Jared Lee Loughner, Bob Brady, Carolyn McCarthy

Frank Lautenberg, Glenn Beck

Who Needs Protection from Whom?

Washington (CNN) 1/9/2011 – Rep. Robert Brady, D-Pennsylvania, said he will introduce legislation making it a federal crime for a person to use language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a Member of Congress or federal official.

It’s long overdue for a law making it a crime for a Member of Congress or federal official to threaten to send massively armed government officers against a private citizen if that citizen does not comply with rights-violating laws or forcibly resists violations of his rights.

Glenn Beck’s Tory Pledge

Glenn Beck posted today on his website the following:

I challenge all Americans, left or right, regardless if you’re a politician, pundit, painter, priest, parishioner, poet or porn star to agree with all of the following.

• I denounce violence, regardless of ideological motivation.
• I denounce anyone, from the Left, the Right or middle, who believes physical violence is the answer to whatever they feel is wrong with our country.
• I denounce those who wish to tear down our system and rebuild it in their own image, whatever that image may be.
• I denounce those from the Left, the Right or middle, who call for riots and violence as an opportunity to bring down and reconstruct our system.
• I denounce violent threats and calls for the destruction of our system – regardless of their underlying ideology – whether they come from the Hutaree Militia or Frances Fox Piven.
• I hold those responsible for the violence, responsible for the violence. I denounce those who attempt to blame political opponents for the acts of madmen.
• I denounce those from the Left, the Right or middle that sees violence as a viable alternative to our long established system of change made within the constraints of our constitutional Republic.

Substitute “our constitutional Monarchy” for “our constitutional Republic” and Beck’s pledge could have been a British response to the Declaration of Independence, which reads:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

You can’t have it both ways. When violence is used to snuff out human rights, often violence is both necessary and morally justified in preservation of those rights.

This statement does not in any way countenance the violence of a madman who in a hail of indiscriminate gunfire targets a grocery shopper who by happenstance turns out to be a sitting federal judge, or a nine-year-old girl who was attending a rally because of a budding interest in politics. That madman deserves to die for his crimes.

But Glenn Beck said on his Fox News Show today that such incidents should not be used to support any political agenda.

Beck’s pledge does just that. It supports the political agenda of abandoning self-defense against established violent tyranny.

Crazy Violent reaction to Crazy Violence

Defenders of Jared Lee Loughner might use diminished capacity as a basis for claiming he wasn’t capable of forming a criminal intent in his shooting rampage. But what negation of mens rea can justify Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s (D, NY) and Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s (D, NJ) legislative intent to send massively armed federal officers to initiate violent confrontations with peaceful owners of 2nd Amendment protected firearms?

The Real Climate of Violence

Every time a SWAT officer busts down a door to serve a warrant for a victimless crime — regularly resulting in the murder of innocent victims who weren’t even committing such victimless crimes — a climate of violence leading to a cycle of more violence is perpetuated. Let’s not lose sight: the number of innocent victims Jared Lee Loughner racked up with a gun in ten minutes is insignificant compared to the government’s weekly body count.

This article is Copyright © 2011 The J. Neil Schulman Living Trust. All rights reserved.