Constitution be Damned! Off With Their Heads! (Before they murder your daughter or your mother or you...)

The United States literally began with these words: “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.”

What that actually means, particularly the pursuit of Happiness part, is different for different people. At a minimum however, we can all agree that Life means, well… life.

The above, of course, comes from the Declaration of Independence.  But that document doesn’t define the structure of our government, the Constitution does.  And from the Constitution we get our federal system, where (originally) the federal government had a number of well-defined and finite powers such as defense, foreign relations and adjudicating conflicts between the various states.  States on the other hand reserved all those powers not specifically prohibited to them or delegated to the federal government. 

And the truth is, that system worked very well for a long time.  About 150 years.  But, starting in the 1910s, with the passage of the 16^th and 17^th amendments, the line between the two started to blur, in the 1930s it began to be fray and by the 1990s it was basically gone, which is the situation we find ourselves with today. 

This evisceration of our federal system of checks and balances for all intents and purposes no longer exists.  From to welfare to education to employment to consumer products to media to farming to housing, the federal government is involved in virtually every other aspect of American lives. 

But you know one place where federal control largely doesn’t extend?  The criminal justice system.  That doesn’t mean there is there no federal involvement, because in reality, there is, but states exert more control over the criminal justice system than they do over other aspects of life like healthcare, automobiles, banking, etc. 

As it relates to America’s founding document, that’s a problem.  Not that I believe the federal government should take over everything.  Just the opposite, actually. Indeed, as I read the Constitution, 70% of what Washington does is blatantly unconstitutional.  I’m confident America would be a far more prosperous place if the federal government stopped doing most of what it does.

But, sadly, that’s not happening, and as the old adage goes: “When in Rome…” 

Chris Bray over at the Federalist had a piece the other day discussing federalism, and how because, blue states are so dysfunctional, the federal government is having to step in to protect dogs. Most certainly the Founding Fathers didn’t have protecting Fido in mind when they wrote the Constitution.  But you know what they did have in mind, and explicitly so?  The lives of Americans. 

Nonetheless, we are seeing across the country, from Virginia to Maine to California, state and or local governments failing to protect that most basic thing upon which America was founded: Life.  The reports and stories we seen regularly are heartbreaking.  We see a criminal with 40 arrests murder a young woman during a home invasion.  We see an illegal alien with 30 prior arrests fatally slash the neck of a random woman standing at a bus stop. We see a thug with 17 priors beat a 64 year old man to death in a subway because he didn’t like the way the victim looked at him.

For far too many criminals the justice system is nothing but empty threats, empowered by government employees more focused on leftist agendas than the safety of the citizens they serve.

Stephen Miller pointed out recently that western civilization only started flourishing after centuries of culling the most violent among them via capital punishment. I’ve often said that it’s impossible to go into a dark movie theater and fully enjoy the show if the entire time you’re worried that the guy behind you might shoot you in the back of the head.  Similarly, it’s difficult to build a functioning, flourishing society, one that advances science, technology and builds prosperity if the citizens of said society worry about being killed waiting for the subway or driving home from work or standing in line at some fast food restaurant. All of the creativity that a people might put into inventing new widgets or doing cancer research or teaching children how to read instead gets focused on how to avoid becoming a victim of crime.

These policies are the bleeding edge (literally) of George Soros’ and the swamp’s attempts to destroy the Republic and turn America into the leftist paradise they all dream of controlling.  And just as the as Communism in the 20^th century did nothing but deliver bloodshed, economic ruin and tyranny everywhere it showed its ugly head, we see the same thing in blue states and cities across America.

Given the failure of blue state / city judges, prosecutors and District Attorneys to protect the lives of their citizens, Washington should step in to do the job.  They won’t be able to protect everyone, but they will be able to tackle the problem in a way that the states and cities refuse to do. 

What kinds of things can be done?

First: Make murder a federal crime with capital punishment the sentence and a streamlined appeal process so that the process doesn’t drag on for years or decades.

Second: The federal government should begin to indict and imprison said judges, prosecutors and DAs every single time one of the career criminals they put back on the street kills someone. 

