Mine got a little more attention, methinks.
Posted on 02/15/2013 11:33:08 AM PST by Noumenon
“We have a weapon more powerful… than any in the whole arsenal of the British Empire! That weapon… is our refusal!”
- Michael Collins
The police in America have proven once again that they are above the law and have a license to kill as the charred remains of Christopher Dorner were cooling in the cabin in California. The more thuggish aspects of the constabulary were on the mainstream news despite the twisted and sycophantic relationship of the press in lionizing tyranny everyday in the hero worship of the thin political black and blue line.
The readers who have read my essays over the years are aware of the case I have made for why cops are the primary danger to all individual freedom and liberty in any tax jurisdiction on Earth. No political bad actor in any account of human history could deprive anyone of liberty or enforce tyranny absent a police force. The vicious and nonsensical drug war has so retarded human progress with the caging and maiming and killing of hundreds of thousands of Americans and permeated the entire American society with laws piled on laws to do everything from making every financial transaction transparent to the rulers for “money laundering” to the creation of a legal system whose only sense of justice is in name only.
Two important questions have surfaced after the Dorner tragedy; first, have the police in California stepped over a Rubicon with the summary execution of Dorner in broad daylight?
The increasing militarization of police and the literal criminalization of everything has seen the rise of the fabled and dreaded Orwellian state where no one is safe and if one pays close attention to what just happened in the mountains of California, you discover that all judicial processes and civil rights niceties were overlooked and the police immediately murdered Dorner by burning him alive. They were even so brazen as to casually issue the orders to fire the cabin most likely under the guise of officer safety, the curious mantra that gives the police their license to kill and get away with it. The officer safety conceit releases them from all responsibility that saddles the averages citizen in self-defense thus the hundreds of thousands of videos on the internet and written and oral testimonials of victims of this officer safety madness. Will Grigg, the most able chronicler of police misbehavior in America, has already made the rock solid case of just how risk-free and safe is the occupation of the praetorians in America.
Dorner was hunted in the fashion he was because he was not one of the 98 percent of bad cops that give the two percent a bad name. The media is between a rock and a hard place because if Dorner were a “right-wing” man who did not belong to an Federally accredited victim group whose opinions of gun possession were quite the opposite of his manifesto, he would be the poster child of why the police are not only right but should immediately move to phase two of seizure and confiscation of all cosmetically offensive weapons in individual citizen’s hands who are not wearing a statist costume of one stripe or another. But Dorner is Diane Feinstein in male drag with the usual government supremecist superstitions that so pollute the minds of our rulers and their sycophantic media. The notable exception is that the Senator would not deign to handle weapons herself (except the pistol she has a permit for) and leaves those to her peons in her security detail.
Quite clearly, the police across America will be further emboldened to continue the kind of murder spree which just happened in California. Indiscriminately shooting up vehicles with occupants who bear no resemblance to their “suspect”, roughing up citizens at their leisure and, of course, employing the very weapons most wish to strip the Mundanes of. We are fortunate in America that in case after case, the absurdly poor quality marksmanship and weapons handling of the cops in the nineteen thousand law enforcement departments of America has saved lives but more tragically led to the lead poisoning of many innocent bystanders who then sue the cops and the taxpayers who are occupied by the police are forced to cough up millions to pay for the armed thuggery and malpractice.
The second and greater question that I hope becomes a meme in the American future: what would Michael Collins do?
What the LAPD and more importantly, the Federal government have not taken a measure of is the unintended consequences of unleashing the million plus statist goons in blue not only in the zealous attempted murder spree on view in California but combined with the looming threats of disarmament of the populace may be an uncorking of a genie the government will regret letting loose.
In California, one man made the law enforcers fill their pants, cower in their homes with protective details surrounding them and led to the aforementioned (comedic if not tragic) Kalifornia Keystone Kops antics where seven detectives let loose a fusillade of rounds into a newspaper delivery truck not even matching the description of Dorner’s vehicle and hit the two Hispanic women with two rounds and perforate the truck. Fortunately, the legendary and widespread abysmal weapons proficiency of the thin black and blue line saved their lives.
Michael Collins faced a similar foe in Ireland at the turn of the twentieth century as England was closing on the eight hundredth anniversary of their occupation of Ireland. Collins adduced correctly that the locus and focus of all alien governance in Ireland was the law enforcement arm of the Englisg state augmented by British military forces.
