Tag Archives: progressives

Guns, Cops, and the Posse Comitatus Act

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Herschel Smith has a good post over at Captain’s Journal that examines the question of “When did the Left fall out of love with guns?” His answer is that the Left still loves gun–their guns.

Yes, the left still loves guns. There is no other reason for the fawning acceptance of the vulgar SWAT raid tactics in which innocent men like Mr. Eurie Stamps get shot and killed. These tactics are repeated all across America every day.

The left just doesn’t love guns in the wrong hands, and anyone who isn’t an agent of the state is the wrong hands. Listen to Representative Jim Himes (D – CT) tell you why high capacity magazines are still necessary in government hands.

There is absolutely no justification for weapons that were made for the explicit purpose of killing lots of people quickly to be in the hands of civilians.

Let that wash over you again. “Killing lots of people quickly” and “civilian hands.” The two don’t go together.

The police are civilians. If the arms the Progressives want to ban don’t belong in civilian hands, then the cops shouldn’t have them. After all, as was asked by a gun owner in New York, “Who are the police at war with?”

THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: OK, let’s say that civilians shouldn’t have these arms, but that the police need them. One solution would be to make the police part of the military, but that would require repeal (or severe amendment) of the Posse Comitatus Act. Well, if we’re going to let the military do policing, the current civilian police forces are redundant. Some of the cops could be rolled into the Army and the rest laid off. Think of the budget savings!

Also, think about what happened the last time we used a military force for law enforcement. Reconstruction. How did that turn out?

As long as we’re looking at history, what has been the outcomes of trying to restrict the possession of things rather than outlawing criminal behavior. Prohibition. Did That result in more or fewer societal problems? The War on Drugs. What has that done for crime?

Given that neither a bottle of booze nor a joint can shoot back, how much violence could we expect as a result of creating a black market in firearms?

UPDATE–Prof. Reynolds writes:

Why are you afraid of the Constitution? The answer, of course, is that the political class doesn’t want citizens. It wants subjects.

UPDATE 2–Or as Hubert Humphrey said:

Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. … [T]he right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, and one more safeguard against a tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible.

Democrats/Progressives Begin Damage Control in re #NealRauhauser

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Matt Osborne has a piece called Is the World’s Longest-Running Performance Art Piece Finally Ending? (H/T, @AaronWorthing) which looks like the beginning of the damage control spin by which mainline Progressives will try to disassociate themselves with Neal Rauhauser.

Neal Rauhauser … is really into performance art — ultimate, endurance performance art. He has spent much of the last two years perpetrating a merry prank that right wing bloggers have taken all too seriously. Indeed, Rauhauser’s epic comedy routine has consistently driven them to distraction ever since he earned their attention and enmity during the “Twittergate” nontroversy of 2010.

…

Most progressives have tired of the show, too. The only people who never get tired of Neal Rauhauser’s act are right wing bloggers. If the curtain is finally dropping on this marathon performance, I expect they will rush the stage, riot in the aisles, and burn down the theatre — but they will be all alone in there, because everybody else has already left the building.

I think I just heard a bus engine starting. Will Mr. Rauhauser be on it or under it?

Change and Federalism

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Jacob Sullum has an essay over at Reason called Fair-Weather Federalists in which he argues that both Progressives and Conservative should be opposed to an overreaching federal government. While reading it, I was struck by how what is “progressive” and what is “conservative” change with time. Here’s the paragraph that triggered my thought:

Two Supreme Court cases decided during George W. Bush’s second term further illustrate how federal involvement can jeopardize progressive causes. In Gonzales v. Raich (2005), the Court ruled that the Commerce Clause authorizes the federal government to enforce its absolute ban on marijuana even in states that allow medical use of the plant and even against patients who grow their own. The decision arguably went even further than Wickard v. Filburn, the 1942 ruling that said Congress has the authority to stop a farmer from growing wheat for his own use because such self-reliance reduces aggregate demand, thereby exerting “a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce.”

Prohibition, first of drugs with the Harris Act and then of booze via the 18th Amendment and the Volstead Act, were major Progressive achievements of the first quarter of the 20th century. Let me repeat that. Drug prohibition was originally a Progressive cause. Drugs, you see, are bad for you, almost as bad as a 17 oz cup of soda (Why do you think they call it Coke?), and Progressives want to care for you. That’s why they support nannystateism—until they get caught in their own nappies. When they started smoking dope, prohibition became a bad idea.

Conservatives are no better. We have our own hypocrisies. The French got it right when they created their proverb ”Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”

The Exception That Proves the Rule

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Andrew Klavan asks the following question:

Can you name a single left-wing policy that can’t be translated into, “The government knows better than the people”?

I think I can. It was the Progressives who really got behind the idea of using the referendum process to allow the people to legislate directly. It’s more “democratic.” But when it is as easy to get something on the ballot as it is in California, one of the important check and balance features of our republic is crippled. That’s the check that the legislature has on the people as a mob.