Before I get into the subject at hand I want to make it abundantly clear that this is not about the recent protests and rioting that has been going on, nor is it about the video that is the cause of these protests/riots. I’m not even sure that the account of what happened in Minneapolis is accurate; as there are things about it that don’t add up.
However, until I can prove my theories I’m going to go on the assumption that what people saw in that video is an accurate account of what happened; a Minneapolis Police Officer killed a handcuffed man by placing the full weight of his body onto his knee; which was placed across the neck of the handcuffed man, George Floyd.
You see, it’s not what I think happened that matters it is everyone else’s perception of what happened in that video that matters. So the question people must be asking themselves is, are they justifiably angered by what they saw in that video, or are they being played for fools because they reacted the way they did over a staged event designed specifically to cause these protests and riots. Again, I’m going to base this article upon the assumption that what you saw in that video is exactly what happened; nothing more, nothing less.
The perception many people have, particularly those in the inner cities and black communities, is that the police are thugs who abuse their power and authority. I find it interesting that the majority of whites in this country stand behind law enforcement unquestioningly; that is until they find themselves on the wrong side of the law.
I’d be willing to bet that the majority of those you see with stickers on their vehicles supporting law enforcement are white. However if you were to ask Randy Weaver or any of the survivors of the Branch Davidian compound whether they supported law enforcement unquestioningly, I’d be willing to bet that they’d say they didn’t; not after what they experienced at the hands of law enforcers.
Let me explain why I do not stand behind law enforcement. However, before I do I want you understand that I recognize the need for some kind of law enforcement; especially when we live in a country where the people have lost their moral compass and commit all manner of atrocities against their fellow human beings. That said, as an institution, I believe law enforcement is something we should not give our support to; not until they get their shit together that is.
I think that in 1850 Frederic Bastiat described to a T laws and law enforcers in America today, “The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!”
Let’s go way back in time to see if I can explain this in a manner that you’ll understand.
In 1776 fifty-six patriots affixed their signatures to a document that not only declared that they sought to sever the bonds which had tied them politically to Great Britain, it explained where our rights come from and the purpose they believed all governments should be instituted to serve. The words they risked their lives in support of were, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
That right there explains the purpose our founders felt government should serve, to secure the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Therefore, all laws passed by that government should serve that purpose, or else Bastiat’s words are true, “The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it!”
In 1787 another group of men, this time not so well intentioned, gathered together and drafted a document which would replace the existing one under the Articles of Confederation with one which they claimed would better serve the needs of the Union.
Three years after that document was ratified and put into effect one of the drafters of it, James Madison, wrote a short essay on property. I think what Madison said ties in quite nicely with our current discussion:
This term in its particular application means “that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.
In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.
In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.
In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho’ from an opposite cause.
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own. (Source: James Madison, Property, 29 March 1792)
It is important that you understand that, particularly this last paragraph, “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”
Therefore, as law enforcers, you must ask yourself who you serve, the people or those who right the laws you enforce. If you serve us, then it is your duty to not only protect our rights from citizens who might infringe upon them, but also to protect them from unjust or unlawful laws; for as Jefferson so aptly said, “…law is often but the tyrants will, and always so when it violates the right of the individual.”
So if all you do is enforce whatever laws government enacts, without giving any thought to whether those laws violate our rights or our liberty, then you’re exactly what some claim you are, jack-booted thugs who use force and violence against those who do not follow your commands or obey the law.
There is something you should consider when you decide whether or not to impose tyrannical laws upon the people you are sworn to protect, that being that 16th American Jurisprudence states, “The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, though having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it.” (Source: 16 American Jurisprudence, Section 256 137, 180)
It also states, “Since an unconstitutional law is void, the general principles follow that it imposes no duties, confers no rights, creates no office, bestows no power or authority on anyone, affords no protection and justifies no acts performed under it. No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.” (Source: 16 American Jurisprudence, Section 177)
You call those who do not obey the law, or your commands, lawbreakers. However, our country became independent because of lawbreakers. You would do well to undertake a study of the history preceding the American Revolution; particularly the actions taken by groups like the Son’s of Liberty in response to the Stamp Act of 1765.
These Son’s of Liberty demolished the offices of those charged with collecting the taxes imposed by the Stamp Act, they tarred and feathered tax collectors, and they looted and ransacked the home of the Royal Governor; Thomas Hutchinson. Oh, and let us not forget a little event outside of Boston at a place called Lexington Green where patriots refused to allow government agents to confiscate their arms.