But, you might say, they have immunity. Maybe from state charges, but not from federal civil rights violations.  Think back to 1992 when the local jury acquitted the police officers of assault and use of excessive force in the beating of Rodney King. What happened then? The feds came in and charged them with violations of King's civil rights and won convictions. Frankly, that was a BS charge then, but the precedent was set. If using a baton on someone who put the lives of countless motorists at risk is a violation of civil rights then actually empowering the murder of someone is at least as much so. As such, given the role that the various government officials play in putting on the street career criminals who then go on to commit murder, the Justice Department should hold them accountable. 

What would the result of such a policy be? One would be that it would force government officials to weigh the potential consequences of releasing criminals into communities against the potential outcome to the community, and as a consequence, to themselves personally if that criminal murders someone.  Another would be that the amount of crime would drop precipitously as career criminals find themselves held behind bars far more often than they’ve become accustomed to.

None of this is ideal and this is not an ideal solution, but as Voltaire said: “Perfect is the enemy of the good”, and when government officials not only don’t protect citizens, but actively put them in harm’s way, they should pay for those decisions. Government without accountability is just another way of saying tyranny, something the Declaration of Independence was specifically written to oppose. 

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Ingratitude and Ignorance Are Driving The Destruction of The Greatest Civilization In Human History

I started writing my Imperfect America blog in 2009.  It’s my passion, despite the sad fact it’s never made me a penny.  Not even on Twitter, new or old, where my account is constantly throttled!

My first post was titled “Racism, America’s Original Sin”.  It was a response to the new normal of anyone disagreeing with Barack Obama being called a racist.  In it I talk about the 3/5^th Compromise and the fact that it gave southerners less power in the House than they wanted, but more importantly, it was the key to America being one nation rather than two, one free and one slave. I pointed out that blacks would likely have been much worse off in a nation of only slave states. The 3/5^th Compromise is a literal example of the subtitle of my blog: “Perfect is the enemy of the good.”

At the end of the day, over the last million or so words I’ve written about everything from race to the judiciary to entrepreneurship to European travel and more, most from a conservative, even libertarian perspective. I regularly make the argument that western civilization is the greatest that has thus far been produced by men. And it’s not even close. While the Egyptians built the pyramids 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians, Egyptians, and Greeks developed math and the Chinese invented gunpowder and paper, the reality is, almost every single thing used by most people around the world today is a consequence of western civilization.

For most of human history, life was brutal, short and dangerous. For most today, it’s not.  And there’s a reason. These five elements: Free speech, the rule of law, limited government, private property and Capitalism combined to give humans the unprecedented ability and motivation to be creative and productive. And the results were extraordinary. Longer lifespans. More food. Larger and safer living quarters and conditions. Vastly more options for making a living and safter conditions when doing so.  Cheaper, faster and more comfortable transportation. Unprecedented communication tools and energy. Exponentially more information available and accessible. Leisure time, something almost unheard of throughout history.  And the list goes on.

But none of that happens in a fascist state.  Nor a Communist state. None of that happens in a tyranny, nor in a cradle to grave nanny state. None of that happens when science and math and human nature are ignored, and finally, none of that happens when there are no consequences for bad actors. 

But those are all elements of what America is becoming.  Families on welfare for generations.  Giant banks and corporations privatizing profits and socializing losses.  Government regulation of virtually every aspect of life. Violent criminals let loose on society with slaps on the wrist. Freedom of speech defined by whose feelings get hurt.  Merit taking a back seat to a spectrum of victimization categories.  And this list too goes on.

But here’s the thing.  No society ever prospered on the basis of victimization and a nanny state culture where citizens turned on one another and the few worked to support the many. Never, not one.  And no, modern European nanny states haven’t prospered because of their paternalism, they prospered in spite of it because the United States guaranteed their security for the last 75 years.

I write to try and make a difference. I try to showcase the fact that most Americans, indeed most westerners, have lost sight of the reality that we’re living in the greatest and most prosperous time in human history, and more importantly, they willingly choose to ignore what created it and indeed attack those responsible. It’s not politically correct to say, but this civilization was largely created by white people, most originating in western Europe. Nor is it PC to say that Christianity was the force that impelled it. And finally, it’s individual liberty, private property, limited government and Capitalism that were the oil that lubricated the engine of advancement. 

