That Hoary Old Colloquial Definition Of Insanity

     I haven’t been writing nearly as much as previously for Liberty’s Torch these past few weeks. The reason can be found in the title of this piece. In essence, I feel that I’ve been repeating myself, and that to go on doing so would be pointless. Have I been saying things most other commentators are unwilling to say? Perhaps. But that doesn’t matter if the audience is lacking, or unwilling to listen.

     The Republic has fallen. Our “public institutions” are corrupt from top to bottom. The officeholders in whom we’ve reposed our hopes are cowards, almost without exception. “The law” is a farce used to subjugate honest, decent Americans while thugs, grifters, the political class, and the connected get away with anything, up to and including murder. (Cf. Sam Francis, “anarcho-tyranny.”) Those we have trusted to preserve America as it was founded have abdicated the responsibility.

     Do you really expect the Supreme Court to invalidate the electoral college votes of several states – on any grounds? I suppose it’s possible, but how likely is it? Supreme Court Justices have lives, homes, and loved ones just like you and me. Were they to take decisive action, the Left would target them personally. Why do we expect them not to be deterred by fear of the consequences?

     The Left is winning because its leaders know that violence trumps speech – and that we in the Right are unwilling to counter its violence with still greater violence. As in Weimar Germany, a violent minority is being permitted free rein to terrorize the nation into submission.

     Yet there are still persons who claim that the pressing need is to speak out, nothing more than that. Willful blindness knows no more blatant manifestation.

---

     I am indebted to Co-Conspirator Colonel Bunny for linking to this piece. While Gregory Hood’s essay is somewhat discursive, he says several things that must be said. However, he fails to recognize the implications of his own arguments. Here’s what I mean:

     We need only a small number of people who can speak out without being socially and financially ruined....The movement in-fighting will fade, because it is easier to unite in opposition and there will be no more tactical debates about whether to defend Donald Trump.

     Who would seriously claim that persons in the Right have not been “speaking out” up to now? The volume of our voices has been stupendous. What has it achieved? Why expect that it would achieve anything more once we’re “in opposition?”

     Violence trumps speech. The Left has embraced violence. If our “opposition” remains resolved to proceed solely with “speech,” the Left will roll roughshod over us. As we mathematical types like to say, quod erat demonstrandum.

     As I commented to Hood’s essay:

     “Social and financial” ruination are only the beginning. Just about everyone is vulnerable physically: in his business, his home, his loved ones, and his person. The Left, energized by the lack of a forcible response to its assaults and vandalisms of commercial properties, will not refrain from assaulting private citizens and their personal properties. Only a couple of days ago, a Michigan Trump supporter's house was literally bombed. Police response? None. They're afraid of being targeted too.

     If we are to be free, we must go to war -- war to the knife -- and it will be terrible. The alternative is enslavement.

     Having said that puts me in a category I hate to occupy: one who exhorts others to do what he cannot do himself.

---

     Because of the above, I haven’t been writing much, and what I’ve written has almost completely avoided the stolen election and what’s likely to follow. I am personally incapable of doing anything materially constructive. To sit here and blather endlessly about what others should do is ludicrous. At this point, any American with an IQ above room temperature knows the battle line has been drawn, and on which side of it he stands. My prattling on about it will add nothing to the affair.

     That having been said, I’ll say it one last time: You want the Republic back? You want the freedom your forebears enjoyed? You can’t have it unless you’re willing to go to war:

• Lock, load, and march on your state capital;
• Remove every officeholder from his position – forcibly, not by “voting him out;”
• Decorate lampposts with the ones who won’t go quietly;
• Reload your magazines and do the same to Washington, D.C.

     It would have to be a clean sweep, Democrats and Republicans alike. None of them can be trusted. They are all beneficiaries of an Establishmentarian system that protects and rewards those who “go along to get along.” The demonstrations have been innumerable.

     Then the really hard work would begin. But that’s a subject for another time.

---

     One final observation before I close. Here’s the latest on the Supreme Court cases about the election:

     The Democrat leaders who promoted massive mail-in ballots and due dates up to three days after the election responded to Justice Alito per Law and Crime:

     As Joe Hoft puts it, “Basically what the brilliant minds from the left claimed is that – no one has ever stopped us before so don’t be the first.” And I must tell you, Gentle Reader: That argument has a fair chance of prevailing. In law as nowhere else, precedent has stunning, often overwhelming power. As Alan Dershowitz put it semi-comically in his book The Best Defense:

     ...there are no Nobel Prizes in law, because law is the only profession in which you lose points for originality and gain points for demonstrating that somebody else thought of your idea first. Lawyers are prone to look to the “authorities”—to past lawyers and judges—for their ideas. Creativity in the law consists largely of analyzing past cases so as to get around a barrier or move the law incrementally. Rarely do lawyers indulge in bold leaps of faith, in grand conceptual breakthroughs. (I recall my high school Talmud teacher once putting me down with the following “Catch-22” response for claiming that an idea I had was original: “If what you’re saying is such a good idea, then obviously the old rabbis, who were much smarter than you, must have thought of it first. And if the old rabbis, who were much smarter than you, didn’t think of it first, then it can’t be such a good idea.”)

     Have a nice day.

We’re Almost There

     You need to read this Julie Kelly column:

     Dave Morris was fed up.

     As a gainfully-employed television news reporter aired a live segment outside a small café to tell viewers that Morris was keeping his business open despite a government order to close it, the Portage, Michigan restaurant owner confronted him. The Kalamazoo Health Department had issued a warning to Morris on December 1 for allowing indoor dining against the wishes of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer; he was instructed to shut down his business immediately or face a fine imposed by the government.

     The local journalist was on the scene, however, to tattle.

     “Everyone needs to stand up,” Morris told WWMT-TV reporter Tavarious Haywood on Wednesday. “This isn’t an order . . . this is tyranny. Wake up, stand up, this is America, be free.” (Haywood later tweeted about his own bravery in the face of an “angry business owner” who “interrupted” him.)

     Morris, who has owned D&R’s Daily Grind Cafe for 12 years, said he’s lost $100,000 in business this year and is going broke. “I can go down quietly or I can go down making some noise so people understand what’s going on,” he said.

     Dave Morris is an American hero, one I’d be proud to know personally and to stand beside. Anyone who reads the rest of the column without his blood pressure grazing 200 should check his pulse: you may have died and not noticed. A living American should be incensed to the point of violence.

     So why aren’t we?

---

     If we don’t rear up on our hind legs and rebel, we will lose everything: our rights, our property, and our children’s hopes of ever living in a free society. The time for it is long past. It was already behind us when the “authorities” reacted to the Wuhan virus by quarantining the entire country.