I believe with all my being that were men like Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, and Samuel Adams alive today, they would be classified as domestic terrorists by the government you people serve.
If you truly were serving and protecting the people, as well as defending their rights and liberty, the majority of the laws you currently enforce would be nullified; for there would be no one enforcing them. I cannot see a State or U.S. Senator patrolling the streets enforcing the laws they write; it is law enforcement that does the dirty work of our lawmakers; and for that you should be ashamed.
I’m not saying every cop goes out and abuses the public, but I am saying that those who don’t are part of the system, and the system does contain many bad apples who treat the people as if they were sheep to be herded around; and if the people do not obey their commands they often find themselves brutalized by these law enforcers.
Why don’t the good cops speak out against those among their ranks who abuse their authority, or enforce laws that violate our rights and liberty? Is it because they are afraid of losing their job, or being reprimanded or chastised by their fellow officers? The Bible, in 1 Peter, Chapter 3 states, “Let him [man] eschew evil, and do good.”
Thomas Jefferson also took as his personal motto the following phrase, “Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.” If I were to resist laws I believe were tyrannical; which deprived me of any of my rights or liberty; or were not in accordance with the specific powers delegated to government by the Constitution, I would be treated by you as a criminal. Yet aren’t those who write those laws the real criminals? Therefore, aren’t you either criminals yourselves, or at least accomplices for enforcing those laws upon the people?
If you are not among those who brutally assault the people you are sworn to protect, then your silence in response to those who do makes you as guilty as they are; for the legal maxim Qui tacet consentit translates to, “Silence implies consent.” Therefore, if you remain silent you are consenting to whatever abuses of power are committed by your fellow officers.
Four years before the Declaration of Independence was written Samuel Adams wrote a paper entitled The Rights of the Colonists for the Boston Town Meeting of November 20, 1772. In it he wrote, “Among the Natural Rights of the Colonists are these First. a Right to Life; Secondly to Liberty; thirdly to Property; together with the Right to support and defend them in the best manner they can–Those are evident Branches of, rather than deductions from the Duty of Self Preservation, commonly called the first Law of Nature.”
It is our right as human beings to defend our rights, our property, and our liberty against all those who might seek to take them from us; including our government and those who enforce the laws it enacts; meaning you.
Getting back to Bastiat’s book The Law, in his chapter entitled What Is The Law, he writes, “What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.
Each of us has a natural right—from God—to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?
If every person has the right to defend—even by force—his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right—its reason for existing, its lawfulness—is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force—for the same reason—cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.”
We do not surrender our rights when we created government; we merely authorize them to enact laws to better protect them than we would have in a state of nature. Yes you have the authority to serve and protect us, our property and our freedom, but since you cannot be everywhere all the time, then we retain those rights as individuals, and can exercise them against any and all who might seek to deny us of our lives, our property, our rights, or our liberty.
In his Second Treatise on Civil Governments, John Locke writes about the state of war that exists when one man seeks to place another under his absolute jurisdiction, “And hence it is, that he who attempts to get another man into his absolute power, does thereby put himself into a state of war with him; it being to be understood as a declaration of a design upon his life: for I have reason to conclude, that he who would get me into his power without my consent, would use me as he pleased when he had got me there, and destroy me too when he had a fancy to it; for no body can desire to have me in his absolute power, unless it be to compel me by force to that which is against the right of my freedom, i.e. make me a slave. To be free from such force is the only security of my preservation; and reason bids me look on him, as an enemy to my preservation, who would take away that freedom which is the fence to it; so that he who makes an attempt to enslave me, thereby puts himself into a state of war with me.”
Locke also explains what course of action a man thus subjected to has at his disposal, “I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.”
Finally, Locke states, “This makes it lawful for a man to kill a thief, who has not in the least hurt him, nor declared any design upon his life, any farther than, by the use of force, so to get him in his power, as to take away his money, or what he pleases, from him; because using force, where he has no right, to get me into his power, let his pretence be what it will, I have no reason to suppose, that he, who would take away my liberty, would not, when he had me in his power, take away every thing else. And therefore it is lawful for me to treat him as one who has put himself into a state of war with me, i.e. kill him if I can; for to that hazard does he justly expose himself, whoever introduces a state of war, and is aggressor in it.”
I have the right to, not only, defend my life against those who would take it from me, but to also defend my property and my liberty with the same force I would use against an individual threatening my life; and any law that says otherwise is a violation of Natural Law and the purpose for which all governments are instituted among men.
