Tuesday, January 12, 2021

“Lawful Resistance”

     A cocky chum stepped forward--one who had to be sent for twice. "You can't do this! It's against the law!"
     "What law, Gospodin? Some law back in your hometown?" I turned. "Finn, show him law."
     Finn stepped forward and placed emission bell of gun at man's belly button.

     [Robert A. Heinlein, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress]

     Heinlein’s novel of revolt against unwarranted authority and its excesses is a classic of Twentieth-Century speculative fiction. It’s also one of the most instructive novels of that era – and the passage above is a sterling example of what it has to offer. “What law?” is the question of the hour. Indeed, we should have been asking it a year ago, when “the authorities” refused to act against rampaging mobs that destroyed billions of dollars’ worth of others’ property and rendered a number of American cities near to uninhabitable. The refusal to act implicitly declared that there are two laws: one for those whose actions advance the agenda of the political elite; the other for the rest of us grubby peons.

     But if there are “two laws,” is there law at all? Law in the American sense? More to the point, what’s the point of trying to act “lawfully,” if “the authorities” can suspend, alter, abridge, or dismiss the law when it suits their purposes or the purposes of their backers?

     I must dismiss the myriad calls for “lawful resistance” to the Usurpers. I appreciate the sentiments and the intent, but those who exhort us thus are living in an America that no longer exists.

     The time for prissiness about “the law” is past. It isn’t even visible in the rear-view mirror. Whether we like it or not, what matters today is the ability to impose your will upon your circumstances: in other words, the possession of force majeure in your personal context.

     Every other notion of “law” is someone’s fantasy. Ask Ashli Babbitt.


     I didn’t want to write the above. My personal inclination is to get along, rather than to trigger a confrontation. But we’re at the culmination of “a long train of abuses.” We have a Usurper Administration looming ahead of us. And it has already been made quite plain that the Usurpers and their Big Tech allies intend our subjugation.

     You doubt that? Consider this story:

     On Monday, Facebook blocked former presidential candidate Ron Paul from his own page. The move came hours after the longtime congressman and libertarian hero shared an article he wrote criticizing Twitter and Facebook for banning President Donald Trump from their platforms.

     “Last week’s massive social media purges – starting with President Trump’s permanent ban from Twitter and other outlets – was shocking and chilling, particularly to those of us who value free expression and the free exchange of ideas,” Paul wrote. “The justifications given for the silencing of wide swaths of public opinion made no sense and the process was anything but transparent. Nowhere in President Trump’s two ‘offending’ Tweets, for example, was a call for violence expressed explicitly or implicitly. It was a classic example of sentence first, verdict later.”

     Paul shared the article on Facebook sometime around 10 a.m. EST. Hours later, on Twitter, Paul said he had been blocked by Facebook.

     “With no explanation other than ‘repeatedly going against our community standards,’ Facebook has blocked me from managing my page,” Paul announced on Twitter. “Never have we received notice of violating community standards in the past and nowhere is the offending post identified.”

     Dr. Paul, a widely admired former Congressman, is 85 years old. He’s been a major figure in the liberty movement for nearly fifty years. I worked for his campaign in 1988, when he was a candidate for President. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is his son. To cut off his communications with his many followers achieves...what? For whom?

     The irony of Facebook blocking Dr. Paul’s page because he dared to criticize Big Tech censorship is just a rotted cherry atop the fetid sundae.

     As I’ve written before, the essential requirements for the maintenance of freedom are education, communications, and weaponry. Big Tech is enlisted with the Usurper forces, and is steadily severing our ability to find and communicate with one another. The Usurper Administration has already made it clear that it intends to take our weapons. It’s also proclaimed the “necessity” of renewed “lockdowns,” to smother what remains of our economic and social vitality. Law? What law? Some law from back in the Cleveland Administration?


     In one of the less well considered things he wrote in The Law, Frederic Bastiat said that “Law is justice.” No, sorry, dear departed Frederic, law is nothing of the sort. At its best, it’s a statement of intentions we’re supposed to believe will conduce to justice. But the reality is often a good distance from the ideal.

     Many are the laws that go unenforced, or are selectively enforced according to the whim of “the authorities.” Many are the laws written to target particular institutions or individuals, who are thus made “enemies of the state” in fact if not in name. Many are the laws written so obscurely that even those who wrote them cannot explain their intent nor their effect. Many are the laws that have advanced injustice rather than justice.

     When those who claim to represent the law decide, arbitrarily, when it applies and what degree of enforcement it deserves, then there is no law. When they decide, for whatever reason, that the law binds some persons but not others, then there is no law. When the law is written in such a fashion that no one can be certain what it compels or forbids, then there is no law. And when the law is “interpreted” to override the natural rights of individuals to their lives, liberties, and honestly acquired properties, then there is no law.

     The rest is left as an exercise for my Gentle Readers.

15 comments:

Ed Bonderenka said...

The basis for the law in this country is the Constitution.
The left cannot bring itself to adhere or recognize the plain language of that document.
All else follows from that.

Joe Texan said...

Facebook has a big, new datacenter in a former cornfield at the intersection of Nebraska Hwy 50 and Platteview Rd, in Springfield, NE. Google has a big, new datacenter in a former cornfield at the Bellevue, NE/Offutt AFB exit on I-29 in Iowa. Those are the kinds of places where patriots should be holding "mostly peaceful protests."

