September 16, 2011
(Link to article at Strike the Root)
Recently an Atlantic article on the history of guns emphasized the 1960s Black Panthers exercising their right to bear arms openly on the California state capitol steps. The article highlights one confrontation between a Panther and an Oakland police officer, who sees guns in the Panthers’ car and asks to see one of the guns. Knowing his rights, the Panther states that he doesn’t have to give the officer anything but his ID, name and address, and the conversation continued:
“Who in the hell do you think you are?” an officer responded.
“Who in the hell do you think you are?,” Newton replied indignantly. He told the officer that he and his friends had a legal right to have their firearms.
Newton got out of the car, still holding his rifle.
“What are you going to do with that gun?” asked one of the stunned policemen.
“What are you going to do with your gun?,” Newton replied.
After a larger crowd showed up, the Panther stated, “If you try to shoot at me or if you try to take this gun, I’m going to shoot back at you, swine.” And the officer let him and his fellow Panthers go on their way.
Can you imagine such a confrontation now, ending with the cop leaving the individual alone? No, not today. Today, many cops are overzealous and/or extremely narcissistic, are bullies, neanderthals and/or tyrants. That Panther civilian would probably have been murdered in cold blood today.
It is necessary that people know and understand their rights as human beings, and defend their rights, especially in our “Us vs. Them” society. That refers to We, the presumably innocent public, versus the State, its apparatchiks and propagandists. That is, we who believe in the rights of the individual, the right to presumption of innocence and the right to be left alone, the right to move about and travel freely, the right that our persons and property are not violated by others or handled or searched by agents of the State, and the right to not be stopped and questioned by police who have no reason to suspect us of any wrongdoing.
We are now living in a police state, a prison state, in which the civilians are prisoners of the state and must bow to the authority of armed thugs. And it is only getting worse, and with the aid of the “clovers” and obedient masses, who have willingly accepted their lives being surveilled, questioned, searched, scanned, and raped by police and other agents of the criminal State.
Here is a confrontation between a cop and a civilian that would be from our current police state. The civilian is walking from the local pharmacy down the street toward a department store:
Police: Where are you going?
Civilian: I’m going to the department store.
Police: Why are you going there?
Civilian: To get stuff.
Police: Where do you live?
Civilian: 1349 Dependence Avenue, Washington, D.C.
Now, if another civilian approached that first civilian with those personal questions, don’t you think that information would be none of the other person’s business? Well, not in our current police state, apparently. And it isn’t just police who are intrusive against civilians, but our other government agents and bureaucrats and our neighbors are getting more intrusive as well.
Here is how that conversation really should go:
Police: Where are you going?
Civilian: Why are you asking me that?
Police: Just answer the question – Where are you going?
Civilian: Do you suspect me of something?
Police: No, just tell me where you’re going!
Civilian: Well, if you don’t suspect me of something, then I have a right to be left alone by the police. You are obligated by law and the Constitution to leave me alone if you don’t suspect me of anything.
That should be the end of that. The civilian should go on his way, and the police officer should go on his way.
However, oftentimes, perhaps especially when a civilian does exercise his rights, the police do not like their authority questioned, that is, the artificial authority granted to them by the State that other people are not allowed to have over others, which negates the idea of “equality under the law.” Such artificial authority allows the agents of the State to be above the law, which is what has been encouraging them to act like thugs and goons, marauders and murderers.
So, if that confrontation actually did occur, the cop might apprehend the civilian and detain him, not for committing any crime but for not bowing to the cop’s authority, not disclosing personal information that was none of the cop’s business, when ordered to do so. And of course, like a coward, the cop probably then would have called for “back up.”
Throughout America, people are being arrested and thrown in jail for non-crimes, while the actual criminals, such as abusive police and intrusively overreaching government bureaucrats, get away with actual crimes – of physical violence, trespassing, destruction and theft of private property. People are being kidnapped and caged for the non-crimes of videotaping police, growing a vegetable garden on their front lawn, having a garage sale, a lemonade stand, and so on. And schools are causing little 9-year-olds to be arrested for showing a toy gun, or suspended for teasing a fellow child in school that is now called “bullying.” Some schools are now banning hugging among students, because that might be misinterpreted as “sexual harassment.” What a sick society this has become! Little kids being arrested for showing toy guns and kids suspended for hugging, while the police continue to harass, bully, punch, kick, beat up, rape, tase, shoot, maim, and murder totally innocent human beings, and they get away with it!
Every day, the news is filled with one story after another of how innocent civilians are jailed for being disobedient, for not obeying a policeman’s orders. Why have the police become such cowardly little dictators?
And we also have a society with a Congress in Washington, filled with people who love to give orders and commands through their dictatorial legislation. And there are thousands and thousands of government bureaucrats across America who get very upset when you do not follow their orders to do as they say. It is not so much that these misfits and reprobates actually care about the poor, disadvantaged foster children or small businesses. It’s that they just like giving orders. They are little dictators, just like the abusive cops.
