Category Archives: Law

Russian Interference? How About American ‘Color Revolutions’ The World Over?

Argument, Conservatism, Democracy, Democrats, Foreign Policy, Globalism, Law, Neoconservatism, Race, Racism, Republicans

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Regime change abroad is not the purview of the Deep State alone; it’s the practice of the American State, Republican and Democratic administrations:

… both the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute “are chartered to promote democracy abroad with [ostensibly] nonpartisan training and election monitoring.” “Loosely affiliated with the Republican and Democratic Parties,” these institutes “were created by Congress and are financed through the National Endowment for Democracy, which was set up in 1983 to channel grants for promoting democracy in developing nations.”

As an example, take “The Adventures Of America’s Alinskyites in Egypt,” detailed in my 2012 column. Americans were outraged when Egypt expelled US nationals for fomenting regime change. Egypt was right:

The Egyptian Justice Ministry, under the authority of the military council, has detained and indicted 19 American democracy activists. To listen to the malfunctioning media stateside, however, the Egyptians are being petty, picking a fight with their American benefactors for “operating in Egypt without a license.” Or, if you want “expert” opinion, courtesy of Politico.com, the Egyptian plan to prosecute these “Americans and two dozen others” “is more over the future of U.S. aid to Egypt and who controls it.”

More…

Now, Darren J. Beattie, former Trump speech writer (who should have been kept on, if the Right had any moral courage), unsparingly reminds us of the American “Color Revolution” policy. His thinking is refreshingly original, the likes of which one doesn’t often see coming out of conservative quarters, where the same talking points are constantly recycled.

(To wit, on the same Tucker Carlson show, Candace Owens provided recycled boilerplate to the effect that the US is not in a race war, and that black violence is the doing of the Democrats. Untrue. There is most certainly a racial offensive against whites, to which conservatives can’t give expression. Irrespective of the Democrats’ undeniable agitation and incitement, this enthnocidal aggression against whites would persist.)

Essentially, Beattie empirically and analytically connected the US-launched “Color Revolutions” with the “lawfare” coups against Trump. I like the “lawfare” term Beattie has coinded. Nicely done.

Note: Beattie imputes “Color Revolutions” to the “US Government,” not merely to Democrat-run administrations. 

HERE:

There is no purer embodiment of Revolver’s thesis that the very same regime change professionals who run Color Revolutions on behalf of the US Government in order to undermine or overthrow alleged “authoritarian” governments overseas, are running the very same playbook to overturn Trump’s 2016 victory and to pre-empt a repeat in 2020. To put it simply, what you see is not just the same Color Revolution playbook run against Trump, but the same people using it against Trump who have employed it in a professional capacity against targets overseas—same people same playbook.

 

1807 Insurrection Act Was Good Enough For T. Jefferson. So, Bring It.

Constitution, Crime, Federalism, Foreign Policy, Founding Fathers, Law, States' Rights

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Face it. The US Constitution is a dead letter. The American Constitutional scheme—federalism—exists only in as much as to allow outlaws within and without government to hurt the law-abiding.

No other than Thomas Jefferson, an august constitutional authority if ever there was one, passed the 1807 Insurrection Act.

“Jefferson, to his credit, says I’m not going to act unless the Constitution says I can act,” says Fea. “The Federalists take a much broader view of the Constitution. If the Constitution doesn’t outright condemn it, then it’s OK.”

Jefferson stuck to his principles and in December of 1806 asked Congress to pass a bill “authorising the emploiment of the land or Naval forces of the US. in cases of insurrection.” This legislation, known as the Insurrection Act, would take another three months to become law.

Do it, Mr. President. Better late than never. Quell these bloody riots. Some skulls need cracking.

It was early in June that POTUS promised to protect American life, liberty and property forsaken, by invoking the 1807 Insurrection Act. Oh yes, “There’s this long tradition of” deploying the military to protect only countries the US invades, so this would be a departure from the imperial tradition.

Now, amid the razzmatazz of the Republican National Conference (RNC), being floated again is the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act to perform the negative duties of saving American lives and livelihoods. “Idea”? It’s more like a constitutional obligation hitherto ignored.

The police, whose first duty is to uphold the negative rights of the citizens, appear to believe they serve not the citizens but local mob bosses like Seattle’s mayor, Jenny Durkan, and her crooked police chief, Carmen Best. The latter, who seems to worry more about the weave on her head and eyelashes than about the working people of the city, commanded her compliant and cowardly police officers to desert their posts and the people they swore to protect.

READ: “Bring In The Feds! Protection Of Natural Rights Trumps Federalism”

UPDATED (8/22/): NEW COLUMN: Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!

