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Last week’s installment of this annually updated series–enter “guns and liberty 2023–in the SMM homepage search bar to find the entire series–asked a fundamental question: Do human beings have an unalienable right to self-defense? There is no question the founding fathers of our constitutional, representative republic—we are not a democracy, thank God–-believed they do–-they must–-and they acknowledged–-not created–-that unalienable, individual right in the Second Amendment. This was finally–-in 2008 and 2010 respectively–-affirmed in the Supreme Court’s decisions acknowledging, for the first time in American history, that right: the Heller decision, and the McDonald decision, which applied the right to the states, and in June of 2022, the Bruen decision, which made absolutely clear Americans have the unalienable, individual right to keep and bear arms, not just at home, but in public.  What good is a fundamental, unalienable right to self-defense that doesn’t apply wherever one might need it?

It is time to consider a second, related, question:  DOES EVIL EXIST? 

The answer to this question represents a fundamental dividing line between what I have come to call Normal Americans—those of any party, race or the two actual genders that honor American constitutionalism–-and Democrats/Socialists/Communists, for that is what the contemporary Democratic Party has, sadly, become.  That, and as the passage of time starkly reveals, a thinly veiled criminal enterprise involving powerful government agencies and corrupt politicians on every level of government (enter “twitter tells the truth” into the SMM home page search bar to find a series on that topic).

D/S/Cs believe human beings–-except themselves of course–-are systemically racist, sexist, and a variety of other “ists,” but are perfectible.  This utopian perfection can be realized only through sufficient, absolute, eternal D/S/C controlled governmental power and the right kinds of ruinous taxes, redistribution of wealth, laws and regulations to make people think, speak and behave in appropriate ways, to perfect them for their own good, a good they are unable to recognize or seek without the benevolent coercion of government.  These laws and regulations will be created and enforced by a small class of self-imagined elite “progressives,” the term they generally prefer, because Normal Americans long ago caught on to “liberal,” “socialist” and “communist.”  Who, after all, could be against progress? These evolved beings are, by virtue of their education, sophistication, credentials, titles, beliefs and highly attuned sense of social justice (generally best understood as whichever social and economic policies, and useful victim groups, elite D/S/Cs prefer at the moment), already perfected.

For the D/S/C, the only true evil is resistance to their evolved social consciousness and perfection.  One might quibble about labels, and might be more comfortable with the labels “progressive” or “statist,” but I trust you understand I am not engaging in gratuitous name-calling, but merely trying to clearly explain defining contemporary philosophical and political trains of thought.  I trust that if you apply them to the policies and stated beliefs of current D/S/Cs, you’ll find they apply rather well.  If anything, I’m being too kind.

For the D/S/C, unalienable rights do not exist; indeed they cannot exist. The only “rights” are those allowed at any given moment by the state.  In such an exalted polity, rights are reduced to the reality and force of mere privileges.  Religion, with its quaint, superstitious adherence to the doctrine of an eternal battle between good and evil, is just that: quaint and superstitious.  It may be, from time to time, politically useful, particularly when the votes of believers might be won through stealth or outright subterfuge, or when a denomination takes up the banner of preferred leftist social causes, advancing it before–-or in place of–-religious doctrine.  However, religion is always dangerous, to be feared and suppressed because of its belief in a power greater than men, and therefore of its inherent general resistance to progressive socialist enlightenment, which is always ongoing and evolving despite D/S/C’s belief it can never be falsified.

The other factor governing the rate of D/S/C evolution is the amount of power D/S/Cs are able to hoard and wield at any given time.  Should they ever fully control all three branches of government, America is in for a fast and ugly ride to destruction.

