Cynics scoff at such ideals. Skeptics question the integrity of the men who acted on that principle in 1776.

Progressives deride both the principle and the men who acted upon it as venal and vicious, and seek to replace both at the core of our government and the core of our society.

In an April 15 lecture delivered at the University of Texas, Justice Clarence Thomas eloquently reminds us that our nation’s founding principle is still relevant, still foundational, and still worth defending.

He reminds us that the progressive “elites” in this country, expropriating a rubric of virtue, oppose this principle and want to dismantle the government founded upon it.

I could not hope to add to what Justice Thomas said. Instead, I share his thoughts in their entirety.

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Justice Thomas’ UT Address

SUPREME COURT ASSOCIATE JUSTICE CLARENCE THOMAS: President Davis, Provost William Inboden, Dean Dyer, faculty, students, and honored guests, I thank each of you for being here. And I thank the school and the officials here for the invitation to visit the University of Texas at Austin.

My wife, Virginia, and I are pleased to be here. To celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If my memory serves me, this is only my second visit to the University of Texas.

And this is the first visit at the invitation of the university. But I have hired and worked with a number of outstanding young people associated with this university. My first was now Chief Judge Greg Maggs of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Services, who was a fairly new faculty member at the law school when I became a member of the court. He took a leave of absence to help me as a law clerk during the second half of my first term. My first UT graduate to serve as a law clerk was Greg Coleman three decades ago. Greg went on to become the first solicitor of the state of Texas.

He was simply outstanding, as was his son, Reed, who also was a graduate of the law school here, and who was equally outstanding. Greg’s widow and our very dear friend, Stephanie, is with us today. Stephanie, thank you, and thanks for being such a good friend.

And both Greg and his son, Reed, clerked for my dear friend, Judge Edith Jones, also a graduate of UT Law School. I greatly admire Judge Jones. She is one of my heroes, and I admire her as a person and as a jurist.

And I’m grateful that she can be here today. A number of my former clerks are also here. I can’t tell you which ones, so let me ask them to stand to be recognized.

So in my chambers, UT and UT Law School are very well represented. I hope—I’m having a little trouble with this, getting used to the podium, sorry about that— I hope that my talk today will help in some small way to inaugurate another great initiative, the State of Texas’ plan to restore the teaching of civics and Western civilization to a central place in its flagship university. And I am grateful and honored to have been invited by Justin Dyer, the dean of the new School of Civic Leadership.

I’m also grateful for the assistance of my former law clerk, Professor John Yu, who has spent the last three decades at Berkeley Law School, but is now joining Justin and his team here at the University of Texas. The school’s stated mission is to help students encounter the distinct inheritance of Western civilization and the American constitutional tradition as part of a larger quest for wisdom about how to live and how to lead. Your plans could not come at a more important moment for our nation, when as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the very values announced in it have fallen out of favor.

It is my sincere hope that your work to revitalize the teaching and research of Western civilization and the American constitutional tradition will lead the way in the reform of our nation’s colleges and universities. And I hope that your example will help to rejuvenate our fellow citizens’ commitment to the principles of the Declaration of Independence. I seem to always enjoy my travels to this amazing state.

My wife, Virginia, and I have many wonderful friends and acquaintances here. And it is so special to have our dear friends Harlan and Kathy Crow join us today. One of the features of this state that stands out in a way that Texans talk about it, what comes through is the sustained and sustaining affection that they have for their home state.

That reverential feeling for and attachment to Texas is to be respected and admired, and if possible, emulated. This affection is similar to the attachment that I grew to have for my home state of Georgia, and certainly for our country, despite the indelible mark of segregation and its companion evils. I was proud to say that I was American by birth and Georgian by the grace of God.

It was not uncommon to hear others openly proclaim their allegiance to God and country. At our grammar school, St. Benedict’s, we started each school day by lining up two by two and class by class in the schoolyard to watch the raising of our flag and to say the Pledge of Allegiance before silently marching to our respective classrooms. Even as so much of our God-given and constitutional rights were denied us, we still faithfully said the Pledge of Allegiance, memorized the preamble to the Constitution, and yearned for the fulfillment of its promised ideals.

Sadly, these sentiments are not as widely shared among our fellow citizens today, and they certainly do not seem to have that sustaining strength that they had back then. In fact, all too often the sentiments tend toward cynicism, rejection, hostility, and animus toward our country and its ideals. With the foregoing in mind, I would like to begin by addressing my first encounter with the principles of the Declaration of Independence.

It is perhaps not what you would immediately think. The second paragraph of the Declaration proclaims, 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. Throughout my youth, these truths were articles of faith that were impervious to bigotry and discrimination.

The American Heritage Dictionary of English Language defines self-evident as obviously true and requiring no proof, argument, or explanation. Whether they had a divine source or a worldly one, they were never questioned. They were the Holy Grail, the North Star, the Rock, immovable and unquestioned.

Despite the multiplicity of laws and customs that wreaked a bigotry, it was universally believed among those blacks with whom I lived and who had very little or no formal education that in God’s eyes and under our Constitution, we were equal. This was also the case with my nuns, most of whom were Irish immigrants. At home, at school, and at church, we were taught that we are inherently equal, that equality came from God, and that it could not be diminished by man.

We were made in the image and likeness of God. That proposition was not debatable and was beyond the power of man to alter. Others with power and animus could treat us as unequal, but they lacked the divine power to make us so.

Somehow, without formal education, the older people knew that these God-given or natural rights preceded and transcended governmental power or authority. When you lived in a segregated world with palpable discrimination and the governments nearest to you enforced laws and customs that promoted unequal treatment, it was obvious that your rights or your dignity did not come from those governments, but rather from God. Though not a literate man, my grandfather often spoke of our rights and obligations coming from God, not from architects of segregation and discrimination.

Men were not angels. They were subject to the constraints of antecedent rights, and we were not subject to those men, even as we were subjected to their whims. We knew that life, liberty, and property were sacrosanct.

Those truths were self-evident to the adults in our lives and were taught to us as indelible, undeniable truths. Those around us would endure or could endure the insults of segregation with dignity because they knew that in God’s eyes, they were equal. All too often, there is an unfortunate tendency when discussing the Declaration to make these self-evident truths and first principles of government obscure.

Intellectuals want you to believe that our founding principles are matters of esoteric philosophy or sophisticated debate. Even those who support them too often talk about them as if they were academic playthings. They overcomplicate them, take the spirit out of them, and discuss them in a way that puts us to sleep.

But the principles of the Declaration of Independence, as I encountered them, are a way of life. They are not an abstract theory that you only learn in college or law school, but the basic premises of our Constitution and government that you can learn from the people all around you. When Alexis de Tocqueville visited early America from France, he was struck that there was no country in the civilized world where they were less occupied with philosophy than the United States.

But there was likewise no country where the principles of the Declaration were more deeply ingrained or more fiercely defended than those same United States. That is the sense in which I knew the principles of the Declaration in my childhood. That is the only sense in which those principles can sustain our country.

And that is the sense in which I will speak to you about those principles today. I believe now, as I did then, that the Declaration of 1776 provides us with the principles to guide us as citizens of our republic. Even in this time of questioning and criticism of our founding, we should not forget that the Declaration established the principles that produced, despite all of our imperfections, our miscues, and our tragic mistakes, it gave us the freest, wealthiest, and most powerful nation in the history of the world.

It provided the moral principles by which Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King would criticize the institutions of slavery and segregation. The Declaration is, in fact, along with the Gospels, one of the greatest anti-slavery documents in the history of Western civilization. It did not establish a form of government.

That was the work of the Constitution that followed. But it stated the purpose of government. The Declaration made it clear, in clear prose, that the purpose of government is to protect our God-given, unalienable rights, rights that all individuals equally possess.

As Abraham Lincoln declared in 1858, in the midst of his great debates with Stephen Douglass, quote, drop every paltry, insignificant thought for any man’s success. It is nothing. I am nothing.

Judge Douglass is nothing. But do not destroy that immortal emblem of humanity, the Declaration of American Independence. The ideas of the Declaration are so powerful that our nation could not coexist with the contradiction created by the great evil of slavery.

Those principles were so powerful that hundreds of thousands of Americans fought and died in the Civil War to make men free. Those ideas have been so powerful that they convinced our nation to finally end segregation. They continue to be so powerful today that they have inspired people throughout the world to throw off the shackles of their own oppressors.

And it all began with our founders declaring in 1776, in the Declaration of Independence, that we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We should also not forget the important sentence that follows, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that to secure these rights, governments are instituted. The principle of consent follows from the principle of equality.

We the people can never legitimately consent to the violation of our God-given equality. However, when I encounter the Declaration of Independence anew today, I am most struck by the final sentence. It can be easy to forget, 250 years later, the courage it took for those 56 men to sign the Declaration.

Arguably, those men committed treason against the king, risking death at the hands of an empire far mightier than the newborn United States. They thus concluded with the memorable final sentence, and I quote, and for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. I will say it again.

We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Recently, I came across a definition of courage that is attributed to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.

In essence, the signers of the Declaration were saying that they were willing to die for the principles they were asserting, the supreme act of courage. Those principles were more important than their fear. Nothing in the Declaration of Independence, I now realize, matters without that final sentence.

Without that sentence, the rest of the Declaration is but mere words on parchment paper. Nice words, but nonetheless, just words. What changed the world was not the words, but the commitment and spirit of the people who were willing to labor, sacrifice, and even give their lives what Lincoln and Gettysburg call the last full measure of devotion for the Declaration’s principles.

It is that devotion to which we owe our rich inheritance. It was that devotion that sustained the Founding Fathers and the Continental Army as they fought and won the Revolutionary War, braved the winter at Valley Forge, crossed the Delaware, and defeated an army, many times their number and firepower, to win their freedom. It was that devotion that Nathan Hale expressed when, before being executed by the British, he reportedly said, I only regret that I have but one life to give for this country.

It was that devotion that Patrick Henry invoked when he stood before the Virginia Convention and asked, Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God. I know not what course others may take, but for me, give me liberty or give me death.

That devotion has driven the great achievements and heroism of Americans in the 250 years since. Think of the frontiersmen who settled the West. Think of the families who built their little towns on the prairies.

Think of the women who raised their children to love God and country and sent them off to fight wars. Think of the soldiers on the battlefields of the Civil War who sang, As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free. Think of the innovators and laborers and engineers who Tocqueville observed were so infused with the patriotism that they felt every triumph for their country as a triumph in their personal lives.

Think of how the devotion carried us from Independence Hall to Flanders Field and to the beaches of Normandy. Think of the memorable scene in the Band of Brothers when the American soldiers arrived at a concentration camp, saw the suffering, emaciated, desperate prisoners, unlocked the gates and gave them food and blankets and warm embraces. The soldiers looked around and knew in their hearts that this is why we fight.

Think of the passengers of Flight 93 that crashed in Skanksville, Pennsylvania on 9-11 or the young men and women whom we send in harm’s way even as we sit here today. Think of my grandparents who heroically, quietly, without fanfare sat my brother and me down at the kitchen table in August of 1955 and committed the rest of their lives to us so that we could have a chance. They told us, we don’t have no education.

We don’t have no education and no chance, but you boys are going to have a chance. But we’re going to devote the rest of our lives to you boys. It was their devotion, their love, their dedication to raising us right that has made the difference, not the words, though the words expressed as best they could what they intended to do.

Their devotion is what mattered. Similarly, it is the devotion expressed in the final sentence of the Declaration, the willingness to do anything for our principles that has throughout American history been most indispensable. It is that devotion that we are missing today and that we must find in our hearts if this nation is to endure.

I arrived in Washington, D.C. 47 years ago. It’s hard to believe. I arrived as a staffer for Senator Jack Danforth of Missouri in 1979, telling myself that the job on Capitol Hill would be a short stop on my way home to Savannah, Georgia.

I then joined the executive branch during the Reagan administration, served in two federal agencies for nearly a decade, served as a judge on the Federal Court of Appeals, and have for the past 34 years served on the Supreme Court. Since the day I arrived in Washington, there was never a shortage of people espousing noble purposes, saying all the right things. All around me there have been people full of promises, claiming a commitment to some righteous cause, to traditional morality, to national defense, to free enterprise, to religious piety, or to the original meaning of the Constitution.

These people can be just as high-minded as the men who signed the Declaration. They can mouth the words of the Declaration and parrot its principles. They can write essays and talk at conferences about the Declaration with the best of them.

All too often, however, this was but lip service, camouflaged by grand theories in the tall grass of big words and eloquent phrases. What seemed to be lacking, however, was that devotion. People gain positions of authority, and you learn who they really are.

To paraphrase something I recently read, combat strips us down to our essentials. Once in the spotlight, in that combat, many people fall prey to the lures that are set up to turn them away from their previously untested principles. They become petrified by criticism, so fearful of negative attention that they find ways to avoid doing the right thing.

Or they fall prey to the enchanting siren songs of flattery and become so bewitched by praise that they will desperately seek to conform accordingly. They are enticed by access to things that were previously unavailable to them. They get so swept up in the euphoria of acclamation and acceptance that they put aside their convictions.

They water down their message, negotiate against themselves, vote against their principles, and hide in the tall grass. They recast themselves as institutionalists, pragmatists, or thoughtful moderates, all as a way of justifying their failures to themselves, their consciences, and their country. It did not take me long in Washington to stop wondering why the Supreme Court took 60 years to overrule Plessy v.

Ferguson, the 1896 decision that endorsed government-enforced racial segregation and validated the Jim Crow South that I grew up in. It could not possibly have taken my court 60 years to know that Plessy was a hideous wrong and that racial discrimination was grossly incompatible with our colorblind Constitution. The justices must have known it all along.

The right thing to do, as Justice Harlan spelled out in his lone dissent, was obvious, as it so often is. Perhaps what stood in the way was cowardice. The justices may have been afraid of the societal consequences.

They may have been afraid of coming under political fire. They may have been afraid of losing their social standing. They may have been afraid of bad press.

They could have been concerned that if they began to enforce a colorblind Constitution, they would have to address interracial marriage next. But in any case, for 60 disgraceful years, they made American children like me grow up in a racial caste system because it was easier to do nothing than to do the right thing. When Americans look to Washington and wonder why it is so often disappointed, it is not because there are too few people who know what is right.

It is not because we lack the intellect or the capacity or the talent. It is instead because there are too few people who are willing to do what it takes to do the right thing, to sacrifice the popularity, flattery, comfort, and security that are the purchase price for principle. It is because too few of us reflect on and reflect the courage and commitment of that final sentence of the Declaration.

And so many seem to have forgotten how much others have sacrificed so that this nation could exist and endure. I will state this more poignantly. Do any of us have what it took for our young soldiers to storm Normandy Beach, to fight at Guadalcanal, to later fight at Chosin Reservoir?

If we can’t say that we have the courage required of these young soldiers in battle to defend our founding principles, then how do we preserve these principles and this republic? Until we have a devotion that matches the courage of those who made this country possible, I doubt, I seriously doubt any amount of study or development of insights about our Constitution will make much difference. There is a world of difference between what it takes to score academic points and what it takes to protect and defend the Constitution as we are sworn to do.

I have faced this struggle myself. About 43 years ago, in the early spring of 1983, I was the lowest point in my life. I had just buried both of my grandparents, the man and woman who raised me, and the two greatest people that I have ever known.

I was broke. I was living in and nearly evicted from a cockroach-infested apartment. I could not pay my credit card bills on time.

I would soon sell my car to pay my son’s tuition. I was being constantly attacked by the media and Congress because as chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, I did not bow to the then prevailing orthodoxy on race. At that point, I asked myself a simple question.

What are your principles worth to you? My answer then was the same I would give today. It is worth, they are worth, life itself.

What are those principles? They are the same principles in the Declaration. They were bequeathed to me by my grandparents and reinforced by my nuns and my faith.

In God’s eyes, we are equal. We are all equally created in the image and likeness of God. We are all endowed with the natural rights to life, liberty, and happiness.

Our rights and our dignity are inherent. They do not come from others, and they do not come from the government. And our government derives its legitimacy and its authority from our consent.

We do not derive our rights from our government. The primacy of our rights in relation to our government is crucial in reconciling the immortal words of the Declaration with our Constitution and our history. None of our rights come from the government.

All of the government’s authority comes from our consent. And the structure and limited role of government is to assure that it does not exceed the authority to which we have consented or intrude on our natural rights. The Constitution is the means of government.

It is the Declaration that announces the ends of government. The Constitution achieves this purpose by protecting our natural rights and our liberties from concentrated power and excessive democracy. Our Constitution creates a separation of powers and federalism, truly for the first time in modern history, to prevent the government from becoming so strong that it threatens our natural rights.

Federalist No. 10 proposed the idea that the great threat to our rights comes from the majority faction. Human history teaches us, alas, that numerical majorities frequently seek to control government and use the state to violate rights of the minority.

Because man has fallen, and the desire for power was, as James Madison described it, sown in the nature of man, government had to be limited. For as Madison also said, if men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.

But, alas, men are not angels. The slaveholders used the power of government to deny the fundamental rights, natural rights, of the slaves. The segregationists used the state to oppress the freed men and women, including my ancestors.

As we meet today, it is unclear whether these principles will endure. At the beginning of the 20th century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream. The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominent among them, the 28th president of our country, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism.

Since Wilson’s presidency, progressivism has made many inroads into our system of government and our way of life. It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever.

Progressivism was not native to America. Wilson and the progressives candidly admitted that they took it from Otto von Bismarck’s Germany, whose state-centric society they admired. Progressives like Wilson argued that America needed to leave behind the principles of the founding and catch up with the more advanced and sophisticated system of relatively unimpeded state power, nearly perfected.

He acknowledged that it was a foreign science speaking very little of the language of English or American principle, which offers none but what are, to our minds, alien ideas. He thus described America still stuck with its original system of government as, quote, slow to see the superiority of the European system. Progressivism was the first mainstream American political movement, with the possible exception of the pro-slavery reactionaries on the eve of the Civil War, quote, to openly oppose the principles of the Declaration.

