspended, Only Violated by Thomas L. Knapp.

Rights are inherent characteristics possessed by all human beings, not privileges to be granted or withheld at the whim of a bureaucrat in a black dress. And the point of the 5th Amendment’s due process clause is precisely to protect the life, liberty, and property of Americans against arbitrary judicial edicts. Under the US Constitution, “laws” which violate those protections are null and void.

This point is true, but just as it is prudent to back off when a 18 wheeler wants to violate your right of way in traffic, so it makes sense to let the police have your guns for now, then sue to get them back. Should it be this way? Hell no. But reality is often far different from theory. In this case, the violation is of the 5th Amendment rights. The 5th Amendment states:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

As an example of one such law in action the reader is pointed to the Maryland case of Gary Willis, who answered his door at 5:00am to find, unexpectedly, police at his door. Like any reasonable person, getting a knock on the door at 5:00 in the morning, he had a gun in his hand. Who wouldn't? Having no knowledge of the proceedings against him, he would not suspect that the police arrived at that uncivilized hour to seize his property. I would just be making coffee. The police seeing his gun, naturally shot him. Why the police chose 5:00am to deliver the news that he was about to have his 5th Amendment rights violated was never asked, evidently. Who made the accusation, we can not know. Neither, apparently, can the accused. Due process involves the accused facing his accuser, and offering evidence in his defense. None of these things happened in Gary Willis's case.

Neither the cops who killed Willis, nor the judge who sent them to do so, will likely be held accountable for the killing of a man accused of no crime and minding his own business on his own property. That’s the very definition of lawlessness.

Why did a judge order police to steal Willis’s guns? We’re not allowed to know. The contents of such orders are considered state secrets.

What might we call a system under which anonymous judges can secretly order anonymous police officers to expropriate property from citizens who have neither been accused of nor convicted of crimes, on pain of death for resistance?

The only term that seems to fit is “police state.”

Why Leftists are immune to the "good guy with a gun" argument

Today I would like to highlight an article by Karen Kataline over at Townhall.com that tells us Why the Good Guy With a Gun Arguement Doesn't Work with Leftists. Of course, it sounds like click bait, and I bit, but it is an interesting look into the "mind" of your typical Leftist. I put "mind" in scare quotes because, from the description, it is obvious that these people react emotionally to any idea, never using reason and the thought processing parts of their brain. But let her tell it:

Conservatives have an excellent argument in favor of the Second Amendment by proclaiming that “it takes a good guy with a gun to stop a bad guy with a gun.” Unfortunately, it makes no sense to Leftists and it’s instructive to examine why.

The Left has been working overtime to erase the difference between good guys and bad guys. To them, we are all just as capable of being Charles Manson as we are Mother Theresa. They claim that individual choice and personal responsibility has nothing to do with who is good and who is evil. Maybe that’s why they can always be counted upon to come to the defense of ruthless, hardened criminals. They have for decades perpetuated the idea that criminals are victims. Now, they've moved on to painting law-abiding citizens are criminals. This speeds us on the road to being all the same. Think of it as the redistribution of personal responsibility.

If you are white, male, Christian, or God-forbid, a Republican, you are already guilty without having done anything at all. If you dare to own a gun, you are de facto guilty. It doesn’t matter what choices you make. The Left does not consider this to be prejudice as long as the right people are pre-judged. They argue that they can perfect the world and our behavior by creating a “correct” society which they will define for us. We are merely spokes in their socialist utopian wheel.

I agree with everything said here except the part about the capability of everyone to commit murder. I believe we all have the capability. That is baked into us by our nature. Mankind is a predator, and as such, must restrain himself from praying on his fellow man.  I believe it is wrong to kill another human being because each of us was created in the image of God himself.  We, of course are not God, but we are also more than the animals.  Our DNA and a chimpanzee's may be 98% alike, but the other 2% makes us moral agents.  While some try to bring us down by showing that great apes may be able to learn the use of a very limited vocabulary, the fact is that never in a thousand years would an ape develop, much less teach other apes to use, a language.

That 2% of DNA makes all the difference.  No animal could compose, or play the great organ pieces of Johann Sebastian Bach.  No animal could dream up, much less play the guitar as Chet Atkins.  No animal could compose the works of Shakespeare, despite what statisticians might say about the subject of an infinite number of monkeys typing on an infinite number of typewriters.  No animal can conceive of basic algebra, let alone the calculus. On the other hand, no animal could have committed the atrocities of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.  For better and worse, we are not like the animals, and we are certainly not God.