     Do it Gandhi’s way: simply ignore the tyrants, their decrees, their “regulatory bodies,” and their threats. Gandhi knew the British authorities could not impose their will on millions of Indians who wanted only to see them leave. The same is true for these United States. A sufficiently large mass of non-compliant Americans and their businesses will bring the edifice of tyranny crashing down.

     If enough Americans simply refuse to comply, the “authorities” will lose their nerve. They won’t send in the troops and tanks; it’s too likely that half or more of those troops and tanks would turn and fire on them. That’s one of the beauties of a “citizen army.”

     I sense that we’re almost there. The renewed “lockdowns,” mask mandates with no exit criterion, isolating demands such as that we “cancel Christmas,” and selective enforcement of totalitarian decrees against churches, schools, and small businesses have brought us very close to the edge. But we won’t be there until you, Gentle Reader, are willing to stand forth, say “I shall not comply,” and stand with your fellows.

     For there’s another “almost there” to consider: the point of no return. Americans’ compliance with the tyrants’ decrees has emboldened them to the point where they think they can get away with anything. “Rights be damned! Constitution be damned! If we say there’s a crisis, then there’s a crisis and you’ll do what we tell you. We’ll mobilize the whole weight of social opinion against you. The media will pillory you. Your employer will cast you out. Your friends and neighbors will shun you. Maybe even your family will disavow you. We will use our traditional weapon against you, one that has seldom failed to get us our way: fear.”

     To rebel, you have to be angry: angry enough that it overwhelms your fear. So ask yourself:

     What do I fear?
     Is the threat fact or fiction?
     How highly do I value my freedom?
     How angry am I at the tyrants?
     Why am I waiting for permission to live and work like a free man from tyrants who won’t even comply with their own dictates?

     Measure your anger against your fear. Which is greater – and why?

---

     This is the last time I’ll address this subject. Dave Morris is showing us the way. His example is what we need, not more blather from an old crank on Long Island. Anyway, Julie Kelly has said all that needs to be said, and I dislike repetition.

     “This is how these things happen, Vladimir. You see all your peasants smile and look sleepy and they say, ‘Oh, this is our lot in life,’ and then something happens and they all say, ‘We will die to keep them from doing this to our children.’ All in a night it can happen, Vladimir.” – Steven Brust

     “If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” – Samuel Adams

     Have a nice day.

     UPDATE: Add this from John Hinderaker:

     The totalitarian impulse has been loosed, and a dismaying number of Americans are on board with it. Californians are now ordered to wear masks in their homes and cars, which is stupid on any interpretation of the data. They also are forbidden to leave their homes to, for example, walk their dogs. On the other hand, there are lots of exceptions. For a “critical” activity–like participating in a podcast–you can go out. In other words, peons stay home.

     I grew up in a time when everyone took it for granted that America was a liberty-loving country. If one kid tried to boss around another kid on a playground, the standard reply was: “It’s a free country!” I doubt that our children say that anymore. We are divided 50/50: half of us want America to be a free country, and half of us don’t. How we can manage to coexist is an open question.

     It cannot be said better than that.

The Bayonet Is Advancing

     A certain Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known to most who know of him as Nikolai Lenin, advised his fellow Communist agitators and insurrectionists to “Probe with the bayonet. If you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, push.” To those who seek to bring down a country, it’s sound tactical advice. Just as in ground warfare, the soft points in a nation are the places to attack. Hurling your forces against their strongest positions only guarantees a high body count.

     The coverage of the violence and vandalism that has overtaken many American cities makes it clear that the Antifa / “Black Lives Matter” insurrectionists have selected genuinely soft points against which to “probe.” Indeed, in Seattle, the police have been deprived of all non-lethal crowd-control weapons. They face a choice between firing live ammo at the insurrectionists and doing nothing. So Seattle’s police chief has told them to do nothing:

     In other words, Seattle has gone belly-up to the insurrectionists. The city’s “forces of order” have shrugged and walked away. While nothing quite as stark has happened in any other riot-torn city yet, the mayors and police of those cities have exhibited a similar degree of inanition.

     What remains are the active-duty United States Army, the National Guard, and the armed citizen.

---

     I’ve said more than once that we cannot remain on defense. We are at war, and have been for some time now. Those prosecuting the war have cast aside all pretense. Many of the insurrectionists are carrying firearms. Some have already exchanged fire with others who would oppose them. If the insurrectionists are not thrown onto the defense by some equally capable force, we will lose the country. The forlorn hope that “the police will protect us” has been shown to be a phantasm.

     On that score, Michelle Malkin, herself a recent victim of the insurrectionists, has a few thoughts for you:

     It's not "socialism" or "communism" under which we suffer. Our dangerously chaotic, selectively oppressive predicament is more accurately described as "anarcho-tyranny." The late conservative columnist Sam Francis first coined the term in 1992 to diagnose a condition of "both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny — the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes."...

     Anarcho-tyranny is how hoodlums can toss statues into rivers with impunity, while citizens disgusted by Black Lives Matter street graffiti are charged with "hate crimes" — as David Nelson and Nicole Anderson in Martinez, California, were by a George Soros-funded district attorney two weeks ago.

     Anarcho-tyranny is how rioters can shut down highways and byways on a whim without fear of arrest, while commuters trying to escape the window-smashing barbarians obstructing traffic are charged with "assault" — as poor Jennifer Watson of Denver, Colorado, was this week.

     Anarcho-tyranny is how hordes of gay pride activists marching shoulder to shoulder can defy social distancing guidelines with gushing approbation from radical left-wing medical "experts," while anti-lockdown and anti-mask mandate protesters are deemed public health menaces who now face snitch hotlines, fines, house arrest or jail time.

     Anarcho-tyranny is how 1,000 black militia members can take over the streets in Georgia and point their guns at motorists as they demand reparations, while white citizen militia members in Idaho, Utah and New Mexico have been smeared publicly as racists and face injunctions for peacefully defending their neighborhoods.

     Sam Francis’s vision was prescient. Our countrymen in the riot-torn cities would surely agree.

---

     I haven’t got anything more to say that I haven’t said more than once already, and I’m not going to wear out my fingers with pointless repetition. Instead I’ll let one of my favorite colleagues, David De Gerolamo of N.C. Renegade, close this essay:

     War is not coming. It is here. If you need any more proof than the shortage of available firearms and ammunition, look to the censorship of the news from the front. War may not be at your doorstep today, but any sapient individual understands that time is of the essence.

     As COVID-19 has now become the government’s means to control us, our work and our food supply, do you think they will abate? The time to have prepared for your supplies is in the past. The time to recognize that the war is here is now. The actions we take today will impact how our children will live in the future. From what I see and hear, Communism is winning and we are kneeling.

     It’s time to get off our knees: to lock, load, close with the enemy, and destroy it. All the less demanding options we’ve relied upon have failed us.