Yet if government were to pass a law imposing a total ban on the private ownership of firearms, many of you would have no qualms about disarming the public in clear violation of their right to keep and bear arms, and their right of self defense; which as Adams said, is the first law of nature.
If government, and its enforcers, no longer serve the purpose for which government is supposed to serve, then the answer is not to vote for a better quality of candidate, or meekly consent to whatever tyranny it imposes upon the people, it is to alter or abolish that government, and to institute one which ‘shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.’ (Declaration of Independence)
It is our right to protest against those who would threaten or take our lives simply because we disobeyed some law that was fundamentally null and void, (recall what 16 American Jurisprudence said). It is our right to protest against those who enforce laws that violate our rightful liberty; which as Jefferson explained is, “…unobstructed action according to our will, within the limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.” It is not only our right to protest against these things, it is our right to defend ourselves against them.
Robert Yates, writing under the pseudonym of Sydney, warned of the danger posed by our Constitution regarding our ability to defend our rights and liberty from attack by the government it established. His words stand in condemnation of those who both wrote and ratified that document, “What is to limit the oppression of the general government? Where are the rights, which are declared to be incapable of violation? And what security have people against the wanton oppression of unprincipled governors? No constitutional redress is pointed out, and no express declaration is contained in it, to limit the boundaries of their rulers.”
Patrick Henry said something very similar to that in his arguments against ratification during the Virginia Ratifying Assembly, “Where is the responsibility — that leading principle in the British government? In that government a punishment, certain and inevitable, is provided: But in this, there is no real actual punishment for the grossest maladministration. They may go without punishment, though they commit the most outrageous violation on our immunities. That paper may tell me they will be punished. I ask, by what law? They must make the law — for there is no existing law to do it. What — will they make a law to punish themselves? This, Sir, is my great objection to the Constitution, that there is no true responsibility — and that the preservation of our liberty depends on the single chance of men being virtuous enough to make laws to punish themselves.”
Those who write the law, those who enforce it, and those who see that it is upheld in our courts of law rule over us, as we have no power to punish them under the Constitution. Yet they can punish us with fines, jail time, and even death if we do not obey their commands. Does that not sound like tyranny to you?
I’m all for protesting, and if the situation truly warrants it, fighting against those who would oppress me. However, I am not for random and wanton looting and destruction of public property. If you’re gonna protest, then protest against those you feel have violated your rights. If you’re going to commit acts of violence, then commit them against those you feel have infringed upon your rights. Just know this, if you do bring violence against them, you cannot complain when they return violence upon you. I’m not saying people should commit such acts of violence; I’m only asking you to think about the repercussions if you do decide violence is necessary; and to not cry when you are met with equal, or more overpowering violence in return.
Believe me, I don’t want a civil war, or widespread violence and destruction. I see things from a different perspective than most, it would seem. I hear people say these protests are good, that they let government know the people are angry. Possibly, but they damned sure give the government all the justification it needs to enact even tighter restrictions upon our rights and liberty; and law enforcement will undoubtedly enforce them.
I even hear people calling for martial law and the suspension of the Posse Comitatus Act, which would give the President the authority to use the U.S. military against the people. I hear that they are working on revising the Patriot Act, and enacting even tougher gun control laws; such as a law that requires you to obtain a permit to own and operate your privately owned firearms.
How much you wanna bet those will be enforced by law enforcement as well?
If you are in the law enforcement community you need to ask yourselves who or what you serve, and are you willing to take responsibility for what might be coming to America simply because you obeyed the orders given you, or did not question whether the laws you were enforcing are constitutional? What we are witnessing now is partially due to the fact that you have become jack booted thugs who enforce whatever laws you are told to enforce, using whatever violence you deem the situation warrants, without ever thinking about the rights and liberty you may be violating by enforcing these laws.
The Nuremberg Trials set the standard that simply following orders does not exempt law enforcement from punishment when those orders resulted in the loss of a people’s rights, or their lives. Should such a trial be held again, you will be treated as a war criminal; not a peace officer or defender of the life, property and liberty of the people you are sworn to protect.
And, if you are among those who blindly support and defend law enforcement, and you have not changed your opinion after reading all this, I suggest you just crawl back into your ass; because you are an idiot.
Finally, for those of you who are used to reading my rants at work, this will be the last one you’ll ever see from me; I’m retiring. If you wish to continue reading them I suggest you bookmark this webpage; for that is where I post all my rants: http://www.zombie-slayer.com/neal/