To the degree that modern America and western civilization are making policies that are antithetical to all of those things, they’re killing the goose that laid the golden civilizational egg.  And it would be one thing if they could point to an example of some place, some time, some civilization that was equal to or greater than ours, particularly at scale.  But they don’t because they can’t. It didn’t work in New Harmony, Indiana, it never worked in the Soviet Union and it didn’t work in the 1960’s communes.

It was western civilization and the United States that took men to flight, put men on the moon, discovered DNA, invented the computer, harnessed nuclear power and revolutionized farming.

Nonetheless every day we’re faced with a growing faction of citizens who whine because someone else has something they don’t, because they’re victims of someone else’s success, that bad actors shouldn’t have to face the consequences of their actions or that someone is saying something that hurts their feelings.  And for them, the solution is always the same: More government.  More government to take from others to give to them. To stop others from being successful. To silence and imprison enemies and allow fellow travelers to do anything with impunity. That’s called tyranny and it never, ever, leads to prosperity.

Teddy Roosevelt said, “Comparison is the enemy of joy.”  I think it’s no coincidence that he also said, “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.” Both refer to setting oneself apart from others. 

Which is, I think, the fundamental problem with America and the west right now:  comparison, envy and the lack of gratitude for exactly where we are in the big picture.  That skewed perspective is what leads huge swaths of the population to be willing to destroy the good in pursuit of the illusion of perfection. I write to try and wake America and the west up to the fact that continued prosperity is not guaranteed. Much had to go right for us to get here but it wouldn’t take much going wrong to destroy it. 

You can only lay siege to the foundations of a civilization for so long before it collapses. We’re seeing that across Europe and the United States today. Gone is the appreciation of and gratitude for men who did great things and built this civilization, replaced by reverence for and desire to become influencers, most of whom have accomplished nothing. You have large numbers of illegals who don’t share western values and native-born minorities who hate the majorities and think the rules don’t apply to them. Add to that a self-hating wing of the majority and you have a perfect storm that will destroy the west and take civilization as we know it with it. 

Europe will find itself part of the caliphate while the United States will devolve into a bloody morass of demographically defined armed camps. And eventually the economically and militarily empowered Chinese Communists, not constrained by morals of any kind, will enslave much of the world.

When that history is written it will say that a once great west committed civilizational suicide, having crucified itself on a cross anchored by diversity, globalism, environmentalism and compassion. 

I’d prefer not to go quietly into that good night, thank you. Which is why I write. I may make all the noise of a tree falling in the woods, but I’m going to continue doing so for as long as the Lord allows.    

Democrats and the Tyranny of the Mob

Forty years ago there was a great show on NBC called Hill Street Blues.  It was an early player in the gritty police drama genre, a-la The Wire or Bosch. The ensemble show was led by Daniel J. Travanti playing Capt. Frank Furillo and his love interest, the stunning Veronica Hamel as public defender Joyce Davenport.

In one episode the police had arrested a suspect for a particularly heinous crime and Davenport was his attorney.  There was a giant mob in front of the jail demanding the suspect’s head.  Furillo knew the suspect was guilty but the man refused to confess. 

In order to “encourage” the suspect to confess, Furillo told Davenport that her client was being released.  The suspect, knowing that if he walked out that door he would be set upon by the frothing crowd, decided to confess.  Davenport was furious so we expect Furillo might have been sleeping on the couch that night…

That episode was an example of mob rule, albeit one orchestrated by government.  The more common form or mob rule is what happened down in North Carolina some weeks ago when the University of North Carolina gave in to the literal mob outside their doors and offered Nikole Hannah-Jones tenure.  The university had previously offered the writer of the insidious 1619 Project a five year contract – sans tenure, and she had accepted.  Soon however Hannah-Jones decided that such a contract demonstrated UNC’s racism and soon the university was overrun by a mob demanding she be granted tenure.  And as the cowards that university administrators typically are, they complied and offered her tenure.  Something happened on the way to their final capitulation however… after the offer of tenure that Hannah-Jones had demanded came through, she decided she she’d rather not. 

That is episode is a microcosm of exactly what is going on in America today:  Somebody feels aggrieved, social media engages and enrages an army of supporters to protest against the racist in question and they eventually apologize and acquiesce to whatever is demanded of them. 