Michael Collins was what one could suppose is any government most dangerous adversary. He was a practical visionary. Not only did he envision a free Ireland, he had a concrete plan to get there. Like Samuel Adams and Patrick Henry before him and Giap after him, he blended a unique talent for the political chess game and calculus of violence that would enable the resisters to overwhelm the will and outmatch the ferocity of the British occupiers. While a contemporary of T. E. Lawrence, they did not know each other but crafted an eerily similar game-plan to defeat their foes. Collins knew that the “golden hour” for independence and all the planets aligning for the political tectonic shift were on the horizon and he simply had to arrange the events and orchestrate the players. Those six years between 1916 and 1922 would prove to be the precise moment when the Irish could loose the English fetters that had harnessed their nation for nearly 800 years.
Who was Michael Collins?
Collins worked as a clerk in London from 1906 until he returned to Ireland in 1916. He fought in the Easter Rising, was arrested and held in detention at Frongoch, Merioneth, but was released in December 1916. In December 1918 he was one of 27 out of 73 elected Sinn Féin members (most of whom were in jail) present when Dáil ireann (Irish Assembly) convened in Dublin and declared for the republic. Their elected president,Eamon de Valera, and vice president, Arthur Griffith, were both in prison. Hence, much responsibility fell on Collins, who became first the Dáil’s minister of home affairs and, after arranging for de Valera’s escape from Lincoln jail (February 1919), minister of finance. It was as director of intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), however, that he became famous. As chief planner and coordinator of the revolutionary movement, Collins organized numerous attacks on police and the assassination in November 1920 of many of Britain’s leading intelligence agents in Ireland. He headed the list of men wanted by the British, who placed a price of 10,000 on his head.
After the truce of July 1921, Griffith and Collins were sent to London by de Valera as the principal negotiators for peace (October–December 1921). The treaty of Dec. 6, 1921, was signed by Collins in the belief that it was the best that could be obtained for Ireland at the time and in the full awareness that he might be signing his own death warrant. It gave Ireland dominion status, but its provision for an oath of allegiance to the British crown was unacceptable to de Valera and other republican leaders. Collins’s persuasiveness helped win acceptance for the treaty by a small majority in the Dáil, and a provisional government was formed under his chairmanship, but effective administration was obstructed by the mutinous activities of the anti-treaty republicans. Collins refrained from taking action against his former comrades until IRA insurgents seized the Four Courts in Dublin and civil war became inevitable. William Thomas Cosgrave replaced Collins as chairman when the latter assumed command of the army in mid-July 1922 in order to crush the insurgency. About five weeks later, while on a tour of military inspection, Collins was shot to death by anti-treaty IRA.
Collins was the right man at the right time in the right historical place. Absent his strategic & operational brilliance, tenacity and charisma, Irish independence may not have happened. In the larger schema of history, this became yet another chapter in the long succession of nation creation and destruction that has marched through Western history from it Hellenic roots in ancient Greece. Not only was Collins seceding from a larger tax jurisdiction but he was creating a wholly independent tax jurisdiction that would go on to become an odd amalgam of capitalism and socialism that would completely collapse economically at the beginning of the 21st century.
Key aspects of his campaign were the careful grooming of auxiliary organizations in the mass base of the greater population, a consistent and wholesale campaign to legitimize Irish independence in the minds of the Irish and his charismatic leadership.
He also employed a savage violence that led to the events of 21 November, 1920 when he effectively killed and destroyed the essential elements and personnel of the UK intelligence organs in Ireland proper. T. Ryle Dwyer, author of The Squad and the Intelligence Operations of Michael Collins quotes Collins:
“My one intention was the destruction of the undesirables who continued to make miserable the lives of ordinary decent citizens. I have proof enough to assure myself of the atrocities which this gang of spies and informers have committed. If I had a second motive it was no more than a feeling such as I would have for a dangerous reptile. By their destruction the very air is made sweeter. For myself, my conscience is clear. There is no crime in detecting in wartime the spy and the informer. They have destroyed without trial. I have paid them back in their own coin.”
Most historians agree this crippled British intelligence operations (in this case, the Cairo Gang) from this point onward and made the withdrawal of British interests inevitable. Absent the sophisticated network of spies and informants, the war would be fought blind. More atrocities in response to this were visited on the Irish by constabulary and military forces and this merely stiffened the spine of the major and minor elements of the Irish resistance. That same day, British forces fired on spectators at an Irish football match which left seven dead and dozens wounded.
David Leeson in “Death in the Afternoon: The Croke Park Massacre, 21 November 1920” describes part of the aftermath.