The inability of progressivism to be falsified is another fundamental conflict between the religious and the D/S/C.  Religion relies upon certain God-given, unchanging truths.  Socialism constantly evolves as ever more intelligent, elite scientific socialists perfect it and labor to perfect the ungrateful masses against their will.  The only unchanging truth and principle of D/S/Cs is their philosophies and policies represent the only hope of man—despite millennia of failure and slaughter–and may never be falsified.  How can one falsify perfection, or as Joe Biden put it, truth instead of facts? They alone will succeed where all before them have failed.  They alone can do the same stupid, destructive, evil, murderous things and achieve different results.

If glorious D/S/C perfection has not been reached, it is only because unenlightened, smelly, toothless, WalMart shopping God and gun clinging Deplorables/MAGAs resist, and because insufficient D/S/C policy has been applied. Because man is always in the necessary and noble process of being perfected by his betters, neither unalienable rights nor adherence to crumbling, fading, yellowing documents written by privileged, racist white men in the late 1700’s can be allowed to stand in the way of the brave, inevitable march of D/S/C “progress.”  History itself must be constantly revised to reflect new, perfect learning, thus the 1619 project.  

Men reach the heights of evil when people are in charge who think themselves, through their self-evident perfection, uniquely suited to perfect the human race.  Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.  The greatest weakness of D/S/C thought and policy is always a fundamental misunderstanding, even willful rejection, of human nature.  That, and as Margaret Thatcher said, you always run out of other people’s money.

Normal Americans have no doubt of the existence of evil or of its eternal work in the world.  They overwhelmingly embrace Christian theology and its bedrock understanding of men as fallen sinners who can never attain perfection on Earth.  Mankind cannot be perfected—he will sin; it is his very nature, and for those who will see, the evidence of history is irrefutable–-yet the social contract works best when Man has the greatest possible freedom and autonomy.  He has, above all, free will and can chose to be altruistic, kind and considerate of others. Even so, he sometimes will choose otherwise, and consequences for personal misbehavior must be made swift and certain and must be justly applied while upholding the essential dignity, worth and sovereignty of the individual.

This is known as “equal justice under law,” which contemporary D/S/Cs reject in favor of “equity,” and similar weasel words.

Thus do Normal Americans accept the necessity of the Social Contract, of the equality before the law of all men, of the rule of law, and of a supreme law of the land–-the Constitution–-which may not and must not change, as the Founders put it, for light and transient reasons, because the fundamental nature of human beings does not change. This is why Normals are so alarmed and disgusted by the lawless behavior of D/S/Cs. For Normals, any balance of power that favors the state at the expense of the unalienable rights of the individual is illegitimate, tyrannical and must be resisted, and if necessary, overthrown by the force of arms recognized and affirmed for The People in the Declaration of Independence, and by the Second Amendment.  This is the primary purpose of the Second Amendment, and the reason D/S/Cs so hate it: an armed population is a population inherently dangerous to despots.

Such republican (as in our constitutional, republican form of government) rhetoric is often decried with mock horror by D/S/Cs who cry “anti-American!,” or more recently “domestic terrorist!” “insurrection!” or “treason!” but these are merely examples of the straw men D/S/Cs reflexively erect in defense of “our democracy,” a deceptive term for the tyranny of the majority, another of their essential, anti-liberty, goals.

Also richly ironic: these are the very people who constantly scream America is a flawed nation full of horrible, racist haters; they must be fundamentally transformed.  Who can take seriously such people as former Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano who claimed military veterans returning from the battlefield pose a greater danger than Islamist terrorists?  Or CNN’s Don Lemon—always in the running for the “stupidest man in America” title–-who recently revealed his hatred for Normal Americans:

Understanding the moral foundation of the Constitution, and particularly the purposes of the Second Amendment, one realizes Normals are not at all radical and are surely not dangerous–-except to criminals and those that wish America ill.  They merely accept and reflect the thinking of the Founders, and the text and intent of the foundational documents of the Republic including The Federalist Papers, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution.

D/S/Cs tend to reject all of these documents, or to so twist their clear intent and meaning as to render them self-contradictory and meaningless. They would make the Constitution a suicide pact, despite the Supreme Court, the writings of the Founders, and common sense, declaring it cannot be so read.

