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Every day, I thank America’s Founding Fathers for their prescience in providing a Bill of Rights to protect against the government arbitrarily undermining fundamental civil liberties. The actions undertaken by the government in New Zealand in response to the mass murder by a lone gunman earlier this month, provides but the most recent illustration of why our Bill of Rights is so vital to the preservation of freedom.
The First, Second, and Fifth Amendments to our Constitution guarantee — among other fundamental liberties — the rights to free expression, the right to keep and bear arms, and the right to own property free from arbitrary confiscation. These civil liberties, which we enjoy here in America (and often take for granted), are being decimated by the New Zealand government in the name of “public safety.”
Predictably, of course, has been the effusive praise with which many public officials and media outlets here in the United States have lauded New Zealand’s government for “moving swiftly” in the wake of the March 15th murder spree in Christchurch; actions making it even more difficult than previously for that country’s citizens to purchase or possess most handguns and many rifles.
It would be surprising indeed, if the American Left had not quickly rallied in praise of New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern pressing for a sweeping ban on various firearms, including “military-style assault rifles” following the mosque murders. What is less understandable is the silence with which those same liberals who laud New Zealand and bemoan our own government for its gun-control lethargy, have reacted to the other edict issued by that government – criminalizing the physical or digital possession or distribution of the “manifesto” drafted and placed on-line by the gunman shortly before launching his murder spree.
The speed with which a ban on firearms morphed into a ban on speech, to be enforced by New Zealand’s Chief Censor (the official’s actual title), is breathtaking. Henceforth, as decreed by Ardern’s administration, physical or digital possession or transmittal of the killer’s rambling diatribe against immigration is a criminal offense. Copies of the “officially objectionable” screed possessed by individuals (including the media) prior to the censorship edict, must be destroyed – or an exemption granted by the government — in order to avoid prosecution.
One possible explanation for the silence exhibited by the American Left in response such an obvious blow to freedom of the press and individual freedom of expression, may lie in the fact that the censorship falls squarely at the confluence of two fears most commonly manifested by liberals: the fear of guns and the fear of “hate speech.”
Common sense should tell New Zealand’s leaders that banning a document already in the public domain does not make it disappear; especially in this internet age. Beyond the fact that government cannot make invisible that which already is visible, New Zealand’s bizarre effort to do so may in the long run actually impede efforts to prevent future firearms murders in the country (and perhaps elsewhere).
Making it more difficult if not impossible for individuals to study the document drafted and disseminated by the New Zealand killer, removes from the body of research clearly relevant background potentially useful in dissecting the mind of this – and perhaps other – mass murderers.
Moreover, in banning the document New Zealand officials have given a new mystique to a document that otherwise was worth hardly a cursory glance. It also forces those who may be susceptible to the drafter’s hateful thoughts into the shadows to secretly discuss it amongst themselves, rather than leaving the document in the public space to be debunked.
We cannot with comfort assume that the Bill of Rights will continue to protect Americans against illogical and arbitrary power grabs such as is occurring in New Zealand. A 2017 Annenberg survey found that more than one-third of Americans could not name even a single freedom protected by the First Amendment; a number likely even higher today.
Americans cannot be relied on to defend what they neither know nor understand. That so many in our country blindly applaud the moves by New Zealand to undermine basic freedoms for all its citizens in response to the bad acts by a single deranged individual, makes clear the depth of the challenge awaiting us.
So-called “no-knock” search warrants — a tool used with increasing frequency since the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act greatly expanded their availability — have proved extremely dangerous to civilians on the receiving end of such actions. A scandal involving the use of such a warrant earlier this year in Houston, Texas, however, illustrates just how dangerous these situations can be to everyoneinvolved, including the law enforcement officers executing such warrants; especially if undertaken with little or no regard for truth or accountability.
