The Ace contributor known as "CBD" ruminates on Kyle's case.
...The year-long persecution of Kyle Rittenhouse is merely the latest and most compelling example of the multi-front war against the 2nd Amendment and every American citizen's right to keep and bear arms. The pro-forma weapons charges with which Rittenhouse was charged were a triviality, and it is entirely possible that they were brought incorrectly (or maliciously).
The real charges were the conflation of legitimate self defense with first degree reckless homicide. The message is clear and unambiguous; do not use your legal weapons in self defense, because the full weight of the law will be brought to bear....
He's not wrong....but I'm not certain that he's right, either. The Rittenhouse case was pure politics, driven by the Governor of Wisconsin (an extreme partisan jerk) and the A.G. of Wisconsin, who is an incompetent A.G. and an extremely partisan twit. Both of them wanted to look good to what they imagine to be their base: black people. Since the Kenosha D.A. and Mayor are a weaklings, it was not hard for those two to give them a shove. (That D A is weak, but not stupid: he refused to prosecute the case, knowing that it was a loser. The Mayor disappeared from sight.) That being the circumstance, Rittenhouse would have been prosecuted hard if he were merely jaywalking-while-armed. That's how ugly Tin-Pot Tony Evers is; it's how weak D A Graveley is.
(When I say "imagine" that black people are 'their base,' I mean it. Dollars to doughnuts 80%++ of Kenosha blacks were horrified at the riots and told their children to keep their distance. It is notable that many of the rioters were NOT Kenosha residents.)
But CBD's ruminations go a step further.
...it is entirely possible that the rapid breakdown of our legitimate legal protections by the progressive elite will yield unintended consequences. Imagine the Kenosha riots, but instead of Kyle Rittenhouse doing what he did, there were several hidden shooters whose goals were less noble. Instead of merely protecting life and property, perhaps they would be playing a more punitive role...well hidden and almost impossible to to discover.
Rooftop Koreans indeed...
Umnnnhhh...the honorable thing to do IS to defend your village from the invaders, and to use whatever force is necessary to that end. But lethal force is ONLY licit when in defense of life or grave bodily harm to self or others.
So what CBD imagines is a 'false-flag' op, an attempt to start a real civil war, done by malevolent characters, not likely allies of either 'side' in this scenario.
And yes, that could happen very easily.
3 comments:
But lethal force is ONLY licit when in defense of life or grave bodily harm to self or others.
That's only true under ordinary self-defense law. Consider an alternative scenario in which a governor decides to stop riots and invokes the state militia clauses, allowing the citizens to be brought into military service. "Looters and arsonists shall be shot on sight" was long a standard order in periods of intense civil disorder, to be carried out by the National Guard, or earlier than that by militia forces.
At least the Medieval Church would not have had any qualms about a legitimate government using force to protect civilization from being burned or looted by mobs. You can doubtless construct the argument yourself from first principles, starting with Aristotle's observation -- wholly embraced by the Church -- that the human good is not fully achievable except in a civil order that is capable of sustaining higher goods. Goods like unburned and unlooted churches and monasteries, not to put too fine a point on it.
Well, yea...........property rights, where "pursuit of happiness" really meant 'property.'
No disagreement from me, but the last time a Wisconsin Governor called out the National Guard (not civilians) was during the riots in Milwaukee in the mid-1960's
But that was not the proposition here. The Governor had NOT called out a militia, so there is no licit 'authority' in the mix. That's the hard part of the question.
The hard question is under what circumstances the militia, which is composed of the citizenry, has the power to call out itself without or in spite of an exercise by the formal government.
There must be some, per the logic of the Declaration of Independence. When a government proves destructive to natural rights and natural law? Yes, per that authority. A complete refusal to enforce the common peace and lawful order? Maybe. It’s certainly getting close to the line at least. If it persists…
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