Many go so far as to claim that the written English of the late 1700s and early 1800s cannot be understood by contemporary Americans, therefore the Constitution and all foundational documents, are outmoded, useless. Count among them former Newsweek and Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein who observed that the Constitution can not be understood because it was written in the English of more than 200 years ago.

Perhaps this is the plight of the contemporary, educated, self-imagined elite and politically evolved D/S/C, but my teenaged students managed, year in and year out, to understand the English of William Shakespeare as it was written in the late 1500’s and early 1600’s.  Odd that Texas teenagers, benighted denizens of Flyover Country, God and gun clingers most, should be capable of reading and understanding Elizabethan English while our current, self-exalted elite cannot read and understand the colonial English of nearly two hundred years later, language much closer to contemporary American English. On second thought, it does tend to explain a great many things.

credit: issuehawk.com

If there is no right to self-defense, are you, gentle soul, truly willing to meekly surrender your life to anyone—any government–-cruel enough to take it?  Will you, sensitive, caring, morally and intellectually evolved D/S/C, allow your life to be taken by one of the recipients of the wealth redistribution you so adore in order to fully live–-die–-your convictions? Do you believe that right–-left–-and sufficient law and regulation will eliminate any tendency toward human evil, and the soaring rhetoric of the latest state pseudo-messiah will protect you and those you hold dear?  Would you truly do nothing to prevent the loss of your own life?  The loss of the life of your spouse?  Your children?  Are the lives of those you love and your own life of so little value, and the value of the lives of evil brutes so great?  Truly?

YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE EVIL EXISTS or that it can possibly interrupt your life, but to paraphrase an aphorism attributed to many, you may not be interested in evil, but evil is interested in you. As a student of history, as a military veteran, and a veteran of police work, I have no doubt evil exists and any one of us may meet it, in human form, at any time, as I so often have.  Had I been unaware of its existence or unwilling to recognize it, I would not have survived.  Hundreds of the wounded, maimed and dead I have known would attest, if they could, to that reality.  They would also attest to the fact good intentions, a life lived virtuously, and “enlightened” social consciousness are not proof against evil, but serve only to encourage and feed it.

This is a lesson, circa January, 2023, some D/S/C blue city politicians are grudgingly learning, the realities of defunding and prosecuting the police while inviting mob and indiscriminate criminal violence becoming harder to ignore.  Of course, their pseudo-awakening may be largely an artifact of the approaching 2024 elections and the harder reality even D/S/Cs don’t like being robbed, beaten, carjacked and murdered while dodging needles and feces on city sidewalks.  I say “harder” because in many places, the prevalence of crime can no longer be ignored or blamed on Donald Trump.

Edmund Burke said:

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

Perhaps the best illustration of the reality of Burke’s aphorism is the case of Kitty Genovese.  On March 13, 1964, in Queens, NYC, at 3:00 AM, 28 year-old Kitty Genovese was repeatedly attacked, raped and stabbed to death over 35 minutes.  Her screams awakened her neighbors, at least 38 of who were aware of what was happening.  Not one intervened despite the fact the killer was momentarily frightened off at least once by their voices and lights.  Not one actively helped Genovese.  Only one woman called the police after Genovese was already dead and the killer escaped.  The most infamous and telling quote to come out of this horrific event came from at least one witness who explained they did nothing because they “didn’t want to get involved.”

The facts of the case are somewhat different than media accounts—no surprise there—and there is evidence the police were called, but wrongly categorized and broadcast the call as a simple assault rather than a murder in progress (such mistakes happen far more often than the police will readily admit).  However, some understanding of the case is useful to illustrate cultural issues with some clarity.