In January, 59-year old Navy veteran Dennis Tuttle and his wife were suddenly shaken by the sound of their front door being smashed in. What happened next left both Tuttle and his wife dead from gunshot wounds, and five Houston police officers injured. The police had been hoping to find large quantities of heroin in the Tuttle’s home. What they came away with — in addition to two human beings shot dead, five officers injured, and one pet dog killed — was a small amount of drugs.
Most tragically, however, is the fact this surprise raid appears to have been based not on facts, but on false statements made by Gerald Goines, the officer in charge of the operation, in order to secure permission from the judge to carry out the no-knock operation. The human tragedy of this operation is compounded in the refusal by the Houston Police Department to admit error, accept responsibility, and improve procedures going forward. Moreover, and in a move clearly designed to further shield the police department from responsibility, Police Chief Art Acevedo used the tragedy as a pretext to blame insufficient “gun control” in testimony before a congressional committee just days later.
Standard and constitutionally-based procedures for executing search warrants require the officers involved to announce their presence before entering the premises to be searched or in which a suspect is to be arrested. Furthermore, and in order for the suspect or suspects opportunity to challenge the constitutional propriety of the search, the police are required to leave a written inventory of items seized.Exceptions to these rules appropriately address circumstances such as when pre-entry announcement would pose a clear danger to the police or a hostage, would result in vital evidence being destroyed, or would put at risk an important and continuing investigation.
No-knock exceptions to standard search warrant procedures, however, have been expanded statutorily by the USA PATRIOT Act and by police procedures in many jurisdictions that have come to rely increasingly on SWAT team-type searches, even in circumstances that carry little if any expectation of violence. While the avowed purpose for such expansion has been to address searches conducted within the context of terrorism investigations, in recent years, the exceptions have come to swallow the rule.
Criminologist Peter Kraska estimated in 2006 that over a 25-year period, the use of no-knock warrants increased from 3,000 in 1981 to more than 50,000. The New York Times also found that no-knock raids from 2010 to 2016 resulted in the deaths of at least 94 people, including 13 police officers. This data suggests the incident in Houston is far from unusual.
As Washington Post columnist Radley Balko, a dogged watchdog of police abuse, noted in his column last month, the dangers of no-knock raids “create violence and confrontation where there was none before…sow confusion and chaos, and thus have a very thin margin for error.” Balko concluded that this, in combination with intentionally bad information from criminal informants (along with corruption such as in the Houston incident), produce results that are increasingly dangerous for civilians and police.
Yet, instead of serving as a lesson in bad policing practices, the death and destruction from no-knock warrants have bolstered calls from many police chiefs, including Houston’s, for more stringent gun control generally. This blame-shifting makes it more difficult to correct abuses such as apparently occurred in the lead-up to the botched Tuttle raid in Houston, and thereby further endangers both police and civilians.
Mandating “universal background checks” for all firearms transactions, or making it easier for judges to issue orders seizing a person’s firearm(s) because they might in the future commit a violent act — measures currently under consideration by the Congress — have nothing whatever to do with the issue at hand; despite Acevedo’s attempt to make it appear so.
The relevant and important issue which Congress as well as state and local governments should be addressing in the wake of the tragic no-knock raid in Houston, is how to protect against the minority of police departments that refuse to hold their officers accountable, or that fail to properly train officers in how to plan and conduct search warrants in the first place.
There is a proper role for the federal government in this process, by tracking, highlighting and limiting such abuses; but it is not to further curtail the ability of law-abiding citizens to exercise their rights guaranteed to them by the Second Amendment.
While far from the only recent example of a no-knock raid gone tragically wrong, the Houston example should serve as a clear warning sign that no-knock raids are in need of immediate and serious reform. And these efforts must not be permitted to be obscured by disingenuous efforts by the gun-control lobby or by the few “bad apples” like Goines and Acevedo, to further the gun-control agenda always lurking in the shadows of any tragedy involving the use of a firearm.
