The Fantasy of Peace & Safety!

[ImminentDanger]

I've taken the liberty below to BOLD some of the judge's comments as particularly important and relevant to this thread...


Taking Liberty for Granted
By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano - 03 June 2021
https://www.newsmax.com/judgeandrewp.../03/id/1023741

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." * Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826).

No one knows if Thomas Jefferson personally uttered those words. They have been widely attributed to him, but they don't appear in any of his writings. If he did not literally utter them, he uttered the sentiments they offer. They remind us not to take liberty for granted.

As America returns to pre-pandemic normalcy, we should think about the dangers of taking liberty for granted. This column has argued frequently that personal liberty is our birthright. It is a natural right. It doesn't come from the government. It comes from our humanity, which is a gift from God. As God is perfectly free, so are we.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution presume that our liberties are natural and cannot be suppressed or taken away by the government absent due process.

Due process requires a notice of charges, a fair hearing with all constitutional protections at which the government must prove fault, and the right to appeal. The Constitution doesn't grant liberty; it restrains the government from infringing upon it.

Some liberties are so essential to the pursuit of happiness that the Constitution prohibits their infringement, period * with or without due process. These are the liberties that we exercise every day * worship, speech, peaceable assembly, self-defense, privacy, ownership and use of property, commercial transactions, travel. We voluntarily establish governments to protect our liberties.

Are the governments we have established morally legitimate? They are when they have, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration, the consent of the governed, and when they defend our liberties. Absent consent and defense of liberty, government is not legitimate.

Jefferson argued that government exists only to secure our rights. When it fails to protect our rights, or when it destroys our property, we have the right to alter and abolish it.

These principles of personal liberty in a free society were mocked and attacked by the government during the recent pandemic, and most folks went along with it.

How, in a land made prosperous by rugged individualism and personal sacrifice, not by government, did the people become sheep when their governors * without legal authority and in utter defiance of constitutional guarantees that they swore to uphold * signed orders that purported to deny the right to worship, work, travel, assemble peaceably and use private property as one sees fit?

Why did so many folks who believe in personal liberty accept these illegal orders and cave to them? Why did we wear medically useless masks on our faces when we, not the government, own our faces? Why did we allow the government to close lawful businesses? Why did police and prosecutors break their oaths to defend the Constitution in deference to these gubernatorial power grabs?

The same Constitution that restrains the federal and state governments from curtailing fundamental liberties also guarantees those liberties. Stated differently, the 14th Amendment * which imposes the guarantees of the Bill of Rights on the states and prohibits the states from impairing those guarantees * also enables Congress to intervene when states fail to uphold basic, fundamental, constitutionally protected rights.

Did the feds come to the rescue of any of us in beleaguered states where our liberties were curtailed by executive decree? They did not.

Did the courts, whose principal role is to apply and enforce the Constitution, invalidate the unlawful commands of governors or curtail the unconstitutional prosecutions of those who had the courage to defy them? They did not.

Did any legislative body * state or federal * use its powers to write laws to invalidate the unlawful, unconstitutional, immoral orders of governors? They did not.

There is a common thread running through all this, and it leads to the dark and baleful state of voluntary servitude * a lamentable, Orwellian state of affairs where people are so afraid of a new demon that they voluntarily bow to rules and commands that bankrupt them and crush their liberties in a vain hope for safety.

The core thread running through all this is fear. Fear of sickness and death. Fear of bucking the tide. Fear of exercising personal liberty. Fear that the government might be right.

All these lockdowns happened overnight. There was no great public debate about them. There was far more acquiescence than challenge to them. The public took for granted that the governors actually had the authority they claimed they had and actually could become dictators in a crisis of fear * a crisis they created. Now that this is for the most part behind us, the question arises: Why did we let this happen?

It happened because we take liberty for granted. We repose the Constitution for safekeeping in the hands of men and women who, in the eternal conflict of personal liberty versus governmental power, side with power. These are folks popularly elected who don't care about liberty; they care about control.

At this writing, there is no clear answer as to the cause of COVID-19. But the cause of the pandemic was taking liberty for granted. What kind of a society is ours? You can go to jail for fishing or barbering without a license, but if you are a governor, you can crush the liberty of millions and destroy the property of thousands with impunity.

