The Hacienda On The Hill: Timbers In Place.

The New Royalty has become unabashed about its pretensions:

A petition on the formal White House petitions website called for "gun free" zones to be extended to politicians, saying if it's good enough for children in schools and other places where otherwise legal firearm carry by private citizens is prohibited, then it should be good enough for our country's leaders, right?

Wrong.

Here is the original petition language:

Eliminate armed guards for the President, Vice-President, and their families, and establish Gun Free Zones around them

Gun Free Zones are supposed to protect our children, and some politicians wish to strip us of our right to keep and bear arms. Those same politicians and their families are currently under the protection of armed Secret Service agents. If Gun Free Zones are sufficient protection for our children, then Gun Free Zones should be good enough for politicians.

Here is the response of the White House:

Working to Keep Everyone Safe

Thanks for your petition.

We live in a world where our elected leaders and representatives are subject to serious, persistent, and credible threats on a daily basis. Even those who are mere candidates in a national election become symbols of our country, which makes them potential targets for those seeking to do harm to the United States and its interests. In 1901, after the third assassination of a sitting President, Congress mandated that the President receive full-time protection, and that law is still in effect today. Because of it, those who are the subject of ongoing threats must receive the necessary and appropriate protection.

You can’t make this stuff up, Gentle Readers. Take it from one who spends his minuscule leisure time and energy writing fiction.

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If there's a genuinely funny aspect to the White House's response, it's the citation of a law that mandates full-time armed protection for politicians.

A law! The Regime has invoked the Majesty of The Law! But isn't the current president well known for his many refusals to enforce the laws? Hasn't he made it plain, by implication at the very least, that he'll only enforce those laws with which he agrees?

You don't need to read yet another tirade about that, Gentle Reader. I merely wanted to note it, as a foundation for what follows.

Isn't a law that discriminates among Americans an inherent violation of the Equal Protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment? If we defer that consideration, what about the implication that "our elected leaders and representatives are subject to serious, persistent, and credible threats on a daily basis," but that common American citizens are not? Finally, what about the intrusion into education represented by federally mandated "gun-free zones" around government-run schools. despite the complete absence of the words education, school, teacher, student, and the like from the Constitution of the United States? What does such a mandate say about the self-defense rights of school teachers, administrators, and other school employees?

Give that a spin on your mental merry-go-round while I fetch more coffee.

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Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein, in their masterpiece The Bell Curve, noted that the ongoing striation of the American populace into classes separated from one another by differences in intellect presaged the emergence of a "Latin American kind of conservatism." Their symbol for this was the hacienda on the hill, surrounded by parapets manned by armed guards. Those walls and guards exist to protect a class order in which the aristocrats enjoy an elevated lifestyle and access to power, from disturbances from los peones below.

As I wrote some time ago:

A class is defined by its legal and social privileges. The aristocrats of medieval times were not distinguished by their lineages or their deeds, but by the things they were allowed to do, without penalty, that commoners were not. There is reason to believe that the majority of medieval aristocrats were fairly responsible stewards of their lands and of public order within them. That does not justify the creation of a class of men who could wield high, middle, and low justice over others, but who would normally escape all consequences for deeds for which a commoner would be severely punished.

Among the privileges medieval aristocrats enjoyed were that of bearing arms, and of employing others to bear arms at their command and on their behalf. Commoners were forbidden to possess a weapon, or to wield a common tool as a weapon, except when pressed into the service of the nobility. That the aspiring aristocrats of our time should seek to re-establish that privilege is entirely consistent with the sociodynamics of our increasingly fractious and violent age.

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Education in America is in a terrible state. The steady elevation of school taxes to stratospheric levels has corrupted the entire trade, and has made it next to impossible to operate a private alternative to the government-run juvenile-warehousing system. Very few families are well enough off to be able to afford both to support the government schools and to pay for a private education for their youngsters. Only the wealthy and politically privileged have the power to escape the system. It's a power they use without the least hesitation or embarrassment.

Most parents of minor children are resigned to this, and struggle along as best they can. What they have a harder time swallowing is the notion that their children should be involuntary targets for a lunatic who's decided to get his name into the papers. After Columbine it became a cleavage issue. If we can judge from the prevalent response to the Newtown massacre, it's about to become a very hot button indeed.

That's all to be expected from a people accustomed to the concept that their well-being, and the well-being of those they love, lie principally in their own hands. What I'm waiting for beyond that is a general recognition of what truly lies behind their children's mortal danger: an ever more arrogant political aristocracy determined to maintain its class privileges -- the security and serenity of its haciendas -- no matter what risks it might impose on los peones.

The political elite's presumptions haven't offended enough of us yet. No density of scandals, usurpations of powers not granted, infringements on individuals' rights, nor ostentatiously expensive taxpayer-funded vacations seems adequate. What more will it take?