There is a video of Bernie Sanders and his wife on their 1988 honeymoon in the USSR, in which a shirtless Bernie is shown singing “This Land Is Your Land” with a bunch of drunk communists. It is a vignette apparently welcomed nowadays by the Senator from Vermont, who proudly represents true, “old school” socialism. Sanders’ doctrine is a far cry from the “bubblegum socialism” eagerly embraced by many 21st century Millennials, including the Congresswoman from New York’s 14th congressional district; but it must be taken just as seriously, if not more so. Today’s socialism is no laughing matter.
Socialism is socialism; and in whatever form is completely at odds with free political and economic enterprise that are at the core of our system of government. This holds true whether one considers the dry and pedantic old-school variety hawked by Sanders, or the bouncy, bubble-gum iteration gleefully spouted by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. And while it is easy to dismiss the latter, with its inane talk of “farting cows” or “garbage” capitalism, we do so at our peril; for the appeal of such nonsense is finding an easy mark in much of today’s American youth.
With socialist Venezuela visibly dying under the burden of a dictatorial socialist government, we might properly expect that “socialism” should be getting trounced in public opinion polls; yet the concept continues to draw voters to its siren song, especially younger ones.
At the most basic level, this phenomenon is actually not difficult to comprehend. For more than two generations, Americans have come of age being told that government is the solution to every one of society’s ills (real or perceived). The process of turning to government to solve every problem faced by the citizenry has created the fertile breeding ground in which today’s Millennials embrace precisely what this is — socialism.
Dismissing the antics of Ocasio-Cortez with snarky rebuttals or superficial jokes misses this key point. She is not the problem. She is merely the face of the far deeper malady infecting American culture and western civilization generally. It is a cultural problem an inch deep but a thousand miles wide. Notions of socialism now reach far into our political system and the American business sector; its tentacles have entwined the entertainment industry, and it has sucked the lifeblood from our once-outstanding educational system.
Dealing effectively with socialist tropes like “capitalism is irredeemable” or that incremental change to the status quo is simply shifting around “garbage,” requires far more than the superficial sound bites many in the GOP throw back at socialism’s minions like Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Kamala Harris (who claims not to be a “democratic socialist” but refuses to define even what that means to her).
Rather than the easy road of responding to today’s American socialists on their level of superficiality, conservatives must define and focus on the moral superiority of capitalism. That debate begins with defining free enterprise as the very foundation of American economic and political freedom; and moves on then to asking of Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and their socialist compatriots why they prefer a system that crushes human freedom in pursuit of collective mediocrity.
We must aggressively and publicly support the efforts being led currently by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to make education great again. Copies of the Constitution of the United States must be distributed in schools to every student in every grade; accompanied in high school by a copy of the Federalist as required study. Policy debates among adults about the proper role of government — whether in the context of Roe v. Wade or President Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency” at our southern border – are largely wasted if not truly understood in the context of what our government is, was supposed to be, and has become.
In October 1964, then-private citizen Ronald Reagan birthed a political movement and stirred a nation to action, with his nationally-broadcast speech declaring a “rendezvous with destiny.” Reagan identified the existential dangers facing American civilization (including the burgeoning growth of government and the threat from socialism’s bigger brother, communism). Drawing then on the reservoir of goodwill, patriotism and education bequeathed to us by our predecessor generations, Reagan warned that without girding for and meeting head-on the battle already looming, we would doom our children and grandchildren to a “thousand years of darkness.”
Bernie Sanders was 23-years old when Reagan delivered that speech. In his heart, Sanders knows the power of words such as Reagan’s; he witnessed the Soviet Union he so warmly embraced crumble in the face of the strategy unleashed against it by the forces to which Reagan gave voice. Eloquence and reason such as uttered by Reagan, if backed by actions consistent therewith, candefeat socialism in whatever form it marches; but only if we fight it with substance and understanding – two commodities in far too short supply in this year 2019 A.D.