The next time this happens, will we cave, or will we resist?

One of the rights championed by Jefferson and his fellow founders was the right to secede from the government * the right to avoid a government to which one never consented. This is the core natural right for which the American Revolution was fought.

For a government without the consent of those it governs is invalid and illicit * and of no lawful authority. It only endures when masses of folks and shapers of opinion take liberty for granted.

These are folks popularly elected who don't care about liberty; they care about control.

Herein lies the dangers that led to The Third Reich & the necessity for World War II ... It can happen in America!

Who will come to save us? ... From our own myopic and delusional citizens?

...

[ImminentDanger]

Corporate Authoritarianism - For Money & Power

No matter how much assurance is given, by governments and companies, to their virtue and constraint, if it is possible to violate our Rights, they will do so for money & power. This is the reason to resist all things that make us vulnerable to such violations. It is the reason that the potential for small violations be taken seriously, because those things that are small now, will inevitably lead to larger & larger intrusions & violations.
<SNIP>
All of this in order to benefit themselves with money and power. They see others as the sheep to be shorn and eventually consumed as mutton when it benefits them.

FCC lifts rules so Amazon can build radar devices to track users' sleep
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...adar-devices-/
By Ryan Lovelace - The Washington Times - Monday, July 12, 2021

The Federal Communications Commission waived its rules so Amazon can build radar sensors that the company says would be used to track people's sleep.

The federal government's exemption for Amazon paves the way for the tech giant to monitor users' movements in the bedroom with extreme precision * all without users having to press a button.

The FCC accepted Amazon's claim that the tech would be used to improve users' health and wellness.

"Granting the waiver will provide substantial public benefit by, among other things, permitting the deployment of applications that can provide assistance to persons with disabilities and improve personal health and wellness," wrote Ronald Repasi, acting chief of FCC's office of engineering and technology, in a letter to Amazon granting the waiver. "We believe that, without the higher power levels associated with the waiver, it is highly likely that Amazon would not be able to produce devices that transmit with large enough bandwidths to provide sufficient resolution to achieve these objectives."

Details about the product Amazon plans to build are scarce. Mr. Repasi's letter to Amazon on Friday, first obtained by Bloomberg, noted that Amazon indicated its devices would be "nonmobile" and function only when connected to a power source.

Amazon did not respond to a request for comment. In its June request for a waiver, the company indicated it needed the waiver to build devices that could monitor sleep and detect movements.

Amazon officials told the FCC that the "higher degree of resolution and location precision" offered by the planned devices would help users better estimate sleep quality and improve their awareness and management of "sleep hygiene." The company's officials also argued the tech could be of use to users with physical impairments.

"Facilitating touchless device control could have a substantial societal impact by greatly enhancing the accessibility of everyday devices," the Amazon officials wrote in their request.

According to Business Insider, Amazon has explored developing a product that expands its Alexa technology, the artificially intelligent virtual assistant, to track and detect sleep apnea.

But the company's touchless radar technology for users' bedrooms is likely to raise concerns about hackers invading the privacy users expect in their bedrooms.

Last month, an ADT home security technician was sentenced to slightly more than four years in prison after hacking into customers' video feeds.

The Justice Department said the technician secretly accessed roughly 200 customer accounts more than 9,600 times without the users' consent. One female customer told the federal court that the technician accessed her bedroom camera five times per day, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Amazon is not the only tech company that has received a waiver for touchless technology. In granting Amazon's waiver, the FCC noted it previously gave a waiver to Google in 2018 that the company used to deploy a mobile radar in its Pixel smartphone to enable touchless control of the device.

This is another example of the Road To Hell Paved With Good Intentions (supposed Good Intentions). And with government complicity, these giant corporations are collecting and utilizing personal information to increase their bank accounts and their control.

"Last month, an ADT home security technician was sentenced to slightly more than four years in prison after hacking into customers' video feeds." How many hundreds or thousands of technicians and hackers have already compromised people's home privacy, BUT ARE NOT CAUGHT OR EVEN KNOWN???!!!???