Progressives strove to undo the Declaration’s commitment to equality and natural rights, both of which they denied were self-evident. To Wilson, the unalienable rights of the individual were, quote, a lot of nonsense. Wilson redefined liberty, not as a natural right attendant and assedent to the government, but as, quote, the right of those who are governed to adjust government to their own needs and interests.

In other words, liberty no longer preceded the government as a gift from God, but was to be enjoyed at the grace of the government. The government, as Wilson reconceived it, would be, quote, beneficent and indispensable. Progressives such as John Dewey attacked the Framers for believing that their ideas were immutable truth, good for all times and places, when instead they were, according to him, historically conditioned and relevant only in their own time.

Now Dewey and the progressives argued those ideas are to be displaced. Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God but from government.

It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights. You will not be surprised to learn that the progressives had a great deal of contempt for us, the American people. Before he entered politics, Wilson would describe the American people as, quote, selfish, ignorant, timid, stubborn, and foolish.

He lamented that we do too much by vote and too little by expert rule. He proposed that the people be ruled by administrators who use them as tools. He once again aspired to be like Germany, where the people, he said admiringly, were docile and acquiescent.

The century of progressivism did not go well. The European system that Wilson and the progressives scolded Americans for not adopting, which he called nearly perfect, led to the governments that caused the most awful century that the world has ever seen. Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao all were intertwined with the rise of progressivism and all were opposed to the natural rights on which our declaration are based.

Many progressives expressed admiration for each of them shortly before their governments killed tens of millions of people. It was a terrible mistake to adopt progressivism’s rejection of the declaration’s vision of universal, unalienable natural rights. Wilson’s claim that natural rights must give way to historical progress could justify the greatest mistake in our history.

In Plessy v. Ferguson, my court upheld Louisiana’s system of racial segregation because, quote, separate but equal, it observed, was reasonable in light of the established usages, customs, and traditions of the people and with a view to the promotion of their comfort and the preservation of the public peace and good order. It comes as no surprise that the progressives embraced eugenics.

Progressives believed that Darwinian science, the idea of ever-advancing progress written into biology itself, had proven the inherent superiority and inferiority of the races. It was only a small step for Wilson to resegregate the federal workforce. It was only another step for the government to launch sterilization programs on those deemed by the experts of the day to be unfit to reproduce, upheld by my court in Buck v.

Bell in an opinion written by no less a figure than Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. We can argue over whether you believe in immutable, absolute natural rights or the Wilsonian idea of ever-progressing history. Indeed, your school of civic leadership was created to host just such arguments, but let me ask you to consider the consequences.

European thinkers have long criticized America for remaining trapped in a Lockean world with its weak, decentralized government and strong individual rights. They say our 18th century declaration has prevented us from progressing to higher forms of government, but we were fortunate not to trade our Lockean bonds for the supposedly enlightened world of Hegel, Marx, and their followers. Fascism, which after all was National Socialism, triggered wars in Europe and Asia that killed tens of millions.

The socialism of the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China proceeded to kill more tens of millions of their own people. This is what happens when natural rights give way to the higher good of notions of history, progress, or as Thomas Sowell has written, the visions of the anointed. None of this, of course, was an improvement on the principles of the declaration.

Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is largely about how America owed its superiority over Europe to its conscious decision to reject central planning and administrative rule, root and branch. Progressivism, in other words, is retrogressive. As Calvin Coolidge said on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration, and I quote, if all men are created equal, that is final.

If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the government, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.

If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which they can proceed historically is not forward but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of individuals, no rule of the people. When Abraham Lincoln addressed the assembled crowd at Gettysburg, they had gathered to memorialize the past, but Lincoln’s address urged them to not do so with complacency. Instead, Lincoln said, they should look to the past as inspiration to take them to greater heights in the future, and I quote, it is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us, that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion, that we were highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation shall have a new birth of freedom, and that this government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

As we are gathered to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration, it may be tempting to do so as if we are passive spectators. It may be tempting to enjoy our tea and crumpets, treat the Declaration like a shiny object or a keepsake, and listen to the sound of our own voices. We could get into debates over whose conception of the founding is better, over how we are so much better than our founders were, over what we would do differently.

We could be careful to not do anything that exposes us to criticism, costs us friends, or hurts our career prospects. But in my view, we must find in ourselves that same level of courage that the signers of the Declaration had, so that we can do for our future what they did for theirs. Each of you will have opportunities to be courageous every day, whether your calling in life is as a day laborer, a stay-at-home mom, a small business owner, an educator, an office worker, a judge, or some other endeavor.

It may mean speaking up in class tomorrow when someone around you expects you to live by lies. It may mean confronting today’s fashionable bigotries, such as anti-Semitism. It may mean standing up for your religion when it is mocked and disparaged by a professor.

It may mean not budging on your principles when it will entail losing friends or being ostracized. It may mean running for your school board when you see that they are teaching your children to hate your values and our country. It may mean turning down a job offer that requires you to make moral or ethical compromises.

One thing I do know to be true. It will mean waking up every day with the resolve to withstand unfair criticism and attacks. These are the choices that we will confront, that will confront you, and you must decide whether to respond with timidity or with courage, as the signers of the Declaration did.

It will, of course, not be easy. It never is. But if, like me, you need a greater source of strength than yourselves, you will need to rely on your faith to guide and to sustain you through it all.

You will disappoint people you thought were friends and endure personal attacks, as well as attacks on those you care about. But if you stand, you will find that courage, like cowardice, can be habit-forming, and it will become a part of your life and a part of who you are. And I may dare say it is liberating.

You will also be a living example for others to emulate. So by all means, celebrate the Declaration of Independence. It is the most important act of American history, the foundation of our Constitution, and, as Lincoln said, the sheet anchor of our republic.

But I implore you to celebrate it by standing up for it, by defending it, and by recommitting yourselves to living up to its ideals. Channel the courage of the men who faced down a king and signed it. Or a president who led the nation in a civil war, rather than permit this house to be divided by the great contradiction of slavery.

Take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure. And, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, let us mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. Thank you, and may God continue to bless our country.

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Shoutout to one of my regular readers here on Substack, , for putting this question directly:

Peter, I guess my first question would be “Why are we expanding American Power?” To be the “Big Kid” on the block? To take other countries’ oil? Just what is the purpose of Gunboat diplomacy?

Many pundits both pro- and anti-Trump have proffered explanations (or criticisms) of the Caracas raid, all of them proceeding from a particular geopolitical bias.

There are those who focus on Nicolas Maduro being the leader of a sovereign nation.

There are those who focus on Nicolas Maduro having been indicted as a drug trafficker.

There are those who fret about Donald Trump committing the US to yet another exercise in “nation-building”.

While there is some substance in much of what has been said, we also see a hubristic intellectual overreach. What emerges is less an explanation of why Donald Trump would order the Caracas raid and more either a justification for the raid or a condemnation of it. Both normative perspectives, while useful for fleshing out political responses, offer little in the way of substantive understanding.

My assessment of the “why” behind the Caracas raid is far simpler, but I think it is far more complete by virtue of that simplicity.

Governments expand power. Politicians seek power.

When you strip away all the moralizing and political philosophies, that’s what governments do, and have done since the Pharaohs. That’s what Trump has been doing since Day 1 of his return to the Oval Office.

Simply put, governments chase power the way individuals chase wealth.

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“Great Power Competition”

The term I broadly apply to this notion is “Great Power Competition”.

Trump’s seizure of Maduro is sufficiently controversial, and sufficiently disturbing to other world leaders, that an exploration of what Great Power Competition is in order. If we proceed from a conceptual framework of Great Power Competition, we begin to see not just why Trump would decide to strike at Maduro, but how that decision reverbates into other geopolitical theaters, such as the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Starting from the framework of Great Power Competition, we see that this is what nations do, and that the United States is not so different from Russia, China or Iran in this regard.

When I say that the United States is not so different from Russia, China, or Iran with respect to Great Power Competition, I want to be clear that I am not drawing a moral equivalence between these regimes. Quite the contrary, I am very explicitly putting aside all moral precepts and predicates.

When we discuss Great Power Competition, we are discussion what nations—or, rather, governments—do. Whether a particular government’s choice of tactics is moral or immoral is a separate question, and deserves separate treatment. Just as in baseball the pitcher who throws a savage split-finger fastball is as intent on striking out a batter as the pitcher who throws a spitball, the objective is of itself not a commentary on the ethics of a particular approach.

Whether Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is moral or immoral, good or evil, says little about why Putin invaded. Whether Israel’s bombing campaign against Iran during the Twelve Day War was moral or immoral provides no insight into why Israel chose to wage war against Iran.

Likewise, whether there are legal or moral criticisms to be levied against President Trump’s raid on Caracas sheds no real light on why President Trump wanted Nicolas Maduro seized, and why Trump wants regime change in Venezuela.

This is not an exploration of whether Trump’s decision was right or wrong. This is an explication of Trump’s decision as an expression and pursuit of power.

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“Great Power Competition” Defined

When defining terms, the simplest and most straightforward definitions are usually the most accessible and therefore the most useful. When we are defining “Great Power Competition”, that is what we should seek—simplicity and accessibility. A good working definition comes from the Department of War:

What’s great power competition? It’s when large nations vie for the greatest power and influence — not just in their own parts of the world, but also farther out.

Bear in mind that "power” itself is fundamentally defined as an “ability to act or produce an effect.”

“Influence” is fundamentally defined as “the power or capacity to cause an effect in indirect or intangible ways.”

Thus, when we are talking about “Great Power Competition”, we are discussing the ambitions of nations to exert power and influence over other nations.

One need only look at the behavior of governments around the world to see that all nations seek to acquire and wield influence over other nations. Just as businesses seek to acquire profit and individuals seek to acquire wealth, governments seek to acquire power. That is what governments do.

We can refine our understanding of Great Power Competition a bit further, however, in order to differentiate between the geopolitical choices made by so-called “great powers” and those made by other, not-so-great powers. “Great Powers” are nations which are going to seek to exert hegemonic influence over other nations. “Hegemony” arises when one entity—typically a nation—is able to exert dominance over others.

Thus, when I speak of “Great Power Competition”, I am speaking of the propensity for various nations to seek, acquire, and wield hegemonic influence over other nations, in either a regional or a global context.

Again, this definition is not an assessment of whether these aspirations by various nations are either moral or immoral. This is simply an understanding of what nations do, for good or for ill.

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President Trump Is Explicit: He Wants American Dominance

We do not need to wonder if President Trump has hegemonic ambitions for the United States. He says so quite explicitly, as he did in the press briefing which followed the Caracas raid.

And the Monroe Doctrine is a big deal, but we’ve superseded it by a lot, by a real lot. They now call it the Donroe Doctrine. I don’t know. It’s Monroe Doctrine. We sort of forgot about it. It was very important, but we forgot about it. We don’t forget about it anymore.

Under our new national security strategy, American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again. Won’t happen. So just in concluding, for decades, other administrations have neglected or even contributed to these growing security threats in the Western Hemisphere. Under the Trump administration, we are reasserting American power in a very powerful way in our home region. And our home region is very different than it was just a short while ago. The future will be — and we did this in my first term. We had great dominance in my first term, and we have far greater dominance right now.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with the pursuit of dominance as the appropriate geopolitical strategy for the United States, there can be no question that President Trump is pursuing dominance as a geopolitical strategy.

Nor is this a new ambition for Donald Trump. In the first Trump Administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy summary, one of the base predicates for the strategy hinged on competition among the great powers:

Today, we are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding. We are facing increased global disorder, characterized by decline in the long-standing rules-based international order—creating a security environment more complex and volatile than any we have experienced in recent memory. Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in U.S. national security.

Former Marine General James Mattis, then Trump’s Secretary of Defense, cast the strategy specifically in terms of Great Power Competition.

“Today, America’s military reclaims an era of strategic purpose, alert to the realities of a changing world,” said Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, according to the prepared remarks of his speech on Friday morning. “We will continue to prosecute the campaign against terrorists, but great power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus of U.S. national security,”

Dominance is a theme of several of the items within President Trump’s 2024 campaign platform “Agenda 47”

• Make America the dominant energy producer in the world by far!

• Stop outsourcing, and turn the United States into a manufacturing superpower.

• Strengthen and modernize our military, making it, without question, the strongest and most powerful in the world.

• Keep the US Dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

Nor is military muscle the only means by which President Trump seeks to exert dominance in the world. As we saw in the spring with his visit to the Middle East, Trump also seeks hegemonic influence through a combination of diplomatic overtures and trade deals.

President Trump also has demonstrated a measure of hegemonic influence in helping broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan when their long-simmering dispute over Kashmir flared up once again into outright military aggression.

Donald Trump’s ambition for the United States has been, from the beginning of his first term of office, global hegemony. He wants America to sit at the head of the table.

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The United States Is Not Alone

While Donald Trump is not at all shy about stating his ambition for American dominance in the world, we should not presume that he is unique in this regard. He is not.

Israel emerged from the Twelve Day War with unchallenged regional Great Power status in the Middle East. That status was made evident when the new regime in Syria allowed Israeli aircraft transit through Syrian airspace when carrying out strikes on Iran.

For its part, Turkey’s role in helping topple the Assad regime in Syria at the end of 2024 served to launch it also into regional Great Power status in the Middle East.

The rise of Israel and Turkey as regional Great Powers in the Middle East came at the expense of Iran.

With respect to Iran, the aftermath of the Twelve Day War saw China exploit the outcome by agreeing to supply Iran with its domestic version of Russian S-300 air defense system, the HQ-9B.

While the extent to which China is pursuing a hegemonic ambition in Iran is problematic, there is little doubt that China has a clear interest in Iran’s situation, given that China is Iran’s principal buyer of Iranian crude. Moreover, China is also taking advantage of Russian limitations by stepping in to arrange deals for Chinese military hardware when Russia has failed to deliver or refused to commit to delivering key items.

Regional analysts see the fresh HQ-9B deployment as a vivid signal that Iran’s military ties with China are poised to deepen, a trend reinforced by Tehran’s newfound appetite for the J-10C multirole fighter after Moscow repeatedly delayed deliveries of the Su-35.

With Russian influence apparently waning in Iran, China is stepping into to fill that breach. Arms sales are a quick pathway to geopolitical influence for every nation.

That assessment is bolstered by Syria’s broader willingness to engage with Western nations (including Turkey, which becomes “Western” in this regard as a NATO member) at the expense of Russia, formerly one of Assad’s principal backers.

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Nations Reach For Power And Influence But Don’t Always Get It

While we can easily see that nations as a rule will reach for at least some measure of power and influence, the reaching alone is no guarantee that power and influence can be achieved.

World reactions to Maduro’s extradition show in stark terms the relative impotence of many global actors with their own global ambitions.

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, posting on X several hours after the Caracas raid was complete, offered to act as a “mediator” to the “crisis”.

In a statement posted on X, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez called for “de-escalation and responsibility” in Venezuela and for “international law and the principles of the United Nations Charter” to be respected.

The socialist politician said that Spain’s embassy in Caracas and its consulates continue to be operational after the bombings.

Madrid’s Foreign Ministry further said that “Spain is willing to lend its good offices to achieve a peaceful and negotiated solution to the current crisis.”

Exactly what remained to be negotiated was unclear, as everything including the shouting was by that point complete. The “solution” had already been achieved: Maduro was in custody and out of power.

The European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Kaja Kallas, posted on X focusing mainly on the security of EU citizens.

Eugyppius, a Substack writer who focuses on Germany and the EU, savaged the response as “entirely irrelevant”.

Even Russia was left with just powerless and empty posturings, calling on the United States to release Maduro as a “lawfully elected president of a sovereign nation”.

“We firmly call on the U.S. leadership to reconsider this position and release the lawfully elected president of a sovereign country and his wife,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement, and described that the crisis should be resolved through diplomatic means.

China also was left with issuing similarly vacuous statements.

China has called on the United States to immediately release Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro after Washington carried out massive military strikes on the capital, Caracas, as well as other regions, and abducted the leader.

Beijing on Sunday insisted the safety of Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores be a priority, and called on the US to “stop toppling the government of Venezuela”, calling the attack a “clear violation of international law“.

However, there is zero chance that will happen, as the position of the United States is that Maduro is an indicted drug trafficker, not a lawfully elected president of a sovereign nation.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio threw that gauntlet down during the Trump Administration’s press briefing on Saturday.

Nicolas Maduro was indicted in 2020 in the United States. He is not the legitimate president of Venezuela. That’s not just us saying it. The first Trump administration, the Biden administration, the second Trump administration, none of those three recognize him. He’s not recognized by the European Union in multiple countries around the world. He is a fugitive of American justice with a $50 million reward. Which I guess we saved $50 million.

Rubio’s position is axiomatic to the Trump Administration’s stance regarding Nicolas Maduro. There is no negotiation to be had with such a position—one either agrees with it or one does not.

Rubio issued a flat categorical rejection of any of the claims advanced by China, Russia or anyone else regarding Maduro’s presumed “legitimacy”, or a supposed illegality of the Trump Administration’s decision to go to Caracas to capture him. With that statement, Rubio took all such discussions immediately off the table.

Neither Russia nor China have presented any reasons to take their view more seriously than President Trump’s. If Russia and China thought their statements would carry weight and substance, and be received as expressions of their own geopolitical influence, Rubio has already disabused them of that notion.

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Right Or Wrong, This Is How Nations Behave

As I opined to The Watchman in my response to his comment, whether what the Trump Administration has done is good or bad depends primarily on what political outcomes one wishes to see in the world.

Those who view all expressions of US power extending beyond US borders as intrinsically corrupt and evil are going to view the Caracas raid as corrupt and evil.

Those who believe all global actions must be sanctioned by a supranational body—the United Nations or the European Union—are going to view the lack of such sanction for the Caracas raid as proof of the Trump Administration’s basic lawlessness.

Those who want President Trump to aggressively confront whatever threatens America’s interests and people are going to view the Caracas raid as something which was a long time coming, and which should have been done years ago.

Yet what all of these various constituencies need to acknowledge is that, regardless of the particular political or moral lens through which they choose to view Trump’s actions, in all cases they are assessing both the Trump Administration’s expression of geopolitical dominance and its desire to increase that dominance.

