America in 2020 continues to erupt in riots, spurred by the death-by-cop of George Floyd. The violence is qualitatively different from the violence that roiled the United States during the race riots of 1964.
Whether you thought those riots right or wrong, back in 1964, state police officers were a forceful presence for law-and-order. They did damage to rioters as deliberately as they defended people and their property.
“End-stage America” riots, referred to by the malfunctioning media as “peaceful protests,” have engulfed “over 2,000 cities and towns in all 50 states.”
Even Wikipedia has conceded that “most large cities [have seen and are seeing] large scale rioting, looting, and burning of businesses and police cars.” You know how bad things are when such habitual liars for the Left admit to “large-scale” destruction by the Left.
This “mostly peaceful” mob even murdered a man in Minneapolis and burned down a pawnshop, all in memory of George Floyd.
Neutered, coopted, infiltrated and compromised—the police force in 2020 is missing in action. In the rare event that they act in accordance with their constitutional obligation to protect innocent people and their property, the police are hobbled—prevented from deploying riot-control tactics and, thus, invariably “hurt and hospitalized.”
“End-stage America” and its kneeling, pleading police force is the result of institutional rot, brought about because of the Left’s lengthy control of the intellectual means of production (neocons and Conservatism, Inc. are collaborators).
In 1964, the law would not countenance the disruption of public order and tranquility. The law in 2020 has helped invert ordered liberty, so that, in America today, the law protects the outlaw against the law-abiding.
Witness the case of Mark and Patricia McCloskey: Riffraff invaded their grounds and encroached on their residence. The legacy media faulted the St. Louis couple, framing the two’s self-defense stance and deterrence as dangerous aggression. The law followed through with weapons confiscation and criminal charges.
The police, whose first duty is to uphold the negative rights of the citizens, appear to believe they serve not the citizens but local mob bosses like Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkan, and her crooked police chief, Carmen Best. The latter, who seems to worry more about the weave on her head and eyelashes than about the working people of the city, commanded her compliant and cowardly police officers to desert their posts and the people they swore to protect.
Another Black Lives Matter stooge—all around coward and oath-of-office violator—is Paul Pazen, police chief of Denver, Colorado. He stands complicit in standing down so as to enable the violent attack on author and activist Michelle Malkin.
Malkin, the scrappiest, bravest woman in America, was physically assaulted at a “Back the Blue” rally, in Denver, Colorado, on July 21. Police were present all right. They watched on as a woman with a baton advanced on a little Braveheart of a lady, who screamed her lungs out in fury, not in fear.
But the boys in blue for whom Malkin stood up, stood down.
Inspired by scenes of wanton destruction openly enabled by elected authorities and their private militia—the police—Chris Cuomo of CNN minted a new phrase for the kind of activities in which these “peaceful protesters,” who physically struck the diminutive Malkin and are destroying structures across the country are engaged: “Inequality riots.”
“Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto”: Another morally corrupt celebrity, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has made the Jean Valjean argument from bread: Rioters are hungry. Indeed, there are some “heartbreaking videos of starving New Yorkers stealing bread from . . . a Chanel flagship store on Fifth Avenue.”
The same scenes played out in thousands of cities across the country. Worst of all have been in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.
So, finally, President Trump has sent in the cavalry. The president launched “Operation Legend.” “Announcing a surge of federal law enforcement in American communities plagued by violent crime,” Trump added that he had “no choice but to get involved.”
This paleolibertarian supports the president’s belated defensive actions to launch a counterterrorism operation with the aim of crushing a violent insurrection against law-abiding America.
It is essential to take back the streets, and to quit misnaming a repulsive specter that is neither democratic nor peaceful.
Upholding rights to life, liberty, and property is a government’s primary—some would say only—duty.
Belatedly, and in furtherance of the violation of individual rights, Democrats frequently rediscover American federalism. (In fairness, to promote their political agenda, Republicans are as opportunistic about deferring to the division-of-power bequeathed by the Founders. Rather than mandate facemasks to save people from dying and killing others; Republicans have left local leaders to supervise the killing fields of COVID-19.)
The reason the president’s domestic counter-terrorism operation is warranted is because the people’s rights to life, liberty, and property are being systematically violated.
And natural rights antedate the state apparatus. Federalism is an excellent principle, but it is not a religion.
Michelle Malkin has a natural right to walk about unmolested and speak her mind free of bodily harm. If Colorado officials will not uphold her inalienable natural rights in Colorado, and mine in Washington State, then bring in the feds. Better still, free armed citizens to do the job their representatives, ostensibly bound by the Constitution, have shirked.
What a shame that a debate that ought to be about inalienable individual rights is straitjacketed into statist terminology.
We are told that “federal authorities from the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, DEA and ATF” have arrived in our states to protect federal property (courthouses, in the main), when their true duty is to uphold inalienable rights.
The level of decision-making is immaterial; what matters is the decision. No one has the right to threaten lives and livelihoods (that includes the Internal Revenue Service). By logical extension, it matters not who upholds those inalienable rights to work and walk about Seattle and Denver unmolested—which state or federal official—just so long as someone does.
Yes, suddenly loathsome local leaders like Seattle Mayor Durkan, Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler (who was tear-gassed by federal agents on Wednesday night), Oregon Governor Kate Brown (D), and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) are decrying “a blatant abuse of power,” given that policing is the purview of “states, and governors and local officials.”
To repeat, natural rights antedate the state apparatus and the federal scheme. And although federalism is an excellent principle, it is not a religion.
In their appetite for destruction, these liberal “leaders” have rediscovered principles for which they’ve hitherto had nothing but contempt.
In the liberal vernacular, states’ rights are synonyms for racial hatred and discrimination. Now Democrats are shrieking louder than Dixiecrats ever did that the intervention by the federal government in state affairs might undermine this “cherished” principle. (So, they know about the 10th Amendment?)
What’s next in liberal two-facedness? As they shield lawbreakers and attack the law-abiding, will Mayors Jenny, Lori, and Ted lecture that, “We are a nation of laws”?
These confused casuists, whose reasoning is even more meager than their morals, don’t know that the long tradition of English and American law and the Christian religion favors the preservation of life, liberty, and property over their forfeiture.