Decimation, Due Process & Deportations

Since the Enlightenment, the Anglosphere has had a laudable commitment to due process, which means opposing the brutality of group punishment. But what happens when that commitment leads to societal suicide? Our Founders cannot have intended this, especially regarding those people who ignored due process to enter America illegally.

In 73 BC seventy slaves escaped from a gladiator school in the town of Caupa, in central Italy.  They spent the next two years attacking various towns and encouraging slaves to revolt and join them. This was the beginning of the Third Servile War.

By 71 BC the force numbered 120,000, had at its head the former gladiator Spartacus, and had become a formidable force, defeating a number of Roman legions on the battlefield. It was then, with much of the peninsula living in abject fear of both the rebels and their own slaves, that the Senate appointed Marcus Licinius Crassus command. 

Crassus was a brutal commander and revived the ancient ritual of decimation.  Decimation is responsibility taken to an extreme, where one out of ten members of a group are killed by the other members as punishment, often for the group having lost a battle. While it’s unclear exactly why Crassus utilized decimation – he ordered the deaths of up to 4,000 men out of his force of almost 40,000 – the result is clear, his men feared him more than the enemy.  They defeated Spartacus, and crucified his last 6,000 men along the Appian Way.

That one in ten responsibility ratio has been a defining maxim of American law since before there was an America, although not in the same direction. In the middle of the 18th century William Blackstone released his Commentaries on the Laws of England, which became a core element of English and then later American law.

In Commentaries Blackstone draws on the Old Testament to turn Rome’s responsibility decimation on its head.  Blackstone’s Ratio stated "is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer.”  This maxim was picked up by Ben Franklin stating “That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer…”

John Adams put it like this: “It is more important that innocence should be protected, than it is, that guilt be punished; for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world, that all of them cannot be punished.... when innocence itself, is brought to the bar and condemned, especially to die, the subject will exclaim, 'it is immaterial to me whether I behave well or ill, for virtue itself is no security.' And if such a sentiment as this were to take hold in the mind of the subject that would be the end of all security whatsoever.”

With all due respect to Blackstone, et.al. I disagree.  My disagreement is perhaps best personified by my favorite quote, from Voltaire: “Perfect is the enemy of the good.”

There is no system that is perfect, and while Blackstone said the ratio of good to bad should be 1 in 10, Franklin said it should be 1 in 100.  But both numbers are arbitrary.  How about 1 in 2 men, or 1 in 1,000 or 1 in 1,000,000. If not, why not? That maxim sounds noble and virtuous, but civil society cannot survive such a caveat.  While society and the government should do as much as it reasonably can in order to ensure that no innocent men are going to pay for a crime they did not commit, the reality is that no system operated by men is perfect.

Why does any of this matter today?  Because our Constitution is not a suicide pact. 

Over the last 4 years over 10 million illegal aliens invaded the country.  Over the previous 30 years another 20-30 million came.  In total, there approximately 35 million illegal aliens in the United States, and we finally have a president who’s decided to take on the Herculean / Sisyphean task of deporting them. 

And now that someone is trying to do something about the cancer of illegal immigration the left is throwing roadblocks in the way seemingly every other day. The rationales are varied, but a fundamental argument is “Due Process”.

Due Process is an important element of American history and jurisprudence, but like the Constitution, it’s not a suicide pact.

Thirty-five million illegal aliens is 10% of the American population. Judges across the country are telling the administration it must exercise Due Process before any of them can be deported. That is simply not feasible. Between scheduling court dates, conducting court cases and waiting on the appeals processes, there’s literally no way for the American judicial system to handle that number of cases. If each case could magically be fully adjudicated in just one day and the government could deport 10,000 people a day, it would take a full decade to deport all the illegals already here.  But they don’t take one day.  In most circumstances it takes months and often takes years. 

But we’re told that without Due Process it’s possible that someone legally here, or even an American citizen could be deported. And that’s true, it is possible. But is that a reason to not deport the 35 million illegals in the United States? No.

To say yes would be basically to treat the United States the way blue states treat homeowners victimized by squatters.  Across the country we hear horror stories of homeowners whose lives are turned upside down by squatters.  The owner not only loses access to or use of their homes but they’re still required to pay the mortgage, taxes and insurance.  This can go on for years.  And when the squatters finally leave – sometimes only after being paid to do so – the homeowners often find tens of thousands of dollars of damage. Such situations make anyone with a functioning brain see red with fury.  It’s simply insane.