Russia and China are perturbed by this action primarily because every such expression of geopolitical dominance by the United States challenges and even diminishes their own efforts at geopolitical dominance.

The member states of the European Union champion rinsing all such actions through supranational bodies because that is the only basis on which the EU itself can have any credibility on the international stage.

Just as people aspire to wealth and businesses aspire to profits, nations aspire to power and influence. Nations with the resources to dominate others aspire to hegemonic power and influence—thus making them “great powers” at either a regional or global level.

In every part of the world, and in every domain of geopolitics and global economics, this is what nations do.

Why did President Trump seize Nicolas Maduro? To both flex and increase American power and influence.

What has President Trump accomplished by seizing Nicolas Maduro? For at least the time being, he has increased American power and influence—in Venezuela, in the Western Hemisphere, and around the globe.

Does that make the seizure justifiable? No. Nor should it. For justification one must overlay whatever notions one has of what constitutes “American interests” and what establishes “right action” in affairs between nations.

Regardless of the justification—or perhaps the lack thereof—President Trump ordered Nicolas Maduro seized to show and increase American dominance in the Western Hemisphere. That is what nations do, no matter what ideological lens one uses to view the actions of various nations.

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My young adult children never watch network news. Not in the evening, not in the morning. In addition, they don’t watch cable news even if I’m on. It’s boring to them. They can thumb through information on the internet anytime they want. Television news is not even considered a “thing” anymore.

That’s happening all over the country as the lava flow heading towards electronic news and newspapers has almost arrived.

Traditional journalism is NOT gathering the attention of younger Americans mainly because it is not practiced very much.

As he makes clear with examples of declining viewership even on Fox News, corporate media is in a downward death spiral towards extinction.

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Ironically, O’Reilly glosses over an equally grim reality: the alternative and “independent” media outlets and resources are hardly in a much stronger position. Conservative and pro-Trump news outlet Breitbart gets only a sliver of the Internet traffic of the New York Times, CNN, or Fox News. ZeroHedge and The Epoch Times similarly languish in a sea of competing alternative news outlets.

O’Reilly also hits on a major reason, if not the primary reason, all media outlets are far from thriving: Virtually all of them function as little more than echo chambers for a particular audience demographic.

Apparently, the people at USC live in a dense bubble. And that is exactly why younger Americans, as well as the mass audience, have left the TV news building. Folks know the fix is in. It’s all about ideology now. The objective news coverage ruse has evaporated.

While Bill O’Reilly is focused on TV news, that virtually all media outlets are almost entirely isolated silos feeding people a predetermined narrative is depressingly obvious.

Nor is this merely an opinion. If we look at how various media outlets frame the same event, we immediately see that they are tilting even their notionally “objective” coverage towards the political ideologies of their favored audience.

Case in point: President Trump’s prime-time address from the White House the week before Christmas.

Gateway Pundit focused on summarizing President Trump’s talking points, accentuating the positive even in the headline.

Meanwhile, the staff at progressive mainstay The Atlantic did a panel post-mortem on the speech, generally looking down their collective nose.

In particular, they panned Trump’s assessment of the US economy.

Although “Donald Trump is actually great at willing his own reality,” Atlantic staff writer Ashley Parker argued last night, the president is realizing “that you cannot will an economic reality into existence.”

Across the pond, the United Kingdom’s Independent portrayed Donald Trump’s speech as “angry”.

The internet has reacted to President Donald Trump’s frustrated national address — which came off more like a campaign rally speech — with many expressing concern over his sanity.

ZeroHedge piggy-backed on Just The News’ coverage of the speech to highlight President Trump’s talking points of economic rejuvenation, border security, immigration enforcement, and the “warrior dividend” he promised to America’s military men and women.

For my part, my assessment of Trump’s speech was short and simple: President Trump effectively announced the start of the 2026 mid-term election campaign.

Aside from that singular observation, I had very little to say about the speech. Rather, I opted to include a transcription of the speech (courtesy of Substack’s video transcription tools) and encouraged people to read and watch for themselves.

I encourage everyone to read Trump’s words for themselves. Listen to what he had to say. Gauge whether he spoke fairly or no, whether he was honest or duplicitous.

Mark what he said. President Trump laid down several markers about what will come next in his Administration. I for one shall be very interested to see how many he is able to deliver.

Do any of these various headlines and article quotes sound as if they are describing the same speech? Not really.

For those who watched Trump’s address, did he come across as “frustrated” or “angry”?

Was he trying mightily to “will” a particular economic reality into being?

Was he right to claim dramatic improvement in the economy?

Was he simply telegraphing his intent to be the major campaign issue of the 2026 mid-term elections, as I surmised?

Those who watched Trump’s address, and those who read the transcript (either here or elsewhere), will of course have their own answers to these questions. That is as it should be. There are no monolithic “right” answers regarding how one reacts to a political address.

Yet there is an additional question which must be asked here: how many people who read the Independent’s “angry” assessment also read the Gateway Pundit’s positive recitation of Trump Administration accomplishments? How many who read the Atlantic’s arrogant and effete dismissal of Trump’s speech also read my conclusion that Trump used the address to kick-start the mid-term election cycle?

My guess is that the answer lies somewhere between “none” and “damn few”.

I will go even further and speculate that most who read the Gateway Pundit’s reporting on the speech did not read either Just The News or ZeroHedge’s coverage of that same speech.

Bill O’Reilly is right to call out corporate media as being in a bubble where political ideology reigns supreme. That is exactly what it is.

However, the same thing can be said of ZeroHedge, the Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, and most every other news media source out there. Each of these news sources reports from a particular—and fairly blatant—political bias. Each of these news sources exists in its own particular bubble.

Even All Facts Matter proceeds from a certain bias. I rarely refer to corporate media in kind terms. While I would not count myself as part of the MAGA coalition, I make no secret that I voted for Donald Trump and that I support his Presidency. I do not disguise my disapproval of his predecessor Joe Biden, generally referring to his period in the Oval Office as some variation on “the Biden Reign of Error.”

However, with All Facts Matter, I strive to stay out of the bubble.

Where I strive to be different is that, while I disapprove of corporate media, I make a point to quote them completely and honestly when I reference their reporting. Whether I agree with what they say or not, if their reporting is relevant to one of my articles, I want my readers to see exactly what they had to say.

I approach alternative media outlets in the same fashion. I strive to quote liberally, to ensure that full context is maintained, whether the source be corporate or alternative media.

Whether I am criticizing the Trump Administration or defending the Trump Administration, I make every effort to ground my commentary is the facts of the matter. If there is a law I cite the statute. If the Supreme Court has had something to say I cite the particular opinion.

If I am going to stake a political claim, I am going to anchor that claim to such facts as I can bring to bear.

My readers deserve that much respect from me.

My editorial objective is simple: I want my work to be as accessible to readers of ZeroHedge as readers of The Atlantic or the Independent. Whether people agree with me or not, I want them to have the factual basis for my arguments, that they may rebut with factual arguments of their own if they are so inclined.

Can the writers at ZeroHedge or The Atlantic claim the same objective? Can the New York Times hold the interest of Breitbart’s readership?

I do not see how they can—not when even the “objective” news reporting is presented through an ideological lens, regardless of the outlet.

If I can do these things then so can Breitbart, so can The Atlantic, so can ZeroHedge, so can the Independent, so can any media outlet. They have no excuse for not doing these things. They simply do not want to do them.

You deserve honest and objective reporting, but most media outlets do not want to give you honest and objective reporting.

Honest and objective reporting is not a question of skill, but rather of choice.

Those who aspire to present the news can make the choice to present the facts as honestly and as completely as they can—or they can slant and spin the news into propaganda.

Those who aspire to present the news can make the choice to approach a topic with a certain humility—or they can deploy the arrogance of the ideologue.

This much is certain: We have to make deliberate choices about what to present and we have to own that presentation should we get it wrong—which we will at least now and again.

In my time writing All Facts Matter I have learned that much about what constitutes good journalism.

The goal of any journalist—whether the straight news reporter or the analyst and commentator such as myself—must always be to give people plenty about which to think, without ever telling them what to think.

That is the goal to which I aspire with every article. My readers get to decide how well I succeed—which is exactly as it should be.

That is the goal to which every journalist should aspire with every article.

I do not see many journalists today from any outlet aspiring to that goal. They could—they should—but they choose not to.

To those who do: all due respect, honor, and admiration.

To those who do not: Do better, because you know you can. Do better, because your readers deserve that much respect from you.

To those who read and watch the news: recognize the ideology and the politics at play. Look for news which presents verifiable facts from primary sources. Put aside journalistic opinions while you form your own. Be skeptical. Be curious.

Demand honesty and integrity in journalism. It’s the least you deserve.

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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.

For some years now, part of my personal celebration of the Fourth of July holiday has been these little essays on the Declaration of Independence. Few documents are as rich in history, in symbolism, and in significance as this brief text authored by the Second Continental Congress two hundred and forty-nine years ago.

Yet from time to time we do well to step back and look not at the history, not at the moment, not even at the politics, but just at the words. The Declaration of Independence is, at its foundation, words—important words, eloquent words, words which convey powerful and timeless truths, but still words.

The Declaration of Independence is definitely on the short list of “words that matter”!

I am reminded of a pithy observation the late great Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made about the Constitution:

"The Constitution is not a living organism," he said. "It's a legal document, and it says what it says and doesn't say what it doesn't say."

While the Declaration is a political rather than a legal document, the same rule applies: it says what it says and it doesn’t say what it doesn’t say.

What the Declaration of Independence says is that all men are created equal—all men. It does not say “some men”, nor does it say “white men.” It does not even say “men and not women”.

The Declaration of Independence says “all men are created equal.”

That simple declaration of political and moral principle are the words upon which the whole of the Declaration is built. These simple words form a profound truth that is as self-evident today as it was in 1776. These simple words are why the words within the Declaration of Independence matter more than two centuries after their writing.

These words mattered in particular to men like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, who was struck by their unbridled optimism—optimism to which he paid specific tribute in a 1964 speech at Drew University1:

I would like to use as a subject from which to speak tonight, the American Dream. And I use this subject because America is essentially a dream, a dream yet unfulfilled. The substance of the dream is expressed in some very familiar words found in the Declaration of Independence. “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” This is a dream.

Now one of the first things we notice about this dream is an amazing universalism. It does not say some men, it says all men. It does not say all white men, but it says all men which includes black men. It doesn’t say all Protestants, but it says all men which includes Catholics. It doesn’t say all Gentiles, it says all men which includes Jews. And that is something else at the center of the American Dream which is one of the distinguishing points, one of the things that distinguishes it from other forms of government, particularly totalitarian systems. It says that each individual has certain basic rights that are neither derived from nor conferred by the state.

They are gifts from the hands of the Almighty God. Very seldom if ever in the history of the world has a socio-political document expressed in such profound eloquent and unequivocal language the dignity and the worth of human personality.

Dr. King read the words, saw the words, and was awed by those words—and I would say rightfully so.

The remainder of Dr. King’s speech—a speech specifically about the “American Dream”—was a challenge. Dr. King challenged his audience, and all people, to rise to the promise and potential of the words within the Declaration of Independence.

The Declaration proclaims that all men are created equal. Despite the historical reality of Thomas Jefferson as a slave owner, and the truth that many of the Founding Fathers were quite invested in the institution of slavery, the Declaration remains the words upon which the entire experiment we call the United States of America is based. Regardless of Thomas Jefferson the man, Thomas Jefferson the writer laid for the cornerstone of this Republic the premise that all men are created equal.

Our challenge today is the same as the challenge in 1776, and the challenge in 1964: to build and perfect a society where these words are not just merely a celebrated truth, but a deeply held and profoundly lived truth.

Nor is this a new challenge. We must remember the teachings of Jesus in the Gospel according to Luke, that every man has fundamental worth given by God2

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.

We must remember as well how the Apostle Paul built on this teaching in Galatians, reminding the early Christians that all men everywhere are the blessed children of God3.

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

Regardless of anyone’s particular faith, these words are every bit as real as the words within the Declaration of Independence which echo them. That these teachings from two millennia ago find their parallel within a political proclamation from two centuries ago demonstrates that these truths are indeed “self-evident”.

These words were sufficiently “self-evident” to President John F. Kennedy that he observed in his 1961 inaugural address how the challenge of equality was a global challenge in the 1960s, just as it is today4.

And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe--the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.

That all men are indeed created equal was at the core of Kennedy’s plea for peace in his commencement address at American University in 19635:

So, let us not be blind to our differences--but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

President Kennedy espoused the ideal that a free and just society begins with the premise that all men are created equal, and dared to propose that equality is the pathway to universal and lasting peace.

I, for one, want very much to believe that President Kennedy was right on both counts.

Remarkably, President Kennedy, like Dr. King and even the Apostle Paul, was far from a perfect being.

The Apostle Paul was a flawed man who began his career as a persecutor of the early Christians.

For all that he is rightfully celebrated today, Dr. King was a flawed man, whose personal life was far from spotless.

President Kennedy was likewise a flawed man, whose extramarital affairs at times bordered on the reckless.

Yet each of these men, despite their flaws and imperfections, could see the same self-evident truth that Thomas Jefferson wrote down in 1776, despite his flaws and imperfections. In their time and in their own words, each of these men reached the same conclusion as Jefferson.

What these men, despite their flaws, understood was that the truths Jefferson celebrated in the Declaration of Independence were self-evident because they were true. No matter how flawed Jefferson the man was, the words he wrote were true.

All men are created equal.

All men are endowed by God with inalienable rights.

Among the rights given by God are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

These truths were self evident when Jesus walked the earth. These truths were self-evident to the Apostle Paul after his profound transformation on the road to Damascus. These truths were self-evident to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and to President John F. Kennedy.

These truths are self-evident today.

Today we celebrate these truths. Today we celebrate the words with which Thomas Jefferson so brilliantly encapsulated these self-evident truths. Today we celebrate that these words challenge us as much today as they have every day for the last 249 years.

Celebrate these truths. Celebrate these words. Rise to the challenge.

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For proof, we need only consider Jordan Peterson’s comments on an episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast.

The fuse was lit on one of the world‘s largest media platforms, the “Joe Rogan Experience,” where Jordan Peterson, a psychologist—turned-public-intellectual-superstar — said the “woke right” phenomenon isn’t political at all.

It‘s the product of social media algorithms empowering “psychopathic pretenders” to “invade the idea space” and “use those ideas as false weapons to advance their narcissistic advantage,” Peterson said.

If you believe that nonsense, I’ve got lovely piece of swampland to sell you, complete with mosquitos and malaria.

Readers who also follow and his will already be familiar with this topic, as he has been tackling this head on for some time now. If you haven’t read his commentaries on this topic yet, you should.

Alas, the rest of the mediaverse is not so clueful. A number of ostensibly “conservative” influencers are now putting out alarms that people must be worried about the presence of lefty-sounding tropes and ideas wrapped up in what we are meant to consider to be the memetics of the political right.

This entire non-controversy can be easily deconstructed and laid to rest with a simple overlay of the geopolitical rubric of Great Power Competition.

GPC is a classic feature of modern international relations grounded in a traditional power politics approach. Specifically, GPC is a permanent, compulsory, comprehensive, and exclusive contest for supremacy in a region or domain among those states considered to be the major players in the international system. The contest varies in intensity over time and space but remains a persistent aspect of the international system of sovereign states.

Great Power Competition has merit in geopolitics because it provides a coherent framework for assessing geopolitical conflicts regardless of context or culture. The core premise is that states generally aspire to greater power and influence, and in any geopolitical theater there will be a subset of states in competition with each other to gain and wield hegemonic influence over others.

What is happening among presumably “conservative” influencers is fundamentally the same thing: competition for influence, which is analogous to “power”. The more crowded the media landscape becomes, the more challenging it is even for established voices to continue to be heard.

Small wonder, then, that a cadre of established influencers on the political right have suddenly discovered “wokeness” among some of their bretheren. As “wokeness” is the original sin of the political left, tagging even a portion of the competition with the “woke” label becomes an effective means to delegitimize them. It is a rhetorical device intended to kneecap the competition.

Even I use the term derisively against elements of the political left. Using the term against elements of the political right may be fairly presumed to be similarly derisive and derogatory.

However, there is a subtle but important distinction in how people come to that point of demeaning someone else’s ideas.

I can only speak for myself, but I dismiss ideas from the political left as “woke” because I have examined them. I’ve listened to various advocates and I’ve assessed their arguments. Applying the label of “woke” to the political left is the culmination of the process of weighing those ideas in the balance and finding them wanting. It is for me a conclusion, not a predicate.

From what I have observed of others, I believe this to be broadly true about the use of the term “woke” against the political left. It is, for the most part, an earned appellation.

What Jordan Peterson, James Lindsay, and the others who are “alarmed” about the rise of “wokeness” on the political right are doing, however, is attempting to prevent certain ideas from even being weighed in the balance. Theirs is a blatant effort to silence competing voices. Their goal is patently obvious: they want to kneecap the competition.

When they speak of other people trying to “invade the idea space”, they are attempting to delegitimize them as participants in public dialog. When they make sweeping generalizations of people as “psychopathic pretenders” they are making a claim of moral supremacy which is charitably described as problematic.

It’s a tactic to preserve influence and power. It’s not even a subtle one.

It’s also not how public discourse is meant to go.

The only rational way to engage in public debate is to listen—and that means people do not prejudge someone else’s ideas, but instead allow them the space to say what they have to say.

Some people even on the political right will have ideas that do not work. That happens.

Some people even on the political right will use framing and vocabulary for their ideas that turns out to be clunky and in desperate need of refining. That happens too.

Some people will have ideas that do work, with framing and vocabulary that brings those ideas home as truth.

If we engage with the ideas, we can quickly ascertain which ideas will work and which ideas will not. We can easily establish which ideas need more refinement in their expression—and we can then facilitate the process of refinement.

We do well to remember always that everyone invariably has an agenda. Jordan Peterson has an agenda. James Lindsay has an agenda. I have an agenda—and yes, part of my agenda is I want you to listen to what I have to say!

You can rest assured that James Lindsay, Jordan Peterson, and every other dissident and establishment voice in the mediaverse has that much in common with me.