Leftists, however, don't see these things for what they are, and continue to conflate the majority of the good guys with the small minority of those who choose to live by their own code, and take whatever it is they want.  They often even romanticize these people.  Yet somehow, they themselves are more "evolved" than the rest of us.  They have "seen" the future, and if we just give them the power, they will instruct us poor deplorable masses in the right way to live.  Well, good for them, but before we entrust them with all the power, perhaps one of them could demonstrate for us one of J.S. Bach's masterpieces on the organ?  Just one??  In the meantime, since evil people roam among us, we'll just keep these weapons just in case.

Different World Views Lead to Different Conclusions

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I had had a conversation with a Leftist who claimed, against all evidence, that socialism would work if ever it was actually tried.  I countered with the fact that many Socialist experiments had failed utterly, starting with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, more commonly known as Soviet Russia.  At that point the conversation was ended by the other party's request.  I initially thought that he didn't want to be confused by the facts.  It turns out that may not be the case. 

It later occurred to me that this was a case of two people talking past each other.  We both saw the same facts on the ground, but we each came to different conclusions based on different assumptions about  the nature of people, and different understandings about world view.  It is these differences I wish to explore today.

My side you probably know well, and from the general lack of comments, you probably agree with me.  Of course that means I am "singing to the choir" and convincing no one.  Which of course also indicates I should quit blogging.  But that is a consideration for another day.  I believe, as our founders did, that men are born in sin, are prone to seek their own interests at the expense of the interests of the polity.  Even when we consciously set out to do good, our efforts are corrupted by our sinful nature.  Our Constitutional Republic is the best system that could be devised, but clearly it is not perfect.  And in very real ways, the protections that the founders put in place to protect our liberties have been cut away.  This, I am convinced, was due to a lack of understanding of the true nature of the Constitution, along with deliberate distortion of that documents' meaning.  The Senate was originally appointed by the various States, and each State had an equal voice in the Federal government.   The Justices of the Supreme Court were intended to read the law as written and understood at the time and not to apply novel theories to the law that were never intended.  The idea was to spread government power as far and wide as possible to prevent too much power from getting into the hands of too few people.

Of course, in my view of mankind, it is easy to become cynical, to think that all politicians are rotten and the only solution is to throw all the bums out and elect an new set of bums.  But such a view must be resisted, for each individual is just that, an individual.  Everyone comes along with his own set of experiences, prejudices, beliefs, indeed the whole of that person's life adds up to a unique individual.  Identity politics, therefore is anathema to my way of thinking, because it does not allow each individual to express his own individuality.  On the other hand, ordered liberty means that each individual must give up a certain amount of liberty to achieve maximum liberty for everyone.  That balancing act, determining how much liberty people should have, and how much should be constrained, is the purpose of the Constitution, and of our Constitutional Republic.  It is the very essence of rights and responsibilities.

Now, look at it from the other side.  About half the people in this country believe that people are fundamentally good.  From this springs the idea that if material goods could be spread out so that everyone had an equal share, then there would be no wars.  If every war is about power and money, then take away the need to more, and there is suddenly no need for war.  One is tempted to join hands and sing  Kumbaya. But seriously, at the core, this is their belief.  Out of this belief grows the belief that there is no God, no heaven or hell.  After all, if we are all basically good, then morality is part of our nature, and the only thing that determines morality is ourselves.  Some people, of course, (and by some people we mean those mean people, conservatives) chose to be evil.  Virtue signalling is how they signal to each other that THEY are not like THOSE PEOPLE.  If all people are basically good, then there can be no better or worse cultures, each culture grew out of its own history, and must be respected, indeed celebrated, on its own terms.

With that understanding then, socialism, as expressed in the Communist Manifesto can indeed work. It just requires having the right people governing and they must persuade the masses to give up their private interests to achieve Utopia: a Paradise on Earth.  So far, they people who believe this stuff haven't found the right people.  But they're not giving up, no sir.

If you believe the basis for the Communist Manifesto, and you are steeped in Marxist theory, then the fact that "socialism has never actually been tried" is a statement that makes a certain amount of sense.  The Soviet Union, almost from the start, employed brutality, murder and intimidation not persuasion.  It was like living under the mafia.  Of course, we know the bloody history of Nazi Germany, but the official name of the Nazi party was the National Socialist German Workers' Party.  Oddly, it was voted into office, and was less brutal than the Soviet Union, but then the Soviet Union set a very low bar to clear.  Nazi Germany was as evil as the Soviet Union, but had less people to kill in order to achieve its goals.  Communist China, Cuba, Cambodia under Pol Pot, North Korea, Vietnam, and the many "People's Republic of" all testify that human nature can not be overcome.