There is no doubt Genovese’s neighbors did not come to her aid.  The response of my Texas teenagers is illustrative.  Hearing of the case, they, to a boy and girl, confirmed in a similar situation, every neighbor within range–-including them–-would blow the killer out of his socks as soon as they could lay sights on him, and call the police thereafter. In their Normal world, virtually everyone owns and is comfortable with firearms, something they take for granted. I have no reason to believe they were insincere, nor do I doubt they would have immediately come to Genovese’s aid, medically as well as in defense of her life. Their innate decency made my heart swell with pride.  Kitty Genovese met evil that night.  How do you stand in morality to a classroom of Texas teenagers that don’t for a second doubt the existence of evil, or their response to it?

But surely the police will protect me? It’s their job and they are professionals!  It is surely one of the great ironies of all time that D/S/Cs tend to hate the police, regarding them as barely sentient, stupid, racist, sexist, (add your favorite “ist” here) brutes. D/S/Cs have long tried to federalize law enforcement, or when politically advantageous, abolish it.  They see no contradiction in this.  We resist paying the police more, yet simultaneously expect them to protect our very lives and the lives of those we love.  We rightfully laugh—or shudder in horror–at the idea, when our lives are on the line, of calling a progressive pajama boy, Antifa or BLM protestors, in place of the police.

An even greater irony is the police have no duty to protect any individual citizen.  None.  Worse, most police are not expert with their firearms.

In June, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court announced its decision in Castle Rock v. Gonzales.  Gonzales defied a custody decision and restraining order–-ink on paper tends to take no action to save lives–-and kidnapped his three daughters, ages 7-10, from his estranged wife’s yard. Gonzales killed the girls and eventually committed suicide by cop by shooting up a police station.  The police were called when the girls were kidnapped, but did nothing over many hours until they were finally forced to respond to Gonzales, when he opened fire on the police station.  By then the girls were dead, killed earlier by Gonzales and driven to the police station in his pickup.  Gonzales followed them in death not long after.  My December 25, 2011 PJ Media article explores this incident in greater depth.

Cold comfort may be found in such situations only in the belief Gonzales’ final destination was surely 180° opposite that of his innocent children.  In handing down this decision, the Court affirmed decades of precedent, which holds the police have a duty only to deter and investigate crime for the benefit of the public at large.  They have no duty to protect the life or property of any individual. Even though they did nothing to assist Mrs. Gonzales who so piteously and repeatedly cried out to them for help over many hours, even though they did nothing to save the lives of her children, they could not, and cannot, be held liable.

This might seem outrageous and unjust, but it is rational and absolutely necessary.  Most people would be shocked to discover how few police officers are patrolling their community at any time of the day or night, a state of affairs even worse in 2023, thanks to D/S/C anti-police/pro-criminal policies. It is impossible for the police to guarantee protection to anyone, and if they could be successfully sued for failure to render such protection, what city could possibly afford a police force? Who would volunteer to become a police officer knowing financial ruin from never-ending lawsuits constantly stalked them?

By the summer of 2020, police agencies across the nation had long been suffering from the Ferguson Effect; officers reasonably afraid of being fired or prosecuted doing as little as possible.  Recruiting, particularly in blue cities and states, was dramatically down, officers in many agencies were quitting in large numbers, and hiring standards were being lowered.  Then the “defund the police” movement, and the “summer of love” arrived with its loving and mostly peaceful riots, arson, destruction of property, mass theft and even murder.  Officers that could moved to free states that prosecuted criminals rather than the police, changed careers, retired, and many, seeking to survive and unable to quit their jobs, did, and continue to do, the absolute minimum.  At the beginning of 2023, these trends, if anything, have worsened.

Police agencies are always understaffed.  Agencies staff their shifts with the most officers when most are needed: evenings in general and Friday and Saturday nights in particular.  In smaller communities across America, only two or three officers may be patrolling between 6 AM and 6 PM, often, fewer.  In semi rural or rural areas, the nearest available deputy may be an hour or more away at top, lights and siren, speed—if the weather doesn’t interfere.  The police love to catch bad guys in the act.  They love to stop rapists, killers, child molesters, you name it, but there are very few police officers, more than enough bad guys to go around, and many of the law-abiding.  This is the nature of reality, of human beings.