When people go out of their way to discourage their audiences from listening to competing voices, they are not fostering public discourse but suppressing it. They are attempting to wield power by silencing other voices.

When Jordan Peterson and James Lindsay complain about the “woke right”, they have their interests in mind, not yours. They are attempting to preserve their power and influence by silencing other voices.

Always remember this one fundamental truth: the Jordan Petersons and James Lindsays out there need you far more than you need them. As a self-styled independent data journalist and commentator, I need my audience far more than my audience needs me.

In the marketplace of ideas, as with every other marketplace, it is always more challenging to be the supplier of ideas than it is to be the consumer of them.

We do not have a problem with a “woke right”. Jordan Peterson, James Lindsay, and others have a problem with competition—they’re getting some and they don’t like it.

That’s their problem. It should remain their problem, and not become anybody else’s.

Unsurprisingly, a number of writers here on Substack are recalling their work from that time, and with good reason. However one views COVID, that period was undeniably the most impactful certainly in modern times, and we should look back at what was being both said and done in that period. Part of understanding where we are now involves recalling where we were then.

When I recall my own writings from that period, I find that understanding where we are now is not at all easy.

What does one say five years after such global madness? How does one even begin to put any of it into any sort of perspective?

I have no idea.

I know how the story evolved—I wrote about it. I know how the narratives shifted.

Yet if anything I understand less about the Pandemic Panic now than I did then, even though I know more.

What I do understand is this: the facts, the evidence, and the data which charted the true impacts of the SARS-CoV-2 virus were always out there. They were always available.

They were ignored—deliberately, willfully, even spitefully.

Some will say it was all planned. Perhaps it was. Or perhaps that is fear and suspicion overcoming reason and evidence. I am not certain the evidence points conclusively in either direction.

Bad Journalism Was Immediately Obvious

When reports of a new infectious respiratory pathogen began to emerge publicly at the end of 2019, it became immediately apparent that corporate media was completely MIA when it came to giving the story adequate coverage.

That realization was the focus of one of my first commentaries on what would become the COVID Pandemic.

We do well to remember that, early on, the most detailed reporting was occuring in alternative media outlets such as ZeroHedge, and from independent journalists such as Paul Joseph Watson.

We do well to remember also the reporting ZeroHedge did at the time was far more focused on the virus, its resemblance to SARS from years earlier, and its seeming greater virulence than SARS. COVID as an expression of malevolent global conspiracy came later.

Only reluctantly did corporate media outlets such as the Associated Press pick up the story, and only after outlets such as the South China Morning Post along with Zero Hedge had started to provide more in-depth coverage.

Only after the second SCMP story did the Associated Press pick up the story. Even then, it was not the legacy media but alternative media news aggregator ZeroHedge that gave the story wider distribution, pulling together the narrative threads from the SCMP and AP articles, and highlighting the health risks posed by coronavirus infections.

Thanks to the alternative media outlets, there was reporting being done even very early on, when corporate media had not yet picked up the story.

It was ZeroHedge that provided some of the earliest details on the initial lockdown in Wuhan.

It was from these sources that I soon realized just how completely absurd the notional “experts” were, how utterly clueless and even uninformed they were.

What those early days of the COVID Pandemic Panic—what at the time I was still calling a pandemic—made plain was that the “experts” to whom people were turning were not delivering the honest, reasoned, evidence-driven leadership people expected.

The COVID-19 pandemic is merely the latest example of a reality few want to contemplate: there are no true "experts" in anything. A quick survey of the significant events and crises in recent decades, from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster to the SARS outbreak in 2003 to the subprime mortage crises and subsequent global financial crisis of 2008, to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, time and again one can point to the actions of "experts" as being a catalyzing force if not a primary cause. Time and again, the "experts" have led us down the rabbit hole.

Remarkably, even then there was reason—and evidence—to wonder if the virus had somehow been weaponized, and either accidentally escaped a laboratory environment or was intentionally released.

The notion that COVID-19 is a bioweapon is not a conspiracy theory. It is a valid and disturbingly reasonable hypothesis. It is only a hypothesis, however, one that is not as yet proven to be categorically true.

That is the frustrating fact of the bioweapon hypothesis.

At that time, the evidence that had emerged was well short of what we have now—and even so was enough to support speculation about the pathogen’s possible weaponization.

Not all the facts were out there….yet. But they eventually would be.

It was as COVID cases began to be reported outside of China that another uncomfortable reality emerged: The data was not reconciling to the corporate media narrative at all.

However, we already begin to run into a problem with the data. When we look at the total number of COVID-19 cases reported by China (which we must take with a grain of salt, as China has been almost blatantly manipulating the data they report publicly), we have the following totals:

78,824 total confirmed cases
2,788 deaths
7,952 severe cases
36,117 recovered

7,952 is only slightly more than 10% of 78,824. 19 percent of the total case number would be 14,976--almost double what we are told.

Even within China, but especially without, the COVID cases that were being reported simply did not rise to the estimated severity levels that had been popularized by corporate media. There were not enough cases, there were not enough severe cases, there were not enough deaths.

This was known. The data was available in the public record—in most cases it was provided by the world’s public health agencies—and yet corporate media either disregarded the data or simply lied about it.

All of this was what was known and knowable in February of 2020.

Long before lockdowns came to Europe or the United States, long before face mask mandates were a thing, long before the pharmaceutical authoritarianism of the mRNA inoculations was public policy, it was demonstrably obvious that the COVID Pandemic was something quite different from what was being reported. It was demonstrably obvious that people the world over were being gaslit and deceived by the media reporting.

The data was out there—and people were deceived anyway.

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From Media Lies Came Actual Death

Just a couple months later, in April of 2020, the United States had fully embraced the madness of the COVID Pandemic Panic. The narrative was in full swing, and the corporate media propaganda machine was relentlessly pushing that narrative at every turn. That was made obvious by the lunacy of the lockdown policies, which from the beginning very deliberately avoided considerations of the costs of the lockdowns.

Even if the COVID disesase was as horrible as it had been portrayed by the media, that still did not excuse the intentional disregard of the very real human and economic costs of lockdown strategies.

Lives were not merely lost due to the lockdowns. They were sacrificed. They were knowingly, willfully, intentionally discarded.

Contrary to the sentiments expressed by many progressive media and legacy media outlets, addressing economic concerns is not about trading profits for lives, but about saving lives, as the lockdown strategies are certain to produce several times more deaths than the disease possibly could.

Who is counting these deaths? Who is even contemplating these deaths?

For all the moralizing that occurred within the corporate media at the time, there is no denying that this was the reality.

Perversely, these lives that were tossed away like so much dross were never matched on the disease side of the ledger with disesase-related fatalities. The lack of severity the media failed to report in February very clearly became a lack of death which the media also failed to report.

Again, this information was always available. It was available in public news outlets, and it was available from public health agencies, up to and including the CDC.

The data to prove that the media was lying about all of it was always a mouse-click away.

Yet the media lies went largely unchallenged. Lives were sacrificed—all supposedly to prevent deaths which never actually happened.

Of course, in those early days of the Pandemic Panic, no lie was more damning, or told with more impertinence and impunity, than Anthony “The Science™” Fauci’s damning about face on face masks.

What still beggars belief was the rapidity and requisite mendacity of that about-face. It was quite literally an overnight change in position, because at the end of March the WHO was still against mask mandates.

Even as late as March 30, the World Health Organization (WHO) advised against wearing masks.

"There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly," WHO executive director of health emergencies Mike Ryan said Monday.

What also confounds reason and logic was that the scientific literature had for well over a decade established a solid clinical basis for refuting the mask mandates.

Everyone in corporate media, in government, and in healthcare knew, or should have known, that there was never any scientific basis for mask mandates—and yet the lies about the mask mandates were still told.

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Governments Were Not Merely The Problem, They Were The Enemy

The narrative itself merely went downhill from there.

By May of 2020 there was a damning amount of evidence to support that the SARS-CoV-2 virus had emerged from a laboratory, that all the energies spent in defense of a zoonotic origin of the virus were nothing but pure hogwash and horsehocky. Even if the virus itself was not explicitly intended as a weapon, Beijing’s response to the COVID outbreak was an absolute weaponization of the disease.

It was the pursuit of the bioweapon angle, and of COVID’s likely laboratory origins, that put ZeroHedge in corporate media’s crosshairs, resulting in them being booted for a time from the pre-Elon Musk Twitter.

This interest in the truth about the CCPVirus' origins would get ZeroHedge falsely accused by BuzzFeed and then subsequently banned from Twitter, but their journalism has withstood the test of time--researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had not only studied bat coronaviruses for some time, but were actively seeking graduate students to participate in that research as late as December, 2019.

They were not the only ones. Later on, I would be booted from LinkedIn for a time.

Nor was I alone. Indeed, I was perhaps the smallest of the fish cancelled by corporate media for challenging the “official narrative.”

I am the smallest of fish in the independent media pond. I have nowhere near the readership or following of Alex Berenson or Steve Kirsch. Yet what has happened to me on LinkedIn has also happened to them—Alex Berenson had his Twitter account suspended, and Steve Kirsch has been booted from LinkedIn. Both writers have stated their cases within their own newsletters, and anyone interested in how Big Tech came gunning for them should read their own words on the matter.

The official narratives put forward by governments around the world were simply not to be challenged—ever.

Nor was it hard to understand why government was so intent on cancelling dissident voices: the incompetence and idiocy of government policies on COVID were several orders of magnitude beyond absurd, as the foolishness of mass PCR testing would quickly prove.

The tests were flawed, the protocols were ineffective, and the logic nonexistent. Ultimately, mass testing simply did not do a damn thing to prevent COVID’s spread. That much was proven in every country where it was presumably tried.

South Korea's low positive test rates have been largely replicated here in the US. In mid-March, Washington State had a marginally higher positive test rate at 7%, a percentage that has remained fairly stable. Only New York has had a sizable fraction of tests come back positive; the current positive result rate is 35.7%.

The conclusion to be drawn from this is that testing, while an invaluable diagnostic tool, is simply unsuitable for any sort of epidemiological tracking. This is also the somewhat belated conclusion of the "experts", who have at last concluded that, for tracking purposes, confirmed case numbers are "meaningless". It was similar logic that led Los Angeles in March to alter its testing protocol to focus it on diagnosing patients for whom the positive diagnosis would impact the course of treatment.

Yet the insistence on testing persisted, and would be used to shut people out of public spaces, even deny them the ability to travel.

This, despite the volume of data that existed arguing against a reliance on mass testing.

The data was there. The facts were known. Governments simply did not give a damn—or rather they gave a damn that people not know the facts and not look at the data.

No expression of government malevolence in 2020 could possibly exceed that of the lockdowns themselves. They were, in every instance, an economic and humanitarian disaster.

Even before China tried the Dante-esque extremity of “Zero COVID”, it was clear that lockdowns did only harm and no good.

In China, and in Italy, the data was unequivocal: lockdowns did nothing.

87.5% of Italy's March 23 case total occurred after the lockdown, as did 93.3% of Italy's March 23 death tally.

Moreover, 66.9% of Italy's April 20 case count occurred after March 23, as did 76.9% of Italy's April 20 death toll from the virus.

Again, if the lockdown strategy were to have worked as advertised, the majority of cases as well as deaths should have occurred relatively soon after the lockdown was initiated. The data is as emphatic in Italy as in Wuhan: that did not happen.

To make matters even more surreal, the clinical research at the time showed that lockdowns did not help.

These findings are independently confirmed by a study published on MedRX as of April 24, 2020, which showed the lockdown in Italy, as well as other European countries, did not save any lives. This study compared expected decay trends pre- and post-lockdown as the infection peaked, and found that the post-lockdown decay trends actually slowed.

In 2022, long after the lockdowns had largely faded away, more clinical research confirmed what I and others had said at the time.

The data, however, always told the same story: lockdowns did not work. That was known—and knowable—in 2020. There was never any need for post-mortem research into the lockdowns to establish that they were useless. The information that proved that was always publicly available.

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Trust Nothing. Verify Everything

Even now, as I am writing this, and rereading what I wrote in 2020, comprehending how many lies were told, and how much damage was done, seems impossible. I like to think I am fairly well read in human history, and I cannot recall a single event where so much deception was deployed on literally a global scale, to alter the trajectory of societies worldwide.

I can think of no parallel from the past that matches the COVID Pandemic Panic. It stands alone, an apotheosis of government and media malevolence and mendacity. I like to think that it could not be repeated—but I fear that, with the right timing and the right circumstances, something very much like this will happen again.

But this much I do know: every single piece of information that one would need to understand the error of the government diktats, and to grasp that corporate media was in fact lying about COVID, was always out there. Every data point I used in 2020 was freely accessible, available to everyone.

If there is one lesson people will take from the COVID Pandemic Panic, five years on, I surely hope it will be this: trust nothing, and verify everything.

Governments and the media and Big Pharma all lied about the virus. They lied about how to treat the disease brought on by the virus. They lied about how dangerous the virus and the disease were.

Yet they lied because people let them lie. They lied because people were willing to accept what they were told at face value. They lied because people were unwilling to question. Rather than reach their own conclusions, people chose to accept the “conclusions” proffered by others.

People chose to trust the “experts”, and the experts betrayed them. Worse, the experts were counting on that trust, and intentionally weaponized that trust. When I look back over everything that I wrote in 2020, and every cited data point, that much is clear.

If my writing now persuades people of anything I hope that it is to not accept anything uncritically. If my work accomplishes anything I hope it is to spread a little more skepticism, to sow a good deal more doubt, that people will be inspired to check the facts for themselves.

We can prevent a repeat of the COVID Pandemic Panic. We can make sure that something that evil never happens again. If we are willing to think for ourselves, to form our own conclusions, and to cultivate at every turn the courage of our convictions, neither media nor government can ever mislead the way they did with the COVID Pandemic Panic.

The facts are out there.

The evidence does exist.

The data does matter.

Get the facts. Get the evidence. Get the data. Think for yourself. Never let anyone do your thinking for you.

Trust nothing. Verify everything.

I am forever gaining new appreciation for how a Substack is in many respects a living thing, a creation which is constantly evolving. With that in mind, I believe an occasional self-assessment is in order, primarily to ensure that I am still being true to my purpose and motivation for doing this work.

I will beg your indulgence, therefore, as I engage in some of that self-assessment openly.

Fight Corporate Media Propaganda With Facts, Evidence, And Data

As my regular readers are aware, my tagline for is “Fight corporate media propaganda with facts, evidence, and data.”

There is little doubt that corporate media routinely lies to people—for all their pontification and pearl-clutching over “misinformation” and “disinformation”, they are non pareil the leading distributor of both. As readers will recall, I have discussed at length such corporate media lies as

• COVID is a major health threat (it wasn’t).

• The mRNA COVID inoculations are both safe and effective (they aren’t).

• Face mask mandates work against COVID (they don’t).

• President Donald Trump is an insurrectionist (he isn’t).

• The US Economy is robust and healthy (it isn’t).

• US labor markets are robust and healthy (they aren’t).

These are hardly the only corporate media lies. With each new day, corporate media outlets put out new falsehoods. There is not space enough in a single Substack article to fully describe the mendacity of the corporate media.

Yet beneath all of these lies and falsehoods there is a subtle but perverse message—the proposition that “narrative” can be synonymous with “facts”. Interwoven into nearly every corporate media missive are subtle but misleading phrases such as “without evidence” and “false claims”. Such statements are not the obejctive statements of fact the anodyne wording implies, but are opinions and conclusions—and no one should ever conflate opinion with fact.

As a consequence of such word choices, the narrative arc of most corporate media “reporting”, and their clear motivation within their reporting, is not to inform their audience on the state of affairs in the world, but to indoctrinate that audience into a particular worldview.

I reject this premise.

I do not deny that I use narrative to present factual information in a hopefully coherent fashion. That is the role of narrative—to assemble facts and data points into a cohesive whole that will make sense to the reader.

Yet I do not manipulate facts to fit a narrative. Rather, I bend narrative to fit the facts. In every story, the facts are what matter most of all. My readers deserve to have the facts, and in every article I strive to present the facts.

To this end I will at a minimum link to every article and resource I cite. Where I am referencing scholarly or legal research, I will generally include a footnote with the particular source. When I reference media articles, be they corporate or alternative media, I will archive them first, to ensure that the reader always can view the same materials I do when researching a topic.

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Facts Matter Because People Matter

My worldview is very much informed by my faith—it is my faith that is the impetus for , which is where I discuss my thoughts on Christian living. While that is a separate Substack from All Facts Matter, it is also related, and together they serve the same larger mission: inform, perhaps educate, and possibly inspire all people with a message of hope.

All people matter. No matter one’s politics, or worldview, or religious beliefs, I believe every person is a unique and special Child of God, created in God’s own image. If you are Democrat or Republican, you are still a Child of God. If you are Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, or Atheist, you are still a Child of God. If you are a progressive or a conservative, an authoritarian or a libertarian, you are a Child of God. And you matter.

Because people matter I desire that all people everywhere prosper and succeed. As an American I believe it is the responsibility of the American government to address the needs of Americans first, and only then be a benefactor to the wider world. I support America First movement, but I also wholeheartedly endorse the view expressed in 1963 by President John F. Kennedy:

our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.

Because all people matter I recognize that the individual is the atomic unit of every community and every society. Ideologies which emphasize instead group identification over individual identiy are by definition bigotry and prejudice, and should be called out as such. Such ideologies promote the same segregationist sins Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., described so eloquently in his “Letter From A Birmingham Jail”.

Like the racial segregation he denounced and gave his life opposing, such ideologies replace the “I-thou” relationship dynamic we should have with each other with an “I-it” dynamic, and fundamentally reduce all people to the status of objects.

Such ideologies by their very nature dehumanize and degrade people. All such ideologies are wrong; they are evil.

Corporate media has been at the forefront of promoting these ideologies. A substantial amount of corporate media propaganda seeks to advance the proposition that DEI is moral, even righteous, and inevitable—and it is none of these things.

By confronting corporate media propaganda with facts, evidence, and data I challenge these ideologies. By calling attention to the factual realities of the world, I seek to present a narrative which reminds everyone that each of us is unique, and each of us is uniquely affected by world events. If there is one overarching bias in my writing it is that I will always celebrate the individual above all else.