Townhall.com
MARCH 6, 2019
‘For the People’ Legislation is Really ‘For the Government’
Bob Barr
3/6/2019 12:01:00 AM – Bob Barr
In an iconic scene from the 1980s comedy classic “The Blues Brothers,” Jake (John Belushi) and his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) are being chased by the police when Elwood attempts to allay Jake’s fears by asserting, “They’re not gonna catch us…we’re on a mission from God.” Today’s real-life Democrats believe themselves to be on a similar quest; one they claim is essential to “save democracy.” And, like Elwood, they believe they will not (cannot?) be caught before the mission is complete.
For the sake of our nation, they must be proved wrong.
It remains unclear exactly from whom, or from what, Democrats want to save democracy. Nevertheless, and perhaps just by coincidence, this crusade has been the Party’s obsession since being shocked by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat. Curiously ignoring the fact that this same democratic process was working fine when electing Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Democrats now are convinced the system is completely broken, and have assumed for themselves the responsibility to repair it in advance of the 2020 elections.
One such fix, H.R. 1 — the “For the People Act” — was approved by the House Administration Committee last week, setting up a likely floor vote later this month. The bill comes with much ballyhoo from Democrats, and contains numerous election “reforms” long coveted by liberals; including, for starters, automatic voter registration and expanded early voting.
There are other insidious measures lurking within the legislation’s pages. The bill includes provisions carefully crafted to undermine the 2010 Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which was a major victory for free political expression during election cycles. In a gut punch to nonprofit organizations’ ability to engage in election-cycle issue advocacy, H. R. 1 would force disclosure of contributors’ names; thereby significantly chilling free speech.
A coalition letter organized by FreedomWorks in opposition to H.R. 1 (signed by me among many others) outlines other serious issues with the bill, including an expansion of the definition of “political coordination” that would severely restrict political advocacy; a reorganization of the Federal Election Commission to make it more partisan in nature; and several provisions significantly extending the arm of federal government control into state and local elections.
The degree to which H.R. 1 would “federalize” state and local elections should come as no surprise to those who have witnessed the Democrats’ contempt for President Trump and the GOP reach a fever pitch. Ever since Clinton’s loss in 2016, the Left has been engaged in an all-out war to turn America’s system of government on its head in order to grab from Republicans as much power as possible.
Calls for an end to the electoral college have gone from a largely-forgotten liberal talking point to one championed (but still misunderstood) by high-level Democrats, including former Attorney General Eric Holder, who labeled the electoral college “undemocratic” and “a vestige of the past.”
Liberals also have expressed contempt for equal state representation in the U. S. Senate, especially following the 2018 election; prompting even the liberal-leaning Washington Post to remind Democrats the “Senate popular vote” did not actually exist. This, however, did not stop Sara Jeong, an ultra-liberal member of the New York Times’ editorial board, from recently bemoaning on social media “how the state of [W]yoming has two senators and a total population smaller than [P]ortland, [O]regon.”
Such disdain for a republican form of government so presciently designed by our Founders to protect minorities from the majority, belies the true intent of H.R. 1. Despite their tiresome moralizing, Democrats’ support for “direct democracy” in presidential elections is merely a means to the end; wherein the balance of power in our country is shifted to high concentrations of liberals clustered in major cities across America, with the means to more tightly control and dictate public policy for everyone else.
It is understandable why Democrats use the term “for the people” to describe their scheme, rather than the far more accurate, “control the people.” The camouflaged nature of their effort, however, makes it all the more important for us to understand that this legislative effort is but one instrument among many being employed by the Left with which to federalize public debate and policy. For example, despite declaring themselves “for the people,” Democrats have not hesitated to enlist unelected federal judges in their effort; through mechanisms such as nationwide judicial injunctions to thwart administration actions with which they disagree.
So it is with today’s Democratic Party, which cannot bring itself to declare what it stands for but does not hesitate to impose its will on “the people.”
