Posted on 05/05/2015 12:31:18 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Watching the Right’s reaction to the Freddie Gray case, I’ve had a horrible nightmare: Aliens from a distant planet—big-government, statist aliens from Planet Obama, perhaps—have snatched millions of American conservatives and replaced them with Progressive pod people.
How else to explain the sudden, sweeping abandonment by my fellow conservatives of that most precious icon of our movement, the Constitution?
The Grey case is a constitutional fiasco. A guy walking down the street approached by the authorities because—literally—he “looked at them?” He’s pursued, frisked, found in the legal possession of a weapon (a pocketknife) and is arrested? No crime? No theoretical charge of a crime?
Then he’s shackled, laid on the floor of a police van on his stomach—unsecured and in violation of police rules—and bounced around the city for hours, while being repeatedly denied requested medical treatment.
The Police Can’t Just Grab People
Freddie Gray was an American citizen who started his day having not committed a crime, and ended the day with fatal injuries sustained while in custody of the government. And Republicans are defending…the government? Who are you, and what have you done with my conservatives?
Real conservatives—my Tea Party friends and limited-government activists—understand that the Constitution is a document of “negative rights.” An officer of the government sees you and decides he wants to search you, or grab you, take your stuff, or even kill you. Can he? For most of the history of mankind, the answer was “Shut up, peon, and get back in your cell!”
Our founders committed a truly revolutionary act when they wrote a Constitution that is a document of “No.” It tells agents of the government, “No, you can’t.” It doesn’t matter if the citizen is a pillar of the community or a punk. He’s still an American, so hands off!
You Don’t Need to Be Good to Get Rights
But why am I having to explain this to the Right? I learned all this from you. You explained to me that gun ownership has nothing to do with the question “do you need a gun?” or “are you a good enough person to be allowed to own a gun?”
We wear “What Part Of ‘Shall Make No Law’ Don’t You Understand?” t-shirts to remind big-government liberals that, whether they like guns or not, we have constitutional rights they can’t touch. You explained to me that the Obama administration’s assault on Tea Party groups—using the Internal Revenue Service; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the Federal Bureau Investigation, etc. to intimidate activists during an election cycle—was precisely the sort of government thuggery the founders feared. Even though the IRS has the power to audit citizens, laws and institutions must check that power in the name of citizens’ rights.
But now you’re telling me that you support cops who arrested a guy legally in possession of a weapon, and you’re on the side of “Lois Lerner” law enforcement? Who are you people? Whoever you are, you definitely aren’t conservatives.
Alleged “conservatives” making their angry, foamy-mouthed defense of the Baltimore police tell me that what I don’t understand is that Gray is “different.” He’s “different” because he’s a known drug dealer, not a good, upstanding citizen.
To which I reply: Do you think President Obama thinks you “bitter clingers” are good citizens? Do you think he believes opponents of same-sex marriage, or businesses that don’t want to pay for abortions, or skeptics of climate change are good citizens?
Conservatives taught me that the founders understood we needed the Constitution specifically to protect the rights of Americans the government considered “bad.” When conservatives take the position that some citizens are so “bad” that the government should be free to ignore their constitutional rights, they are kicking the door wide open for a Hillary Clinton to use the power of the White House to do just that to Americans she thinks are “bad.”
No real conservative would support such a flawed, unconstitutional view of the relationship between the citizen and the state. Government agents free to kill unarmed Americans—and have the support of conservatives while they do it—is simply unimaginable.
So I’m left with only one possible conclusion: RUN AWAY! THE POD PEOPLE ARE COMING!
-- Michael Graham is a radio talk show host in Atlanta, Georgia.
Guess the writer hasn’t visited FR!
By whom in particular?
Nobody thought of him as a Reagan type, to be sure. His sympathies lie with European political Catholicism more than with the US Constitution, and he’s quite the Beltway insider.
Back when he worked for Nizon, he was in charge of crafting a strategy that would make his employer attractive to Democrats. He needed his sister’s influence to join Reagan’s camp too.
Given that cops are now blindly executed on the streets now by muzzies and other dark skinned people, I might be inclined to give police a little more leeway. As to the facts of this case. ..who knows? I would think that in a sane world the good citizens of this community should be glad that a drug dealer is off their streets.
Once I get some facts instead of rumors, I'll know what position to take.
Mr. Graham was ran out of WMAL a few years ago because he was attacking Islam. He’s got more balls in that regard than most of the ‘conservative’ talk show hosts that are held in high regard here.
Nobody thought of him as a Reagan type, to be sure.
The idea of "a Reagan type" is hard to pin down. A lot of people who claim to be Reagan types aren't really that.
Some new fissure always opens up and whoever is on the other side of it becomes a RINO. I'm not even sure Ronald Reagan himself would pass muster as a Reagan type today.
Back in 1992, there were plenty of people who thought they were continuing in Reagan's footsteps by following Buchanan -- or at least in voting for whoever was running against Bush.
I didn't vote for Buchanan, but like a lot of people I was tempted.
Cop shooting deaths are far down over what they used to be, and they weren’t very high back then and ‘cops” means everyone, from city cops to Secret Service and the Port authority, and FBI.
Well then, maybe he "evolved" since 1992. All I can tell you is that he was one of my top favorite talk show hosts for years, and I was sorry to see him go.
See if you can find any of his columns online. He definitely is not a RINO. I know, because I can't STAND RINOs, and was chastised by many here on FR during the 2014 mid-terms for arguing that conservatives should not vote for any member of the GOPs establishment.
Lots of RINOs attack Islam out of one side of their mouth and then vilify the enemies of Islam out of the other. Graham’s former boss Buchanan is like that too, and of course other people like Michael “Savage” Weiner.
He was always correct on such issues, and the RINOS are the ones who failed to hold the line.
The modern day GOP is the embodiment of being on the other side of such concerns.
Freddie Gray was a thug and a troublemaker.
The cops may have overstepped procedure. But there is no way on God’s green Earth that a murder charge is justified, and I’m pretty sure even Little Girl Mosby knows it.
If they broke the law, they should be punished, but let’s see the evidence.
However, with the kind of jury pool they have in Bawlmore...
I am curious if Freddie Gray could legally purchase a gun in Mariland. Only because the author argued the 2nd amendment.
We haven’t paid much attention to Freddie Gray because we have been distracted by mobs, thugs and thieves destroying private property. No one at the stores that were destroyed by looters and arsonists had anything to do with what happened to Freddie Gray. Freddie Gray has simply become the latest excuse for violent, destructive anarchy.
Why was Freddie Gray’s switchblade illegal? Who made it illegal? Why didn’t the arresting cops call for a SWAT assault to deal with that fully automatic knife? There are a lot of questions that need to be answered, but how can that be done with all this noise going on?
RE: Why didn’t the arresting cops call for a SWAT assault to deal with that fully automatic knife?
I didn’t know Freddie Gray had an automatic rifle...
Exactly.
I don’t even know what the arrest charge was. It will all come out later, but too early to jump on the ‘illegal arrest’ bandwagon.
Me neither.
Leaving aside that we'd be taking the word of a lawyer with a very vested interest in the case that the knife was completely legal in Baltimore, why do I need to defend anyone here? Can't I find fault with everyone involved?
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