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This Is A Calling

While it may seem unorthodox and unusual, I do view this as a calling.

I do not mean to suggest I am morally superior than anyone else, or in any way more righteous. I am neither. I am a human being, flawed and imperfect, as is everyone else.

Even so, this is the work to which I am drawn. This is the contribution to humanity I strive to make.

For this reason, I do not put any of my articles behind a paywall. I want my work to be read by one and all. If my work has any value at all, I want that value to reach as many people as possible.

As neither of my Substacks receive any support from advertising or any form of corporate sponsorship, I am entirely dependent upon reader subscriptions and donations to keep my work going.

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To all those who have already subscribed on a paying basis and who have already donated, my deepest appreciation. I give thanks every day for your support.

I do humbly ask that everyone who is able please give whatever support you can. Every donation and every paying subscription helps further this mission, making it possible to reach more people and hopefully touch more lives for the better.

To all who read this and choose to subscribe or donate, my deepest appreciation. Thank you very much for your support!

To everyone, with a new President in the White House who is bringing many changes both to America and around the world, know that I will continue to bring you well-researched and well-reasoned analysis of the state of affairs in the world.

I encourage everyone to ask questions, challenge my reasoning, and especially provide feedback. If I ever get something wrong, I hope and pray that one of my readers will let me know.

Facts, evidence, and data will always be the antidote to corporate media propaganda. My pledge to you is that I will always bring facts, evidence, and data to bear in each and every article for this Substack.

To borrow from the science-fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, we pilot always into an unknown future, and facts are our only clues. Look for the facts, and know that will always be one place where you will find the facts!

Thank you all.

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.

The Declaration of Independence
July 4, 1776

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If there is any question that engenders eternal debate, it is the question of whether we or any people, can or shall be “free”.

We saw this question emerge earlier this year when Congress began debating the merits of banning the social media platform TikTok because it was owned and controlled by Chinese companies.

Substack saw this question engaged directly last year, when the introduction of Substack Notes immediately triggered calls for “censorhip”, “moderation”, and other authoritarian-tinged restrictions upon Free Speech.

The Second Continental Congress engaged this question directly in 1776, when they unaninimously issued the Declaration of Independence, whose 248th anniversary we celebrate today.

Given that the Second Continental Congress answered the question in the affirmative in 1776, why is it still lingering seemingly unresolved today? How is it that this question cannot simply be answered and deemed resolved, so that we may move on to other questions of significance?

Part of the challenge arises from the difficulties people have in comprehending what “freedom” is, and in particular what the mode of freedom—”liberty”—that was sought in 1776 is.

The modern Merriam-Webster dictionary—arguably the best dictionary for “American” English—defines “freedom” as “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action.”

“Liberty” is likewise defined as “freedom from arbitrary or despotic control”. While this largely is synonymous with “freedom”, the qualification that liberty is merely freedom from “arbitary or despotic” control implies the state of liberty still preserves some means of control, ones presumably neither arbitrary nor despotic.

Noah Webster, in his 1828 dictionary of American English, went to some length to clarify that “liberty” was not absolute anarchic “freedom”:

1. Freedom from restraint, in a general sense, and applicable to the body, or to the will or mind. The body is at liberty when not confined; the will or mind is at liberty when not checked or controlled. A man enjoys liberty when no physical force operates to restrain his actions or volitions.

2. Natural liberty consists in the power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, except from the laws of nature. It is a state of exemption from the control of others, and from positive laws and the institutions of social life. This liberty is abridged by the establishment of government.

3. Civil liberty is the liberty of men in a state of society, or natural liberty so far only abridged and restrained, as is necessary and expedient for the safety and interest of the society, state or nation. A restraint of natural liberty not necessary or expedient for the public, is tyranny or oppression. civil liberty is an exemption from the arbitrary will of others, which exemption is secured by established laws, which restrain every man from injuring or controlling another. Hence the restraints of law are essential to civil liberty.

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Significantly, the concept of “civil liberty” holds that only those constraints “necessary and expedient” for public safety and the public interest may be imposed on an individual’s freedom. Yet even necessary constraints are still constraints, and that is a subtle but crucial distinction between “liberty” and “freedom.”

That distinction very likely is why the question of whether or not we can or will be free is eternally unanswerable with any degree of finality. If we accept the legitimacy of certain “necessary” constraints, we must also entertain the reality that sometimes those constraints are violated. Sometimes “freedom” exceeds “liberty”—and that’s a problem.

Understanding why this is requires us to consider another term frequently used synonymously with freedom—”license”. In modern usage, “license” is defined as a “permission to act”. Yet there is an additional meaning that applies to “license”, “freedom that allows or is used with irresponsibility”—a modality of behavior that gives us the related term “licentiousness” (“lacking legal or moral restraints”).

Even in 1828, Noah Webster appreciated this notion of license being liberty run amok:

1. Leave; permission; authority or liberty given to do or forbear any act. A license may be verbal or written; when written, the paper containing the authority is called a license A man is not permitted to retail spirituous liquors till he has obtained a license

2. Excess of liberty; exorbitant freedom; freedom abused, or used in contempt of law or decorum.

License they mean, when they cry liberty.

The signature distinction between “liberty” and “license” is this: liberty exists in the absense of contraints, whereas license exists in the presence of constraints. “Liberty” presumes there is no authority capable of constraint, and “license” requires authority exercise that constraint.

Paradoxically, liberty and license are, as regards the role of authority, nearly polar opposites of each other.

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The Founding Fathers were many things, but they were not outright anarchists. For all their love of liberty, they also loved an ordered, peaceful, and prosperous society. Moreover, they accepted that a modicum of law and government—of constraint upon personal freedom—was necessary in order to achieve and sustain that ordered, peaceful, and prosperous society.

Thus the Second Continental Congress sought freedom from Great Britain’s refusal to constrain in urgently necessary ways:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

The Second Continental Congress sought freedom also from what they viewed as Great Britain’s political licentiousness, their taking license with the government of the thirteen colonies:

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

As I have argued previously, the Declaration of Independence was the culmination of the Founding Fathers’ desire not just for personal and political freedom, but also for good government.

When we take in the whole of the Declaration of Independence, we see that both liberty and good government, in the eyes of the Founding Fathers, existed in the balance between freedom and constraint.

Good government, in their view, becomes the guarantor of liberty. Good government constrains freedom where it absolutely must, yet refrains from so doing wherever it possibly can.

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As the Declaration of Independence thus stands as a blueprint for such good government, we may reliably look to the Declaration today as a gauge for whether our current government is “good” or not.

Is our government today constraining our freedom only where it absolutely must?

Is our government today refraining from so doing wherever it possibly can?

Only if we can plausibly answer both questions in the affirmative can we accept our government today as “good”.

If we cannot plausibly answer both questions in the affirmative, the Declaration of Independence also informs us of the corrective action that must be taken.

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.

What “new Guards” should there be in any corrected government? Simply those safeguards which preserve that crucial balance between freedom and constraint that we call liberty.

Above all, we may know from the Declaration of Independence that our Founding Fathers absolutely rejected notions of government license along with government licentiousness. The default presumption in their eyes was that government was not empowered to regulate or constrain human endeavor. Man does not need to secure a blessing from government for his actions, and cannot be called by government to account for all but a very few of his actions.

Whenever we see a call today for more government, we may know absolutely that the Declaration of Independence has already assured us that such is not good government, but its antithesis.

Whenever we see a call today for greater government regulation and license, we may know absolutely that the Declaration of Independence has already assured us that such is not good government.

If we wish to have an ordered, peaceful, and prosperous society, we absolutely must have good government. Of that there can be no doubt and certainly no dispute.

248 years ago, the Founding Fathers put forward their thesis of what good government should be—a government grounded in liberty and not license, with the clear understanding of the distinction to be made.

248 years onward, we must choose whether we will continue in their quest for good government, or if we will put it aside, allowing government license to supersede liberty.

I know my choice. What is yours?

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What sort of year was 2023? Was it a good year or a bad year?

What were the signal events of the year, and what do they tell us about what lies ahead for 2024?

Do we stand on the precipice, about to fall?

Will peace and prosperity come to the world at long last?

For better or worse, the same trends that shaped 2023 are set to shape 2024 as well. The world is likely going to stumble on for the coming twelve months, neither collapsing in calamity nor exploding in apocalypse, but also not witnessing an upsurge in peace and prosperity. Wars and rumors of wars will continue. The economic outlook will remain gloomy.

2024 will almost certainly be like 2023, only more so.

Let us consider a few of the pivotal narrative arcs from the past year, and contemplate what they portend for the coming year.

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The narratives on the economy will without a doubt continue to be dominated by what the Federal Reserve has done and may do. Those narratives will also underscore both how little credence Wall Street gives the Fed, and how little control the Fed actually has over the economy.

We saw this unfold early in 2023 with the twin collapses of Silvergate Capital and Silicon Valley Bank, two banks which fell victim to their own mistakes and misjudgements during the liquidity mini-crisis of last March.

A point needs be made here for emphasis: The Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes are but one factor among a sea of issues surrounding the governance of each institution. The Federal Reserve did not push FTX to commit fraud on a scale to make Bernie Madoff blush. Jay Powell did not demand Silvergate bet big on doing business with the fraudulent FTX. Jay Powell also did not demand that SVB hold onto money-losing Treasuries at low yields even as he pushed yields higher.

Both Silvergate and SVB have been part of the mainstream banking system since well before 2022, and thus well before Powell started raising interest rates. Both banks have seen interest rates move steadily higher, while their respective lower-yielding securities steadily lost value. Both banks had over a year to address any prospective weakness in their liquidity strategies. Both banks failed to do so.

Just as the liquidity crisis was predictable once the Fed began its policy pivot towards a tighter monetary policy, so, too, was what would happen in the inevitable fallout on Wall Street, which has time and again refused to wean itself off the “cheap money” the Fed has provided since the Pandemic Panic Recession.

Yet Wall Street refused to learn the lesson from Silvergate and SVB, and as late as December has continued to guzzle the Fed’s Kool-Aid.

Meanwhile, the Fed continues to game both monetary policy and interest rates with a less than transparent approach to shrinking its balance sheet.

At the same time, the economic reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Bureau of Economic Analysis are becoming more and more obscure, as their headline numbers become increasingly massaged and therefore irrelevant.

There is zero reason to believe either narrative trend is going to change any time soon. The “official” sources on the economy will continue to promote distorted and disingenuous perspectives, and Wall Street will continue to pretend those narratives are accurate, following them all the way down to the next big crash—which may or may not come next year. Their effect on the economy and how people perceive the economy will not be benign.

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With 2024 being a Presidential election year, there is little doubt that political headlines will be once again the main attention-getters.

Yet even in 2023, this country’s political discourse was greatly altered and even distorted by the serial efforts of state and federal prosecutors to indict and convict Donald Trump—the leading candidate for the GOP nomination—on a wide range of presumed offenses.

That the indictments themselves were a triumph of politics over pragmatism for the prosecutors has been self-evident from the outset.

Yet these indictments have already been subsumed in the political jihad being waged by Democrats in several states to simply keep Donald Trump from running.

While these bare-knuckle tactics are sure to draw the Supreme Court into the fray, they may have already exposed fatal flaws at the heart of the indictments being pursued against Donald Trump—that these are contrived cases targeting Donald Trump and not credible pursuits of justice and defenses of the law.

The outcome of the cases against Trump are likely to prove to be the pivotal political story of 2024, as the GOP debates have proven beyond any and all doubt that the rest of the GOP field barely qualify as serious politicians.

Ironically, the cases against Donald Trump are also shaping up to pose questions of extraordinary legal and Constitutional significance, with the role of impeachment in the prosecution of a former President and what should be the process for disqualifying him from appearing on a state’s ballots presenting thorny questions of “states rights”, presumption of innocence, and Presidential immunity.

While it is too soon to even guess how the Supreme Court will resolve these matters, the election calendar alone dictates the Supreme Court hear the inevitable appeals quickly, and that they render a decision equally quickly. Whatever the Court does will shape the 2024 election in profound and significant ways—like it or not, the Supreme Court has now been drafted into having a say in the electoral outcome next November.

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On the other side of the Pacific, the dominant narrative in China was that country’s “reopening” after its draconian “Zero COVID” policies had shut that country down for virtually all of 2021 and 2022.

The media and Beijing certainly attempted to present a picture early on of a vigorous economic “recovery.”

Reality, of course, prevailed as it always does, and it soon became clear that there was no “recovery”, that instead deflation and stagflation were what lay ahead for China.

While China continues to present massaged data to show economic “growth”, it is plain even from the massaged numbers that China’s economy is set to get worse before it gets better.

The global economy will get no boost from China in 2024, and possibly not even after. China is in long-term decline, with little evidence to suggest a reversal of any meaningful sort in the near future.

In the Middle East, the dominant event will continue to be the Israeli-Hamas war, which blossomed overnight on October 7th, presenting a host of competing narratives which all media outlets are still struggling to parse correctly.

One narrative arc that is persisting is the likely involvement behind the scenes of Israel’s arch-enemy Iran.

Yet Iran’s attempts to pull countries into a wide war in the Middle East, if that is indeed its strategic objective, have by all meaningful metrics been an abject failure.

Even Iran’s Houthi rebel proxies are coming up short in attempting to spread the war past the Gaza strip.

Will Iran’s proxies ultimately succeed in widening the scope of the Israeli-Hamas war? At present that seems unlikely to happen, but it absolutely remains very much a possibility.

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Perhaps it is important to note also the stories that did not happen in 2023:

Financial markets did not collapse in 2023, not even after the scare in March.

Civil war has not broken out in the United States, despite the very best efforts of the Deep State to push the people into greater and greater levels of division and conflict.

The US government did not impose martial law across the land, nor have the COVID lockdowns returned—although the face mask mandates have retained a curious life of their own.

This, even after the rest of the Pandemic Panic Narrative collapsed into history.

China has neither surged ahead of the United States, nor collapsed inward upon itself.

World War 3 has not broken out, in spite of continuing war in both Ukraine and Gaza keeping that possibility alive in the minds of many.

Such was the year 2023, and thus is likely to be the year 2024, only more so.

The economy is likely to remain in a slow downward spiral into stagflation and then deflation. The rolling recession that has prevailed since 2022 will keep rolling on. If Wall Street and the Fed combine, even accidentally, to push interest rates too low, inflation will return even without any real economic recovery and expansion. We remain caught between deflation and stagflation in the near term.

The longer the Fed maintains a tighter monetary policy the more likely it is there will be yet another liquidity crisis. By definition, tighter monetary policy drains liquidity from the system, and last March proved conclusively how uneven that liquidity drain can be, and how much stress it can place on banks.

As the Donald Trump court cases grind their way slowly through the appeals process, the political tensions in this country are sure to increase, and the political divides within the electorate equally sure to become deeper and seemingly unbridgeable. While violence is not assured, where there is political tension and political conflict violence can never be discounted.

So long as oil demand underperforms oil supply, energy prices will continue to decline, and pull the rest of consumer prices down as well. Service price inflation has not really shifted all that much, and there is scant reason to believe that it will do so in 2024.

Yet if Iran finally does succeed in expanding the Israeli-Hamas war to include the wider Middle East, and especially if the United States is drawn directly into that expanded conflict, oil prices will quickly reverse and take off, which will just as quickly reignite consumer price inflaiton globally. Whether that will or will not happen is far too problematic to even hazard a guess. Right now the Houthi rebels are failing to expand that war, but it would only take a few successful strikes on the right targets to reverse that.

It is disturbing to contemplate, but all the calamitous events that did not happen in 2023 are still very much a possibility in 2024. If anything, they are even more probable in 2024 than they were in 2023.

However, even in 2024 calamity will not just happen. If calamity does strike, events will be building towards it over time. There will be facts and data points—warning signs and red flags to alert the wary of imminent crisis. This is how the world unfolds, and how it has always unfolded.

No one can say how 2024 will unfold, not in any great detail. There will be events to come that will not have been expected. Yet we can expect that in 2024, just as in 2023, if we pay attention to the facts and not the narratives, we will not be caught unawares regardless of how the year unfolds.

Follow the facts. Follow the evidence. Follow the data. These are the only things any of us can truly trust.

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War is Hell, and it is also barbaric. Whether we take the side of Israel or whether we take the side of Hamas, or whether we look with horror on the tribulations being inflicted on the Palestinian Arabs as a result of this renewed war between Israel and Hamas, there is no escaping this reality.

Neither is there any escaping our own inability to end the wars waged by others. No matter how earnestly we ourselves may desire peace, that desire cannot prevent the choices of others for war.

While I believe we can and should always work for peace among all men, we should also be mindful that our actions, no matter how well-intentioned, can facilitate and enable war. Motivations aside, when we act, if we are not careful we run serious risk of making matters much worse.

The recent revelations in HonestReporting of how western journalists were “embedded” with Hamas when they launched their October 7th attacks upon Israel are disturbing, and they are a telling example of how, at the very least, innocent carelessness can produce evil consequence.

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While we are generally prone to applaud journalists who travel into war zones to bring back stories of such conflicts, what HonestReporting has detailed about the conduct of journalists for the Associated Press, the New York Times, and CNN lies somewhere between deeply disturbing.

On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.

What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.

Nor is this idle speculation. We know from the stories carried on the AP service as well as other news outlets that journalists were present when the Kibbutzim Kfar Azza and Be’eri were attacked by Hamas terrorists.

Consider these images, which we are told within the story are of Hamas terrorists in the process of abducting Israeli civilians.

These are not the social media postings made by the Hamas terrorists such as has been documented on . These are the work of “professional journalists” who were actually present when these abductions took place.

HonestReporting asks a simple question: how did these reporters come to be there at the very moment these atrocities were occuring? As they point out, it is not simply a question of reporters documenting important events.

Let’s be clear: News agencies may claim that these people were just doing their job. Documenting war crimes, unfortunately, may be part of it. But it’s not that simple.