Most of the people you meet of the type are what Lenin termed "useful idiots."  These people are true believers, and they are dangerous precisely because they believe themselves to be right, and because of their belief in the goodness of mankind, have no higher authority than the State.  They can not believe that the "authorities" are perhaps wrong, so they will do whatever these "authorities" tell them to do.  They believe in the idea of collectivism, that people with a common history necessarily see things the exact same way, and they attempt to make each group out to be victims, that only the benevolent (socialist) party can defend against the oppressor class.  Currently in the United States, the "oppressor class" are whites.  In Nazi Germany, the "oppressor class" were Jews.   Pol Pot's oppressor class were the educated.   In practice, socialism always requires an "oppressor class" to unite the "masses" against.

So there you have it.  A perfect example of people seeing the same facts, but coming to different conclusions based on their different world views. If you want to see what socialism begets, look to Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, or Venezuela.  These countries are not poor because of a lack of resources.  Japan is a country with nearly no resources, yet it is prosperous.  These countries instead have people who, if they have the right laws, do not respect them.  Until they respect the laws, and put in place protections for property rights, they will never be prosperous.  But that is a story for another day.

The Anniversary of GCA68

David Codrea marked the 50th Anniversary of the Gun Control Act of 1968 back on October 22.  The date slipped by me, with other things going on.  David is of an age that he remembers, as I do, that legislation and notes the effects that it has had upon our liberties and freedoms.  Codrea's peace can be found at Ammoland.com entitled 50 Years of Infringement After GCA68 Shows Only Constant Is Obsession With Control.

 Codrea notes the many changes that have occurred as a result.  GCA68 doesn't actually prevent non prohibited individuals from obtaining a gun, but it does make them jump through more hoops, as well as making the process more expensive. And the number and expense of those hoops has only grown. That was deliberate by the way. The first goal of GCA68 was to set a precedent, to obtain a law that past muster with the Second Amendment, but would make owning a gun legally so expensive as to prohibit the poor and blacks from being able to afford a gun.  I can remember Senator Birch Bayh railing against the infamous "Saturday Night Specials," which were killing supposedly thousands of people. Actually, these small inexpensive handguns provided people with a last line of defense for those who had to go into dangerous neighborhoods to provide needed services. A New York Times article of the period shows New York Mayor Lindsay complaining even then that the problem was guns from outside the city.

Interestingly, the NRA lobbied in favor of GCA68, supposedly believing that we would have been stuck with even greater infringements if they had not participated.  It is the kind of thinking that has gotten us ever more and more egregious infringements of the Second Amendment, and has spurred the Left to never be satisfied.  Had they taken a "give no quarter" attitude from the start, we might well have been in a better position today vis a vis guns.  Instead of having each and every crime on the gun, we might have had to concentrate instead on the true problem, the criminals who commit the crimes.  While I am a member of the NRA, I have often thought that with friends like the NRA, who needs enemies?  For many years the NRA seemed to think the Second Amendment was written so we would be able to hunt.

Go read David's article from last month. 

Eric Swalwell: Tyrant Wannabe

I've seen several articles on this guy, Eric Swalwell, and his inflammatory remarks.  But I haven't dealt with them yet, having other pressing items with which to contend.  Now that the elections are winding down, the Democrats having stolen several seats in government, and Florida having proven itself to be yet again the laughing stock of the world, it seems time to take Mr. Swalwell apart.

William Sullivan, writing at the American Thinker today, has already done much of the work for me, in an post entitled  Dem Congressman: Government can always nuke resistant gun owners. Sullivan notes that the reason for the Second Amendment is that government might one day become so tyrannical that the citizens would need to be armed to preserve their freedom. Swalwell's tweet makes clear that is exactly the case he would have us face:

Here's the most mind-boggling part of all this: he expresses that belief while simultaneously arguing that the federal government should infringe upon the rights of gun-owners and should confiscate and outlaw ownership of Americans' deadlier weapons, making them less capable of defending themselves against a ruling class that views itself as capable of forcing the citizenry to do whatever it deems best for them.

In short, Eric Swalwell accidentally makes a brilliant case for gun rights. It's hard to imagine how the existence and exact purpose of the Second Amendment could be better justified, or why Americans' right to keep and bear arms must be protected at all costs.