In an iconic scene from the 1980s comedy classic “The Blues Brothers,” Jake (John Belushi) and his brother Elwood (Dan Aykroyd) are being chased by the police when Elwood attempts to allay Jake’s fears by asserting, “They’re not gonna catch us…we’re on a mission from God.” Today’s real-life Democrats believe themselves to be on a similar quest; one they claim is essential to “save democracy.” And, like Elwood, they believe they will not (cannot?) be caught before the mission is complete.
For the sake of our nation, they must be proved wrong.
It remains unclear exactly from whom, or from what, Democrats want to save democracy. Nevertheless, and perhaps just by coincidence, this crusade has been the Party’s obsession since being shocked by Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat. Curiously ignoring the fact that this same democratic process was working fine when electing Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, Democrats now are convinced the system is completely broken, and have assumed for themselves the responsibility to repair it in advance of the 2020 elections.
One such fix, H.R. 1 — the “For the People Act” — was approved by the House Administration Committee last week, setting up a likely floor vote later this month. The bill comes with much ballyhoo from Democrats, and contains numerous election “reforms” long coveted by liberals; including, for starters, automatic voter registration and expanded early voting.
There are other insidious measures lurking within the legislation’s pages. The bill includes provisions carefully crafted to undermine the 2010 Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which was a major victory for free political expression during election cycles. In a gut punch to nonprofit organizations’ ability to engage in election-cycle issue advocacy, H. R. 1 would force disclosure of contributors’ names; thereby significantly chilling free speech.
A coalition letter organized by FreedomWorks in opposition to H.R. 1 (signed by me among many others) outlines other serious issues with the bill, including an expansion of the definition of “political coordination” that would severely restrict political advocacy; a reorganization of the Federal Election Commission to make it more partisan in nature; and several provisions significantly extending the arm of federal government control into state and local elections.
The degree to which H.R. 1 would “federalize” state and local elections should come as no surprise to those who have witnessed the Democrats’ contempt for President Trump and the GOP reach a fever pitch. Ever since Clinton’s loss in 2016, the Left has been engaged in an all-out war to turn America’s system of government on its head in order to grab from Republicans as much power as possible.
Calls for an end to the electoral college have gone from a largely-forgotten liberal talking point to one championed (but still misunderstood) by high-level Democrats, including former Attorney General Eric Holder, who labeled the electoral college “undemocratic” and “a vestige of the past.”
Liberals also have expressed contempt for equal state representation in the U. S. Senate, especially following the 2018 election; prompting even the liberal-leaning Washington Post to remind Democrats the “Senate popular vote” did not actually exist. This, however, did not stop Sara Jeong, an ultra-liberal member of the New York Times’ editorial board, from recently bemoaning on social media “how the state of [W]yoming has two senators and a total population smaller than [P]ortland, [O]regon.”
Such disdain for a republican form of government so presciently designed by our Founders to protect minorities from the majority, belies the true intent of H.R. 1. Despite their tiresome moralizing, Democrats’ support for “direct democracy” in presidential elections is merely a means to the end; wherein the balance of power in our country is shifted to high concentrations of liberals clustered in major cities across America, with the means to more tightly control and dictate public policy for everyone else.
It is understandable why Democrats use the term “for the people” to describe their scheme, rather than the far more accurate, “control the people.” The camouflaged nature of their effort, however, makes it all the more important for us to understand that this legislative effort is but one instrument among many being employed by the Left with which to federalize public debate and policy. For example, despite declaring themselves “for the people,” Democrats have not hesitated to enlist unelected federal judges in their effort; through mechanisms such as nationwide judicial injunctionsto thwart administration actions with which they disagree.
So it is with today’s Democratic Party, which cannot bring itself to declare what it stands for but does not hesitate to impose its will on “the people.”
©2022 Liberty Guard, Inc. All rights reserved.
Designed and Developed by Media Bridge LLC