Tag: opinion

Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the “general welfare of the people.” Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen.

-Marcus Tullius Cicero

Look around and all you see is failure.

A bunch of kids are being murdered by some semi-human, so what do you do? Draw your weapon and put him down or die trying? Or do you sit there, doing nothing?

The same government we’re supposed to give up our guns to because they have it all under control chose Option B. It chose failure.

Tell me more about how the real problem is that we have the capacity to defend ourselves.

But the real problem, to our enemies, is not that murderers murder. The real problem, to our enemies, is the very fact that we can defend ourselves. The objective of our trash elite is not to have a country that runs well, where people are secure, and where rights are respected. The objective is to rule. And if a bunch of kids die for that, they’re fine with it.

They can live with failure, but not accountability.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/05/30/the-new-normal-is-failure-n2607940

Those who refuse to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Biden just signed an executive order limiting the equipment that local law enforcement may acquire from the Federal government surplus.

What you are about to read you may not remember, however I remember it like it was yesterday because the rank& file police were still carrying revolvers. The LAPD officers involved in this shoot out had to go to gun shops and physically take better firearms, not that the shop owners minded, to end this threat.

How soon people forget:

The North Hollywood shootout was a confrontation between two heavily armed and armored bank robbers, Larry Phillips Jr. and Emil Mătăsăreanu, and members of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) in the North Hollywood district of Los Angeles, California, United States on February 28, 1997.

Both robbers were killed, twelve police officers and eight civilians were injured, and numerous vehicles and other property were damaged or destroyed by the nearly 2,000 rounds of ammunition fired by the robbers and police.

At 9:16 a.m., Phillips and Mătăsăreanu entered and robbed Bank of America’s North Hollywood branch. The two robbers were confronted by LAPD officers when they exited the bank and a shootout between the officers and robbers ensued. The robbers attempted to flee the scene, Phillips on foot and Mătăsăreanu in their getaway vehicle, while continuing to exchange fire with the officers.

The shootout continued onto a residential street adjacent to the bank until Phillips, mortally wounded, succumbed to a self-inflicted gunshot wound; Mătăsăreanu was incapacitated by officers three blocks away and subsequently bled to death before the arrival of paramedics more than an hour later.

Phillips and Mătăsăreanu are believed to have robbed at least two other banks using similar methods for entry past “bullet-proof” security doors, taking control of the entire bank, and firing weapons illegally modified to enable fully-automatic fire. They were also suspects in two armored car robberies.

Standard issue sidearms carried by most local patrol officers at the time were 9mm pistols or .38 Special revolvers; some patrol cars were also equipped with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Phillips and Mătăsăreanu carried Norinco Type 56 rifles (a Chinese AK-47 variant), a Bushmaster XM-15 Dissipator with a 100-round drum magazine, and a Heckler & Koch HK91 rifle, all of which had been illegally modified to be select-fire capable, as well as a Beretta 92FS pistol.

The robbers wore homemade body armor which successfully protected them from handgun rounds and shotgun pellets fired by the responding officers. A law enforcement SWAT team eventually arrived with higher-caliber weapons, but they had little effect on the heavy body armor used by the two perpetrators. The SWAT team also commandeered an armored car to evacuate the wounded.

Several officers additionally equipped themselves with AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles from a nearby firearms dealer.

The incident sparked debate on the need for patrol officers to upgrade their firepower in preparation for similar situations in the future.

Due to the large number of injuries and rounds fired, equipment used by the robbers, and overall length of the shootout, it is regarded as one of the most intense and significant gun battles in U.S. police history. Combined, the two men had fired approximately 1,100 rounds in total, while approximately 650 rounds were fired by police. Another estimate is that a total of nearly 2,000 rounds were fired collectively.

Sent to me by a friend. Long, but well worth the read;

The foundation of any government is the consent of the governed.Democracies and republics are founded on the consent of the governed earned via representational or direct democracy: those who have a say and a stake in the system will give their consent to the government, even if an opposing view is in the majority because their opinion is part of the governance structure.

Even totalitarian states ultimately depend on the consent of the governed, as repressive states that lose legitimacy cannot imprison or kill a majority of their populaces, or restore legitimacy via coercion once the populace has nothing left to lose and the organs of state oppression realize the regime is doomed.

It feels like the consent of the governed is slipping away in the U.S. The reason is so obvious we dare not acknowledge it or discuss it: those in power–elected and unelected–only give lip-service to “serving the public interest and common good.” Beneath this flimsy facade of PR, every action serves the interests of a wealthy, politically potent elite or the self-interests of those in power.

Commoners have no real say in governance. We are consenting to rule by self-interested elites under the guise of being represented by an elite who governs at the behest and expense of hyper-wealthy individuals, families, corporations, cartels and monopolies.

Consider the issue of legalizing cannabis. Poll after poll shows the majority of the American citizenry favor legalizing cannabis, yet our federal representatives and regulators insist on ignoring the public will, public interest and the common good by continuing to classify cannabis as a Schedule 1 drug, as addictive and dangerous as heroin and fentanyl.

This is patently false and absurd. Hundreds of thousands of American die from alcohol and opioids every year, while deaths attributed solely to cannabis use are near-zero. Yet the federal government and our elected representatives refuse to accept the reality that cannabis isn’t equivalent to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids which continue to kill thousands every year.

Why? It’s the money, honey, greasing their palms and paychecks. Big Pharma views cannabis as a competitor so it lavishes billions of dollars on campaigns, lobbying and shaping the media narrative to serve their agenda of maximizing profits by any means available.

The War on Drugs Gulag of private prisons, law enforcement and the judiciary also skim billions of dollars as a result of cannabis being Schedule 1 (i.e. just as deadly as fentanyl). These powerful elites would lose billions in funding if the will of the people actually counted for something.

The realization that we’re not actually being represented at the federal level has eroded the consent of the governed for the national government, and pushed the electorate to seek legitimate representation at the state and local level. In response, states are openly flouting federal statutes (for example, the Schedule 1 absurdity of federal cannabis regulations) and claiming sovereign rights on issues such as currency (declaring gold coins as legal tender in the state, etc.) and cryptocurrency.

We can anticipate a cross-migration as residents who disagree with the majority views in their state move to states where the majority-approved policies align with their own preferences. This cross-migration will strengthen existing majorities into super-majorities, further accelerating cross-migration as policies that were considered extreme are normalized within states.

Within states, this relocalization of the consent of the governed is trickling down to counties, which are increasingly under pressure from the citizenry to ignore (or leave unenforced) state mandates which the residents disagree with.

Capital also manifests the consent of the governed. Capital will migrate away from states where it’s treated poorly, science-based enterprises will migrate away from states which restrict or starve research and development and manufacturing will migrate to states with willing, educated workforces and attractive infrastructure and tax structures.

States and counties whose policies are detrimental to capital will become poorer as capital chooses to locate to places where it has a say in governance, just as individuals want to live in a place where they have a say.

As the consent of the governed unravels, citizens may increasingly decide which statutes they’re going to obey and which ones they’ll ignore. Locales with strong community values will rely less on statutes and enforcement and more on social norms and community standards to maintain social order, while locales without any coherent community standards and shared values will have to rely on enforcement to avoid social disorder or meltdown.

Choose your community wisely. Thousands of pages of regulations won’t preserve the social order if the the consent of the governed and the social contract both unravel.