     Have a nice day.

The Most Urgent Connectedness Problem

     Things don’t just “happen,” as if the universe were nothing but a giant random-number generator. They happen for reasons that can almost always be teased out by an inquiring and attentive observer. Cause and effect, don’t y’know. (Any “essential chaos” fans in the bleachers are invited to play a frame or two of snooker with Ronnie O’Sullivan or Judd Trump. Then prattle to me about “the randomness beneath it all.”)

     Sometimes – and lately it seems to be more often than not – problem A gives rise to problem B, because people mistakenly see problem B as a solution to problem A, or at least a compensating response. This tragic pattern helps to explain the striking connection between the violence and squalor in our cities and the legitimization of militarized police forces.

     Both these problems have important, though not absolute, connections to another problem with which America has not adequately coped: the sociodynamics of the city.

---

     Mark “Mad Dog” Sherman contends that the city – categorically speaking – is and was a mistake. This overstates the case slightly. Cities, understood as concentrations of population with human densities appreciably higher than their surroundings, were not someone’s bright idea that just hasn’t worked out. They arose because of important social and economic forces: largely, the need for access to trade routes and transportation for goods.

     Consider New York City and Los Angeles. Neither of these cities would exist except for their excellent harbors. Manhattan Island is a slab of rock inhospitable to life. Los Angeles is situated in a desert. Only access to waterborne transport made these locales places anyone would care to be...but for a developing commercial republic with a hunger for markets, that factor trumped all else in the early years of our nation.

     As populations concentrated in the zones of what would become cities, other factors emerged to accelerate their development. In particular, for quite some time the cities were safer than the regions around them: fewer wild animals and more people to come to one’s aid in an emergency. They also provided residents with employment opportunities and easy access to goods. That latter trade-off is one that many young people still make today.

     But there’s no such thing as an unmixed blessing:

     “Now, we know from historical data that predators of all sorts will concentrate where the prey is fattest. The State, which is merely an organized band of predators with a veneer of legitimacy derived either from tradition or from a manufactured appearance of the consent of its subjects, took a huge fraction of its subjects’ annual production from them in taxes. A typical State would increase its exactions on its subjects faster than those subjects could increase their own fortunes. That compelled wage earners to strive ever harder just to run in place, with obvious consequences for production and marketing.”

     Feel free to argue, but as Arne Stromberg is the holder of the Edmond Genet chair in the sociology department of Gallatin University, Hope’s most prestigious institution of higher learning, you’re likely to come away feeling foolish. So cities attracted human civilization’s worst known enemy – the State – merely by concentrating potential prey.

     Cities also attract another sort of enemy: parasites. Wealth is like that: those who want it will move toward it. That includes persons willing to work for it and those to whom work is unattractive or unknown. The synergistic effect of the State plus hordes of good-for-nothings “should” be “obvious” – including in its effects on law enforcement and public order. The parasites will demand freebies. The productive will demand protection. The State will promise to satisfy both. In reality it will satisfy neither, while increasing its own exactions and coercions upon the law-abiding.

     The welfare state and its excrescences are the State’s pander to the parasites. The intensified, militarized police force is its pander to the productive residents. Note, however, that the police do little or nothing to quell the violence and disorder in the welfare zones. Rather, they exert themselves against the productive, in a classic illustration of Samuel Francis’s conception of anarcho-tyranny:

     What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny—the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through “sensitivity training” and multiculturalist curricula, “hate crime” laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny.

     The parasite class is quite as important to the maintenance of an anarcho-tyrannical regime as are the violent and criminal. And cities, which naturally attract both predators and parasites, are the anarcho-tyrant’s “ecological niche.”

---

     Rather than thrash this to a pulp, allow me to cite a single illustrative episode, one that exhibits all the features of a city in grip of anarcho-tyranny: The Baltimore boy with the BB gun:

     A Baltimore family got a surprise visit from the police after someone noticed a fifth-grader’s BB gun in the background during a virtual school session....

     Courtney Lancaster is a Navy veteran with extensive knowledge on guns and gun safety. Her 11-year-old son is an aspiring Eagle Scout who has learned to shoot BB and Airsoft guns as well as taken archery lessons.

     They’d never had an issue until the cops unexpectedly showed up one day.

     “So, I answered the door. The police officer was, he was very nice. He explained to me that he was coming to address an issue with my son’s school,” Courtney told Project Baltimore. “And then explained to me that he was here to search for weapons, in my home. And I consented to let him in. And then I, unfortunately, stood there and watched police officers enter my 11-year-old son’s bedroom.”

     Baltimore, Gentle Reader. Baltimore! If there’s a city more deeply mired in violence and squalor anywhere in the U.S., I, at least, am unaware of it. Yet the powers that be in that city deemed it a proper use of the police power to investigate a child’s BB gun, while genuine crime runs rampant throughout the region. Savor that.

---

     Though cities formed from natural causes and according to easily comprehended incentives, today they’re ever less a source of the things for which people once flocked to them, and ever more a concentration point for things people – decent people, at least – prefer to avoid. Their predator and parasite classes are large and rapacious; their police forces are militarized and more intrusive than ever; and their law-biding residents are more coerced and mulcted than ever before in history.

     Perhaps, had we avoided certain historical mistakes, it could have been otherwise. Yet we live with what is, not what might have been. And we cannot solve either the problem of crime and parasitism, or the problem of overweening governments supported by militarized police forces, in isolation from one another; either both must go, or both will continue and worsen. Which is why Americans are steadily leaving large cities, especially those along the nation’s seaboards, in search of something less violent, more orderly, less expensive, and more respectful of personal and family privacy.

Anarcho-Tyranny On Parade

     On the very day a team of brilliant engineers catapulted two brave Americans into space, for the first time using launch and life support systems designed and built by a private American corporation, to thunderous nationwide cheers and celebrations, it appears that the collapse of the Republic has truly been set in motion.

     The rioting afflicting Minneapolis is being mirrored in several other cities. All those cities are currently under Democrat administrations. Coincidence? Perhaps...and perhaps not.

     It’s not about the death of George Floyd, no matter who says otherwise. No death, however unjust, could possibly justify the looting and burning of private property. Yet the rioters have done a great deal of that, along with the usual “liberating” of valuable portable goods from the places they’ve attacked.

     There are conflicting reports about the rioters. Some have said they’re almost entirely black, and there’s video to that effect. Others have said they’re largely white, and there’s video to that effect as well. Some say the rioters are mainly locals; others say they’re being bused in. It will be difficult, at least for a while, to sort through the competing claims.

     What’s beyond dispute is that in those cities and districts overrun by the rioters, the social order has vanished. We’re back to Hobbes’s state of nature once more. Only those ready, willing, and able to defend themselves and their property stand against the tide.