It is now obvious that Hamas had planned its October 7 attack on Israel for a very long time: its scale, its brutal aims and its massive documentation have been prepared for months, if not years. Everything was taken into account — the deployments, the timing, as well as the use of bodycams and mobile phone videos for sharing the atrocities.

Is it conceivable to assume that “journalists” just happened to appear early in the morning at the border without prior coordination with the terrorists? Or were they part of the plan?

The actions of the relevant media outlets in the immediate aftermath of HonestReporting breaking this story casts even more doubt on the role the journalists played on October 7.

REACTIONS UPDATE: After publication of this article, a spokeswoman for the Associated Press quoted by the Daily Wire denied any advance knowledge of the attack, although HonestReporting did not make such accusation. “The Associated Press had no knowledge of the Oct. 7 attacks before they happened,” said Nicole Meir. “The role of the AP is to gather information on breaking news events around the world, wherever they happen, even when those events are horrific and cause mass casualties. AP uses images taken by freelancers around the world, including in Gaza.”

According to Ynet News, CNN has decided to suspend ties with Eslaiah despite not finding “any reason to doubt the journalistic accuracy of the work he has done for us.”

Despite the denials of evil intent by these media outlets, we are nevertheless left with the two eternally awkward questions: What did the media know about Hamas’ plans, and when did they know it?

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Even if we ascribe the most innocent of motives to the journalists who captured these images, that they were merely there reporting on an unfolding story, we cannot escape at least the intimation that their presence was a part of Hamas’ overall strategy. For the reporters to have been right there at the right place at just the right time is quite possibly—perhaps even probably—a deliberate effort on the part of Hamas to magnify the impact of their attack.

As HonestReporting points out, if this is the case, then the journalists, intentionally or not, breached that ephemeral boundary between covering a story and being part of the story. The most charitable explanation we have is that the journalists were duped by Hamas into providing a platform to publicize their barbarities. The least charitable explanation is that these journalists wanted to publicize Hamas’ barbarities. Somewhere in between is the possibility that the journalists were so focused on their own journalistic ambitions they simply didn’t care whether Hamas was being empowered by their actions or not.

Should the journalists have paused to consider the possibility they were being used by Hamas to further Hamas’ agenda? Should the journalists have notified the Israelis and then refused to give Hamas the publicity the terror organization craved? Did the journalists notify the Israelis before proceeding to cover the attack anyway? I certainly do not have the answers to these questions, yet I know these questions must be asked.

Yet we are faced with more than just this one breach of a journalistic boundary. Politicians and even ordinary citizens the world over are taking sides, expressing support either for Israel or Hamas or the Palestinian Arabs apart from Hamas. In the recent Republican Presidential Debate, the candidates were asked by moderator Lester Holt what they would as President tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu regarding the conflict. The response was in every instance some flavor of Ron DeSantis’ “finish the job”.

However, a question arises. On what basis does the United States or any nation presume to tell Israel what should be its conduct within any war fought by Israel? How is it appropriate as a matter of US policy for the US to tell any nation how it should wage war?

By the same token, how is it appropriate for the US (or any nation) to tell Israel how it should not wage war? Yet this is exactly what a group calling itself the “Biden Alumni for Peace and Justice” are tasking the United States to do.

We write to you as alumni of your 2020 presidential campaign. We fought tirelessly to organize millions of Americans to cast their votes for you. Like you, we believe in the dignity and value of every human life and the need for moral courage from our country’s leadership. We implore you, President Biden, to live that moral courage right now by stepping up to be a leader we can be proud of in the face of injustice. As President of the United States, you have significant influence in this perilous moment — you must call for a ceasefire, hostage exchange, and de-escalation, and take concrete steps to address the conditions of occupation, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing at the root of the horrific violence we are witnessing now.

Would most Americans approve of the People’s Republic Of China telling the United States how we should handle our own military affairs? Do not many of the same Americans who champion telling the Israelis to “finish the job” also chafe at the notion of the International Criminal Court exercising jurisdiction over US foreign policy?

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This is not to say that we should be silent in the face of evil conduct by anyone. We can—and we should—speak out when Israel commits war crimes against the Palestinian Arabs.

Likewise, we can—and we should—speak out when Hamas commits war crimes, not only against the Israelis but also against the Palestinian Arabs.

It is to say that we should acknowledge that, when we take sides in such a conflict, we run the risk of perpetuating that conflict. If we rationalize Hamas, if we excuse Hamas, if we legitimize Hamas, we run the risk of encouraging Hamas to continue on its bloody path of genocide. Likewise, if we tell Israel to “finish the job”, we are excusing and legitimizing the inevitable deaths of thousands of civilian Palestinian Arabs.

If we encourage either side in that or any war, we potentially perpetuate that same war. Even if we justify our stance as being for the sake of peace, we must always be mindful that such an intention does not guarantee that our actions will actually promote peace and not war.

Separately I have argued that, in the Middle East and elsewhere, mankind has sown a wind of war, and is now reaping a whirlwind of perpetual war.

Peter's Proverbs

We Have Sown The Wind. Now We Shall Reap The Whirlwind

For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind. The standing grain has no heads, it shall yield no meal; if it were to yield, aliens would devour it. Hosea 8:7 It takes no great insight or wisdom to conclude that Hamas very much sowed the wind on October 7, when…

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2 years ago · 2 likes · 4 comments · Peter Nayland Kust

We are witnessing this unfold in Israel and Gaza even now. No matter what predicates are deployed to form the casus belli on either side, the reality of the present day is that Israel and Hamas have chosen war over peace, and are using prior acts on both sides as justification for their current actions. There is no avoiding this reality.

If we encourage either side in this choice, how can we expect either side to eventually choose peace? More importantly, how can we hope to persuade both sides to jointly choose peace?

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If there is to be any hope for bringing this bloodshed to a quick and lasting resolution, we must have the honesty and integrity to acknowledge that if we choose a side—either side—we are choosing war and not peace. If we stand with Israel or if we stand with Hamas, or if we choose the Palestinian Arabs apart from Hamas, we are choosing war and not peace.

To choose peace means choosing an end to the violence. It does not mean choosing one side’s violence over the other.

To choose peace means we must have the humility to understand that we are not Israel, we are not Hamas, we are not the Palestinian Arabs. We are outsiders to these events, onlookers and ultimately bystanders only. We cannot choose what Israel must do, nor can we choose what the Palestinian Arabs must do. We do not control Israel any more than we control Hamas.

To choose peace means we must have the integrity to call evil actions evil, regardless of who commits them. We must not rationalize or excuse evil conduct, no matter whose it is. If Israel does wrong, we must say that Israel has done wrong. If Hamas has done wrong, we must say that Hamas has done wrong. We must hold all sides to account for all that they do.

If we hold Israel to account but not Hamas or the Palestinian Arabs, we are not choosing peace. If we hold Hamas to account and not Israel we are not choosing peace.

In this or any war, if we choose sides we are not ever on the side of peace. If we truly wish to end war, we must stand on the side of peace.

For myself, I stand on the side of peace. This might not be a popular choice. I believe it is the right choice.

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That the Declaration is historic not just for the sheer chutzpah of the upstart colonies daring to suggest that they could and should be independent of the British Empire, but also for its sweeping and even poetic vision of humanity, a vision in which “all men are created equal,” is something every American History and civics course teaches, and with good reason. The chain of events which culminated in the drafting of the United States Constitution and the creation of the Republic which it governs begins with the Declaration.

Thus we know already that the enduring power of the Declaration lies in what it is: a straightforward case for American independence from Great Britain. It details the political grievances of the thirteen colonies, touches previous attempts at rapprochement and reconciliation over those grievances, and finally concludes that Independence is the only course left open to the colonies.

Yet when we read beyond its famous exposition that “all men are created equal,” we find subtle reminders not merely of the moral imperative of freedom, liberty, and independence, but also of the why and the how of respect, also a moral imperative. We are reminded that changing government is not a thing to be done frivolously, yet at times becomes the thing that must absolutely be done.

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.

Even as the Continental Congress championed the cause of American Independence, it celebrated the virtue of coming to that cause through careful and thoughtful deliberation. Within the Declaration are the reminders that we owe it to ourselves, as well as all those around us and all those whom we hold dear, to act with prudence and caution. We are called to use our experience and the experiences of others to ground our choices in reason rather than recklessness.

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.

The Declaration also leaves no doubt about the imperative of action. Independence was not merely a right for the colonies but an affirmative duty. Just as they owed it to themselves to act with reason rather than recklessness, where there was reason, where prudence and caution had been applied, if the problem persisted then there was equally duty to do something about it.

Independence was not the desirable goal sought by the Continental Congress—personal and political freedom were that. Rather, it was the necessary action for achieving that goal. With all other options either failed or foreclosed, independence was the option that remained. Being the only option left, it was the option they were duty bound to choose. It was the action they were duty bound to take.

Thus independence became the colonists’ responsibility and not merely their right.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

In embracing that responsibility, the Continental Congress left no doubt what they were seeking, or what the costs might be to them personally. By signing their names to the Declaration, they accepted those costs without reservation.

We should not forget that independence was a costly choice for each of those 56 men to make; the war that followed the Declaration would leave almost all of them financially poorer than before. That the colonies had the fortitude and the endurance to see that war of independence through to the end is why we have the Declaration of Independence today, and why we celebrate its crafting in that summer of 1776. The Declaration of Independence is historic because those who drafted it chose the course of independence, accepted the consequences of that choice, and still followed the path of independence through to the end. Their actions, and the actions of the American colonists, give us the words of the Declaration today.

Thus the Declaration of Independence comes to us also as a reminder that that we are called to live through actions, and that our words gain meaning by our actions. Where we encounter problems, we are called to seek solutions—and where there are solutions it is our duty to pursue them.

Within the legacy of the Declaration of Independence is a legacy of choice, a legacy of action. Its words were the choice and the action of the Continental Congress. From that choice and from that action came a new nation.

Among the many messages of the Declaration of Independence there is simply this: that if we are to be free, it is upon us to reason, us to deliberate, us to choose, and us to act. Only then can any of us ever be free. Only then can any of us pursue independence of any kind.

The Declaration of Independence encapsulates the reason, the deliberation, the choice, and the action of the Continental Congress, and, by extension, the whole of the thirteen colonies that would become the United States of America. The eloquence of its words comes from the choosing and the action it signified.

When next you are called to choose, will your words likewise signify your choice and your action? Will you likewise declare your independence as a human being, and live accordingly?

Yet the July 4th date is neither the beginning nor the end of the Declaration's own history, but is instead one significant milestone somewhere near the midpoint of the process by which this historic document came to be in the form we have it today, ensconced in the National Archives along with the Constitution of the United States and other historic American documents.

As America celebrates this Fourth of July commemorating the Declaration of Independence, it is perhaps fitting to once again “let facts be submitted to a candid world”, and consider what the arc of history that produced the Declaration can teach us both about the Declaration and its relevance to our own times.

July 4th Is Not “Independence Day”

The vote to separate from Great Britain and seek independence was held on July 2. The July 4 vote was merely the ratification of the text of the Declaration itself.

The very next day, July 3rd, John Adams, delegate to the Continental Congress from Massachusetts (and later Vice-President and President of the nascent United States), remarked in a letter to his wife that July 2nd would soon become a national holiday, and that “It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.”

Ironically, the July 2 vote itself was a paradoxical bit of agreement between the colonies and the British Crown. On August 23, 1775, King George III issued his “Proclamation Of Rebellion”, wherein the thirteen colonies were declared to be in rebellion against the Crown, and obliging all British subjects to render all possible assistance “in order to bring to condign punishment the authors, perpetrators, and abetters of such traitorous designs.” By that proclamation, the delegates to the Continental Congress were arguably already labeled as traitors to the Crown; the July 2 vote merely removed any remaining pretense that the colonies were not in a state of rebellion, but were instead intent on achieving independence from Great Britain.

How did July 4th come to be associated more strongly with American independence than July 2nd? The simplest explanation is found by looking at the engrossed copy of the Declaration itself—at the very top of the document is the date on which the document was ratified and made official: July 4, 1776. That is the date the final text was approved to be sent out throughout the 13 colonies, as well as to several capitals of Europe to help solicit assistance from Great Britain’s many rivals.

People have remembered the document, and forgotten the votes. Consequently, what Americans call “Independence Day” is actually a commemoration of what is most likely the world’s very first press release!

The Declaration Was Not Signed Until August

The decision by the Continental Congress to have an “engrossed” copy of the Declaration prepared was not actually made until July 19, 1776. It is this engrossed copy, signed by the original ratifiers of the document, that now sits in the National Archives.

The engrossed copy was ready at the end of July, and on August 2 there was a little “signing ceremony” in Philadelphia. Fifty of the delegates would sign the Declaration on that day, and another six (who by then were not in Philadelphia for various reasons) would sign later. It is that engrossed copy which is now preserved within the National Archives.

John Trumbull’s famous painting “Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776”, which hangs to this day in the Rotunda of the US Capitol, while endeavoring to capture the spirit of that summer, portrays a scene which almost certainly did not happen, and certainly did not happen on July 4, 1776. The committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence presented the initial draft to the Congress on June 28, four days before the independence vote and 6 days before the final text was ratified.

What About The Signers?

The Declaration of Independence, while largely attributed to Thomas Jefferson, was ultimately the work of the whole Congress, which substantially revised Jefferson’s initial draft and reduced it by roughly a fourth of its original length. The initial draft itself was the work of a Committee of Five (Jefferson, John Adams, Robert Livingston, Benjamin Franklin, and Roger Sherman). Thus all of the signers can be said to have left more than just their signature on the document.

These men were a fairly diverse group. While most were lawyers like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, others were merchants, shippers, and plantation owners. Several served in the colonial militias alongside the Continental Army opposing the British—William Whipple would command troops at the pivotal Battle of Saratoga. Four would actually be captured by the British and spend time as prisoners of war.

Given the edicts laid down in King George’s Proclamation of Rebellion, each of the signers was committing themselves wholly to the cause of independence. While none would die either as prisoners of the British or in combat, the struggle for independence left almost all of them poorer as a result; some, like New York delegate Francis Lewis, were financially ruined by the war.

These men were certainly not saints. Many were slaveowners. Thomas Jefferson is widely believed to have fathered six children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemmings. John Adams was an unnatural politician who valued his own opinion above everyone else’s. Sam Adams, cousin to John Adams, was a failed businessman. Samuel Chase would later be the only Supreme Court justice ever impeached (for political bias).

Yet these imperfect men came together in Philadelphia intent upon building for themselves and their communities better government than what they had from Great Britain. For all their manifold failings and foibles, they made a pledge to each other of “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” to achieve that better government. Through that committment they gave us first the Declaration of Independence, then a free and sovereign United States, and ultimately the Constitution of The United States—perhaps the oldest written constitution still in effect today.

Most would go on to serve in various roles in both state and federal government, helping to shape through their experiences the government they risked the wrath of a superpower to call into being.

Not A Moment, But A Continuum Of Moments

The Declaration of Independence was not written in a day. War with Great Britain in pursuit of that independence would not be won in a day, nor even a year. Over 5 grueling years would pass from the Declaration of Independence to the surrender at Yorktown, and two more years after that for the Treaty of Paris to confer recognition by Great Britain on the fledgling United States. Not until June 21, 1788—nearly 12 years after the Declaration of Independence was ratified—would the Constitution of the United States be ratified by enough states to take effect as the new basis for government within the United States.

The Declaration of Independence was not solely the work of just one man, but the combined efforts of the entire Continental Congress. Thomas Jefferson put together most of the initial draft, but it was Congressional debate that molded it into the shape we know it as today.

The Declaration of Independence was not an end unto itself, but rather a means to a much larger end. Through their collective energies and experiences, the fifty-six men who signed the Declaration authored not merely a meaningful justification for why the thirteen colonies should become the United States, but a rationale for the ideal that all government exists to serve the people, and not to subjugate them.

The Declaration of Independence is not merely an important moment in history, but is rather a continuum of such moments, one that began long before the text of the Declaration was committed to parchment, and one that continues to even today.

The challenge of establishing government sufficient for protecting every man’s inalienable rights—including “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”—is also the challenge of preserving that government, and correcting it when it goes astray. Our right to alter or abolish a government which has become destructive to the goal of preserving our liberty is also our responsibility to do precisely that when the situation warrants. The challenge put before the signers of the Declaration of Independence is the challenge put before every generation—how to have good government.

When the British Crown became inimical to their liberty, the signers of the Declaration of Independence pledged all that they had to the task of repairing that situation. Complex men, conflicted men, they still found it within themselves to rise to the challenge, and so gave us not merely one historic document, but also a living enduring proof that government authority truly does flow from “We The People” and from nowhere else. By succeeding, they left future generations the challenge of either preserving that government, or altering and perhaps even abolishing it when defense of liberty demands.

Will this generation rise to that challenge? Will this generation accept the responsibility of correcting this government in order to preserve basic liberty?

The signers of the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to the defense of their liberty. What will you pledge to the defense of yours?

Tip Jar On Ko-Fi

However, we should not overlook the importance of the other great question frequently at issue in abortion debates: do women have the bodily autonomy to choose not to carry a child to term?

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Roe’s Limits

We should note that even Roe acknowledged that personhood was a superseding issue to the liberty interests and privacy rights asserted by the plaintiffs in that decision.

The appellee and certain amici argue that the fetus is a "person" within the language and meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. In support of this, they outline at length and in detail the well known facts of fetal development. If this suggestion of personhood is established, the appellant's case, of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the Amendment. The appellant conceded as much on reargument.

Personhood for the unborn, even under Roe, moots all competing legal and moral claims for abortion.

In many regards, Roe was never even a validation of bodily autonomy arguments. Roe specifically rejected the idea of an absolute right to abortion, and asserted at multiple paragraphs the state’s inherent interest in controlling and regulating abortion.

On the basis of elements such as these, appellant and some amici argue that the woman's right is absolute and that she is entitled to terminate her pregnancy at whatever time, in whatever way, and for whatever reason she alone chooses. With this we do not agree. Appellant's arguments that Texas either has no valid interest at all in regulating the abortion decision, or no interest strong enough to support any limitation upon the woman's sole determination, are unpersuasive.