Now multiply that exact scenario by 35 million and you have America’s illegal immigrant disaster.

Which brings us back to Blackwell and Adams. One wonders if they would suggest that it’s better that 35 million immigrants remain in America illegally than one citizen accidentally be deported. What if the number were 45 or 75 million, either of which would be possible after 4 or 8 more years of the next Democrat in the White House.  At what point does “Due Process” become “Accept the collapse of the Republic” because that’s exactly the position Democrats and swamp dwelling RINOs have put Trump and America in. 

Of course this is only an issue because activist judges across the country have overstepped their Constitutional powers and embraced nationwide injunctions as the vehicle for undermining Trump. 

I’ve advocated for the president to ignore the judges, but so far he’s chosen not to do so.  He is considering however a suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, similar to what Lincoln did in 1861. As I read the Constitution it seems to my non-lawyer eyes that it’s Congress who can suspend the writ*, and perhaps he’s planning on asking them to do it. Of course there’s zero chance that that snake infested swamp will do so.  Or he could do as Lincoln did and suspend it unilaterally and then ignore SCOTUS.

I realize that doing so would open a Pandora’s Box of potential disasters from Democrats and RINO swamp weasels in DC, but if the leftists leave Trump no other options, is his job to sit by and watch the Republic collapse? I don’t think so.  But make no mistake, we're not here because Donald Trump is some sort of would be dictator.  We're here because Democrats have been attempting to decimate American exceptionalism for decades.

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

*Note from Andrea, the brilliant editor of AT with point I find quite compelling: Vince is entirely correct that the accepted way of reading the power to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus is that it’s limited to Congress. The reasoning is that the permission to do so is contained in Article I, which establishes both Congress's powers and limitations.

However, one can argue that because the authority to suspend the Writ of Habeas Corpus is included in Section 9, Lincoln was correct to say that he, too, had the authority. That’s because there are clauses in Section 9 that clearly extend beyond Congress, such as the prohibition against Foreign Emoluments or the Ports Preference Clause. If these clauses do, and if the President is charged with being the Commander in Chief and front-line of national security, it makes sense that he would also have authority over the Writ of Habeas Corpus.

Dear Donald Trump: Compassion Should Not Be A Suicide Pact...

America is a land of immigrants. We’re told that constantly, and it’s true. Of course it’s also true that immigration of one sort of another is a hallmark of almost all of human history.

Wherever humanity originated, at some point members of the species immigrated everywhere else. It is of course never a simple issue. Sometimes it’s the result of the peoples being chased from their homelands like the Vandals who were chased by the Huns from eastern Europe into the Roman Empire, eventually settling in Gaul then Iberia and finally North Africa. Other times it’s the result of a people who seek to expand their territory through conquest such as with the various Muslim caliphates that emerged from Mecca & Medina whose desire to encircle the Mediterranean was only stopped by Charles Martel in Tours in 732 and by John III Sobieski in Vienna in 1683.

History is full of examples of peoples immigrating from one place to another. We often think of the earliest peoples moving into an area that was previously uninhabited. That may possibly be true of North and South America, but for the most part it’s not true. When the earliest humans immigrated out of Africa and into Europe, Asia and Oceania, they encountered our cousins, the Neanderthals, and after 100 centuries of war eventually eradicated them.

All of this to say that immigration is nothing new in human history. And it’s not in American history either. The United States was built by immigrants from Europe from a land that was extraordinarily sparsely populated when they arrived. It’s estimated that there were 4.5 million inhabitants north of the Rio Grande in 1492, or about one half a person per square mile. That compares to approximately 32 in Mexico at the time, 33 in Spain, 60 in France and the 103 in India, the world’s densest nation at the time.  Today America stands at approximately 100 people per square mile. 

From its beginning, what became America experienced a series waves of immigration which included approximately 86 million people through 2019, a number that has increased to approximately 100 million over the last 5 years. Although Donald Trump stemmed the tide somewhat, Joe Biden has opened up the floodgates with more than 10 million illegal immigrants pouring over the nonexistent border since his installation. That’s fully 3% of the US population.  As significant numbers of those people are heading to New York, California and other blue states who roll out the red carpet and give them free money, the Democrats don’t fight to keep the border open because it helps their Congressional numbers.  

This is simply not sustainable. Particularly when the overwhelming majority of the people coming across the border are from countries that don’t share our values and have little experience with the freedoms that helped create history’s greatest nation & economy. 