Just so.

Mr. Swalwell is probably well aware of the fact that by and large, it is criminals who are committing the murders, armed robberies, muggings, and other crimes with guns.  He must also know that criminals are not going to give up their guns, and they are not going to buy them through the legal commerce in guns, which requires a background check.  These background checks of course remain on the books, and the government can inspect them at any time an know who owns what guns and where they live.  Criminals, on the other hand, obtain their guns from theft and the black market.  He probably also knows that people generally don't just snap, unless they have a history of mental instability.  He must know further that guns don't just "go off."  Given what he knows, therefore, the intention is clearly to disarm the law abiding while leaving the criminal and mentally unbalanced armed to the teeth.

Further, underlining Mr. Swalwell's bad faith is his insistence on calling his proposed confiscation a "buy back" program.     I don't know about you, but I did not buy my guns from the government.  And, contrary to Mr. Obama's assertion that U. S. companies "did not build that!," they did indeed without any help from Uncle Sam.  Therefore, what the government did not build and did not sell, the government can not buy back.

Also, I would note, while the price paid for the gun in question is a negotiable amount when done in the private world, in which both the buyer and seller receive value for the transaction, this so called "buy back" will be entirely at the government's bidding.  The government will name the price, and you MUST give up your weapon for that price, or men with guns will come and force you, or kill you as the case may be.  This is not buying and selling in the traditional sense, but yet again an illustration of the relationship Swalwell sees between the government and the people.  In Swalwell's eyes, the people are the subjects of the government, but the Constitution was written to place the government at the people's command, not the other way around.

Swalwell, therefore, is either a  megalomaniac wannabe tyrant himself, or else unhinged.  In either case, he should not be anywhere near the levers of power.  And what does this say about at least 50% of those who voted for him.  Are they willing to put themselves into bondage to Mr. Swalwell?  Are they also willing to speak for their children, their heirs, forever?  Because if they vote away their rights, they will never get them back.

Finally, for those calling Mr. Trump a "tyrant." please note that Mr. Trump trusts the people with guns.  He has not indicated he wants to take them away.  Remember that when the government does not trust the people, it is probably because the people should not trust that government.

Update:  Scott Morefield had an interesting take on the exchange between Dana Loesch and Eric Swalwell yesterday at Townhall.com entitled The gun control question that stopped Eric Swalwell in his tracks. Either Swalwell doesn't know the relative power differences between 5.56/.223 and 30.06 or .308 or he uses the fuzzy term, "assault weapons," to mean banning all semi-auto rifles.  . She suspects he does indeed know the difference, but wishes to cover up his real intent to ban all semi-auto rifles and hand guns with a fuzzy term "assault rifle," which describes nothing.

The Virtue Signalling of the Left.

Here's an interesting piece from Bearing Arms that notes that Californians Are Flock to Gun Store in Wake of Borderline Shooting. The Borderline Shooting refers to the discharged Marine who shot up a country dance event at the Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks, California. He managed to kill 12 college aged people attending the event.

So, interestingly, I know Thousand Oaks. I used to live just down the hill from Thousand Oaks in a place called Camarillo, CA. At the time, I worked at the Pacific Missile Test Center, located just South of Port Hueneme, CA home of the Sea Bees, the Construction Battalions. This was back in the early 1980s.  California was even then the "land of fruits and nuts," but the inmates had yet to take over the asylum.

Tom Knighton notes that:

The story goes on to talk to Mike Rowan, a former corrections officer, and current firearms instructor at Trigger Burst Training Center. Rowan notes, “I get a lot of closet liberals, people who normally would never want anything to do with a firearm, and I train them and they secretly own firearms.”

What happens if these same liberals wake up and recognize that their side wants to disarm them through laws that have no impact on the bad guys? If that happens, it’s over for gun control activists.

I can imagine exactly what they will do.  In Europe, guns are heavily regulated and nobody supposedly has them. Yet, a number of people secretly have them anyway.  Here in the United States, people like Al Gore have huge carbon foot prints, but espouse everyone else live like their cave man ancestors.  Indeed, I had a friend at work who claimed to believe in man made global warming.  But he drove a Ford Explorer. I was astonished, and asked him about it.  "It doesn't work unless everybody does it," was his reply, as if that made his hypocrisy all right. People's capacity for telling others what to do, but not doing it themselves is very high.  Liberals typically want to be seen as all these supposedly "good" things, even if they don't actually do them.  So, while liberals continue to pass feel good gun laws, liberals will secretly find ways to keep their guns.