That’s not quite how a civil society is supposed to operate.  That’s particularly true as it relates to government action.  If Target or Facebook or Coke or Nike or Disney want to beclown themselves by genuflecting at the altar of wokeness that’s their business and citizens have the option of shunning their products or services.  With government however, there is no such freedom.  Government, by its very nature applies to all citizens equally, or at least that’s the theory.  As such, when government bows to the mob and acquiesces to its demands, the rule of law suffers. 

The last few years have been a virtual tour de force of government acquiescence to the mob.  One of the early examples of this was Baltimore and its previous mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, following the death of Freddie Gray in police custody.  As the chaos erupted across the city, the mayor not only acquiesced to the mob, she literally gave them permission to wreak havoc: “We also gave those wished to destroy space as well.”  That is the definition of mob rule, and the mayor of a major American city let it happen.  As is usual with Democrat treachery, little thought was given to the rights of innocent citizens whose property was destroyed, whose lives were put in jeopardy or whose freedoms were quashed as they hunkered down in their homes hoping to survive the chaos and violence.

Not to be outdone by the vacuous Baltimore mayor, in the summer of 2020, in the midst of telling Americans that they needed to essentially live like hermits to battle Covid, mayors across the country not only allowed mobs to rampage via “mostly peaceful” demonstrations, they took up the mob demands of “Defund the Police”.  The result has predictably been a skyrocketing of violent crime across the country with cities like Portland, Chicago and New York leading the way.

The extraordinary thing about this acquiescence to the leftist mobs is that it runs contrary to the wishes of a majority of Americans, by a wide margin… and of virtually every demographic.  But that is the modern Democrat party, which sits somewhere to the left of Stalin. Their goal is not to make the country a better place for their constituents, nevermind all citizens, it’s not to empower Americans to find success and pursue happiness, it’s not even to reduce crime or improve schools.  No, Democrats, like most politicians, seek one thing:  Power.  And they’ve found the most base element of human nature to gain it and hold it: violence of mob.

Which brings us back to the beginning. Our Republic was crafted specifically to protect citizens against mob rule.  The United States has never been a democracy because the Founding Fathers understood that mob rule was a recipe for tyranny and thus crafted the mechanism of our Constitution specifically to protect the nation from such. The staggered terms of office, the states appointing Senators, the recognition of individual rights in the Bill of Rights and more, all of those things were intended to limit government power and restrain the unbridled passions of mobs seeking to wield the levers of power. James Madison wrote in the very first line of Federalist #10:  “Among the numerous advantages promised by a well constructed Union, none deserves to be more accurately developed than its tendency to break and control the violence of faction.”

Madison was talking about majority factions taking control of the government and using that position to trample on the rights of the minority.  But today the mob doesn’t even have to go through the process of convincing a sufficient number of citizens of the benefits of their positions to get voted into office.  Why bother trying to debate ideas or convince voters when you can accomplish your goals by utilizing violence or the threat of such to get the government – or private sector to do your bidding?  The reality is, violence is an extraordinarily efficient means for accomplishing one’s goals, and it’s made that much easier when the government officials charged with enforcing the laws are sympathetic to your cause, or worse complicit in the threats of said violence. 

The tyranny of the mob we are seeing spread out across the country would no doubt have saddened the Founding Fathers, but it likely would not have surprised them.  Ben Franklin, when asked about the kind of government that emerged from the Constitutional Convention responded “A Republic if you can keep it” while Alexander Hamilton observed “Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” There’s something sadly ironic that a nation founded by such intellectual giants should be felled by imbeciles like Joe Biden, Nikole Hannah-Jones, AOC and Bill de Blasio who have the luxury of attacking it only because it created sufficient prosperity in the first place that they never had to actually do anything productive in their lives. 

Rule of Man vs. Rule of Law - President Obama is a free man’s worst nightmare

The United States Constitution is a unique document. It is the foundation for how the federal government is structured and sets the basis for the relationship between the federal government, states and citizens. In what might be a surprise to most Americans, the Constitution does not confer rights on them. Their rights are bestowed by the Creator as detailed in the Declaration of Independence, the document that established the United States of America in the first place:

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…

What the Constitution does is prohibits the government from infringing upon those rights. Nor does the Constitution articulate all of the rights that citizens have. The 9th Amendment of the Bill of Rights states as much very clearly:

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

What made the Constitution of the United States unique was the fact that for the first time in human history there was a written constitution that clearly defined the powers the national government had, and most importantly, clearly articulated the limits to that power.