Police officers live several common aphorisms:

Call for the police, call for an ambulance and call for a pizza.  See which one shows up first.

They know all too often, the pizza will arrive long before an ambulance or the police.  Although, in many cities, no pizza is delivered, no ambulances or fire units respond without police escort.  In other words, no one responds.  In many urban areas–-not just Detroit–-even 911 calls are often left unanswered or put on hold, so great is the emergency call volume and so few are the police.  Police lore is full of true stories of citizen’s panicked 911 calls that didn’t get through, were hung up, were ignored, improperly dispatched or just couldn’t be handled because of a lack of manpower, resulting in beatings, robbery, rape, mayhem, torture, even murder.

And with unprecedented—purposeful–budget crunches, particularly in Democrat-controlled blue states and cities, police agencies are being forced to lay off police officers or to otherwise cut back on even emergency services.  In 2012, the San Bernardino, CA City Attorney advised local residents to “lock your doors and load your guns,” something unthinkable in socialist California, and something Socialists consider a betrayal of secrets the public should never be told.  Circa 2023, this kind of official honesty is more common.  This is reality, and the balance between the police and individual responsibility will never change.  D/S/Cs might one day get their way and federalize all American police, and if so, honest citizens will do everything they can to avoid any contact with them. Statist police–-regime protection forces–-are more dangerous to the law abiding than criminals, as the Twitter files are so obviously demonstrating.

The police have another common aphorism, which, like the first, they know to be true, but which makes them cringe nonetheless, the aforementioned:

When seconds count, the police are minutes away.

Circa 2023, in an ever-increasing number of blue cities, it must be altered to note the police are hours away, not coming at all or just don’t exist.  This too is the nature of reality, of policing.  Ask any experienced police officer if evil exists, but not if you really don’t want to hear the answer:

EVIL EXISTS. The police would love to protect you from it, but they can’t, and you can’t sue them and win when, not if, they don’t.  If you’re dead, the point is moot. What options remain?  Gated communities? Locks? Alarm systems?  Anything made by man may be defeated by man.  Will you spend your life within that gated community, behind those locked doors with your security system engaged?  Don’t you occasionally need to venture out, if for no other reason than to buy groceries?  Living in a gated community didn’t help the McCloskeys.  In fact, it worked against them because they dared to defend themselves against a violent, threatening mob, which outraged the local D/S/C prosecutor.  Unfortunately for them, they are white and the mob was not; another dangerous sign of our times.

BUT I LIVE IN A GOOD NEIGHBORHOOD!  So did Kitty Genovese.  Consider the case of a car burglar I investigated.  Responsible for hundreds of felony crimes, during his many and lengthy confessions, he told me how he and two of his fellow burglars set out to steal the side view mirror of a vehicle by removing the entire door, which was actually the fastest way to get the mirror of that particular model.  As they set to work at 2 AM, the owner unexpectedly came home and they barely had time to scramble under the vehicle—it was a small SUV–-they had just begun to burglarize as his pickup truck pulled into the driveway, inches away.  The door they intended to steal was standing open a few inches, but the man did not see it and went into his home, leaving the burglars to hastily complete their work and leave with the door.  This was a good neighborhood, but the story does not end there.

The burglar had, only a half hour earlier, burglarized another car not far away and found, to his surprise and delight, a loaded and chambered 9mm semiautomatic handgun which he hastily stuffed into his sagging pants, the better to play the role of the manly gangster/burglar.  As the owner of the soon-to-be-stolen car door stepped from his truck onto his driveway, mere inches away lay the burglar, hopped up on speed, the unfamiliar handgun tightly clutched in his sweating, shaking hand.  The man lived only because he did not notice the open car door.  The burglar was ready to shoot him; he would have shot him, a man who had no reason whatever to imagine, let alone expect, a 2 AM meeting in his driveway with panicky, doped-up, stupid evil.  Don’t for a moment think someone like him may not be under your car as you come home any evening.