     But wait: isn’t this why we have law enforcement institutions? Doesn’t this sort of madness justify using the National Guard – and possibly the regular Army as well – to put down these insurrections? For insurrections, against law and the orderly social processes it’s supposed to safeguard, are plainly what we’re seeing. Moreover, the coordination among the afflicted cities is impossible to dismiss as mere coincidence.

     Yet in the riot-afflicted cities, the “forces of order” are largely passive. They weren’t passive in Detroit in July of 1967. Those riots threatened to destroy what was then called “America’s city of cathedrals,” and honored as one of the most beautiful urban areas on Earth. Michigan’s authorities appealed to the federal government for assistance in putting down the rioters. They got it, complete with an armored column to reassure Detroit’s peaceable residents that no further disorder would be tolerated.

     Tucker Carlson, as impassioned as usual (and justifiably so), asks us why the rest of us continue to “follow the rules.” He has a powerful point, one that has been foreshadowed by writers who’ve warned of “the coming middle-class anarchy.” Yet he has nevertheless failed to use the one word that would clarify our entire situation: anarcho-tyranny. Our “leaders” don't act against the rioters for a positive reason: the threat the rioters represent helps to keep the rest of us cowed -- "in our place," one might say. The irony is profound: we kowtow to the State, unto the minutest minutiae of licensure, inspections, permittage, and endless nuisance fees, out of the belief, carefully inculcated by all manner of propaganda systems from kindergarten onward, that it and only it stands between us and utter chaos...even as the very chaos we fear is unleashed among us, with the passive connivance of the State.

     Few are willing to say this...at least, few who have a mass audience. It goes against The Narrative: i.e., that it’s about “racism.” This is a complete inversion of the truth that no verbal denunciation could punish sufficiently. Yet that Narrative commands the airwaves. Racialist hucksters promote it relentlessly. Leftist politicians endorse it; those in the Right fear to contradict it. And many Americans have swallowed it uncritically.

     But the realities on the ground in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Seattle, Brooklyn, and elsewhere will prove otherwise. Indeed, it’s borne out by the behavior of the rioters themselves. And as I’ve said far too many times already, word gets around. What people need to know, they will know, sooner or later.

     I can’t see where the sense lies in repeating myself endlessly. There will be a terrible reckoning, for which no decent man would wish. If it should come without totally destroying what remains of our Constitutional order, it will be a miracle comparable to the founding of the Republic itself.

     It's been said many times, by many voices, that “there is no voting our way out of this.” I'm beginning to believe it.

It’s Up To Us Now

     Many have been petitioning and pleading for government(s) to “give us back our freedom.” Whoever accepted the premise behind this – i.e., that freedom is something awarded to the subject by the State – is badly in need of remedial historical education.

Freedom is not “given;” it is taken.
By force if necessary…which it usually is.

     Consider all these recent emissions and incidents:

• KC, MO Wants Churchgoers To Register
• Di Blasio Wants To Enforce Social Distancing
• Oregon Governor Extends Lockdown Into JULY.
• Chicago Mayor Threatens “Scofflaws” With Arrest
• 33 Arrested During Sacramento Freedom Protest
• Twitter Suspends Candace Owens For Tweeting “Go To Work”

     Governments at every level are flexing their muscles. They’re testing you, probing to see how much they can do to you before you rebel. Some of them are even pre-announcing sharp tax increases, to “make up for the shortfall during the lockdown.” And of course we’ve all heard about the mass releases of convicted felons, including serial killers and pedophiles, haven’t we? The State has to make room for the anti-lockdown protesters, doesn’t it?

     Regard them well: episodes in the march of anarcho-tyranny:

     What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny. [From the essay Synthesizing Tyranny, written shortly before Francis’s death.]

     Well? Where’s the line? How much will you sit still for before you rear up on your hind legs, take back your freedom, and – in the ideal case – punish your oppressors?

     What’s that? Your gaolers are reassuring you that the fetters they’ve fastened upon you are necessary? That it’s all “for your own good?”

     Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves. – William Pitt

     The real freedom of any individual can always be measured by the amount of responsibility which he must assume for his own welfare and security. – Robert Welch

     The crowning irony of all this is that the data are in: COVID-19 / Kung Flu / Lung Pao Sicken / Wuhan Virus is seriously dangerous only to the exact same cohorts endangered by common influenza: the very young and the very old. Most infectees, as has been demonstrated on naval vessels and at military installations, don’t even exhibit symptoms. The rest of us are moderately and briefly discommoded, even without treatment.

     Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube would prefer that you not know that, of course. They’ve labored like galley slaves to suppress any mention of the actual data, let alone analysis of what it means in epidemiological terms. I suppose that’s “for your own good,” too. After all, if you were exposed to that stuff, you might get ideas.

     Enough. Go back to your jobs. (Employers: reopen your offices and workplaces. Churches: resume the sacraments.) Resume your social lives. Renew your communities. Make play dates for your minor children. Return to your normal lives.

     Let’s be the America the residents of Hong Kong believe us to be.

The Anarcho-Tyranny Chronicles

     If you’ve been a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch for a goodly while now, you’re probably familiar with the late Sam Francis’s coinage anarcho-tyranny. For those who haven’t yet made the acquaintance of this useful term, here’s the original formulation:

     What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny. [From the essay Synthesizing Tyranny, written shortly before Francis’s death.]

     The longer I live, the more I come to view anarcho-tyranny as the terminal state toward which all governments tend as they mature and degenerate.

     But that’s a subject for a later tirade. For today, let’s have a look at the most conspicuous recent outcropping: the assertion of various courts that they possess jurisdiction sufficient to block the enforcement of President Trump’s temporary ban on immigration from several chaotic, violence-ridden countries.

     Mark Levin, in whose emissions I seldom take much interest – he’s simply too shrill for my tastes – captured the matter thus:

     “We have, ladies and gentlemen, rogue federal district judges now; we have rogue courts,” Levin exclaimed. “We have judicial anarchy taking place…where judges are seizing plenary authority from the president of the United States to keep this nation safe — to control our borders and to determine the nature of our immigration in this country.”

     Strictly speaking, there is no need to submit to "judicial anarchy." The courts have no enforcement arm for this very reason. With regard to the current foofaurauw, if the Attorney-General were to prepare a finding for the president that says the courts don't have valid jurisdiction over the subject matter, the president could ignore the courts, freely and without adverse consequences. Andrew Jackson did it; why not Donald Trump?

     The reason might be that the Trump Administration fears a popular backlash: i.e., an adverse reaction from the portion of the electorate that believes the courts to possess plenipotentiary authority over everything. This actually helps to illuminate both the current contretemps and the intra-governmental relations of the courts and the other branches.