People willingly place these devices in their homes because of some perceived enhancement to their life-style. Even if that's true, the very invasion of privacy that these devices represent should 'scare the hell out of people' who think that the swap of Privacy Rights for some Convenience is a worthwhile trade.

How long before the police begin to monitor your movements 'inside your castle' to ascertain if you are being 'an obedient comrade'? Or, to know exactly where you are in your own home when they crash thru the front door for a warrantless search?

There is no way to Overestimate the Stupidity that people will embrace!

...

[ImminentDanger]

Freedom in the Coming Time of Madness
By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano - 05 August 2021
https://www.newsmax.com/judgeandrewp...05/id/1031223/

Sadly, we are approaching a time in America during which our elected public officials will assault the liberties we have hired them to protect. Whatever the cause, the government will soon blame its failures to contain a virus on a small portion of the population and then impose restrictions on the inalienable rights of all of us.

We cannot permit this to happen again.

During the Civil War, when President Abraham Lincoln thought it expedient to silence those in the northern states who challenged his wartime decisions by incarcerating them in military prisons, he was rebuked afterward by a unanimous Supreme Court. The essence of the rebuke was that no matter the state of difficulties * whether war or pestilence * the Constitution protects our natural rights, and its provisions are to be upheld when they pinch as well as when they comfort, in good times and in bad.

Whether COVID-19 is coming back or not, our central planners have panicked. We do not have a free market in the U.S. in the delivery of health care; rather, we have thousands of pages of statutes, regulations and controls at the federal, state and local levels.

Those controls were revealed as manifestly deficient the last time around. The feds were so protective of their control of health care * an area of governance that the Supreme Court has ruled is nowhere delegated to them in the Constitution and, but for their power to tax those who defy them, is nonexistent * that they insisted that only the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta could be trusted to test for the virus.

It took weeks of begging by governors and mayors and health care professionals for the feds to relent. Of course, once they acknowledged that labs throughout the country were as competent as theirs, they realized that their incompetence had deprived all physicians as well as most private sector and state government-owned labs of the test kits themselves.

We all know how central economic planning diminishes freedom, produces scarcity and adds to the cost of products. Now we know that central micromanagement of health care kills people.

But these mayors and governors were not to be outdone by the feds in their totalitarian impulses. Many of them issued decrees that are as profoundly unconstitutional as Lincoln's efforts to silence dissent.

They ordered the closing of most businesses and nearly all retail establishments. They acted as if they, and not we, owned our faces. They shuttered religious institutions. It took a year for the courts to interfere partially with this madness.

The fulfillment of these totalitarian impulses put millions out of work, closed and destroyed thousands of businesses and impaired the fundamental rights of tens of millions * all in violation of numerous sections of the Constitution that the totalitarians swore to uphold.

And now they are threatening to do this again.

The Contracts Clause of the Constitution prohibits the states from interfering with lawful contracts, such as leases and employment agreements. The Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment prohibits the states from interfering with life, liberty or property without a trial at which the state must prove fault. The Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment requires just compensation when the state meaningfully interferes with an owner's chosen lawful use of his property.

Taken together, these clauses reveal significant protections of private property in the Constitution. Add to this the threat of punishment that accompanied these decrees and the fact that they were executive decrees, not legislation, and one can see the paramount rejection of basic democratic and constitutional principles in the minds and words and deeds of those who have perpetrated them.

Add to all this the protection in the First Amendment of the rights to worship and associate, and elsewhere the judicially recognized right to travel, and it is clear that these nanny state rules were profoundly unconstitutional, indisputably unlawful and utterly unworthy of respect or compliance.

Why is this happening again?

Throughout history, free people have been willing to accept the devil's bargain of trading liberty for safety when they are fearful. We supinely accept the shallow and hollow offers of government that somehow less liberty equals more safety. It doesn't. This is the government's dream * dominance without resistance.

This happened here with the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 1790s when the Federalists feared a second revolution and punished speech critical of them, during the Civil War when Lincoln feared dissent and Congress feared defeat and they locked up innocents, during World War I when President Woodrow Wilson punished the speech he hated and feared, and during the Great Depression when President Franklin D. Roosevelt feared economic calamity and seized property without compensation.