As the late psychologist Alice Miller referred to in her book, The Drama of the Gifted Child, some people in positions of authority are extremely narcissistic, and they perceive others as objects, and not only as objects, but as parts of themselves. When the object doesn’t do what one wishes, total rage occurs, as though one’s own arm would not function as one willed it to. That is what goes on with these dictatorial cops, politicians and bureaucrats.
Civilians, whose lives, liberty and individual rights are abused by police or other agents of the State, need to actively seek justice against the offenders. In this case, the civilian – especially if he has been arrested for no good reason, his whole day ruined, and now given an unjust arrest record – should demand that the arresting officer himself be arrested, and charged with violating the individual’s civil rights, causing criminal mischief, harassment, false arrest, terrorism, and so forth. And then, if the police departments try to resist one of their own actually being arrested and put on trial, and try to suggest that their officers are “only doing their job,” the offending officer can tell that to the judge, as the old expression goes.
Actually, law-and-order conservatives should support this, if they actually believe that all individuals must follow the rule of law. After all, while “a conservative is a liberal who got mugged,” a “civil libertarian is a conservative whose innocent son was assaulted or murdered by a cop, or whose own life was ravaged by a fanatical government bureaucrat.”
So if we want to call this a just and civilized society, we must hold all individuals accountable for their actions, and that must include public officials and police. For example, Dick Cheney, as Paul Craig Roberts has observed, was involved in starting three wars of aggression against two countries – Iraq (1991 and 2003) and Afghanistan (2001) – that were of no threat to the U.S., which, along with torturous sanctions, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent human beings and much destruction of those two countries. It is astounding to anyone of any decency and any common sense that this individual has gotten away with such egregious crimes against humanity. Yet, he is on a book tour and enjoying life as a non-tried and convicted war criminal. Dick Cheney is now the poster child for our current totalitarian banana republic under the rule of the criminal State.
Speaking of Dick Cheney, if it is true that Barack Obama has been committing illegal wars of aggression in Libya and elsewhere, in addition to his supposedly illegal and immoral expansion of executive power domestically, then why hasn’t Congress filed one article after another for Obama’s impeachment? Why wait until elections a whole year from now to get rid of a murderous tyrant, when impeachment is the more moral and practical process for immediate dismissal?
Meanwhile, when they are on their many golfing trips and tax-funded extravagant vacations, the President and First Lady, Barry and Evita, have been getting away with plenty of pilfering and mooching, and no one seems to care. Barry and Evita have been wining and dining while Rome burns.
And now, their Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, in addition to all her other examples of banana republic tyranny and gross incompetence, has a brownshirt campaign called “If You See Something, Say Something.” What Napolitano is encouraging is that people spy on their neighbors and report to the government someone who might be unusual or “suspicious.” Of course, one person’s “suspicious” is another person’s mere non-conformity or political dissent. Besides the pathological need for control, bureaucrats just like to make everyone’s life as miserable as possible. That is what they were born to do.
If we were consistent in our desire to bring government ne’er-do-wells to justice, we should have Napolitano arrested for inciting illegal activities, such as eavesdropping, false accusation and false arrest, harassment, and so forth.
The people need to actively seek justice when their lives or businesses have been wronged by punkish police and government bureaucrats. For example, as soon as the Old Dominion Freight Line trucking Company was hit with an EEOC lawsuit for removing a self-confessed alcoholic driver from a driving position, the company should immediately have had criminal charges of harassment and reckless endangerment filed against the actual bureaucrat(s) responsible for such a lawsuit. And the head of the Gibson Guitar company should immediately have criminal charges filed against not only the federal bureaucrat(s) who initiated the intrusions against their business, but also against each and every member of the Department of Homeland Security (!) and S.W.A.T. teams that invaded their factories and offices. “Just following orders” in enforcing bad civil rights-violating and property rights-violating laws is no excuse.
We the People must fight back against these petty bureaucrats, these punk tyrants, and the cowardly, Neanderthal, Nazi police who use brute force and bullying intimidation against innocent civilians, little kids and grandmothers.
Finally, the real way to eliminate Nazi, Neanderthal police is by de-monopolizing all local community policing and security, and allow any individual or group who wants to volunteer their time to do such endeavors, as well as allow for open free entry into those activities of any private security firm that wants to do that. This encourages accountability. Government-monopolizing of these activities is what lures psychopaths and criminals into those positions, as monopolists are not accountable. In a civilized and just society, no one individual may have government-granted authority over another and no one may be above the law. And this should apply to national security as well.
Additionally, repeal all gun-related laws and protect each individual’s God-given right to bear arms and right to carry and openly display weapons. That is the real crime prevention method that works.
And regarding the tyrannical federal bureaucrats, in the manner of how the Soviet Union came to a necessary conclusion through decentralization, so should America decentralize.
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