NITZAKHON said...

Heinlein once said, via Starship Troopers:

“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”

In my evolution from L to R I was moved by a very important saying to the effect that you only truly own what you can carry / defend. The same applies to rights: the only rights you have are those you can defend against intrusion.

Obviously paper fighting is better than bullet fighting. What happens when paper becomes meaningless?

JC said...

I have long despaired for the rule of law. I have seen the ascension of the rule of lawyers. As a young person I though that I might study the law and fight that nasty tendency, I I quickly found out that that I could not do so and also study in a school of law. My ideas were anathema. I dropped out.

Paul in Boston said...

Joe Texan: Wiping out a datacenter doesn't matter much in the scheme of things. Andrew Carnegie, founder of US Steel, in his day was the richest man in America, even richer than John D. Rockefeller. He once said, "Take away my factories and I'll have it all back in five years, take away my people and I'll have nothing." The real issue is the New York news media, the NYT, the Associated Press, and all the network news operations. It's been pointed out that without their influence, the politics of the US would be about the same as the politics of West Texas. The real program over the next several years should be to embarrass, humiliate, and generally ruin the lives of the newspaper and network news operatives from the top executives and anchors down to the lowest trainee reporter. Make the national news operation of the NYT, ABC, CBS, all the rest a financial anchor that will take down the entire network unless it's thrown overboard. They can keep the entertainment stuff, it's the news that's poison. Once that's done the Democrat Party no longer has a megaphone to send out and amplify its message.

John in Indy said...

I almost agree. The expression of the law in America is the Constitution.
The basis of the law is the social contract, wherin we each surrender some part of our ability to use force at our own direction, to a government, in an agreement with other members of our civilization will do likewise, and that the government we thereby empower will respect those of our rights we have not voluntarilly limited.
The Prog / Left, andvtheir cronies in .gov have breached the social contract, and are acting through force alone against us.
If the contract does not bind them, it can not bind me.
They are sowing the wind, and will necessarily reap the whirlwind.
John in Indy

dogsledder said...

Which is the BIGGER CRIME ? Stealing the election, or preventing us from discussing it ? Taking away of our 'right' to vote and choose our own leaders and representatives, or the taking away of our 'right' of free speech ?
Both are treasonous acts. If the government will not 'prosecute' and punish treason WE the People will have to do it by any means necessary. That is why they want to take away our guns. BTW, if the government can take it away, it is not a RIGHT, it is merely a permission slip given out by our masters to their favorites.
Is this the hill to die on ? IT IS THE LAST HILL.

NITZAKHON said...

@JC: I have felt in my gut that America was dead when "Mr. Flexibility" won in 2012 after colluding with the Russian President on a hot mike. I could not believe it. It was then that I realized the America I knew had passed.

Trump gave me hope, but... Francis, if you'll permit the scifi analogy, there's a scene in the book DUNE where the mentat, Thufir Hawat, says that he underestimated what the Harkonnens would do to get his liege Duke Atreides. The same applies here. We on the Right constantly give "the benefit of the doubt" to the Left; witness the "Hey we're all colleagues and friends" behavior in the House and Senate by the Right towards the Left even as the Left backstabs the Right time and time again...


@Paul: Howdy to my neighbor to the south.

Let them eat blackouts.


@John in Indy:

sarc - Come on serf, you have the "rights and priviledges we permit you". /sarc


@dogsledder:

BTW, if the government can take it away, it is not a RIGHT, it is merely a permission slip given out by our masters to their favorites.

Exactly.

But that's the Left's mentality: ALL comes from The State.


Is this the hill to die on ? IT IS THE LAST HILL.

And this is something that has me tearing what little hair I have out - myself and many others. We fall back, we retreat, we cede... and not only does the Left never stop, our own side keeps saying "If we hand them just a little more they'll be satiated".

As you say, this is the last hill.

Matt Bracken said...

Standing Orders:
In the absence of orders, with all comms cut, find something communist and destroy it.

Francis W. Porretto said...

Indeed, Matt. "Doing something constructive at once is better than figuring out the best thing to do hours later." (Heinlein)

Boone said...

Since we're dropping quotes, "A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." - General George S. Patton.

Linda Fox said...

Start with making the wives/daughters of the execs embarrassed to show their faces in public, whether in their neighborhood, their place of work, or online.
Men are influenced by the complaining of their women - they will change a policy, if it gets them peace at home.
Sad, but true for most men.

5stonegames said...

Paul in Boston. Allowing your enemy to provide your media is suicide since this is if anything a culture war.

Entertainment is the way that the Left influences minds, far more than news. This is why in the past, there were Obscenity laws , Federal broadcast standards the Hayes Code and the Comics Code Authority among other things.

To maintain healthy Conservative nation popular entertainment needs to reflect those values and trash kept away from the under 21 crowd. Its also means Right leaning people need to be creatives, we've given ground on those issues for far too long.

Brian E. said...

At the risk of severely mixing metaphors:

We now find our self at the last box.

Brian E. said...

Bill Whittle is a strong proponent of this idea, having worked in the belly of the beast, and (for now, at least) still living in Los Angeles. He claims no plans to move - because he’s fighting from behind enemy lines (he considers getting the conservative message out via entertainment a critical task - especially In content aimed at a younger crowd). The latest incarnation of his website is easy to find - just search on his name using your favorite non-Google search engine. ;-)