Category Archives: Individual Rights

UPDATED: ‘To Save One Life Is Like Saving the World’ (Republicans Disagree)

Individual Rights, Islam, Israel, Judaism & Jews, Liberty, Middle East, Palestinian Authority, Religion, Republicans

This may sound chauvinistic, but when nations are consumed with safekeeping their own, by default (and in self interest), they are more careful with the lives of their enemies.

Israel has demonstrated once again its commitment to that Talmudic verse, “To Save One Life Is Like Saving the World.” (The verse was ‘appropriated,” or ripped off, by Islam, and an exclusionary clause written into the equivalent Quranic ayah. Islam’s borrowed version, needless to say, is considerably less humanistic and universal.)

MSNBC’s Martin Bashir expressed bewilderment at the news that,

Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and hundreds of Palestinians crossed Israel’s borders in opposite directions on Tuesday as a thousand-for-one prisoner exchange brought joy to families but did little to ease decades of conflict. …In all, Israel is setting free 1,027 Palestinians in return for the liberty of Shalit. Some have spent 30 years behind bars for violent attacks against Israel and its occupation of land taken in the 1967 Middle East War.
Over 100 of the 477 prisoners released in the first phase of the exchange were taken to the West Bank. The rest were coming into Gaza, apart from 41 who were due to fly out from Cairo to exile in Turkey, Syria or Qatar.

Bashir, a neocon-cum-liberal, is in good company here in the US. The following is from a 2004, Antiwar.com column:

… the neoconservatives at National Review have grumbled about Israel’s “lopsided prisoner exchanges” over the years. One “sofa samurai,” Eric Leskly, [once noted] the startling disparity of exchanging 5,500 Egyptian soldiers, following the Sinai campaign of 1956, “for the lives of the four Israeli soldiers captured in the fighting,” and over 8,000 Egyptians, after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in exchange for 240 Israeli soldiers.
Its official policy notwithstanding, Israel has also negotiated with terrorists for the lives and bodies of its soldiers. As Dr. Boaz Ganor, executive director of the International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, told the Jerusalem Post: “Israeli governments are more prone to the influence of public opinion.”

I remember thinking just that when, years back, I watched demonstrators heckle Ariel Sharon after yet another suicide bombing. One man yelled, “If you don’t sort this mess out, I’ll personally pay you a visit.”

UPDATE II: Bar Ron Paul, the debaters at the CNN Western Republican Presidential Debate related not at all to the Israeli position—a consistent preference for doing what it takes to save a life, even if not always strategic.

UPDATE II: The Perils of a Killer President (Parlaying Vice into Votes)

Barack Obama, Constitution, Ethics, Foreign Policy, Homeland Security, Individual Rights, Iran, Islam, Justice, Law, Middle East, Natural Law, Ron Paul, Terrorism

He oversees nothing but destruction. But practically everyone except Rep. Ron Paul (and most assuredly Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio) is praising the exercise of an extrajudicial, unconstitutional execution by President Barack Obama.

Anwar al-Awlaki was terminated today in Yemen (in violation of that country’s sovereignty). According to the say-so of U.S. officials, this American-born cleric is said to have “played a ‘significant operational role’ in plotting and inspiring attacks on the United States.”

Good enough evidence in the court of the imperial presidency and his adherents and architects (like Dick Cheney).

Outside of a war zone, as Awlaki was, lethal force can only be employed in the narrowest and most extraordinary circumstances: when there is a concrete, specific and imminent threat of an attack; and even then, deadly force must be a last resort

(The Guardian)

“The targeted assassination program that started under President Bush and expanded under the Obama Administration essentially grants the executive the power to kill any U.S. citizen deemed a threat, without any judicial oversight, or any of the rights afforded by our Constitution. If we allow such gross overreaches of power to continue, we are setting the stage for increasing erosion of civil liberties and the rule of law.” (The Center for Constitutional Rights)

WARNING: Thanks to the wastrel ways of the killer-in-chief and his predecessor (Genghis Bush), America is getting weaker, not stronger. A weakened bully is extra vulnerable.

Note to all Americans who want to go out into the world and soak up the sensation of spring in Arabia, Asia and elsewhere: As hard as it is to grasp, the world is not your friend. Remember what befell a couple of American hikers who wondered into … Iran, after backpacking across … Iraq. You heard right. Their touchy-feely friends stateside vouched for their amaaazingness and thirst to embrace the world. Apparently, the feeling in Iran was not mutual. (By the way, who paid the million-dollar ransom for those bozos? Did taxpayers subsidize that stupidity?)

UPDATE I: A chilling thread on my Facebook Page. Having skimmed the general thrust of the comments, here is my response:

“What are you freedom fighters so afraid of? The rule of law? Due process? A court of law? Twelve jurors? A Judge? You can’t just assert a man’s guilt; you must prove it with credible evidence. You can’t accept the say-so of the state. What is most chilling in a thread I’ve only skimmed is that, if I were to be arrested tomorrow by the Obama-Bush bot apparatus, and you were all told I as was a militia member (read “Missouri Police State: Beware Of People Like … Mercer”; I qualify)—you’d all be, ‘Yeah, yeah , that makes sense. We could see it coming. Go get Ilana.’ All of you except for Bill Meyer and a few others.”