Read in full, Roe has much more to say about State regulation than it does about a woman’s bodily autonomy as regards abortion.

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Bodily Autonomy Is Real—And Under Real Challenge

Even though Roe itself was less centered on bodily autonomy issues than its prevailing mythos would suggest, its cancellation does present a particular challenge to arguments in favor of bodily autonomy, if only because they are once again thrust into the arena of public debate.

Moreover, bodily autonomy concerns extend far beyond the issue of abortion. Opposition to the many iterations of coercive inoculation mandates either proposed or enacted at various levels of government during the COVID-19 Pandemic in large measure leverage the same arguments used by the pro-choice advocates in the abortion debate; “my body, my choice” has often been repurposed by inoculation mandate opponents (including myself) to capture the moral imperative behind their opposition.

Yet this repurposing of rhetoric also highlights a particular moral challenge: absent superseding arguments such as personhood, we must be prepared to accept, however distasteful, the option of abortion if we are to have an ethically consistent framework of bodily autonomy. Stephanie Brail, in her excellent “Wholistic” Substack, concedes this exact point.

I think abortion is wrong, but I'm not in favor of banning it in part because I favor bodily autonomy and medical freedom (I'm against vaccine mandates).

For these reasons, it behooves us to consider what the law has already said on the subject of bodily autonomy. If abortion is no longer the preeminent defense in favor of bodily autonomy, what other legal arguments and principles might already apply in favor of the position?

Bodily Autonomy: A Definition

Before delving into cases and case law, we should first clarify what is meant by “bodily autonomy.”

Such a definition is important to establish, because the term itself is nowhere to be found within the body of the Roe ruling, nor are there any terms that might be synonymous with “bodily autonomy.” Thus we must be clear on what is meant by “bodily autonomy”, in order to explore the underlying legal principles that might have already been addressed by the courts under different language.

In a keynote address given earlier this spring during the 66th session of the Commission on the Status of Women, Dr. Natalia Kanem, Executive Director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), offered this definition of "bodily autonomy.”

Bodily autonomy means my body is for me; my body is my own. It’s about power, and it’s about agency. It’s about choice, and it’s about dignity. 

John Letzing, Digital Editor for Strategic Intelligence for the World Economic Forum, uses a similar definition.

That may be particularly true in terms of bodily autonomy, or the power of women to make choices about their own bodies without facing coercion or violence.

Bodily autonomy, thus apprehended, truly is the realization of the mantra “my body, my choice” (or, as I have often expressed it in online debate, “My body, my choice; your body, your choice.”).

If we broaden the exploration for relevant case law to include defenses of a person’s right to choose—or refuse—medical treatments, we find a fairly rich legal history unfolds before us.

Bodily Autonomy Was Already Defended As A Right Before Roe

What may surprise many is that there is a substantial body of case law in favor of bodily autonomy that predates even Roe v Wade. As far back as 1891, in Union Pacific Railway Co. v Botsford, (141 U.S. 250 (1891)), the Supreme Court issued its ruling based on an assertion of a common law principle that reads very much like the above definitions for bodily autonomy.

No right is held more sacred or is more carefully guarded by the common law than the right of every individual to the possession and control of his own person, free from all restraint or interference of others unless by clear and unquestionable authority of law. As well said by Judge Cooley: "The right to one's person may be said to be a right of complete immunity; to be let alone.”

The issue in Union Pacific Railway Co. was the power of the courts to compel a party to a litigation to submit to a surgical examination in the presence of witnesses in order to substantiate certain claims of injury. The original trial court rejected the notion that it held such power and the Supreme Court affirmed this judgement, with language that leaves little room for doubt or prevarication upon the principle.

The inviolability of the person is as much invaded by a compulsory stripping and exposure as by a blow. To compel anyone, and especially a woman, to lay bare the body or to submit it to the touch of a stranger without lawful authority is an indignity, an assault, and a trespass, and no order of process commanding such an exposure or submission was ever known to the common law in the administration of justice between individuals, except in a very small number of cases based upon special reasons, and upon ancient practice, coming down from ruder ages, now mostly obsolete in England, and never, so far as we are aware, introduced into this country.

In Griswold v Connecticut, (381 U.S. 479 (1965)), Justice William Douglas argued that the specific guarantees of rights within the Bill of Rights have “penumbras” which lead to articulations of other rights as fundamental to human liberty as the enumerated rights.

The foregoing cases suggest that specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance. See Poe v. Ullman, 367 U. S. 497, 367 U. S. 516-522 (dissenting opinion). Various guarantees create zones of privacy. The right of association contained in the penumbra of the First Amendment is one, as we have seen. The Third Amendment, in its prohibition against the quartering of soldiers "in any house" in time of peace without the consent of the owner, is another facet of that privacy. The Fourth Amendment explicitly affirms the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fifth Amendment, in its Self-Incrimination Clause, enables the citizen to create a zone of privacy which government may not force him to surrender to his detriment. The Ninth Amendment provides: "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

Justice Douglas used this logic of a “zone of privacy” to establish the rights of married couples to access contraceptives.

The present case, then, concerns a relationship lying within the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees. And it concerns a law which, in forbidding the use of contraceptives, rather than regulating their manufacture or sale, seeks to achieve its goals by means having a maximum destructive impact upon that relationship. Such a law cannot stand in light of the familiar principle, so often applied by this Court, that a

"governmental purpose to control or prevent activities constitutionally subject to state regulation may not be achieved by means which sweep unnecessarily broadly and thereby invade the area of protected freedoms."

NAACP v. Alabama, 377 U. S. 288, 377 U. S. 307. Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives? The very idea is repulsive to the notions of privacy surrounding the marriage relationship.

A subsequent case, Eisenstadt v Baird, (405 U.S. 438 (1972)), would use similar privacy arguments and the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause to extend the right to acquire and use contraceptives to unmarried couples.

If, under Griswold, the distribution of contraceptives to married persons cannot be prohibited, a ban on distribution to unmarried persons would be equally impermissible. It is true that, in Griswold, the right of privacy in question inhered in the marital relationship. Yet the marital couple is not an independent entity, with a mind and heart of its own, but an association of two individuals, each with a separate intellectual and emotional makeup. If the right of privacy means anything, it is the right of the individual, married or single, to be free from unwarranted governmental intrusion into matters so fundamentally affecting a person as the decision whether to bear or beget a child.

While Griswold and Eisenstadt ground their reasoning in Constitutional protections for privacy, the end result in favor of bodily autonomy is the same as in Union Pacific Railway Co.: People have the right to make their own choices regarding their bodies and their persons.

Additionally, there are several extant rulings which establish Constitutional protection for a patient’s right to refuse or discontinue medical treatments, even when the result of such refusal is patient death.

In 1976, in the ruling In Re Quinlan, (70 N.J. 10 (1976)), the New Jersey Supreme Court acknowledged that the right of privacy included the right to forego treatments necessary for the maintenance of biological and physiological life.

We have no hesitancy in deciding, in the instant diametrically opposite case, that no external compelling interest of the State could compel Karen to endure the unendurable, only to vegetate a few measurable months with no realistic possibility of returning to any semblance of cognitive or sapient life. We perceive no thread of logic distinguishing between such a choice on Karen's part and a similar choice which, under the evidence in this case, could be made by a competent patient terminally ill, riddled by cancer and suffering great pain; such a patient would not be resuscitated or put on a respirator in the example described by Dr. Korein, and a fortiori would not be kept against his will on a respirator.

In Re Quinlan also drew on the logic of another much earlier case from the New York Court of Appeals, Schloendorff v New York Hospital (211 N.Y. 125, (NY 1914)), in which noted jurist Benjamin Cardozo stated the case for bodily autonomy quite explicitly:

In the case at hand, the wrong complained of is not merely negligence. It is trespass. Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body; and a surgeon who performs an operation without his patient's consent, commits an assault, for which he is liable in damages.

The logic in Quinlan and Schloendorff would be restated in the Supreme Court case Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dep't of Health, (497 U.S. 261 (1990)), in which Chief Justice William Rehnquist acknowledged Constitutional protection for the right of a patient to refuse or discontinue lifesaving treatment:

But for purposes of this case, we assume that the United States Constitution would grant a competent person a constitutionally protected right to refuse lifesaving hydration and nutrition.

Rehnquist would reiterate this same reasoning in Washington v Glucksberg, (521 U.S. 702 (1997)).

The logic of bodily autonomy has also been used to preclude State authority from inflicting injury upon the individual. In Skinner v. Oklahoma ex rel. Williamson, (316 U.S. 535 (1942)), Justice William Douglas held than an Oklahoma statute calling for the involuntary sterilization of “habitual” felons violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protections clause:

But the instant legislation runs afoul of the equal protection clause, though we give Oklahoma that large deference which the rule of the foregoing cases requires. We are dealing here with legislation which involves one of the basic civil rights of man. Marriage and procreation are fundamental to the very existence and survival of the race. The power to sterilize, if exercised, may have subtle, far-reaching and devastating effects. In evil or reckless hands, it can cause races or types which are inimical to the dominant group to wither and disappear. There is no redemption for the individual whom the law touches. Any experiment which the State conducts is to his irreparable injury. He is forever deprived of a basic liberty.

As this lengthy enumeration of cases illustrates, the presumption of bodily autonomy was not a novel invention of Roe v Wade, but has been deeply embedded within America’s judicial consciousness for well over a century at least. While not stated explicitly within the Bill of Rights, bodily autonomy is surely among our most fundamental rights, and has been duly and repeatedly acknowledged as such by the courts.

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Limits On Bodily Autonomy: Jacobson and Bell

While the courts have long upheld the broad principles of bodily autonomy, they have also observed discrete limits upon that right. In Glucksberg, for example, while the right of the individual to refuse treatment was upheld, that right was not extended to include a right to proactively end one’s life by suicide, or a right to seek physician assistance in committing suicide. Cruzan, while noting the presumed Constitutional permissibility of a patient in a persistent vegetative state choosing to discontinue life support measures, also concluded that Missouri’s rigorous requirements for clear and convincing evidence of the incompetent patient’s wishes in this regard was not a violation of that right, and acknowledged the state had a discernible interest in ensuring the incompetent patient’s guardian was in fact adhering to the patient’s own wishes.

Perhaps the most notable example of the legal limits on bodily autonomy is the case many have heard at least in passing with regards to COVID-19 inoculation mandates, Jacobson v Massachusetts, (197 U.S. 11 (1905)). While not invalidating the relevance of assertions of bodily autonomy, Jacobson nevertheless held that it lay within the general police power of a state to order mandatory smallpox vaccination as a means of controlling the spread of that disease.

The defendant insists that his liberty is invaded when the State subjects him to fine or imprisonment for neglecting or refusing to submit to vaccination; that a compulsory vaccination law is unreasonable, arbitrary and oppressive, and, therefore, hostile to the inherent right of every freeman to care for his own body and health in such way as to him seems best, and that the execution of such a law against one who objects to vaccination, no matter for what reason, is nothing short of an assault upon his person. But the liberty secured by the Constitution of the United States to every person within its jurisdiction does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint. There are manifold restraints to which every person is necessarily subject for the common good. On any other basis, organized society could not exist with safety to its members. Society based on the rule that each one is a law unto himself would soon be confronted with disorder and anarchy. Real liberty for all could not exist under the operation of a principle which recognizes the right of each individual person to use his own, whether in respect of his person or his property, regardless of the injury that may be done to others.

While the language here is unfortunately vague and circumspect, Justice Harlan’s opinion is not dismissive of bodily autonomy arguments per se, but rather asserts the primacy of state and local government’s compelling interests in preserving the health and safety of the community. Much as with assertions of personhood with regards to abortion, Jacobson asserts that the health and safety of a community comprises a superseding principle.

It should be noted that Jacobson relies heavily on the premise that vaccination against smallpox was and would still be today an effective mitigation against what must be acknowledged to be an highly contagious and highly dangerous disease, resulting in significant death and suffering. It is this consideration that Jacobson concluded permitted a state, through its general police power, to overrule the bodily autonomy and liberty interests of the individual wishing to decline vaccination while remaining within a community.

Since, then, vaccination, as a means of protecting a community against smallpox, finds strong support in the experience of this and other countries, no court, much less a jury, is justified in disregarding the action of the legislature simply because, in its or their opinion, that particular method was -- perhaps or possibly -- not the best either for children or adults.

Yet Jacobson does not wholly dismiss bodily autonomy either as a right or as a general concern of the individual. In his opinion’s closing, Justice Harlan noted that the health regulation was not an absolute requirement, irrespective of the health and bodily condition of the individual, and left the door open for challenge based on demonstrable harm or threat of harm to the individual arising from the regulation.

Until otherwise informed by the highest court of Massachusetts, we are not inclined to hold that the statute establishes the absolute rule that an adult must be vaccinated if it be apparent or can be shown with reasonable certainty that he is not at the time a fit subject of vaccination or that vaccination, by reason of his then condition, would seriously impair his health or probably cause his death. No such case is here presented. It is the case of an adult who, for aught that appears, was himself in perfect health and a fit subject of vaccination, and yet, while remaining in the community, refused to obey the statute and the regulation adopted in execution of its provisions for the protection of the public health and the public safety, confessedly endangered by the presence of a dangerous disease

The essential conclusion of Jacobson is thus that the community’s interest in mitigating the spread of a dangerous and contagious disease superseded the individual’s bodily autonomy at least to some degree. Whether the court got this right or wrong is an assessment I leave to you, the reader, to decide for yourself.

For the courts can, and in at least one instance, have, reached conclusions regarding bodily autonomy that, fully apprehended, are abhorrent and simply wrong. In the lamentable 1927 ruling Buck v Bell, (274 U.S. 200 (1927)), Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes asserted the interests of society and the State were best served by compulsory sexual sterilization of what it termed “feeble minded” individuals, and that the case of Carrie Buck was one such instance.

We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange if it could not call upon those who already sap the strength of the State for these lesser sacrifices, often not felt to be such by those concerned, in order to prevent our being swamped with incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U. S. 11. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.

Not only is Holmes’ execrable declaration that “three generations of imbeciles are enough” morally offensive in its own right, it is a vehicle by which he then summarily dismisses the notion that equal protection of the laws is even applicable to those who “sap the strength of the State.”.

But, it is said, however it might be if this reasoning were applied generally, it fails when it is confined to the small number who are in the institutions named and is not applied to the multitudes outside. It is the usual last resort of constitutional arguments to point out shortcomings of this sort. But the answer is that the law does all that is needed when it does all that it can, indicates a policy, applies it to all within the lines, and seeks to bring within the lines all similarly situated so far and so fast as its means allow. Of course, so far as the operations enable those who otherwise must be kept confined to be returned to the world, and thus open the asylum to others, the equality aimed at will be more nearly reached.

It is a curious (and, I submit, wholly incorrect and inadequate) defense of Constitutional principles to suggest that the law need only say “I tried” to satisfy Constitutional mandates, yet that is all Holmes offered as justification for his conclusions in Buck. Moreover, as already discussed above, Skinner v Oklahoma unambiguously reasserts the primacy of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protections clause, thus providing a complete rejection of Holmes’ reasoning.

Indeed, the conclusion of Buck that the State may, on its own, decide who is and is not fit to procreate, arguably voids all notion of bodily autonomy. Anyone doubting the importance of bodily autonomy both as a moral principle and a Constitutional right should consider carefully the implications and the odious arrogance of Holmes’ casual assertion that “three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

“My Body, My Choice; Your Body, Your Choice”

How an individual apprehends his or her own rights of bodily autonomy, including the desired stance of the larger society regarding those rights, is inherently a moral proposition. It is that moral relevance that mandates pressing the case for bodily autonomy wherever it comes under challenge, and also scrutinizing any assertion of competing or superseding principles.

Fortunately, in large measure the courts have already considered the principles of choice underpinning common understandings of bodily autonomy, and, by and large, agreed with those principles. For over a century, the courts have repeatedly affirmed, through the general rights of privacy elucidated in the Bill of Rights as well as the liberty and equal protections clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, that the general right of bodily autonomy not only exists, but is foundational and fundamental. Within the Constitutional order, we are not free unless we are free to choose what is to be done with regards to our bodies.

Even before Roe v Wade, and thus continuing even now that Roe has been overturned, the general assessment of the courts has been that people retain the full right to choose what happens to their bodies, with only a limited set of competing principles able to supersede that right.

As I have stated elsewhere, the defensible moral position is always “my body, my choice; your body, your choice. That defensible moral position is also the standard of the law, and has been for ages.

In a discussion thread posted earlier today, Sage posited that the “fate of the world” will be decided by a few crucial US court cases:

But it occurs to me that the fate of the world may now hinge on a few judges scattered throughout the United States of America.

Certainly with Canada’s recent handgun ban legislation, and the vote by Canada’s Parliament to continue discriminatory and bigoted travel restrictions based on COVID-19 inoculation status, it requires no great leap of imagination to believe that authoritarianism in one form or fashion is very much on the rise, even among “liberal” political circles. Government, we are being told around the world, is the answer to just about everything.

But is it really?

Gun Bans Do Not Stop The Use Of Other Weapons

In the wake of the horrific Uvalde school shooting, politicians from the President on down are talking up the virtues of various gun bans, ranging from assault weapons to handguns. Such restrictions, we are assured, will end mass shootings and mass casualty events in this country. Gun control is claimed to be the best—indeed, the only means—to ending violence and violent crime.

But is that really likely?

Consider the following mass casualty events:

• On April 15, 2013, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev detonated two pressure cooker bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing 3 and injuring hundreds.

• On July 14, 2016—Bastille Day— Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel drove a rented truck into a crowd in Nice, France, gathered to watch a fireworks display. 86 people were killed

• On April 7, 2017, a truck driver drove a beer delivery truck through a crowd in downtown Stockholm, Sweden, killing four and injuring 15.

None of these mass casualty events would be prevented by any sort of firearm control legislation, because firearms were not used in Boston or Stockholm, and while in Nice Lahouaiej-Bouhlel had a firearm with him, his primary weapon was still his vehicle.

In the case of the Boston Marathon bombing, the Tsarnaev brothers assembled their bombs from largely generic components, including the gunpowder explosive. How could any government possibly hope to regulate such materials?

