Just In Case You're Not Yet Thoroughly Sick Of It...

...have a little Mark Steyn on l'affaire Zimmerman:

The defining characteristic of English law is its distribution of power between prosecutor, judge, and jury. This delicate balance has been utterly corrupted in the United States to the point where today at the federal level there is a conviction rate of over 90 percent -- which would impress Mubarak and the House of Saud, if not quite, yet, Kim Jong Un. American prosecutors have an unhealthy and disreputable addiction to what I called, at the conclusion of the trial of my old boss Conrad Black six years ago, "countless counts." In Conrad's case, he was charged originally with 17 crimes, three of which were dropped by the opening of the trial and another halfway through, leaving 13 for the jury, nine of which they found the defendant not guilty of, bringing it down to four, one of which the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional and the remaining three of which they vacated, only to have two of them reinstated by the lower appeals court. In other words, the prosecution lost 88 percent of the case, but the 12 percent they won was enough to destroy Conrad Black's life.

Steyn is, of course, referring to the prosecution's thwarted attempt to admit "Murder 3" -- homicide with aggravated child abuse -- as one of the verdicts the jury is permitted to reach. Technically, under federal law and (I think) the laws of the state of Florida, Trayvon Martin at age 17 was a minor -- a minor trying his best to commit Murder 2 with his fists. Self-defense still applies; given the overwhelming weight of both the eyewitness testimony and the circumstantial evidence, Zimmerman was entirely within his rights to take Martin's life.

Zimmerman committed a praiseworthy, pro-social act. I don't care who thinks otherwise; a violent, thuggish person of any race or creed taken permanently off the streets is a net gain to social peace. Florida's political elite, under pressure from the federal Department of (In)Justice, felt Zimmerman had to stand trial for something. Accordingly, the prosecution is desperate to convict him of something -- anything at all. But the prosecution's case, despite the suppression of evidence favorable to the defense and a presiding judge whose pro-prosecution bias could hardly be more blatant, has folded like a cheap accordion...and the consequences have laid bare the fiction of "equal justice under law" in these days of rampant racialism, victimism, and anarcho-tyranny (Sam Francis).

No doubt further consequences will soon be upon us. However, there are still several possible directions they could take.

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Florida's firearms laws are relatively permissive. It's what's called a "shall-issue" state, in which the authorities have essentially no discretion: an applicant for a concealed-carry permit whose criminal record is clean cannot be arbitrarily denied that permit. Since 1987, when the state's firearms laws were liberalized, many Floridians have availed themselves of such permits.

The possession of a carry permit doesn't automatically mean that its possessor will go everywhere armed. However, the typical permittee does prefer to carry when it's convenient to do so; that is, when he doesn't intend to go anywhere that bars armed persons from entering, or into some inherently firearms-hostile environment such as a swimming pool. Thus, a substantial fraction of permitted Floridians carry routinely, and their neighbors have grown comfortable with it.

The strong possibility of race riots over a Zimmerman acquittal will raise that fraction closer to 100%.

Now, it might not be immediately obvious, but a man set upon by surprise will seldom manage to defend himself successfully, even if he's armed. Surprise, coupled to the attacker's natural initiative, is that great an advantage. But an environment in which many persons are armed enjoys a "network effect" unknown to disarmed locales such as New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago: armed bystanders are far more likely to come to the aid of an attack victim. Should George Zimmerman be acquitted, and should the "organizers" really precipitate the threatened riots, that "network effect" is what the rioters will need to contend with...in Florida, at least.

In other, less well prepared parts of the country, things could take a much uglier turn. Think Rodney King Redux: massive and widespread violence; large-scale destruction of property; looting of retail establishments; and (of course) hordes of black racialist hucksters telling us "creepy-ass crackers" how we "had it coming."

Such riots, of course, would have nothing to do with justice. They'd be explosions of envy and hatred, inculcated and carefully nurtured these past fifty years, among blacks toward whites. In other words, the rioters would be rioting because they want to riot, have wanted to riot for some time, and felt the opportunity had arrived. The Zimmerman verdict would be only a pretext.