And, after 9/11, fearing another attack, Congress secretly crafted the Patriot Act's circumvention of the Fourth Amendment and authorized the creation of the total surveillance state.

Of course, just one year ago, we free people were all in "lockdown" * a word used to describe confining prisoners to their cells.

This sordid history came about when the public was fearful of the unknown and trustful of the government's bargain. But the liberty that was sacrificed for the safety that was promised is being taken away again.

Liberty is natural and personal. You can sacrifice yours, but you cannot sacrifice mine.

Thus, personal liberty * the Declaration of Independence calls our rights inalienable, and the Ninth Amendment reflects freedom's nature as limitless * is insulated from totalitarian and even majoritarian interference.

Today, the fear of contagion again gives government cover for its assaults on freedom and poses a question the government does not want to answer: If liberty can be taken away in times of crisis, is it really liberty; or is it just a license, via a temporary government permission slip, subject to the whims of the politicians in power?

We cannot permit this to happen again.

While this is referencing the Totalitarian State using a medical mandate to eliminate freedom, the exact same rationale will be used to declare that Gun Violence (as though Guns are NOT inanimate) is a similar crisis and requires similar elimination of guaranteed freedoms in order to get more appropriate safety.

None are so BLIND as those who REFUSE TO SEE.

NOW is the time to resist all these violations of our Constitutional Rights, irrelevant of the excuses they have used to justify those violations.

...

[ImminentDanger]

Tops shooting and Hochul's knee-jerk attack on the First, Second Amendments
By Andrew P. Napolitano - May 18, 2022
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...ttack-on-the-/

OPINION:
Within hours of the tragic killings of 10 Americans — nine Black and one white — in a Buffalo supermarket by a deranged white racist last week, the governor of New York began calling for infringements upon personal liberty. First, she argued that social media platforms were somehow liable for these killings since they provided a platform from which the killer could reinforce his hatred and on which he could manifest them.

Then, she argued that hate speech and incendiary speech should be prosecuted. Finally, she attacked the U.S. Supreme Court, which is about to rule on a challenge to New York's restrictive concealed carry laws. She said twice that "New York is ready for you." It is unclear just what she meant, but the implication was that she'd find a way around whatever the court rules.

She uttered a bitter constitutional mouthful.

From the writings and mental history of the gunman, we know that he was and is deeply disturbed. Police brought him to a mental hospital after he made threats at school, and his hatred was posted on dark websites. Nevertheless, New York gun laws — among the strictest in the country — did not stop him from lawfully purchasing a rifle and the ammunition with which to use it.

The gun control crowd, personified by the governor, makes critical errors in its arguments and shows material misunderstandings of fundamental liberties.

Its critical error is a mistaken belief that someone willing to commit mass murder will somehow comply with gun regulations. It doesn't matter to the killer what the gun laws are; he will find a way to attempt to kill. What matters is a set of laws with which law-abiding folks do comply, the effect of which is to neuter their ability to defend themselves.

This column has steadfastly maintained that the only language mass murderers respect is their own — violence. Only violence against them, or its serious imminent threat, will stop them.

Hence, contrary to the New York governor and the laws she likes, only an armed citizenry will give the creeps among us pause before killing, and only superior firepower will stop them once they start. Their hatred of their intended victims is beyond reason and beyond the ability of the law to regulate. They don't know and couldn't care what the laws are. They only react to fear and their own bloodshed.

John Lott, who is the country's foremost gatherer and analyst of gun statistics, has demonstrated conclusively that more guns equal fewer crimes of violence. The killers themselves have recognized this, as they only stop when confronted by superior firepower.

All of this is an argument from reason and common sense.

The argument from the Constitution recognizes the right to self-defense as a fundamental liberty. It is in the highest category of rights we have. The Supreme Court has made it clear that the right to keep and bear arms is the modern extension of the ancient, natural and common law right to self-defense.

The court has yet to rule on the circumstances under which one may exercise this right outside one's home. But to the framers, because it was a natural right, it traveled with you. The governor of New York apparently fears the recognition of this traveling right. She shouldn't. Her state-employed bodyguards exercise it 24/7 for her benefit.

