Category Archives: Natural Law

Minimizing the Crime of Home Invasion

Aesthetics, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Individual Rights, Natural Law, Private Property, Race

Don Lemon, one of CNN’s not-very-bright, cherubic, soft-spoken “girlie-men,” called the murder of Washington Redskins star Sean Taylor a “robbery gone wrong.”

In other words, the four career criminals who invaded Taylor’s home and shot and killed him were modern-day Jean Valjeans. Like Victor Hugo’s protagonist in Les Misérables, these thugs intended only to take a loaf of bread, sate their hunger, and then leave. (Please don’t tell me I have to post a “cynicism alert” every time I’m being, well, cynical.)

Let’s unpack this.

Confronted with a criminal breaking and entering, there’s precious little a homeowner can do to divine the intentions of the invader. If you violate someone’s inner sanctum, then he or she ought to proceed from the premise that you’re willing to violate the occupant.

The law ought to proceed from the same premise. A home owner ought to be permitted to deploy deadly force in defense of his home and family. In general, albeit with a growing number of exceptions, I believe this is the rule in the US. (Although, not in Cool Britannia.)

This is why neighbors are out in force to demonstrate their support for Pasadena hero, Joe Horn (good luck finding this story on the major news networks’ sites; I couldn’t):

Horn “shot and killed two suspected burglars at his neighbor’s home last month… The neighborhood has been awash in controversy ever since the two men, Miguel Dejesus, 38, and Diego Ortiz, 30, were shot.
The whole thing started when Horn called 911 to say that two men were breaking into his neighbor’s home.

In a tape of the 911 call released to the media, the emergency operator can be heard urging Horn to remain in his home and wait for police to arrive.
‘You’re gonna get yourself shot if you go outside that house with a gun. I don’t care what you think,’ the operator said.
Horn disagreed.
‘You wanna make a bet?’ he said. ‘I’m gonna kill ‘em.’
After the shooting, a shaken Horn called 911 again.
‘I had no choice,’ he said. ‘They came in the front yard with me, man. I had no choice. Get somebody over here quick.’”

[Snip]
“Values” is a buzzword not only in the presidential campaign. There is a veritable revival of the civil rights movement around certain criminal core values. African-Americans are coalescing around thugs to make the case that, wait a sec; what case are they trying to make? You tell me. If the issue is indeed race, then the Juvenile criminal from Jena came close to killing a white boy; these two black men robbed the home of whites.

Incidentally, why do you suppose this story is so hard to trace?

Letter of the Week: A Note from Bobby, Terri Schiavo’s Brother

Conservatism, Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Justice, Law, Morality, Natural Law

Dear Ms. Mercer,

I wanted to sincerely thank you for your column regarding my sister Terri.

It seems to me that many of our conservatives brethren began their exodus when the media made it their mission to justify Terri’s death by misreporting the autopsy report, which by the way, was prejudiced in order to avoid any legal ramifications.

I firmly believe that the jaundiced autopsy results have been and are still being erroneously reported by our popular media as a reason to negatively influence the constituents of those politicians that supported my family’s efforts to help my sister. As a result, it seems to me that no one in Washington had/has the courage to make the point that regardless of someone’s condition, intentionally killing an innocent disabled person, guilty of nothing more than becoming an inconvenience, is intolerable.

However, as you pointed out so eloquently in your column, Terri’s condition (or the autopsy results) should have made no difference in the decision to kill my sister, particularly when so much uncertainly existed in regards to her “wishes”. Not to mention Terri’s suspicious collapse.

It truly was unfortunate that many of our “friends” in Congress were duped by the deliberate inaccurate reporting of Terri’s autopsy and went voiceless when Terri’s issue became an election topic. Just as frustrating, however, was many of your media colleagues also went silent when at one time they were very supportive of Terri and our family. Their silence served to exacerbate the horrible injustice that was endured by my sister.

We all need to recognize that what happened to Terri was happening for many years prior to her death and continues everyday across our nation.

Sincerely,
Bobby Schindler
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation
5562 Central Avenue, Suite 2
St. Petersburg, FL 33707
727-490-7603
www.terrisfight.org

Letter of the Week: A Note from Bobby, Terri Schiavo's Brother

Conservatism, Criminal Injustice, Ethics, Justice, Law, Morality, Natural Law

Dear Ms. Mercer,

I wanted to sincerely thank you for your column regarding my sister Terri.

It seems to me that many of our conservatives brethren began their exodus when the media made it their mission to justify Terri’s death by misreporting the autopsy report, which by the way, was prejudiced in order to avoid any legal ramifications.

I firmly believe that the jaundiced autopsy results have been and are still being erroneously reported by our popular media as a reason to negatively influence the constituents of those politicians that supported my family’s efforts to help my sister. As a result, it seems to me that no one in Washington had/has the courage to make the point that regardless of someone’s condition, intentionally killing an innocent disabled person, guilty of nothing more than becoming an inconvenience, is intolerable.

However, as you pointed out so eloquently in your column, Terri’s condition (or the autopsy results) should have made no difference in the decision to kill my sister, particularly when so much uncertainly existed in regards to her “wishes”. Not to mention Terri’s suspicious collapse.

It truly was unfortunate that many of our “friends” in Congress were duped by the deliberate inaccurate reporting of Terri’s autopsy and went voiceless when Terri’s issue became an election topic. Just as frustrating, however, was many of your media colleagues also went silent when at one time they were very supportive of Terri and our family. Their silence served to exacerbate the horrible injustice that was endured by my sister.

We all need to recognize that what happened to Terri was happening for many years prior to her death and continues everyday across our nation.

Sincerely,
Bobby Schindler
Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation
5562 Central Avenue, Suite 2
St. Petersburg, FL 33707
727-490-7603
www.terrisfight.org

A Republic, if You Can Keep It

America, Constitution, Federalism, Founding Fathers, Individual Rights, Law, Natural Law

Yesterday Bush signed “The Military Commissions Act of 2006.” I went in search for a libertarian analysis, but found only a few splenetic screeds. While perfectly understandable, these execrations do nothing to dissect the implications of the Bill for Americans. As I read them, I knew I ought to be furious about torture. However, too little was being said about the erosion of due process, constitutional protections and the accretion of executive power.

Libertarians need to cite chapter and verse in the actual Bill and then logically and calmly explain its implications for Americans. (It is very possible that, because of his visceral contempt for the Constitution as a so-called statist document, the anarchist can’t rise to the occasion. However, he may want to bear in mind that to the extent the Constitution comports with natural law, it’s both laudable and legitimate.)

In any case, right or wrong, to security-crazed Americans, the constant squealing about torture is a signal to switch off, as it conjures the namby-pamby liberal whose concerns are, overwhelmingly, with the “evil doers.” Readers are likelier to be swayed by arguments that address the possibility of detention without trial of US citizens and the sundering of habeas corpus and the separation of powers.

Finally, I found this, which does just that. This piece from Reason offers a gist of the administration’s impetus vis-a-vis the Bill. This next piece, however, is unhelpful. Libertarians will get its Bastiatian thrust, but, bar some left-liberals, the rest will find it smarmy and juvenile. You don’t have to agree with everything Jonathan Turley says to find him inspiring. (I certainly don’t. Contra Turley, America is a republic, not a democracy, and hence not meant to manufacture “majoritarian” outcomes. And France’s centralized system is the truly ugly system.) There’s a precis of a talk he gave here. Or you can listen to him here.