---

     James Madison, often called “the father of the Constitution,” regarded the courts as “the least dangerous branch” of government. The widespread belief is that that was because the courts were allowed no enforcement arm, apart from the bailiffs allowed for keeping order during a court proceeding. However, this reverses cause and effect. The courts were allowed no enforcement arm because of the danger they would otherwise pose, as is well established by English history.

     The great majority of judges in pre-Industrial Revolution England, from which much of our legal tradition derives, were not government employees, neither elected nor appointed nor hired. They commanded deference on the basis of their personal qualities and their willingness to sit as judges; in other words, from popular respect for their wisdom and diligence. If you’ve heard the term “circuit judge” and have wondered about its provenance, it comes from the time when a judge would routinely “ride a circuit:” i.e., he would regularly travel a known route from place to place, hearing such cases as were presented to him in each place and ruling on them according to the “common law,” another American inheritance from England.

     To make this a workable living, a judge needed to be known and respected in each of the stops along his circuit. A judge’s enforcement arm was the willingness of the commoners whose cases he heard to enforce his rulings. Thus, he had to have a reputation for fairly and consistently applying both the common law and what precedents might exist for its enforcement. For a judge to become known as capricious or arbitrary – e.g., for promoting his personal views over the common law as English commoners knew it – would spell the end of his career.

     England’s problems with “star chambers” and the like came about because of courts whose authority descended from the Crown – i.e., whose enforcement arm was the force commanded by the King. Common-law judges posed no such problems, precisely because they had no enforcement power of their own. Indeed, it was often the role of a common-law judge to prevent a lynching or other variety of mob “justice:” something only a very well known, well respected jurist could do by force of character.

     Even though American judges are government employees, the essence of the English common-law judicial system – that the court have no enforcement arm of its own – was largely preserved by the Founding Fathers. The courts’ authority is essentially one of popular consensus concerning the probity and wisdom of the courts: i.e., that the courts are assessing the laws faithfully rather than whimsically or capriciously.

     But by innumerable capricious judgments: both failures to uphold the black-letter law and usurpations of jurisdiction that in no way belong to them, the courts have destroyed that consensus. Where, then, do we stand?

---

     Sam Francis’s thoughts on anarcho-tyranny are nicely illuminated by contemporary developments – and not just in the federal courts. A justly famous article about “the coming middle-class anarchy” makes the point quite well, albeit in language a bit rougher than is likely to be found in any judge’s opinions:

     When the backbone of a country starts thinking that laws and rules are not worth following, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to anarchy.

     TV has given us the illusion that anarchy is people rioting in the streets, smashing car windows and looting every store in sight. But there’s also the polite, quiet, far deadlier anarchy of the core citizenry — the upright citizenry — throwing in the towel and deciding it’s just not worth it anymore.

     If a big enough proportion of the populace — not even a majority, just a largish chunk — decides that it’s just not worth following the rules anymore, then that society’s days are numbered: Not even a police-state with an armed Marine at every corner with Shoot-to-Kill orders can stop such middle-class anarchy.

     Brian and Ilsa are such anarchists — grey-haired, well-dressed, golf-loving, well-to-do, exceedingly polite anarchists: But anarchists nevertheless. They are not important, or powerful, or influential: They are average — that’s why they’re so deadly: Their numbers are millions. And they are slowly, painfully coming to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it anymore.

     Once enough of these J. Crew Anarchists decide they no longer give a fuck, it’s over for America — because they are America.

     Please read the whole article, if you haven’t done so before. While it’s not merely the courts’ fault that this attitude is gaining strength, the descent of the courts – especially federal courts – are a major component of the machine steadily reducing us to anarcho-tyranny.

---

     For decades now I’ve flitted between minarchism and outright anarchism. If you’ve read my Spooner Federation books, you’re familiar with the process I consider inevitable:

• The disorder of the “state of nature” – read Thomas Hobbes – gradually gives way via natural processes to order, albeit without a recognized – i.e., a pre-indemnified – government.
• A well-ordered yet ungoverned society – i.e., the anarchist ideal – will slowly evolve into an (at first) well-ordered governed society with strong popular consensus.
• This gradually becomes an unjustly governed society owing to the dynamic of power-seeking: i.e., the men most likely to gain power are those who want it for its own sake and the benefits it can bring them personally.
• The unjustly governed society will steadily lose its order, and therefore its popular consensus: the consent of the governed. This will precipitate collapse.
• Collapse means a return to anarchy, which by dint of natural processes will slowly regain order, restarting the cycle.

     This cycle has overwhelming historical support. It suggests that there’s no way out of the cycle, which implies that for best results, one simply has to trust to luck – i.e., to be born in the right time and place – and mobility – the readiness, willingness, and ability to move from an undesirable society to a more desirable one. But where does that leave us of Twenty-First Century America?

     Why, right where we are today, of course: enmeshed in a steadily deteriorating, ever more anarcho-tyrannical context. At the moment, the only escape is to even less desirable places. That might change; developments in space flight and workable space habitats are ongoing, and it’s impossible to say if or when they’ll mature. But the cycle itself appears to be embedded in human nature. If that’s the case, then no matter where men go, the cycle will go with them.

     I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

Looking In The Right Direction

     Today, Dystopic favors us with an excellent essay. It’s long; it’s somewhat detailed. And it is absolutely required reading.

     Dystopic’s first stunner of an observation comes here:

     The Mob is alive and well, but where the old Mafiosos could be counted upon to generally keep their bargains, Hillary feels no such obligation. You are a tool of her will, or you are nothing at all.

     (Isn’t it remarkable that there are no Hillaries other than Hillary!^® Those of us who remember the First Commandment and the reason for it are a bit bemused by that. Well, a lot of pop princesses go by a single name these days. Kinda makes me wonder if the old bat can sing.)

     The above summons to mind an important distinction, one that’s becoming ever more important as our Ruling Elite^® solidifies and reveals its colors to all: the difference between being outside the law and above the law.

     I ranted on this subject some time ago. Yet in rereading that earlier essay, I find that I failed to draw the critical distinction as sharply as it should have been drawn.

     So of course, here I am again to rectify the shortcoming.

---

     “To see, you must have vision.” -- Gregory Benford

     Many have commented on how America has grown “lawless” in recent decades. They point at phenomena such as urban violence, the plague of illegal drugs, the proliferation of “white collar” crimes, and propound a notion that Americans have lost their respect for the law. Note the direction in which their fingers are pointing: those Americans are pointing at other Americans.

     This is misconceived.

     When the late Sam Francis coined the term anarcho-tyranny, he had a different vector in mind:

     The elementary concept of anarcho-tyranny is simple enough. History knows of many societies that have succumbed to anarchy when the governing authorities proved incapable of controlling criminals, warlords, rebels, and marauding invaders. Today, that is not the problem in the United States. The government, as any taxpayer (especially delinquent ones) can tell you, shows no sign of collapsing or proving unable to perform its functions. In the United States today, the government works efficiently. Taxes are collected (you bet), the population is counted (sort of), the mail is delivered (sometimes), and countries that never bothered us are invaded and conquered.