Her comments about free speech are just plain wrong under contemporary Supreme Court jurisprudence, and they are dangerous because they can constitute chilling. Chilling is any behavior by the government that tends to show displeasure or that appears to offer resistance to the exercise of the freedom of speech. Chilling often gives a person second thoughts before speaking for fear of government reprisal. The Supreme Court has defined chilling as a direct violation of the First Amendment and thus as unconstitutional.

The court has ruled that hate speech and incendiary speech are protected. We all know that both of these types of speech can sting and the hurt can persist. But the remedy for them is not to silence the speaker or to blame the owner of the bulletin board for the message that he permits to be posted. The remedy for hate speech and incendiary speech is more speech.

The leading case is a 1969 Supreme Court opinion called Brandenburg v. Ohio. In that case, a Ku Klux Klan leader in Hamilton County, Ohio, condemned Jews and Black individuals and incited a crowd to march to Washington to take back the government; "revengeance" — a made up word — is what he called for. His absurd argument caught the attention of Ohio prosecutors who charged him with incitement to riot. He was convicted, and the conviction was upheld by the Ohio Supreme Court.

In a groundbreaking unanimous ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed his conviction. In so doing, it gave us a modern summary of the limits of incendiary and hateful speech. From and after Brandenburg, all innocuous speech is absolutely protected; and all speech is innocuous when there is time for more speech to challenge it. The values underlying the First Amendment speech and press clauses mandate that all doubt and all inferences favor the speech and disfavor government regulation of it.

The amendment presumes that folks can decide for themselves what to hear and read and how to respond, and this process of the give and take of ideas must be devoid of government involvement. Speech is not only the utilization of the natural rights to think as you wish and say what you think and publish what you say; it is, the courts have ruled, vital to democratic values that all persons remain free to speak their minds, no matter how caustic or hateful are their ideas.

The governor has blinders on. She complains of too much freedom. In New York, there is too little.

YEP - The Leftist Liberals are Dangerous to Law-abiding Citizens - In the face of the truth, they lie - Well to be accurate, they lie all the time. The more chaos they can produce, the louder they claim the need for THEIR CONTROL!

"John Lott, who is the country's foremost gatherer and analyst of gun statistics, has demonstrated conclusively that more guns equal fewer crimes of violence."

...

[85MikeTPI]

YEP - The Leftist Liberals are Dangerous to Law-abiding Citizens - In the face of the truth, they lie - Well to be accurate, they lie all the time. The more chaos they can produce, the louder they claim the need for THEIR CONTROL!

“Artists use lies to tell the truth while politicians use them to cover the truth up.” - V

[ImminentDanger]

The RED FLAG, about the inappropriateness of this proposal, is this: "The White House also praised the proposal."

Senators announce 'commonsense, bipartisan' framework deal on gun reforms
by Christopher Hutton - June 12, 2022
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/n...ng-gun-reforms

A bipartisan group of senators announced Sunday a proposal to combat gun violence, stemming from a concerted effort on Capitol Hill to respond to a string of deadly mass shootings in the United States.

The framework, the result of talks led by Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Republican Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), includes some reforms on access to firearms and cracking down on illegal sales, along with funding for mental health and school security, and measures meant to protect victims of domestic violence.

"Today, we are announcing a commonsense, bipartisan proposal to protect America's children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country," a group of 20 senators said in a press statement. "Families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities." The group is currently made up of 10 Republicans and 10 Democrats.

The legislation includes a federal grant program that would help states enact "red flag" laws that would allow law enforcement to keep guns away from individuals deemed to be potential threats to themselves or others, Murphy explained in a Twitter thread. The proposal would also close the "boyfriend loophole," a legal gap in the Violence Against Women Act that allowed unmarried partners convicted of domestic violence to buy or own firearms.

The legislation also included proposals referenced by Republican lawmakers, including "billions in new funding for mental health and school safety," additional legislation dealing with straw purchases, and enhanced background checks for gun purchasers under the age of 21, Murphy said.

The proposal does not include other provisions favored by Democrats and gun control advocates, including raising the minimum age for purchasing certain weapons from 18 to 21.

