This website has been getting hit a lot by Federal Law enforcement of late. I understand their curiosity and interest and I certainly appreciate their visits. It gives me an opportunity to broach a subject long left unaddressed. We live in a republic based on laws that are reliable, not serving only the powerful or the corrupt, but the average citizen. That definition includes them as well. I know they feel more powerful than that, but they aren't. When the worm turns against them, all of the previous law enforcement experience will do them no good, except to help them accept their fate at the hands of a tyrannical government.
But, they have a choice. They can go along with this unconstitutional government right up to the end, when the government decides to cover their tracks by eliminating the stooges they used to do the dirty work, or they can embrace the legal and proper scope of the Constitution. When you have representatives of the people, who have sworn oaths to the Constitution bray and swear at the reading of it in public, spitting their disgust at the sound of it being read, you do not live in a Constitutional Republic as designed by the founders and I suppose you know that already. Don't you? That republic no longer exists and those who wield the power of it do so illegitimately as surely as if they walked into the station house and started barking orders to kill civilians. Would you stand up to that? I doubt it more and more everyday.
There is a moment to decide where one stands, behind the barricades of totalitarianism, or in front of the citizens one is sworn to protect. There is an oath and it doesn't mean much to people today. It means nothing to more than half of the civilian government. They are just words they hide behind when they commit their crimes against the people and the only thing that allows them to do it is the cowardice of the law enforcement personnel who tolerate it.
One might ask oneself a simple question: Which way should the guns be pointing? If in one's good conscious it should be at the shopkeepers, the day laborers and the nurses for seeking a peaceful change in their government and demanding that the law be followed and obeyed, then fine. No one can argue with a person's perspective and if that is what they believe, then by all means line up as many citizens as you care to and do with them what you want. They are willing victims to this madness for their failure to revolt.
But, if one sees oneself as a champion of legitimate government, of true representation and one who takes the contract with the people as legitimate, then some soul-searching should take place directly. We are moving past the point of decision. The leaders, the ones who have decided to turn their backs on everything lawful and right, are in control right now and they are giving you their orders. But, you are not a Nazi, you do not have to follow orders from people who show no regard for the oaths they have taken, or the loyalties they have sold for the comfort of power.
MORE HERE: http://tlinexile.blogspot.com/2011/01/of-oaths-and-loyalties.html
Sipsey Street: “Choose this day whom you will serve.”: An Open Letter to American Law Enforcement.
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. -- William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming.”
Gentlemen and ladies of American Law Enforcement,
There is a growing perception among many Americans that we are headed for one of those periodic moments in our history when our reactions to events will redefine who we are as a people, where we are going as a country and who gets to call the shots when we get there -- what George H.W. Bush called “that vision thing.” This is happening in the middle of unprecedented external and internal stresses on our social order, the results of which you see daily on the streets.
It is going to get worse.
Odds are, it is going to get MUCH worse before it gets better.
IF it gets better any time soon, which I doubt.
And so, ladies and gentlemen of American law enforcement, the prudent among you should be considering this question now, rather than later: “What am I going to do when we get to ‘much worse’?”
Consider first where we are.
The Justice Department's National Gang Intelligence Center estimated last year that there were over a million hard-core gang members in this country who were responsible for over 80% of the crimes in many communities. Other experts have suggested that when you add in the gangs’ “extended families” and wannabes the number is closer to between five and ten million. As unemployment has increased, their numbers have likewise swelled.
But the gangs, as bad as they are and as great a threat as they pose to public order, are nothing compared to the larger problem, and that is this.
Respect for duly constituted authority and social trust are essential ingredients of civilization. These elements represent the basic glue of society.
Respect for duly constituted authority is, as every cop knows, at an all-time low. There are two general reasons for this, one systemic and the other so personal that if you look yourselves honestly in the mirror you can see it.
Systemically, “duly constituted authority” derives its legitimacy from the founding documents of our country, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and from the Founders’ concepts of the rule of law. These have all been under attack for a hundred years or more by both corrupt political parties and their union and business familiars. The Constitution has become for some a joke and for others an inconvenient speed bump on the road to tyranny. As long as this degradation of the legitimacy of our political and legal system was perceived by only a narrow portion of the population, it was manageable in a societal sense. This is no longer true.
When a president and Congress robs one set of people to enrich their cronies, when they violate the settled rule of law regarding bankruptcy to stiff secured creditors in the case of General Motors while rewarding self-anointed unsecured creditors -- their political allies, the auto unions -- the rest of the population cannot fail but conclude that we are no longer under the rule of law, but the rule of men, which is to say, the law of the jungle. Or, put another way, they -- the “authorities” -- can do anything that the citizenry can’t or won’t stop them from doing. This is the societal Catch 22 we are now in (and have been for a while) that I call “Waco Rules.”
Other cases such as that of David Olofson, a veteran and marksmanship instructor and family man who was railroaded by the ATF on an automatic weapons charge when his semi-automatic AR-15 malfunctioned (and he was chosen for prosecution simply because the ATF did not care for his low opinion of them), have convinced many that a fair trial is no longer possible in federal court if an agency decides to “deal with” them. And if we are no longer guaranteed a fair trial in the federal court system, then if we are innocent and decide that we do not wish to play drop the soap with either the Aryan or Muslim Brotherhoods, our only guarantee is the right of an unfair gunfight when the ATF comes calling.
