“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.

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     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?

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     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.