     Yet, at the same time, the country habitually wallows in a condition that often resembles Thomas Hobbes’ state of nature—nasty, brutish, and short....

     What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny—the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through “sensitivity training” and multiculturalist curricula, “hate crime” laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny.

     Francis wrote that in 1992. Should you ever need a perfect example of clear perception in the hands of a fearless thinker, make use of the above. It’s my principal reason for maintaining that despite his flaws Samuel Francis, like the late Joseph Sobran, was taken from us far too soon: indeed, when we needed him the most.

     Sam Francis knew in which direction to look for the source of our sorrows: upward, at the political elite from which virtually all federal officials and appointees are drawn. The making and enforcement of the law is entrusted to them by processes defined in the Constitution of the United States. And they do make laws. Ye gods and little fishes, do they ever make laws! But the laws they make are of less consequence than the laws they enforce...whether those laws exist or not.

---

     “Miss Weatherly,” Sumner said with a note of regret, “I’m a lawyer. I was raised by a lawyer. He taught me to think of the law as our most precious possession. One of the questions he repeatedly insisted that I ponder was ‘What is the law?’ Not ‘What would I like the law to be,’ but ‘What is it really, and how do I know that’s what it is?’
     “My profession, sadly, has made a practice of twisting the law to its own ends. There aren’t many lawyers left who really care what the law is, as long as they can get the results they want, when they want them. So they play the angles, and collaborate with judges who think they’re black-robed gods, and generally do whatever they can get away with to get what they want, without a moment’s regard for what it does to the knowability of the law.
     “I care. I want to know what the law is, what it permits, requires, and forbids. I want my clients to know. And the only way to reach that result is to insist that the words of the law have exact meanings, not arbitrary, impermanent interpretations that can be changed by some supercilious cretin who thinks he can prescribe and proscribe for the rest of us.
     “The Constitution is the supreme law, the foundation for all other law. If it doesn’t mean exactly what its text says—the public meanings of the words as ordinary people understand them—then no one can possibly know what it means. But if no one can know what the Constitution means, then no one can know whether any other law conforms to it. At that point, all that matters is the will of whoever’s in power. And that’s an exact definition of tyranny.”

     [From Shadow Of A Sword]

     The case of Gibson Guitars is a perfect example of the enforcement of a non-law, specifically to benefit a political patron. It’s merely one of the most egregious cases; there’ve been many others. What distinguished it was Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz’s willingness to go public with the details of the tawdry affair:

     “What is happening?” asks Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz when he arrives at his Nashville factory to question the officers. “We can’t tell you.” “What are you talking about, you can’t tell me, you can’t just come in and …” “We have a warrant!” ”Well, lemme see the warrant.” “We can’t show that to you because it’s sealed.”

     While 30 men in SWAT attire dispatched from Homeland Security and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service cart away about half a million dollars of wood and guitars, seven armed agents interrogate an employee without benefit of a lawyer. The next day Juszkiewicz receives a letter warning that he cannot touch any guitar left in the plant, under threat of being charged with a separate federal offense for each “violation,” punishable by a jail term.

     Up until that point Gibson had not received so much as a postcard telling the company it might be doing something wrong. Thus began a five-year saga, extensively covered by the press, with reputation-destroying leaks and shady allegations that Gibson was illegally importing wood from endangered tree species. In the end, formal charges were never filed, but the disruption to Gibson’s business and the mounting legal fees and threat of imprisonment induced Juszkiewicz to settle for $250,000—with an additional $50,000 “donation” piled on to pay off an environmental activist group.

     Please read the whole article. It’s more than worth your time, especially if you believe that the Rule of Law is still respected in these United States.

     What all too often goes unremarked-upon is that the law de jure – statutes passed by Congress and signed by the president – is far less important than the law de facto – what the power of the State is used to impose upon Us the People. Sam Francis would tell you that the law de facto has become whatever our Ruling Elite^® decides it is at any given moment. Having succeeded in separating itself from the rest of us and closing off its borders against dilution by American patriots such as Stephen Graham Sumner, it will only enforce “laws” that advance or safeguard Ruling Elite^® privileges.

     Indeed, upward is the only direction in which to look.

---

     Many Americans still believe that the Ruling Elite^® can be brought to heel through that mighty instrument, the Vote. That beautiful fantasy dissolved more than a generation ago.

     The electoral process, which was supposed to be a front-line defense against tyranny, rather than a last-ditch resort, has been captured by the major political parties. They realized, around 1988, that the behavior of Democrats and Republicans once raised to office had become too obviously self-serving – that the public would soon search for alternatives to both of them. So they contrived to put the whole business under the control of the Ruling Elite.^® A consortium formed by the three major television networks would control the reporting of national vote tallies. Supreme Court decisions would nullify local or regional attempts to protect the integrity of voting mechanisms. Gerrymandering, the newspapers, and judicious use of bribery, blackmail, and intimidation would pacify any straggling pockets of resistance.

     That this should have happened immediately after the second of Ronald Reagan’s terms in the White House is perfectly consistent with Ruling Elite^® priorities and conduct. Reagan was a maverick by their standards; he’d established his independence during his eight years as governor of California. His international boldness deprived them of one of their most important tools for engendering fear and submission in the populace: the Soviet Union. They barely managed to thwart him domestically through the inherent inertia of the “permanent government:” the millions of federal appointees and bureaucrats whose positions are protected by Civil Service law. The repetition of such an upheaval could not be countenanced. Indeed, it’s an open question why Reagan was willing to accept Ruling Elite^® member-in-good-standing George H. W. Bush as his vice president, and thereafter to endorse him as his successor.

     Many believe that the rise of Donald Trump to the political fore indicates that significant change remains possible. I dislike to dash anyone’s hopes, but Trump’s decades of maneuvers in the private sector suggest that should he attain the presidency, he’ll accommodate the Ruling Elite^® to a much greater extent than his more ardent supporters imagine. Those elitists, after all, are already in the seats of power, with the levers in their hands. He and his family have a great deal to lose should they take direct aim at him and his fortunes.

     We’re not voting our way out from under our political masters.

---

     “To live outside the law, you must be honest.” -- Bob Dylan

     To return to Dystopic’s essay cited at the start of this tirade:

     I would sooner have a Mafia don in office, than Hillary Rodham Clinton, for at least some honor may be found in them, some scrap of understanding that screwing their people too much will result in the death of the host. Hillary has none of this. I doubt she even cares for her own daughter, or her family line. It is all about today, and she could not care less what happens after she is dead. The entire species could be rendered extinct, and what would it matter to her? She got what she wanted, in the end. The new nobility has none of the restraint of the old order.