And remember that Olofson is merely one example of federal misadventure. There are many others, as there are plenty of similar cases in local and state jurisdictions. When the law-abiding rightfully no longer trust the law enforcers and begin to view them as a class of criminals merely acting under color of law, anarchy is not far away.
Yet, you will say, “don’t blame me, I enforce the law, I don’t make it.” True, but insufficient as an excuse, and here we get down to that look in the mirror.
My friend, fellow gun rights blogger and National Examiner columnist David Codrea over at WaronGuns has a description for feral cops. He calls them the “Only Ones.” His daily blog is filled to overflowing with example of rogue cops, their partners who never rein them in and the prosecutors and judges who find reasons to go easy on even the most heinous of criminals with badges. You know who I’m talking about. If you say there are none of these currently operating or in the making within your department then you are either lying or uninterested in seeing the truth, which amounts to the same thing.
Everyone knows what happens to honest cops who “rat out” their uniformed criminal associates. They are hounded, despised, disciplined and shunned -- and that’s on a good day. Can you blame many of us who pay attention to such law enforcement corruption for concluding that you may merely be a member of an “official gang” as opposed to a freelance one? Such dereliction of duty begs the question: If your excuse is that you don’t make the law, you just enforce it, and then you don’t enforce it upon yourselves, why should we be paying tax dollars to support “official” law breaking?
There is another image that many of you can see in the mirror if you choose to take an honest look -- that of tax collector and nanny state bully boy. Yes, we know, you didn’t make the laws, some liberal puke with a control fetish did. But when you write speeding tickets for 3 miles over the limit because you’ve been told to write “x amount” of dollar value, or when you pull people over for “seatbelt violations” at random roadblocks and then ransack their cars without probable cause, can you understand how such behavior eats away like acid on your reputation -- individually and collectively -- as servants of the citizenry? What part of “to protect and serve” does that represent?
But worse than all that is the militarization of the police -- in equipment, tactics and, worst of all, attitude -- and the federalization of all law enforcement over the past forty years, but especially in the last ten. There were, last time I checked a few years ago, something like 750,000 full time state, city, university and college, metropolitan and non-metropolitan county, and other law enforcement officers in the United States. Add to that another 150,000 or so full time law enforcement personnel working for the federal government. With the growth of new agencies like the TSA during the “war on terror” (who, because of political correctness can’t seem to figure out who the real “terrorists” are so they merely oppress the rest of us in order to be “fair”) that number has certainly risen.
In any case, there are hardly enough Feds to work the administration’s will upon a nation so vast and a people so numerous, so, much thought and effort has gone into suborning and subverting local and state law enforcement for federal purposes -- “Joint Task Forces” and “fusion centers” being two principal ways. Yet, as the Founders quite clearly understood, it is one of the duties of local law enforcement, especially the county sheriffs, to interpose themselves between the federal government and the people of their jurisdictions when the federal government becomes oppressive.
Now, however, local law enforcement is looked upon by federal agents as force multipliers and willing stooges -- “local yokels” in their parlance. And as a mark of how successful their campaign has been, many local law enforcement officers agree and happily lick the boots that kick them.
A recent case in point. Two county sheriff’s deputies showed up at the doorstep of a man out west who had expressed his contempt for Nancy Pelosi and and other federal politicians in letters and emails. These deputies, saying that the FBI had sent them, interrogated the man, threatened him “with Leavenworth” and engaged in intimidation of political speech. These local cops, having no jurisdiction to do anything of the sort, would have been laughed off of my porch here in Alabama and told to bugger off and return with real federal cops, if that was in fact their intention. Too often these days, when the federal man says “frog” many of you merely ask “how high?”
Of course, if this intimidation had back-fired on the locals in any way, the Fibbies would have been the first to disavow them, leaving them hanging out in the legal laundry to dry. So when y’all are looking in that mirror, ask yourselves how truly stupid you actually are when it comes to enforcing an agenda and not the law just because the Feds ask you to.
Because here’s the essential thing: you, ALL OF YOU, took an oath to, among other things, “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” You swore that, the overwhelming majority of you, to God. Did you think that oath had a shelf life? Do you think that now that you have by your reckoning faithfully upheld that oath for, say, twenty years now that tomorrow it is okay to forget it? You swore, whether you realized it at the time or not, an OATH, before GOD, and it was a LIFETIME oath.
While you are looking in the mirror, evaluate your career based upon that oath. It was not to a man, or an administration, or a political party but to an idea -- the idea of ordered liberty as codified in the Constitution of the United States of America. So ask yourself, did you or did you not intend to faithfully uphold that oath? Because the answer to that question is going to become very important very quickly as this politically divided and morally fractured society continues to spin out of control.
To quote Joshua, “Choose this day whom you will serve.”
MORE HERE: http://sipseystreetirregulars.blogspot.com/2011/01/mindful-of-tl-davis-piece-below-reader.html
And here's a couple articles I wrote on the subject:
MESSAGE TO THE POLICE OFFICER: http://freedomguide.wordpress.com/2009/04/06/message-to-the-police-officer-2/
MESSAGE TO THE FEDERAL AGENT: http://freedomguide.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/message-to-the-federal-agent/
TIN BADGE GODS: http://freedomguide.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/tin-badge-gods/
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