Across the country we’re seeing sanctuary states and cities being overwhelmed by the events they supported in the first place. Citizens, veterans, children and more are being displaced to make room for illegals, and taxpayers are picking up the tab. Virtually every aspect of public services is being overwhelmed, from shelters to schools to hospitals to police.

The good thing is, Donald Trump has promised that on day 1 he will start the largest domestic deportation operation in American history. That, combined with a wall the likes of which we’ve never seen is a great start.

But there’s a problem, and Jesse Kelly hit it right on the head on Twitter…

“70% of Americans SAY they care about the border.

Run one video of little Pedro sobbing as he and mother Lupe get loaded into an ICE vehicle a they get deported back to Guatemala and that 70% number will drop to around 5%.

Country is too soft for mass deportation. No chance. 0.”

Kelly is right. America is simply too soft to do what’s necessary in order to deal with this disaster.

Americans are largely a compassionate people. The LBGTQXYZ travesty we’re experiencing today is at its core the result of Americans reacting to gay partners not being able to visit dying lovers in hospitals during the AIDS epidemic because they didn’t have rights and families of the dying kept them out of the hospital rooms.

Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of babies are aborted annually because Americans are angered at hearing that a victim of rape or the mother of a severely handicapped fetus are forced to give birth rather than get an abortion.

In wide swaths of the country policing and justice have been eviscerated because too many Americans believe that blacks are incapable of overcoming slavery that ended a century and a half ago or discrimination that was outlawed back in the 1960s.

Americans are indeed a compassionate people, but sometimes compassion can get you killed. Compassion has a role to play in a moral civilization, but when it becomes the driving force to the exclusion of rational thought, it ceases to be a virtue. (See Europe, which since 2015 at Angela Merkel’s direction during the war in Syria, imported tens of millions of military aged men from Africa and the Middle East who are bringing war to the streets, many of whom despise western culture and want to bring Sharia.) You cannot run a country based on teary anecdotes. They make for great media and heartfelt stories, but they make for terrible policy.

If Donald Trump is going to fix this situation, he’s going to have to be willing to endure the unprecedented level of vitriol that will be thrown at him. AOC crying at the side of cages will be child’s play compared to what the media will do with images of little Pedro and his pregnant mommy being pulled from the taxpayer provided hotel room and loaded up into a DHS van. He’s going to have to be willing to endure stories about the heartbreaking lives that face deportees back in Mexico, Guatemala and Venezuela and the rest of the countries from whence they came with him playing the role of Hitler. At the end of the day, if Donald Trump is going to lead the nation out of the morass that Democrats and the swamp have led us into, he’s going to have to be willing to be vilified, cursed, defamed, libeled, reviled and basically all of the other things he has been exposed to over the last 8 years, on steroids.

He wasn’t willing to endure that abuse last time and allowed random judges to throw roadblocks all along the way, and as a result his wall was never finished and now there are 10 million new illegals here as a result. If he’s going to be the leader Americans need right now, he’s going to have be a lot more George Patton and a lot less Mark Milley…

Five For Freedom - A Contract With America For The 21st Century

  America’s in a civil war.  Not a cocktail party war like Vietnam or Afghanistan where Americans stand around and talk about it but relatively few are personally impacted.  No, this a WWII level existential threat war where the difference between victory and defeat is literally freedom or tyranny.  One need look no farther than what Adolph Trudeau is doing in Canada right now to understand what the future holds. 

This war has been simmering for decades and most Americans didn’t even notice.  Now it’s obvious. Virtually every element of traditional American culture is being destroyed.  The left has decided that the United States is a plague on humanity and must be eliminated.

In this case the “left” consists of government, media, big tech, big business, and academia, among others.

Here’s a short list of their targets…    

Turning schools into leftist Indoctrination centers

Government control of your neighborhood

Open borders

Money / Driver’s licenses / Voting for illegals

Legalizing crime / No bail  

Encouraging / Empowering homelessness

2^nd Amendment

Censorship

Gender reimagining

Control over your body

Free exercise of religion

Peaceably assemble

Men having babies

Banking

Climate Change

CRT

Government spying on citizens

Girl’s sports

And of course, most problematic of all is their successful coup d'état.

With that and more, do we still live in a free country?  Obviously not.

Which brings us back to war.  Ask yourself, if someone declared war on America, what more might they do in victory? Other than killing you or turning you into slaves, what more is there?