"Today's announcement of a bipartisan gun-safety framework is a good first step to ending the persistent inaction to the gun violence epidemic that has plagued our country and terrorized our children for far too long," said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in a press statement. "Once the text of this agreement is finalized, I will put this bill on the floor as soon as possible so that the Senate can act quickly to advance gun-safety legislation."

The White House also praised the proposal.

"I want to thank Senator Chris Murphy and the members of his bipartisan group * especially Senators Cornyn, Sinema, and Tillis * for their tireless work to produce this proposal," President Joe Biden said in a statement. "Obviously, it does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction, and would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades."

The framework arrives nearly three weeks after the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed, and a shooting at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store in which 10 people were killed.

The House passed sweeping gun reform legislation on Wednesday, but that proposal faces a steeper challenge in the evenly divided Senate thanks to the filibuster.

The continued mantra that the GOVERNMENT MUST FIX THIS WITH GUN CONTROL is indicative of the depth of the problem. The policies of the government schools have created the vulnerability to violence. They refuse to properly deal with 'out of control' kids - From K - 12. They have demanded that parental rights be taken over by government employees (unionized teachers who are self-serving). They have introduced more and more perverse curriculum that DOES NOT prepare children for life - with a moral compass, self-reliance, a love of freedom, nor the will to defend it - all with a sense of personal responsibility for their own choices and lives of others around them. 'It takes a village' destroys the very essence of those values.

The Promise of Peace & Safety is ever on the lips of those who want to manipulate society to gain more control. The values listed above are not their priority. They are not interested in indentifying the root causes of the thinking and actions of these violent young people, which is the distortion or lack of moral values in the family, educational institutions & society. The politicians and power-brokers are interested in using every display of evil to their own benefit for more power & control.

They promise to end such events, but their actions are not directed to the source of the problem.

...

[ImminentDanger]

Uvalde _vs_ Greenwood - This is the essence of the required proper response to the increase in violence in our public spaces. But the leftist liberals will never come to this conclusion (no matter how bad the violence becomes) because governmental solutions (no matter how ineffective) are the only ones that keep the power that the leftist liberals so desperately demand.

The long term solution (which the leftist liberals will also never embrace) is the abandonment of promoting immorality as freedom. Such promotion leads to exactly the kind of immoral society where there is no respect for life (from abortion to street violence to euthanasia) in all of it's forms.

There will never be total peace in our society. There will always be a need for armed citizens. The founding fathers knew this TRUTH.


The Uvalde disaster and our right to self-defense
Commentary By Andrew P. Napolitano - July 20, 2022
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...-self-defense/

OPINION:
The failure of law enforcement at all levels * local, state and federal * to protect 19 children who were slaughtered by a madman in Uvalde, Texas, in May has raised serious questions about the role of police in our once-free society. Admittedly, the Uvalde case was extreme, as 376 armed police officers did little or nothing to stop the slaughter perpetrated by one madman. There was no command and control; the decisions made on the scene were chaotic and farcical; and the essence of what law enforcement did was to shield itself from harm, rather than stop the harm.

The killer in Uvalde began his rampage by shooting randomly at the school building from a parking lot across the street as he walked toward the school. He apparently entered through a door that officials presumed was locked. It wasn't. The police themselves waited 44 minutes to obtain a key to this unlocked door, which none of them even tried to open. The commanding officer at the scene was not in electronic communication with his team, his dispatcher or the 24 other police agencies present.

The Texas Legislature condemned the police response, and now heartbroken parents are left without a remedy. This is so because the U.S. Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the government and its agents have no duty to interfere with crimes that are in progress and no general duty to protect innocents. Under this line of cases, collectively called the DeShaney doctrine, the police can physically observe a bank robbery, a rape or a murder, and lawfully do nothing.

Joshua DeShaney was a 4-year-old boy who had been repeatedly abused and irreparably brain damaged by his own father whose behavior was well-known to the local government. When the mother sued the government for failing to protect Joshua, the Supreme Court ruled that the government enjoys the common law privilege of allocating its resources with impunity. Stated differently, the government decides whom it will protect and whom it will let be. Not surprisingly, the DeShaney doctrine compels the government only to protect itself and those it has confined.

