The Morning Rant: Hickory Shampoos For The Win!

The recent shootings in Minnesota are a natural result of the breakdown in respect for the legitimate activity of government, and the blurring of the line between legitimate protest against government policy, and violent action to force political change. That it is financed and managed by outside actors is made possible by the failures in our educational systems and our body politic...both have failed to support and defend the political philosophy that created American Exceptionalism

Americans have had numerous avenues to express disagreement with public policy and government behavior. Obviously, the first and most important way is simply to vote. We also have robust legal protections of our right to speak freely and criticize anything in society with which we disagree. And protest is a tried and true American tradition!

For instance, the non-violent protests against legal segregation (separate but equal) focused the country on its fundamental inequality. Yet the violent protests probably prolonged the fight for civil rights! The Supreme Court ruling which struck it down was rejected by some, most famously by Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus, who instructed the National Guard to block integration. President Eisenhower promptly nationalized the Arkansas Guard to end the challenge to legitimate federal government authority and action.

Regardless of what one might think of America's integration efforts (it has been a mixed bag at best), it is a legitimate expression of the will of the people and the equally legitimate action on the part of government.

The massive demonstrations and other legitimate political activity against unfettered abortion bore fruit after many years. The process worked...albeit very, very slowly!

According to the compliant media, many Americans disagree with the current administration's policy on immigration, and are against their efforts and methods to detain and deport illegal aliens who are also violent felons.

Whether that estimation is true is a matter of debate...I doubt very much that more than a small minority of Americans would defend the presence of violent criminals in our midst, regardless of their country of origin!

But there is a way to disagree, and our founders made it a matter of (hopefully) inviolable law!

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Physical interference with the legal activity of government or, for that matter, regular people, crosses the line, and is not protected by the United States Constitution. Our founders would have recoiled in horror had it been suggested to them that violence is a legitimate expression of discontent with an elected government. Any comparison to our revolution is specious and ahistoric. The British ruled us from afar, without any provision for representation or redress. That's the difference, and it is profound.

Violent protest should be met with immediate and overwhelming force. Tear gas, bean-bag rounds, batons, water cannon, bayonet lines...whatever it takes to disperse and render ineffective the attempted violent overthrow of our government and the legal structure of our republic!

Because that's what it is...insurrection, revolt revolution, civil war...call it whatever you wish, but it is the theft of our collective freedoms in service to a minority's belief in their own political philosophy.

Demonstrate, write your newspaper, vote, call your representatives, go door to door explaining your political philosophy. That's all marvelous, even if most people will disagree. But the second violence is used, it loses the protections of our Constitution and becomes law breaking thuggery, and I and many Americans firmly support instant and aggressive action to end it!

Hickory shampoos for the win!

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter and X/Twitter]. If you folks who are on X/Twitter would follow us it would be much appreciated!

posted by CBD at 11:00 AM

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