UPDATE II (Oct. 1): As I put it in my latest column, politicians parlay human vice into votes. The Obama fairy dust is dissipating. The president is good at coordinating terrorism-related killings. (Or perhaps he is simply lucky on this front.) Perhaps this most cynical and wily of politicians is simply playing to the crowd. Murder is one way to unite the bifurcated American voter.

Myron: Your analogy about attacker vs. attacked extinguishing borders doesn’t work in this instance. For one thing, Israel is attacked from Gaza and the West Bank with more than words. When last did Yemen attack the US? That “country” harbors a couple of clerics who write fiery tracts on the Internet. For another, I am unable to tell how bad al-Awlaki’s authentic words were because, er, I can’t access them in the original. I have to contend with US government filtered hearsay. Besides, US law gives wide latitude to speech. We’d have to show that this man was an organizer, a direct funder of terrorism and terrorists. Due process takes care of all that—you know, the pesky need to shore-up your case with evidence.

The BHO strategy works: “According to an Associated Press-GfK poll conducted in late August, … 60 percent of those surveyed approved of his handling of terrorism. Just 36 percent approved of his handling of the economy, an all-time low for Obama.”

UPDATED: The Quicksand of “Stand-Your-Ground” Laws

Crime, Criminal Injustice, GUNS, Individual Rights, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Natural Law, Private Property

When discussing “All Burglars are Home Invaders,” readers in the sensible parts of the country were convinced that their state’s “stand-your-ground” laws would shield them in the event that they were forced to use deadly force to fend off an attack on person, property or both.

These laws removed the requirement whereby “people who think they are in immediate peril must first try to retreat from the confrontation before using deadly force. Prior to passage of the law, only people defending themselves in their own homes, for the most part, could use deadly force without first trying to flee.” (MSNBC)

That some of my readers had faith in the law surprised me somewhat. As recently as the 7/15/2011, I wrote about an “American veteran-hero jailed” for standing his ground, so to speak. Dr. Jerome Ersland was recently condemned to life in prison for defending his property and his employees from a gang of armed robbers. A pistol pointed at his head was not enough to save this hero from imprisonment, pursuant to defending his own life and the lives of his co-workers.

Ersland is from Oklahoma, which is in one of “14 states [that] have revised their laws to ensure that people don’t have to retreat from an attacker. Those states are: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee and Texas, according to the NRA.” (MSNBC)

UPDATE: At bottom, every employee, wife, pal wants a man like Ersland around when the stuff hits the fan. In “Sacrificing Kids To PC Pietism,” I describe the kind of left-liberal perverseness that permeates the letter below. Ersland is a hero; his is an adaptive, manly, normal version of the fight-or-flight response.

UPDATED: All Burglars Are Home Invaders (Property Über Alles)

Crime, Democracy, GUNS, Individual Rights, Justice, Law, libertarianism, Political Philosophy, Private Property, The Courts

In “All Burglars Are Home Invaders,” now on WND.COM, I discuss the culprits Joshua Komisarjevsky and his accomplice Steven Hayes, who “On July 23, 2007, were apprehended at the scene of a crime—the Petit family home in Cheshire, Connecticut. Their crimes:

• Raping Mrs. Hawke-Petit and her 11-year-old daughter Michaela.
• Strangling Jennifer Hawke-Petit.
• Setting the family home on fire, thereby killing Michaela and her 17-year-old sister, Hayley.

“… the Media and law enforcement are in the habit of describing a deadly home invasion as “a robbery gone wrong.” Consequently, homeowners have been culturally conditioned to consider the uninvited house guest as one would a modern-day Jean Valjean. Like Victor Hugo’s protagonist in Les Misérables, the “thief” is likely looking only to take a loaf of bread and leave—that is unless he openly announces his intentions to harm his reluctant hosts.

One extremely conservative writer even bristled when a news reporter broke protocol and applied the ‘home invasion’ appellation to the offense of breaking and entering:

… burglary is when a person illegally enters private property and steals things. A home invasion is when people illegally enter a home in order to terrorize, harm, or kill the residents… If we start calling all burglaries ‘home invasions,’ we lose the distinction between them.

The sooner we lose this distinction the better! All burglars are home invaders in-the-making.

Confronted with a criminal breaking and entering, there’s precious little the occupant can do to divine the intentions of the invader. It should be assumed that anyone violating another man’s inner sanctum will willingly violate the occupant. …If you believe in the sanctity of life you should fight for the sanctity of private property. It is a man’s right—even obligation—to defend his life and the lives of the loved ones living under his roof. Arguably, a right that is not vigorously defended is as good as a right forfeited. …”

The complete column is “All Burglars Are Home Invaders,” now on WND.COM.

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UPDATE (Sept. 23): PROPERTY ÜBER ALLES. I would probably disagree with Myron Pauli about the equal importance of the troika of liberties all libertarians should shout from the rooftops. Property trumps liberty, for liberty can be variously defined. Our government insists we are free so long as we can vote. We know this to be untrue. Property, moreover, is harder to redefine. Thus, if our rights to property were fully upheld—the same state that tells us to consider ourselves free (and be grateful) would be unable to control huge areas of our lives—bedroom, boardroom, you name them.

“Life, liberty property”: I don’t believe them to be equally weighted elements of liberty.