Go read the article, if you can without throwing up your breakfast.

Re-litigating the Welfare State

Looking over the election results so far, and noting widespread election fraud, has me thinking back to 2008 and the fraudulent elections of funny man Al Franken to the Senate.  Franken's long election battle gave Democrats the 60 votes necessary pass Obamacare, against the will of 80% of the electorate.  The Democrats kept insisting that "healthcare is a right" and that therefore the government should provide it to see that everyone has the benefit of a minimal health insurance policy.  I remember my doctor saying "in a country as prosperous as this one, don't you think we should provide healthcare to everyone?"  I remember asking how he thought we became a properous nation in the first place?

Chief Justice John Roberts apparently twisted himself into a pretzel to find this obscene law "Constitutional."   What I intend to do here is to unpack the arguments made for ObamaCare, because these same arguments keep coming up.  And if John Roberts doesn't know this either (he should) then perhaps someone will clue him in.

Certain rights are listed in the Constitution, in the first ten amendments to that document, known as the Bill of Rights.  The rights acknowledge in the First Amendment include:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That seems fairly straight forward.  So, when an employer tells you you may not speak about something to those outside the company, is he abridging your right to free speech in contravention to the First Amendment?  If you said no, go pick up a gold star.  But how about if the FBI writes its own subpoena to request your email records from your internet supplier and the FBI tells them they can not inform you that you are under investigation?  If you said yes, you fail.  Whether or not a court agrees, it seems to violate the black letter law of several Constitutional amendments.

Now let's take a look at the Ninth Amendment, which says:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Here we find the famous penumbras and emanations that the Surpemes routinely wrap their odd interpretations of the Constitution.  It is in these unenumerated rights. So, from this you might expect that the Democrats claim that you have a right to health care is correct, and once again you get a gold star. Horay! But not so fast. Hold your horses before going out and getting your very own subsidized health care.

Going back to the First Amendment, you have a right to free speech, correct?  Does that mean the Government must give you a radio station?  No?  What about a microphone? A bullhorn?  A soapbox?  Anything?   No?  You may study the issues, hire the venue, and...well...speak.  Anything you want.  But you have to pay all expenses required, and nobody else has to listen.  Sorry.  You can buy radio ads, or get someone to write up an editorial in a newspaper.  But if you lie you may be sued for slander or libel.

It is the same way with the Second Amendment.  You have a right to a gun, a rifle or pistol, etc.  You have the right to keep and bear arms.  But the State is not obligated to give each citizen an AR-15 and 100 rounds of ammunition.  No, you have to supply yourself with such weapons as you deem necessary for the safety and security of yourself, and those under your care.  And guess what?  Having a right means you don't have to exercise it.  You can decide not to exercise any right granted you under the Bill of Rights.

And that brings us to the "subsidized" part.  In order to provide some with health care, the government takes tax money from each person who pays taxes, which includes me, and uses it to subsidize the heath care of others.  Now don't think that because I object to the government doing it, that I am not a compassionate person.  I routinely give my own money to help our local food bank, for just one charity.  My objection is specifically using tax dollars to subsidize the healthcare of those who can not, of will not provide it themselves.  And this objection extends to welfare payments, and corporate welfare as well.

First, by providing tax money, which is taken under threat that men with guns will come, and take me away, or if I defend myself will kill me. the government is essentially forcing me to work in order to provide for someone else.  This is, at its most basic form, slavery.  I seem to recall there was a 13th Amendment to the Constitution that outlawed such things in the United States.  Now here it is back under the guise of "compassion."

Secondly, the government is usually the least efficient organization for providing such services.  I remember that Hillary was routinely throwing out numbers of people who were uninsured.  I believe we all finally settled on the idea that there were 30 million such.  So how many are still uninsured?  Turns out the number is still 30 million.  Surprise!  In this year's election, Linda Coleman ran ads saying that George Holding and voted to deny people with pre-existing conditions health insurance.  Would that it were so, but no.  Our Republican Congressman did no such thing, fearing exactly what he got.  I wonder if he wishes now that he had, since he was tarred with it anyway.

The reason the Democrats propose and usually manage to pass these laws, and the Supremes let them. is for power.  And since nobody seems to read the Constitution and take it seriously, we end up with these poorly thought out decisions that simply compound upon one another and drain away our potential.