     Either way, though, America’s inner rot has already killed the nation. The outer shell endured for a time, but now that too is creaking. Collapse is imminent. But given all of that, I am sure it is time to start worrying about the gender of horses in the Olympics, as SJWs are wont to do.

     The organized crime families of the pre-World War II era were actually a force for order in certain ways. They did rule their illegal bastions – liquor and prostitution, mainly – with an iron fist, such that each family’s “turf” was deemed inviolable by the other families or any other force, but in the enforcement of those accommodations they confined the violence to “contestants only.” Their leaders understood that the providers of their profits would turn against them were they to cease being a tolerable source of illegal but valued pleasures and become a bloody pox upon the cities where they flourished.

     The Ruling Elite^® doesn’t fret over such possibilities. Its members believe themselves not only above the law but immune to correction. And indeed, they’ve labored mightily over their defenses against us. The steady penetration of federal action into every smallest community and every smallest area of life, the ever expanding list of federal client groups, the ongoing federalization of local and state police, the control of the media, and the unresisted assertion of federal power via “laws” that do not exist – see the Gibson Guitars case above – have produced a curiously sheeplike state of acquiescence among Americans generally. Yes, there are survivalists and preparationists who defy that pattern, and may God bless them all. But the overwhelming majority has decided, consciously or not, to submit.

     Those of us who will not submit to those who have placed themselves above the law must prepare ourselves to live outside the law, and to cleave rigidly to Bob Dylan’s dictum quoted above. Outside the law has become the only place for men and women to whom freedom and justice are more than sounds occasionally emitted by politicians. What our “official vendors” sell under those labels is too shoddy to be borne any longer. We must return them to private manufacture.

     Have a nice day.

Our Time Is Up

No doubt you've seen the same plethora of "Is America descending into chaos and tyranny?" commentary I've read, these past few years. No doubt you've spun the question about with some reluctance, fearing that the answer might be the...dispreferred one.

We're there, folks. I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you.

---

Justice in these United States is looking pretty weak lately:

Bob Harte groggily opened his front door and found a fully-armed Johnson County SWAT team in front of him early in the morning of April 20, 2012.

It was 7:30 a.m. when he'd heard a knock at the door and pulled himself out of bed to answer it while his wife and two kids slept. A SWAT team surrounded his home, and a deputy had a battering ram ready to charge through the door had Bob had not opened it.

The deputies pushed Bob to the floor of the entry way of his home and stood over him with rifles screaming, “Where are the children in the home?” Bob told them they were in their rooms and the deputies ran to find them.

The commotion woke his wife Addie Harte who came downstairs to find out what was going on.

“We just kept saying ‘You’re in the wrong house!’ said Addie.

Deputies searched the sofa and then allowed the family of four to sit on it, in front of their picture window, as armed deputies searched the home. For two hours, the family sat on that sofa, afraid and puzzled as to why deputies were in their home.

“On television, they always come to the door and say ‘we have a search warrant’ and hold it up. Here it is. Let us in. We were told in Kansas, they don't have to give you the search warrant until they leave,” Bob Harte said.

The Hartes’ kept asking deputies why they were in their home but deputies would only say that they were looking for “narcotics.”

At the end of the raid, deputies handed the warrant over to Bob. On it, they had written they hadn’t seized anything. They had not found anything illegal in the home. Bob would end up taking that warrant door to door in their neighborhood to convince his neighbors nothing inappropriate had happened at their home.

Many families would have simply wiped the sweat from their brows and prayed that such an infamy would never recur. The Hartes were determined to find out why they'd been targeted:

After the raid, the couple thought they could access public records to find out why law enforcement suspected drugs were in their home. They told 41 Action News they were shocked to find out they could not access any of those records under Kansas law.

“We were chosen more or less at random for this drug raid and we were like ‘what do you mean we can't get the records? They raided our house,” said Addie.

The Hartes spent $25,000 hiring an attorney to fight to get access to the records. It took a year, but the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office eventually released the records. The Hartes were surprised by what they read.

Records showed on Aug. 9, 2011, a Missouri Highway Patrol trooper observed a man leaving the Green Circle hydroponics store in Kansas City, Mo., in a KIA with his children and a small bag.

Bob said he had been to the store to get supplies for a science project he was working on with his son: a basement hydroponic garden.

Troopers had been observing customers at the hydroponics store because hydroponic supplies are often used in cultivating indoor marijuana plants.

Whatever the police suspected, they didn't consider it terribly urgent...at first:

The Missouri Highway Patrol didn’t turn over the information to Johnson County authorities until March 20, 2012—seven months after the initial tip was observed. The records contain no information about why MHP waited so long to contact Johnson County law enforcement and no information about what triggered them handing over this information.

Records show Johnson County deputies traced the tag number on the KIA observed by MHP to Bob and Addie Harte. On April 3, 2012, investigators visited the Harte’s home at 5 a.m. They went through the Harte’s trash and found wet plant material. At this time, investigators reported they didn’t know what it was so they failed to test it.

A week later, on April 10th, investigators returned to the home. Again, deputies searched through the trash. This time, when they found plant-like material, they performed a field test which indicated the substance was marijuana.

Deputies went to the home a third time on April 17th, 2012. Again, deputies found plant material in the Harte’s trash. They performed another field test which again indicated a positive result for marijuana.

Was that reason enough for a SWAT-team raid? Prepared to batter down a residential door and enter with guns drawn?

The Hartes say they knew immediately what police had located.

“Bob instantly said, ‘It's your tea!’ because I drink loose tea and those are saturated leaves,” said Addie, who told 41 Action News she often threw the leaves in the kitchen trash.

Though field tests are known to be unreliable, reports obtained from the Johnson County crime lab indicate the deputies did not send any of the samples to the crime lab for confirmation. The records also note that deputies did not intend to, but changed their minds when the Hartes started questioning why deputies raided their home.

When the crime lab processed the evidence, their tests came back negative for marijuana. The results came back in May of 2012. The Johnson County Sheriff’s office had that information months before the Hartes were able to get the records that the material was not marijuana.

The embarrassing misstep for deputies would have remained hidden if the Hartes had not had the means to spend money to gain access to the records.

Their zeal for justice cost the Hartes' $25,000. Whether anything they might ever do could properly repair their reputation with their neighbors, or return them to a sense of safety in their own home, is open to question.

---

The Omnipotent State has a few "volunteer assistants" with notions of their own about the law. Yesterday, noted economist Tyler Cowen was physically attacked:

Economist, author, and George Mason University professor Tyler Cowen was pepper sprayed in his classroom today by a man trying to place him under citizen's arrest. ArlNow.com reported on the incident, which took place at GMU's Arlington, Virginia, campus this afternoon.