“Two military courts of inquiry into the massacre were held, and one found that “the fire of the RIC was carried out without orders and exceeded the demands of the situation.” Major-General Boyd, the officer commanding Dublin District, added that in his opinion, “the firing on the crowd was carried out without orders, was indiscriminate, and unjustifiable, with the exception of any shooting which took place inside the enclosure.” The findings of these courts of inquiry were suppressed by the British Government, and only came to light in 2000.”
The Cairo Gang was responsible for surveilling and torturing a number of innocents and genuine guerrillas and Collins know that making them dead would send a message. It did. Fighting would intensify and British response and overreach to the incident would lead to the withdrawal of all British forces in a little over two years. One can debate the morality and efficacy of assassinating constabulary and military forces but the Irish justified their actions in much the same way one would put down a rabid dog. There are instances where defensive violence is the answer. Kirby Ferris provides an interesting perspective on this question:
“Perhaps the world isn’t the way we wish it would be. We all might wish that evil men could be persuaded from their vile behavior with bleeding heart entreaties, a kiss on the cheek, or proper toilet training. But it ain’t that way, folks, Pacifism is a sickness, an actual moral perversity, and dangerous when its effects spread to anyone else beside the pacifist. You may choose to walk to the cattle car, but damn you if you let your children be led up the ramp. You must never allow any group or government to steal your right to exercise armed lethal force in a just situation.”
Collins is instructive and the perfect storm brewing in America bodes ill for the over-reach of police forces in America. There are a myriad of cultural hurricane indicators gathering. When one looks at the Rubicon crossed in California, the gravely ill economy and the deep and dark pent-up rage against law enforcement by the tens of millions of families ravaged by the drug war and the interminable harassment of ten of millions of citizens for victimless crimes and the increasing militarization of cops, the recipe for confrontation is not far away.
And it won’t be one man.
“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
It couldn’t have been easy for Michael Collins, circling the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin were walking around down there.
I hope we don't need our own Michael Collins here. The militarization of our police from peace officers to quasi-military units is scary, especially from the feds. I see this as well to a lesser extent with some state cops and some suburban cops, especially those under 35 or ones pushing for promotion.
Not all cops are bad, but there are some bad ones out there.
You gotta be sh*tting me.
I can’t believe people believe the crap that all cops are out to get people and are just government thugs.
All cops no. Too many are. SWAT is used way too often and too often they get the wrong people.
Day in and day out, the majority of police officers in this country go about their jobs without incident, and it’s a difficult job. So, what would you have in place of the police? Armed citizens groups? Just who would hold them accountable.
Disband the BATF and DHS. Limit the FBI's powers. Many jurisdictions here, including where I used to life did not have a police department outside of county sheriff and MSP (mostly highway patrol). There wasn't a lot of crime there. Our local PD here has 7 full time cops that aren't desk people. That's more than enough.
The Bible clearly says that government wields the sword to keep order. Romans 13
Legitimate government. Tyrants are another story. Isaiah chapter 49.
Oh really? Obviously, some people don't get out much, if at all.
When I was younger, I was a perpetual target for harassment by the police simply because of the car a drove. A classic, but 20 years older than I was.
Explain to me how someone can get pulled over three times a day for three months -- and never get a ticket. No criminal record, never arrested.
Explain how trying to get to work and to school and to home is "doing something wrong".
If there is no simple explanation for that, then maybe there IS something wrong with the Police. Actually, given the apology I got from them after offering to take them to court over this -- yes, there is something wrong with the Police.
There is also something wrong with people who blindly trust authority figures and that is even more disturbing than people with badges hassling people for no reason at all.
The attitude that "they can do no wrong" enables and encourages bad behavior. It facilitates authority figures doing things that are illegal and immoral.
Please, do us all a favor. Understand that people are only human before giving them a pass simply because they have a badge.
I had a '57 Chevy, 283 cu in, with domed heads, power pack and AFB High Performance carburetor. I was only stopped once. The cop told me to drive the car, not point it and sent me on my way. I now have a couple of Vettes, a Mustang GT and a few other fast looking cars and I've not been stopped in any of them.
The attitude that "they can do no wrong"?
As opposed to the attitude "they do everything wrong"?
“If the cops are out to get you, you probably did something wrong.”
Just, WOW! Didn’t know there were any of those left:
“There he goes. One of God’s own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die.”
Mine got a little more attention, methinks.
“When I was younger, I was a perpetual target for harassment by the police simply because of the car a drove.”
Must have been bitchin’ ride, what was it?
I tell people to watch the movie “Michael Collins” when the subject of CWII comes up in “conversation.” Especially if it’s with some idiot who thinks the sides will be “standing in ranks and trading volleys,” (http://www.unpopulartruth.com/2009/04/american-revolutionary-war-was-not-won.html) or that the anti-gov’t forces would congregate in a place where they could be fixed and killed by superior weapons.