And the Law of Unintended Consequences would begin to function at once.

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White Americans have already begun to react against the imposition of unearned guilt upon us for the "troubles" of American blacks. The black-on-white crime statistics, the two Jesse Jackson clown shows, the Tawana Brawley affair and other Al Sharpton-emceed circuses, the Rodney King riots, the flash mobs of black youths that have assaulted white passers-by in several cities, the total collapse of black-ruled cities such as Detroit and Washington D.C., and the unending demands for "reparations" for the injustices done to persons long dead by persons long dead have -- pardon the phrase -- raised whites' consciousness of the great danger victimist, racialist blacks pose to our well being and the well being of the nation. There's a good reason Mark Butterworth's Tales of New America are so popular.

There's a threshold looming ever nearer: a line which, should we cross it, we could never un-cross: the line that precipitates a real, full-scale, flying-lead race war, after which America would know its own version of apartheid.

Blacks might tell themselves that it could never come to that, that American whites are already sufficiently suffused with racial guilt to be firmly inhibited against that degree of backlash. They're wrong -- typical victims of racialist wishful thinking -- and I shall tell you why.

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There's no such thing as a group identity that engenders no other consequences. Groups coalesce for a reason -- most often, to oppose other groups -- and their first and most powerful impulse is to protect those of their members who are threatened by other groups.

Racial group identity is no exception to this pattern. Indeed, it's the prototype for such studies. He who thinks of himself as black first and foremost will reflexively rally to the defense of even the most violent, criminally inclined persons of his race. In a sense, that's what group identity is for; it's the most visible expression of the innate xenophobia that's built into Mankind's genes.

(A side note: There are persons who claim that Mankind's innate xenophobia is a bad thing, to be combated and ultimately erased. They're wrong. Evolution equipped us with that reaction for good and sufficient reasons. More, few of the xenophilia-promoters ever face the question, "If I don't know the stranger at my gate, why should I trust him without evidence?" Christ commanded us to love our neighbor, not to open our arms to every wandering vagabond who happens by pleading for a free meal.)

Thus, even decent, responsible, peaceable blacks will feel an inclination to rally to the defense of blacks accused of some crime. They will feel that impulse even when the evidence for the criminality of the accused is open and overwhelming. The O.J. Simpson verdict, delivered by a majority-black jury, was no accident.

Should a race war break out, many normally peaceable American blacks would not remain absolutely "on the sidelines." They would engage in the conflict at least to the extent of sheltering their more militant brethren. Indeed, just as nominally peaceable Muslims have cooperated in sheltering and sustaining their jihad-inclined co-religionists, many American blacks would do the same for fighters of their race. Thus, they would make themselves co-combatants...and therefore, targets...and thus would summon even more whites "onto the battlefield."

The level to which this must rise to convince American whites generally that blacks can no longer be tolerated in the larger society cannot be known until that level is reached. After that, no remediation would be possible. The outcome of the war would be foreordained by the numbers involved. Afterward, either there would be no blacks alive and free within our borders, or the nation would be racially partitioned even more firmly than apartheid South Africa. In either case, there would no longer be a United States of America as we've known it since the end of the Civil War.

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At this time, for reasons that have become far too obvious to require enumeration here, blacks, at least in concentration, are dangerous to whites. It simply doesn't matter why. No more does it matter how fervently we wish it were otherwise. John Derbyshire's "talk" might have cost him the acceptance of the conservative Establishment, but that doesn't mean he was wrong.

Envy and hatred toward whites among American blacks have metastasized such that any racially-polarizing incident could be the falling stone that looses an avalanche. Race riots in the wake of a Zimmerman acquittal have a better chance than most of triggering a nationwide race war. The more intelligent black leaders ought to understand this -- and to convey it to their fellows, as forcefully as necessary. Millions of lives could well depend on it.