Implicit in that Constitution is the concept called the Rule of Law. The 10th Amendment makes clear that the powers of the federal government are limited to those delegated in the document:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

And therein lies the problem. The United States is supposed to be a nation ruled by laws, not by men. As Hayek explains in The Road to Serfdom:

“Nothing distinguishes more clearly conditions in a free country from those in a country under arbitrary government than the observance in the former of the great principle know as the Rule of Law. Stripped of all technicalities, this means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand — rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan one’s individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge”

In other words, for a free country to exist, men’s actions must be taken in the presence of previously established, well defined and clearly articulated laws. Otherwise his every move will be taken under the threat of potential illegality, arbitrarily imposed at the whim of those who have accumulated the most power.

I cover this basic Constitutional information simply to contrast it with actual actions of the current occupant of the White House. Our Constitutional Professor in Chief is either ignorant of the Constitution or simply feels like it does not apply to him. Regardless of the cause, today in the United States we are very much moving towards a Rule of Man and away from the Rule of Law.

Really? Some examples please…

There is the takeover of Chrysler. In a typical bankruptcy the secured debtholders get first dibs on the company’s assets. That is the way the law is written and that is the basis upon which secured lending takes place. President Obama threw out the rule of law and coerced Chrysler’s secured debtholders into accepting $.29 on the dollar while paying his friends at the UAW $.40 on the dollar for their unsecured obligations, eventually giving them 55% of the company.

No doubt lenders will henceforth think twice about committing their resources to borrowers given the fact that government can come in and arbitrarily adjust their contracts.

Then there is the National Labor Relations Board. The NLRB made news last year by illegally seeking to decide for Boeing where it could invest its money. The lawlessness of the board didn’t fall far from the tree... This January, President Obama, seeking to circumvent the Senate’s advise and consent role appointed 4 people to the NLRB via recess appointments despite the Senate being in pro-forma session. Pro-forma session? Certainly that must mean that the Senate was not really in session so no actual business could be done, right? Actually… Not according to the President. Just the previous week he was so sure the pro-forma session was real that he signed into law the payroll tax extension bill that was passed during such as session. Either pro-forma sessions are in session, or not, but they can’t be both. It’s like being pregnant, one either is or isn’t, you can’t be both. This is a perfect example of Rule of Man vs. Rule of Law. Unfortunately for the United States the Rule of Obama supersedes the Constitution in that battle.

There are many others of course but the most egregious is of course Obamacare. The Constitution clearly does not give the federal government the right to force consumers to purchase anything; not healthcare not Twinkies, not tooth paste, not even green cars. Despite that, Obama and his Reid / Pelosi led Congress decided to pass a law that does just that – purchase health insurance. If Uncle Sam has the right to force you to purchase health insurance under the threat of jail, then the Constitution becomes nothing but a relic of a once great nation that was once governed by the Rule of Law.

President Obama is a free man’s worst nightmare. Even for those foolish enough to support his statist, redistributionist, green policies. Why? Because he is the epitome of the Rule of Man. Rule of Man simply means that the person in control of the mechanism of government can do whatever he wants to do, and while it’s exercised by your guy that’s great, but what about when someone you disagree with gets into the position of power? Without the Rule of Law to guide and constrain government actions, a nation will quickly devolve into a tyranny of men. Not sure about that? At the Constitution’s bicentennial a quarter century ago could you have imagined that the government could dictate what you must feed your kids for lunch, could require you to buy anything at all simply because you're alive or force churches to provide contraception or abortion benefits? I don’t think so.

Welcome to the Rule of Man. We’ve seen this play itself out before, where someone comes to power legitimately and then manipulates the rules to give themselves virtually unlimited power. That’s how Hitler did it. That’s how Chavez did it. That’s how Putin’s doing it again. Can you imagine a Barack Obama unfettered by the concerns of seeking a second term? One shudders to think…