Police say the man entered the classroom and attempted to place the professor under a citizen’s arrest. The professor tried to get the man—described as a white male in his 20s or 30s—to leave, at which time the man pepper sprayed him and a scuffle ensued, according to Arlington County Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck.

The professor did not know the man, Sternbeck said.

The ArlNow.com account didn't identify the professor, but several commenters said it was Cowen.

Tom Roussey, a reporter with D.C.'s ABC7 news, then confirmed with GMU that it was Cowen who was pepper sprayed.

Cowen is a free-market-oriented economist with a considerable presence on the World Wide Web. Draw your own conclusions.

---

Did you really think the Democrats want to confiscate your guns for your safety's sake?

State Sen. Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) was charged Wednesday with conspiring to commit wire fraud and traffic firearms, part of a sweeping public corruption case outlined by federal prosecutors.

The charges sent shock waves through the San Francisco and Sacramento political establishments, as FBI agents searched Yee's Capitol office. Last year the FBI raided the offices of Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello), who was targeted in a bribery sting.

In all, 26 people, including former school board president Keith Jackson, were indicted on charges related to an extensive crime ring headed by well-known Chinatown figure Raymond Chow, who was also arrested and charged Wednesday.

The indictment alleges Yee and Jackson defrauded "citizens of honest services" and were involved in a scheme to traffic firearms in exchange for thousands in campaign donations to the senator.

Federal prosecutors also allege Yee agreed to perform official acts in exchange for the money, including one instance in which he introduced a businessman to state legislators who had significant influence over pending medical marijuana legislation. In exchange, the businessman -- who was actually an undercover FBI agent -- agreed to donate thousands to Yee's campaign fund, according to the indictment.

The indictment also describes an August 2013 exchange in which Jackson told an undercover officer that Yee had an arms-trafficking contact. Jackson allegedly said Yee could facilitate a meeting for a donation.

Chow, who has been connected over the years to the criminal gang Wo Hop To and is known as "Shrimp Boy," was indicted for money laundering, conspiracy to receive and transport stolen property, and conspiracy to traffic contraband cigarettes.

The redoubtable Glenn Reynolds comments thus:

If a politician’s for gun control, it doesn’t prove he’s a crook. But it’s the way to bet.

Heh. Indeed.

---

The news isn't all bad, of course. Remember all those organizations the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League castigated as "hate groups?"

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has labeled several Washington, D.C.-based family organizations as "hate groups" for favoring traditional marriage, has been dumped as a "resource" on the FBI's Hate Crime Web page, a significant rejection of the influential legal group.

The Web page scrubbing, which also included eliminating the Anti-Defamation League, was not announced and came in the last month after 15 family groups pressed Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director James Comey to stop endorsing a group -- SPLC -- that inspired a recent case of domestic terrorism at the Family Research Council.

Now and then, even the FBI gets one right. But far too much damage has been done already.

---

The party that holds the White House and Senate is afflicted by rampant criminality:

“Think of the Democratic Party as what it really is: a criminal organization masquerading as a political party,” my friend and fellow PJM columnist Michael Walsh wrote in 2009 in the guise of his leftwing alter-ego, David Kahane.

Certainly, at a minimum it’s safe to say that Democrats were rather active on the nation’s police blotters today. Since this is one narrative the MSM will never assemble (as they’re in on the fun), it’s up to the Blogosphere.

PJ Media pillar Ed Driscoll's round-up is too good to miss. Please read it all.

---

Don't think for a moment that the criminality of "our" governments is limited to a few non-representative cases. Nice Deb provides a horrifying round-up today. Please read it all. Then have a gander at just who "our" governments have decided to enlist as assistants in the cause of justice:

Union representatives from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) are now accompanying federal government safety inspectors on site visits to review labor complaints at nonunion private businesses, The Daily Caller has learned.

SEIU and other labor unions can accompany the government inspectors on site visits due to a quiet and contested Obama administration rule clarification issued last year in response to a request from a union representative.

SEIU agents recently accompanied an inspector from the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a division of the Department of Labor, on three visits to nonunion work sites under contract with the Houston-based janitorial company Professional Janitorial Services (PJS).

The SEIU representatives gained entry alongside an OSHA inspector to a private office building cleaned by PJS in West Houston on October 29, 2013.

SEIU representatives also accompanied an OSHA inspector on visits to office buildings cleaned by PJS in Houston on October 29, 2013, and in Southwest Houston on November 7, 2013, but the union agents were denied access by the building owners each time.

There is no identifiable force in these United States more openly thuggish and ready to use violence to gain its ends than America's labor unions. Excepting "our" governments, of course.

---

I really do hate to be the one to tell you, Gentle Reader, but, as my favorite fictional protagonist once said, we're in the deepest of deep shit and sinking fast. Liberty and justice are no longer reliable conditions of American life, even de facto.

Each and every American lives under the threat of the sort of random oppression the Hartes experienced. Anyone of a conservative or libertarian inclination who dares to make his views public is vulnerable to the sort of assault Tyler Cowen experienced. Ordinary passers-by on public streets must go in fear of "knockout game" gangs, about which the police seem disinclined to concern themselves. Businesses of any size that don't kowtow to unions are constantly watchful for "union representatives," who are protected from prosecution under federal law for anything they might do "in furtherance of union objectives." The IRS seeks the power to discriminate among advocacy groups on the basis of their political stances, while its top man has defied Congress's demand for the evidence that it's already done so. The EPA is about to rule that your backyard is a "federally protected wetland," because it's damp for a day or so after a rainstorm. ObamaCare has proved to be a "law" written in water, for whose failure its principal promoter and his co-partisans seek to evade all responsibility. Meanwhile, scores of politicians -- "our representatives," remember? -- are going down on charges that range from bribery to conspiracy to violate the firearms importation laws.

It's impossible not to be put in mind of the late Samuel Francis's concept of anarcho-tyranny:

What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny....

The laws that are enforced are either those that extend or entrench the power of the state and its allies and internal elites ... or else they are the laws that directly punish those recalcitrant and "pathological" elements in society who insist on behaving according to traditional norms – people who do not like to pay taxes, wear seat belts, or deliver their children to the mind-bending therapists who run the public schools; or the people who own and keep firearms, display or even wear the Confederate flag, put up Christmas trees, spank their children, and quote the Constitution or the Bible – not to mention dissident political figures who actually run for office and try to do something about mass immigration by Third World populations.

And no, I have no idea what we can do about it, short of an immediate mass armed uprising and the wholesale purging of "our" political class.

"The System" cannot be redeemed by electoral means. Neither can it be corrected through the courts. I leave it to you whether it's time to reach for the ultimate answer to tyrants.