Conservatism, Free Speech, Law, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Paleoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Race, Racism, Reason

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NEW COLUMN IS “Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!” It featured on Townhall.com, WND.COM, the Unz Review, and Newsroom For American and European-Based Citizens.

It is currently a feature on American Greatness:

“Was The Cop’s Knee On George Floyd’s Neck ‘Racism’? No!” It is the second in a series deconstructing the racism construct. For the first, there is also a quick YouTube primer.

Excerpt:

Racism consists of a mindset or a worldview that boils down to impolite and impolitic thoughts and words written, spoken, preached, or tweeted.

If that’s all racism is, you ask, then what was the knee on George Floyd’s neck? Was that not racism?

No, it was not.

Judging from the known facts, the knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck was a knee on a man’s neck. That’s all that can be inferred from the chilling video recording in which Floyd expired slowly as he pleaded for air.

Floyd begged to breathe. But the knee on his neck—“subdual restraint and neck compression,” in medical terms—was sustained for fully eight minutes and 46 seconds, causing “cardiopulmonary arrest.”

There are laws against what transpired between former Officer Derek Chauvin and Mr. Floyd.

And the law’s ambit is not to decide whether the offending officer is a correct-thinking individual, but whether Mr. Chauvin had committed a crime.

About Officer Chauvin’s mindset, the most the law is supposed to divine is mens rea—criminal intention: Was the officer whose knee pressed on Floyd’s neck acting with a guilty mind or not?

For fact-finding is the essence of the law. The law is not an abstract ideal of imagined social justice, that exists to salve sensitive souls.

If “racism” looks like a felony crime, then it ought to be prosecuted as nothing but a crime and debated as such. In the case of Mr. Chauvin, a mindset of depraved indifference seems to jibe with the video.

This is not to refute the reality of racially motivated crimes. These most certainly occur. It is only to refute the legal and ethical validity of a racist mindset in the prosecution of a crime.

Surely, a life taken because of racial or antisemitic animus is not worth more than life lost to spousal battery or to a home invasion.

The law, then, must mete justice, in accordance with the rules of evidence, proportionality and due process. Other than intent, references to the attendant thoughts that accompanied the commission of a crime should be irrelevant—be they racist, sexist, ageist or anti-Semitic.

Ultimately, those thoughts are known only to the perp.

To make matters worse, legions of libertarians and conservatives have joined the progressive establishment in the habit of sniffing out and purging racists, as though they were criminals.

Sniffing out thought or speech criminals is a no-no for any and all self-respecting classical conservative and libertarian. We should never persecute or prosecute thought “criminals” for utterances not to our liking (unless these threaten or portend violence). …

… READ THE REST. LATEST COLUMN IS currently a feature on American Greatness:

UPDATE (8/22/20):

Loup-Bouc:

Fine article, Ms. Mercer. Unlike all other Unz Review authors who have addressed the Floyd case, you apprehend accurately/correctly much of the pertinent law. ..I observe that you have written a fine article. Brava.

Mark Humphrey says:
August 22, 2020 at 1:51 am GMT   ?

This essay is the clearest and most effective explanation as to why racism and other bad ideas are not criminal. Of the numerous Mercer essays I have read, this is the best. Thank you.

 

 

Strip Social Media’s Social Engineers Of Their State Grants-Of-Privilege

Argument, Business, Conservatism, Free Speech, Law, libertarianism, Republicans, Technology, The State

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As ever, the political caste, in general, and “the party of industry and commerce,” in particular, has shown itself to be arrayed against Middle America.

How so?

An army of Covington Kids ought to have advanced on social media’s loathsome moral crusaders and censors. It can’t, because stripping the tech trolls of their state-grants of privilege has slipped down the order of business.

Depriving social media’s social engineers of their state grants-of-privilege seems more than reasonable.

Nobody conservative is arguing that “government should regulate content moderation of social media,” CATO Institute.

What is being advocated is that social-media censors be deprived of their state-grants of privilege and protections against liability. For social media are collective frauds. While acting as editors and social engineers, they are legally safeguarded as mere platform providers.

Under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, tech companies currently enjoy broad immunity from civil lawsuits stemming from what users post because they are treated as “platforms” rather than “publishers”.

Trump’s executive order is designed to pressure regulators, including the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission, to come up with new rules that would curtail that immunity. It is likely to face legal challenges. (The Guardian)

Look, laws exist. Too many of them. It would be great were there fewer of these laws. However, whether intended or not,  the upshot of corporate libertarianism is that laws only ever hamper the little guy and gal, never the multinational shyster and fraudster.

Naturally, conservatives must agree that unfettered speech is just that.  They can’t start carving out pet exceptions.

UPDATE (4/13/021):  The Civil Rights Act route is way better than Section 230 repeal—although that, too, must be tackled.