Postscript:  I put the burglar and many of his pals away for a long time and recovered the handgun and even the car door–-absent the mirror–-which I fished out of a creek near the bridge where he dumped it.  Ironically, he broke the mirror trying to remove it from the car door.  He would have killed, and not even got the mirror he sought for his trouble.  He did not see the horrible irony inherent in this, but I’m sure you do, gentle readers. Sadly, it’s not common for crimes of that kind to be solved and the property recovered, but that’s a story for another article and another time.

EVIL IS INTERESTED IN YOU; EVIL IS ALWAYS OUT THERE, WATCHING AND WAITING ITS CHANCE. This too is the nature of reality and of human beings.

Even understanding all that I’ve presented here, at least intellectually, there will always be some determined to cling to infallible D/S/C philosophy in the expectation their supposed intellectual and moral superiority will, in some way, magically protect them.  Perhaps they think criminals will render them professional courtesy, or perhaps they merely have unshakeable faith in an all-powerful, benevolent state, even a state that manifestly cannot protect them, cares not at all for protecting any individual–government has no conscience–and will never allow itself to be held accountable for failing to protect them.  It is for these people the term “prey” was created, and it is to them another famous aphorism may someday apply (if they survive the experience):

A conservative is a D/S/C who has been robbed at gunpoint.

Unfortunately, even that kind of intimate encounter with evil does not always suffice. Some portion of even those victims will choose to blame the gun wielded by the miscreant threatening their life.  However, some are capable of reevaluating their philosophy when reality is visited upon them in ways that cannot be easily ignored.  They are never, however, short of incredibly bad, even illegal, advice:  

If no unalienable right to self defense exists, what other right or privilege actually matters?  What is the point of continuing education if one’s life may be taken at any moment?  If no right to self-defense exists, there can be no crime of murder, as no life has value, value that compels society to impose the ultimate penalty for its unlawful taking.  Murder and other laws need not be wiped from the books, just ignored, or very selectively applied, which is now happening in an increasing number of cities where George Soros–funded operatives have won election as prosecutors.

In such societies the ultimate penalty tends to be reserved and imposed for crimes against the state rather than crimes against individuals who are of value only in their transitory and ever-changing utility to the state.  How can anyone plan for the future if life is reduced to a state of nature where, as Hobbes said, life is “…solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”? 

Quite unlike D/S/C orthodoxy, it is not an armed society, a society where the law-abiding, productive, moral and decent have the most effective means immediately at hand to protect their lives and the lives of others wherever they may be, that is lawless, violent and dangerous, but a society where only government has the power provided by arms and where only the lawless, idle, immoral and evil are armed. They don’t obey the law.  In such a society, the whims of the elite ruling class are law, and the written law is enforced only when politically convenient. Contemporary America provides myriad examples of the truth of this assertion.  In those states where concealed carry is common, by any honest measure, citizens are safer.  In those states and cities, particularly, where honest citizens are disarmed, it is quite the opposite.  Cities such as New York, Detroit, Chicago, Newark, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle and Washington DC are commonly more dangerous than active war zones, which they closely resemble.

Let us assume this article has, at least, inspired thought to the point you are willing to tentatively concede that an individual, unalienable right of self-defense is probably necessary.  Or perhaps you’ve just been enraged to the point that you’re anxious to see what lunatic ravings I present in the next article.  What then?  The next installment of the series explores the legal, moral and spiritual issues revolving around taking the life of another, legally and illegally. Enter “guns and liberty 2023” in the SMM home page search bar to find every article in this series. I hope to see you again next Tuesday.