Interesting discussion.
5.56mm
“The best we can hope for now is to find regional pockets of relative freedom”
Find? We’re going to have to MAKE them.
Get himself killed by the very forces he’d helped unleash?
Throughout history, citizen disarmament generally leads to one of two inevitable outcomes: Government tyranny and genocide, or, revolution and civil war. Anti-gun statists would, of course, argue that countries like the UK and Australia have not suffered such a result. My response would be – just give them time. You may believe that gun control efforts are part and parcel of a totalitarian agenda (as they usually are), or, you may believe that gun registration and confiscation are a natural extension of the government’s concern for our “safety and well-being”. Either way, the temptation of power that comes after a populace is made defenseless is almost always too great for any political entity to dismiss. One way or another, for one reason or another, they WILL take advantage of the fact that the people have no leverage to determine their own cultural future beyond a twisted system of law and governance which is, in the end, easily corrupted. The unawake and the unaware among us will also argue that revolution or extreme dissent against the establishment is not practical or necessary, because the government “is made of regular people like us, who can be elected or removed at any time”. http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1337-gun-rights-are-there-any-peaceful-solutions-left ~~ We have spoken the truth and their guilt terrifies them.
1962 Cadillac.
Never a ticket issued. Not once. Great car - loved it, but wow, got a ton of attention.
Twenty years ago a buddy and I were looking at old cars to buy and restore. We checked out a ‘62 Caddy which looked good but the engine was seized up. That was a little beyond what we had plans or funds for. He ended up getting a ‘71 Barracuda convertible and just about broke even on it. Now it would have been worth a lot more.
I agree...
There seems to be a kind of blueprint to the methods implemented during that time in their history, but might not be applicable (in our sphere) without some adjustments for culture, demographies and the area you and others may occupy at a particular time...
Like I;ve said many times...I’d like to think we can keep this civil, keep the fight in the halls of our government and its procedures...
But there are serious and credible doubts about their ability to keep it from spilling out into the streets, for lack of a better term...
I would say I have a controlled cynisism about our leadership caste these days, and my doubts, all our doubts about their abilities are congruent, on the same page, so to speak...Some of us are certainly prepared for worse conditions, and we are still far (in my opinion) from any ddraastic action from our side of the equation...But there will be a breaking point, and each man’s line in the sand is different, our tolerances for the nonsense will be up ended with a series of events, maybe not so much “one thing” that willtrigger us into “individual” action...
Just my opinion...
BTW, peoples inhibitions about fighting back, back then, were different...Nowadays, we are cautious about offending, or calling attention to ourselves and our opinions that differ from this Fabian agenda to “fundamentally” change the founding principles...Why there is concern (maybe fear) I have not quite put my finger on that just yet...
Remember the old addage about ther may become a time that we need to bury our guns, to keep them out of the hands of tyrrany, but that that may be the time to keep them close at hand...
Well, Ibelieve we still need to keep our “wits” about us, close at hand, and do what we can to convince those who choose to lead, represent us, always focused upon the virtue of our cause, to maintain the freedoms/liberties this country was founded upon...And make and most importantly BELIEVE in those principles and lead from that position rather than from a compramised, or moderate political/social standpoint...That may keep us from the brink of losing this country...
Just my random thoughts for the morning...
And those same cops will be more than happy to strap on their ninja gear, toss a flash bang into your house and then rip it to pieces when the order comes to confiscate your firearms. If you think anything differently you’re a fool.
That may be true in some parts of the country...But...
I hear and see a lot of command officers stating publically that they will not inforce un-Constitutional laws in their jurisdictions...
Which in my opinion offers a list of those folks that will be “replaced” when the time comes...
Let’s hope cooler heads prevail...Because when I, and maybe a few others, get into the fracus...It’ll get ugly, real fast...And no one wins at that point...
Just my opinion...
Y’all ought to get together and form the “I hate cops club”. Just be sure to swear an oath never to call 911 nor encourage anyone else to do so if in need.
Steve, I’ve been to New Orleans - yes, I know corrupt cops exist.
Darren, I don’t believe the individual is the sole arbiter of what government is legitimate. Each man is not a law unto himself.
I still stand by my position that the majority of police officers are good people, and if the cops are after you, you probably did something wrong.
Last time I looked, we are still able to hold different opinions in this country. Calling someone an idiot or fool isn’t part of a reasonable discussion.
Unless of course you’re talking to an idiot or a fool, which we apparently are. In that case it’s perfectly reasonable.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.