There is nothing in the Constitution that compels the DeShaney doctrine. It is just big government protecting itself. There are many selfless police throughout the country who would courageously interfere to stop violent crime because they have the ability to stop it and because it is always right to save innocent human life.

In Texas, where it is lawful for anyone over 18 to purchase and openly carry a handgun, it is unlawful to carry one in a school. Local school officials can request exemptions from this law from state officials, and those exemptions have been given to all 137 Texas school districts that requested them. Of course, in none of the districts where teachers and staff are armed have there been any killings.

Just this week, in Greenwood, Indiana, before the police arrived, a 22-year-old civilian shot and killed a shooter who had begun a killing rampage in a shopping mall. Had Indiana not recognized the right to carry a firearm, we might have had another Uvalde or Buffalo, New York, slaughter on our hands.

The problem here is too much government, a progressive goal going back to the beginnings of the nanny state 125 years ago, when cities and towns started government monopolies on law enforcement and schools and taxed everyone in their jurisdictions for the so-called services these entities provided, whether the taxpayer received the services or not. Unfortunately, it takes a tragedy like Uvalde before folks recognize that America is no longer a free country.

In a free country, the government needs permission to do everything. In America today, we all need the government's permission to do anything, even to defend ourselves. Ayn Rand called this an inversion. Ludwig von Mises famously described the government as the negation of liberty, and Murray Rothbard called it the monopoly of force in a given geographic area with no presumption of moral propriety. Government has no competition; it has guaranteed customers who must pay its bills, and it has made itself immune from the consequences of its own failures.

Why do we give cops a badge and a gun and unchecked authority to restrain our free movements and then immunize them from their own failure to do what is expected? The police are at the fulcrum of the clash between order and liberty. Liberty is natural to humanity. Order is imposed by the tyranny of the majority.

Imagine that Uvalde had no police force and a group of parents hired private police to protect their kids at school. Would we even be having this conversation? Of course not. Yet, if the private police failed to protect the children, wouldn't they be fired and sued?

The same government mentality * pay whatever we demand and accept whatever we give * wants to strip us of our right to self-defense and leave us defenseless. That is the progressive dream * an egalitarian society where the government takes from each person according to our abilities and gives to others whatever it decides they need, and we are all dependent upon it.

Because most folks prefer the illusion of safety to the sweet fruits of liberty, the government has successfully stolen freedom and given the impression that only it knows how to use force for beneficial purposes. Uvalde shattered that illusion.

What do we do about this?

Thomas Jefferson argued that no government is moral without the consent of the governed, and all government needs the actual personal consent of the governed once in every generation. Without consent, the government has no right to negate freedom. Even with consent, if the government fails to do what we have hired it to do if it impairs liberty and permits others to take life, liberty or property, it should be altered or abolished.

"Most folks prefer the illusion of safety to the sweet fruits of liberty."

...

[Brick]

Je suis un homme épris de paix et je tuerai tous ceux que je dois pour le prouver.

[ImminentDanger]

In general, Conservatives want to live & let live... But Leftist Liberals are all about forcing their life choices on others.

So no matter how PEACEFUL you want to be, eventually you MUST FIGHT BACK in order to preserve your freedom to make choices or sometimes to even survive physically. If given power, the Leftist Liberals will not allow others to make life choices that are not in accord with their own preferences. They are authoritarians from top to toes and no logical or rational persuasion can penetrate the dictatorial shell of supposed 'good intentions'!

When all else fails, when all tolerance is quenched, when force is applied to destroy you
and counter-force is the only effective option left to allow your survival, then your axiom,
"I am a peace loving man and I will kill anyone I have to to prove it" (as in preserve it),
becomes far less oxymoronic.

...

[Brick]

When all else fails, when all tolerance is quenched, when force is applied to destroy you
and counter-force is the only effective option left to allow your survival, then your axiom,
"I am a peace loving man and I will kill anyone I have to to prove it" (as in preserve it),
becomes far less oxymoronic.

You are exactly correct! I do not seek conflict. But I will fight to preserve what I treasure whenever it is threatened.
Just like using a firearm when attacked. I do not shoot to kill, I shoot to live.