Some argue we’re not in a war, citing polls that show a majority of Americans don’t like those leftist positions.  That’s accurate, but it doesn’t matter. The majority doesn’t count. The people who “count”, the opinion makers, those in academia, media, high tech, etc are the hardcore leftists behind all of this, and as we all know, the squeaky wheel gets the oil.

Americans have traditionally been ambivalent about government. For most politics was something to be endured every four years and after the election life got back to normal.

But no longer.  If you were a Teddy Roosevelt partisan or a fan of Truman or IKE, whether your guy won or lost didn’t matter tremendously to the average American.  Maybe your taxes would go up or down a bit or maybe the price of gasoline or chicken might change a bit, but that was it for most people, because government, particularly the federal government had little impact on their everyday lives.

Today not so much. In America of 2022 the federal government impacts almost every aspect of American lives, daily.  The price of gas, grades of meat, rate of pay at work, MPG for your car, Epi-Pens, not to mention vaccine mandates, gun regulations and shipping illegal immigrants to your neighborhood.  But it’s not just the federal government.  It’s state and local government as well.  From inane licensing requirements for hairdressers, bartenders and Uber drivers to union-centric dysfunctional schools and gun laws that outlaw the 2^nd Amendment in all but name, the fists of the federal fit perfectly into the state and local regulatory gloves, together strangling American freedom. 

But government’s not the only front in this war. There’s culture too.  From social media – the 21^st century’s public square – to mass media to academia and big business, the left dominates.  Not just dominates as in winning, but dominate as in ruling over everyone else.  Live and let live is not an axiom the left recognizes or exercises.  No, the left demands fealty or will crush you.  They’ll destroy your business, get you fired or banned from social media, take your kids away, kick you out of college and anything else they can think of.

Today we’re seeing the government leviathan becoming even more powerful as it assimilates with the leftist borg.  We saw it for four years as the FBI worked side by side with the media to tarnish Donald Trump’s name and destroy his presidency. Now, Joe Biden has encouraged the silencing of “misinformation”. 

At the same time the federal government has essentially established a gulag to house political prisoners who participated in the “insurrection” despite many being invited into the building by the police, some never entering the building at all and most having been involved in no violence whatsoever.  Some of these “terrorists” have been sitting, without charges or bail, in jails for over a year.  That treatment stands in stark contrast to the treatment of those who participated in the violent and deadly BLM / Antifa riots of the summer of 2020, most of whom were bailed out in the unlikely event they ended up in custody in the first place. 

All of this points to a fracture of America. Observations about “majorities” give one hope, but the reality is that unless the “majority” who reject leftism react, it won’t matter because, as we’re seeing in real time in Canada, the wall between freedom and fascism is fragile, and once it’s breached it’s likely game over.       

If the Republic is to survive it will be up to that “majority” to do something to arrest the slide into tyranny.  The GOP needs to take a page from Newt Gingrich and give them something to focus on, to talk about, and most importantly, vote on. The Contract with America was pivotal in nationalizing the election, and that’s exactly what we need now, a message that patriots can rally around.

The fronts upon which the left is attacking are too numerous to defend against simultaneously.  The battle lines need to be streamlined just as the Contract did.  As such, here are Five for Freedom… five common sense items that every GOP candidate or official must agree with if they want to win.  If they refuse on any one of them, they should be primaried or defeated in favor of someone who does support them.

1.  The 2020 election was fraudulent and such fraud cannot be allowed to occur again.

2.  Covid mandates are unconstitutional and must stop.

3.  The #1 job of the federal government will be to seal the southern border.

4.  The United States must be energy independent.

5.  CRT has no place in American schools.

If any candidate running on the GOP ticket can’t support these five positions, they have no place in the GOP. The threats to liberty are too numerous, the threats to the Constitution too grave to elect someone who will waffle on these basic principles.

If there is indeed a majority of Americans who are interested in saving the Republic, they have to have something to rally around.  Thus far the GOP has done an atrocious job of focusing America’s attention.  They need to do that now and Five for Freedom is the tool to do just that.  It’s likely it will have to happen over the objections of establishment Republicans like McConnell, McCarthy and Ronna McDaniel, but so be it.  At the end of the day you’re either on the side of freedom or not.  As the last two years have demonstrated, liberty is fragile and without citizens willing to stand up for it, it vanishes. This is the time, this is the place and Five for Freedom is the weapon with which patriots can vanquish the borg of woke leftism that has been seeking to assimilate America for decades.  The only question is, does the GOP have the courage to wield it? 

(Image courtesy of www.AmericanThinker.com)