Moreover, according to the FBI’s “Crime In The United States” survey report for 2019, in every state in the Union rifles of one kind are another were used only in a small minority of homicides. Hands and feet as well as knives are far more popular for committing murder than is a rifle.

Banning “assault weapons” would be ineffective against the vast majority of homicides, which are committed with all manner of weapon save an assault rifle. Even if one assumes that such prohibitions are an effective means of preventing the murders committed each year with the proscribed class of weapon—a dubious assumption at best—their potential impact on the homicide rate overall could never be anything more than marginal.

In fact, a study of a previous “assault weapons” ban in the United States, which lasted from 1994 through 2004, conceded that its impact was problematic and minimal at best.

Should it be renewed, the ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement. AWs were rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban.

How can any sort of weapons ban work when those who intend harm against another can simply choose another weapon?

The Cities With The Strictest Gun Laws Have The Highest Homicide Rate

When contemplating the practical efficacy of gun control legislation, one statistical reality that must be acknowledged straight away is that Mexican cities are demonstrably the most violent in the world, with the highest rates of homicide per capita.

This is significant, because Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world:

• In the entire country, there is exactly one legally authorized gun dealer: the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales in Mexico City.

• Article 10 of the Mexican Constitution establishes a constitutional right to own firearms, but only those weapons allowed by the government, and even legally owned weapons can only be carried when and where the government allows.

• Mexico bans ownership of rifle calibers larger than .30, and handgun calibers larger than .380—while also banning the .357 and 9mm parabellum calibers.

• Specific carry licenses are required to carry firearms outside the home. Although the population of Mexico was ~112 million in 2014, only 4,300 carry licenses were issued for that year. Quite simply almost no private citizen in Mexico is allowed to carry firearms.

If the purpose of gun control legislation is public safety, Mexico’s gun control laws are a public failure. In cities such as Tijuana and Acapulco, government control of firearms is clearly not working.

Not Just Public Safety Failures, But Also Public Health

The Pandemic Panic Era has been notable for one thing: a near universal insistence on not just the propriety but also the efficacy of government mandates.

Yet time and again, coercive government diktat failed to produce the desired result: control and reduction of COVID-19.

From the beginning of the pandemic, coercive lockdowns failed everywhere they were tried.

All Facts Matter

The Disaster Of Lockdowns

In response to the CCPVirus (the more descriptive and accurate term for the coronovirus the "experts" at the World Health Organization have given the anodyne label SARS-CoV-2), the world has engages in a series of draconian economic and social shutdowns, placing as many as 4 billion people under what amounts to "house arrest…

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6 years ago · Peter Nayland Kust

Shanghai’s recent lockdown experience under China’s “Zero COVID” policy merely reiterates that failure of government edict to contain infectious disease.

All Facts Matter

Shanghai Lockdown: Doubling Down On Faucist Mistakes

Lockdowns do not contain infectious respiratory disease. The latest proof of this comes from China’s largest city, Shanghai, which has gone from no lockdown to targeted lockdowns to partial lockdowns to full citywide lockdown in a matter of weeks. This despise cities such as Shenzhen, Tianjin and Jilin having a similar lack of success…

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4 years ago · 3 likes · 1 comment · Peter Nayland Kust

In November of last year, Austria became the first European country to mandate COVID-19 inoculation, in addition to physical lockdown protocols.

“There are too many among us who haven’t shown solidarity,” Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg said in Tyrol after meeting with provincial governors. “Raising the vaccination rate is the only way to break this vicious circle.”

Yet despite raising Austria’s inoculation rate from 64% on November 19 to 72-73% by February of this year, Austria’s COVID case rates rose and fell during the winter Omicron wave without any apparent impact from the inoculations.

Such failures of mandatory inoculation schemes were not confined to Austria. Mass inoculation has been an unmitigated failure everywhere at stopping the spread of COVID-19.

All Facts Matter

No Return To Normal In Sight

Since the beginning of the year the mainstream media and governments around the world have assured us that vaccination against COVID-19 was the key to a “return to normal.” Only through vaccination, we were told, could sufficient numbers of people be rendered immune to the SARS-CoV-2 virus to allow for pre-pandemic society to return…

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4 years ago · 2 likes · Peter Nayland Kust

Reality Check: Government Does Not Always Work

The tacit presumption behind all government laws and mandates is that of efficacy. Gun laws are supposed to control violent crime. Inoculation mandates and mandatory lockdown protocols are supposed to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Government is supposed to “work”.

Yet time and again, the claimed efficacies are simply not there.

Mexican gun laws have not stopped murderous violence in Mexican cities.

China’s Zero COVID policies have had Zero Success at containing COVID-19.

Lockdown measures around the world failed to stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus in 2020.

Inoculations mandates likewise failed to stop the SARS-CoV-2 virus in 2021.

Merely passing a law or instituting a regulation does not guarantee that law or regulation will achieve the desired result. The examples of the failure of government regulation to achieve its stated goals go on far beyond the few I have detailed here. In virtually every arena where government chooses to wield authority, evidence exists highlighting the failure of that authority at solving problems.

Government does not always work. Some might argue that government never works.

The utility of government is therefore limited at best. The facts and the data are conclusive in this regard: government, like all human inventions, is imperfect. Sometimes it fails to measure up to the task put before it. We cannot look at the world around us and conclude otherwise.

Indeed, not only does government fail to measure up to the task at hand, but sometimes government goes completely wrong, and so the limited utility of government presents us with the moral necessity of limiting government.

All Facts Matter

Who Decides?

What do the following bits of legislation have in common? The Separate Car Act Of 1890 The Virginia Sterilization Act Of 1924 The Reich Citizenship Law The Law to Protect German Blood and Honor Each was a law duly passed by an established legislature…

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4 years ago · Peter Nayland Kust

Government does not always work. When it doesn’t, it falls to the people to fix what government breaks.

• The Separate Car Act Of 1890

• The Virginia Sterilization Act Of 1924

• The Reich Citizenship Law

• The Law to Protect German Blood and Honor

Each was a law duly passed by an established legislature.

The Separate Car Act was the law Homer Plessy stood accused of violating in the pivotal Supreme Court case Plessy v Ferguson (163 U.S. 537), which established as constitutional the segregationist doctrine of “separate but equal”—a doctrine that would stand until the 1950s.

The Virginia Sterilization Act was the law at issue in the Supreme Court case Buck v Bell (274 U.S. 200), where the Court ruled that the State could mandate the sexual sterilization of persons it deemed afflicted with “hereditary insanity or imbecility”. It was in that case that Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes made his execrable declaration that “Three generations of imbeciles are enough.”

The Reich Citizenship Law and the Law to Protect German Blood and Honor were the infamous Nuremburg Laws passed by the Nazi Reich in Germany in 1935, and by which German Jews were stripped of their citizenship and almost all of their civil rights. They were a crucial step towards the Nazi Holocaust during WW2.

Each of these laws stands as infamous history, examples of government gone wrong.

What Should Government Not Do?

The justifications for government action are legion: calls for assault weapons and gun bans in the wake of the horrific Uvalde shooting, the coercive lockdowns and inoculation mandates to contain the spread of COVID-19, et cetera. Most are cloaked in well-intentioned rhetoric about stopping violence and preserving human life—notable and eminently defensible objectives by any measure.

Yet every advocate of such government action should pause and ponder: what should government absolutely not do? What government action would they want prevented?

Should government have the authority to conscript soldiers for an overseas war?

Should government have the authority to compel a woman to abort her unborn child—as was the case in China under its One Child Policy?

Should government authority ever be beyond all scrutiny and accountability? Is government authority intended to be absolute and all encompassing?

How Is Government Limited?

If the answer to any of these questions is “no”, we are immediately confronted with another question: how do we limit government—not just theoretically, but practically?

The prevailing answer in most countries today is the constitution by which a particular national government is chartered. Within such constitutions are found the key declarations of what powers are to be given government, what rights are retained by the people, and what protections those rights enjoy from predation by the powers of government.

As Chief Justice John Marshall explained so eloquentlly in Marbury v Madison (5 U.S. 137), the nature of constitutions invariably imposes limitations upon government:

Certainly all those who have framed written Constitutions contemplate them as forming the fundamental and paramount law of the nation, and consequently the theory of every such government must be that an act of the Legislature repugnant to the Constitution is void.

Constitutions define the structure of a government, and structure, by its very nature, imposes limitations upon that government. Following on Marshall’s thesis, the key to apprehending the role of a constitution is that the government so chartered is unable to lawfully act in a manner contrary to the dictates of the constitution. Where government action contradicts constitutional requirement, the constitutional requirement immediately and automatically voids that action, depriving it of legal form and legal substance.

Why Must Government Be Limited?

While it is fairly easy to see that a constitution is the legal means by which government authority may be limited, returning back to the questions posed above we must address the question of why government must be limited?

While it arguably would be easy for anyone to identify at least one action government should not do, or power government should not have, upon what justification can people broadly agree about what powers governments should or should not have, or what actions government should or should not take?

Perhaps the best answer for this lies in the Preamble of the United States Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

What was true of the nascent United States in 1787 is true for all countries in all times: the people—the society itself—always precedes the government. There is no government without people. A people gives rise to government, never the other way around.

Indeed, Thomas Jefferson stated as much in the Declaration of Independence:

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

As Jefferson eloquently explains, government has authority to act only because the people consent to grant such authority.

People consent to government. Which is to say people do not surrender to government. We agree to be governed; we do not yield to government compulsion or demand—the latter by definition is synonymous with tyranny.

Government accordingly must be limited in its scope and its authority because for it to be otherwise means people no longer consent to be governed, but are instead compelled and coerced into accepting governing—consent is distorted into surrender, and just government is distorted into tyrannical government.

Government Cannot Always Be The Answer

The practical consequence of this understanding of government is that it can not always be “the answer” to society’s problems—arguably, it is never the answer to society’s problems. There are some authorities government does not have, authorities people have not granted to their government. There are powers a constitution either explicitly denies government or implicitly prevents government from assuming.

If government is limited, government ability to act in various circumstances is also limited. Sometimes government has no power to act at all, and is not in any fashion a solution to a problem.

Thus, as horrific as the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was, we cannot look to government for answers. We cannot look to government for means to take weapons out of the hands of such evildoers. We cannot look to government because government has been denied that power, by virtue of the Second Amendment.

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

As I have argued previously on this topic, where the Constitution denies government the power to act, it is pointless to demand that government take action.

Thus, when we ask "What constitutes 'common-sense' legislation on guns?" we are asking the wrong question. That is merely a philosophical debating point, and has little actual relevance to the debate at hand, which is effecting legislation on guns.

The question we need to ask is "What legislation is Congress authorized to pass on guns?" This is directly relevant, directly applicable. There is little point to waxing rhetorical about "common-sense" legislation if Congress lacks the authority to enact such legislation. There is no good purpose served by dwelling on measures the Constitution does not permit Congress to pass.

Grammatically, the Second Amendment is inflexibly categorical. The right to keep and bear arms is not to be infringed at all. The linguistic clarity of the Second Amendment confounds government activist types who seek rationalizations for government action, and yet the clarity of the Amendment remains. That clarity was acknowledged in the Supreme Court case District of Columbia v Heller (554 U.S. 570):

The Second Amendment is naturally divided into two parts: its prefatory clause and its operative clause. The former does not limit the latter grammatically, but rather announces a purpose.

Thus, the argument favored by many that the Second Amendment is about the formation and regulation of state militias is revealed to be invalid by the analysis of the Supreme Court. That analysis also points out something else about the Second Amendment: it does not articulate any limitations on the right to keep and bear arms whatsoever

This is an important distinction, for Justice Antonin Scalia, in writing the Heller opinion, conceded that he did not consider the right to keep and bear arms to be an unlimited right. Whether that right is or is not limited is an endless philosophical debate, but the practical point of the silence of the Second Amendment on limitations is that nowhere within the Constitution is government empowered to say what limitations exist or should exist on the right. Even if we were to agree as a people on some form of “common sense” gun regulation, the Congress has not been given the authority to legislate it.

Where Congress has not been given authority to legislate, Congress may not legislate. That is the point driven home in Marbury.

In similar form, the power of government to impose coercive lockdowns under the rubric of protecting the public health is inherently suspect. The First Amendment denies Congress the power to regulate how people may peaceably assemble:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Congress cannot pass any statute restricting the right of the people to peaceable assembly. It follows necessarily that Congress cannot empower a government agency to restrict the ability of people to gather together—Congress cannot grant any agency any authority but through legislation, and any legislation which restricts people’s capacity to gather together peaceably is forbidden to Congress.

Even if lockdown measures against COVID-19 worked (which they do not), the Congress lacks the power to enact them. That is not a step the Congress can lawfully take.

Where Congress has not been given authority to legislate, Congress may not legislate.

Where Congress has not been given authority to legislate, Congress may not delegate.

This The Founding Fathers Stated. This The Founding Fathers Intended

This limitation upon Congress was not by accident. It was demonstrably by design. That is made plain by the Ninth Amendment as well as the Tenth Amendment.

The Ninth Amendment:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The Tenth Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Taken together, these two amendments make clear that, wherever the Constitution is silent regarding either rights or powers, the presumption always goes against government and instead goes to the people and/or the several States. As with the First and Second Amendments, there is zero room for debate or discussion on this point. Taken together, the Ninth and Tenth Amendments yield one inescapable conclusion:

Where Congress has not been given authority to legislate, Congress may not legislate.

Congress may not limit or deny rights to the people except as the Constitution may explicitly authorize.

Congress may not impose on the people except as the Constitution may explicitly authorize.

Regardless of what various Supreme Court cases might have held previously, the plain text of the Constitution, including its Amendments, allows for no other understanding of the Constitution’s dictates toward the government. Where the Constitution is silent, government is to be barred from governing.

The text of the Constitution not only makes this principle plain, it makes the rationale for the principle equally plain: only by placing boundaries on the scope of Constitutional government can the Constitution possibly hope to achieve its stated purpose of securing the blessings of Liberty for ourselves and our Posterity.

Government can go wrong, has gone wrong, and will in the future go wrong. History makes that much plain. Our only means of correcting government when it does go wrong is to ensure that it remains limited in scope and authority, and only acts where people grant it competence to act. Only then do people retain the power to fix what government breaks.

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration Of Independence

Every Fourth of July, Americans celebrate one of the world's most remarkable documents. On that day, in 1776, the Second Continental Congress issued a declaration of their intent to be free from British rule, and by so doing made real a radical proposition that hitherto had only been a quaint abstract concept: that political authority, and the right to govern, descended from the people of a nation.

We are rightly awed by the majesty of Thomas Jefferson's rhetoric. We are properly impressed by the hope and humanity of the ideals he set forth. From that first Fourth of July until now, America has struggled imperfectly to measure up to the premise of universal human equality at the heart of the Declaration of Independence.

Yet the Declaration of Independence is more than its ideals. It is more than a mere assertion of inalienable rights. It is also an homage to humanity.

By issuing the Declaration of Independence, the Second Continental Congress recognized that, for the colonies to stand as an independent nation, they needed to persuade other nations of the essential rightness of their cause. As the text itself states, "a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."

The Declaration of Independence is thus not merely a statement of political ideals, but a justification for all the struggle and sacrifice that would follow in defense of those ideals. It is not simply a declaration of independence, but a declaration of the "why" of independence.

The Foundation: That All Men Are Created Equal

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.

Thomas Jefferson did not hesitate, but based the colonies' case for independence on a clear and unambiguous proposition: universal equality. Before God and before the law, no man is neither better nor worse than any other. Even King George himself was on a level with every other man.

Jefferson's words crystallized in political reality an idea that had been germinating in the English consciousness for quite some time. Even William Shakespeare, writing nearly two centuries earlier, dared opine in Henry V that "I think the king is but a man."

Yet despite this growing understanding and belief in human equality, much of British society remained stratified and inherently unequal. In the eyes of the Crown, the colonists as well as all inhabitants of the British Isles were not citizens of Great Britain but subjects of the British Crown, and what flowed from the people to the Crown was duty and loyalty, not sovereignty. As King George III would state in the infamous "Rebellion Proclamation" given the previous year:

Whereas many of our subjects in divers parts of our Colonies and Plantations in North America, misled by dangerous and ill designing men, and forgetting the allegiance which they owe to the power that has protected and supported them; after various disorderly acts committed in disturbance of the publick peace, to the obstruction of lawful commerce, and to the oppression of our loyal subjects carrying on the same; have at length proceeded to open and avowed rebellion, by arraying themselves in a hostile manner, to withstand the execution of the law, and traitorously preparing, ordering and levying war against us

Thus did Great Britain sweep aside the claims and grievances of the colonists. As far as the monarchy was concerned, the colonists had no standing to pursue any such grievances; they were the subjects of the King, and as such duty bound to obey whatever laws were passed, no matter how onerous or burdensome.

To argue a reasoned and substantive basis for independence, Jefferson had to push back against the premise that the colonists owed King George absolute loyalty. He did so by sweeping away all pretense of royal prerogative and privilege, and asserting as political reality what Shakespeare had suggested only as dramatic license--that the king was but a man.

As all men are equal before God and before the law, Jefferson's next argument, that governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed, is inevitable. When all men are equal, there is no other plausible basis for government, and it also follows that the purpose of government is to protect the fundamental civil liberties that are the intrinsic endowment of all men.

In similar fashion, if a particular mode of government ceases to fulfill this function, as the people are the creators of government they are also empowered to be its destroyers--to remove government which does not work or no longer works and to replace it with a mode of government more likely to suit the needs of the people.

This was the gauntlet Jefferson threw down when he wrote that "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations." The British government had ceased to address the needs of the colonists, and, as efforts at effecting reasonable changes had failed, independence was the inevitable result.

The Conflict: Facts Submitted To A Candid World

Having thrown down the gauntlet of government inadequacy and government betrayal, the laundry list of offenses listed by Jefferson was the necessary validation of that claim. It is a powerful list. 

Who can say that a government who disrupts regular lawmaking processes is serving the needs of the people?

Who can say that a government which arbitrarily and capriciously changes the law to suit the whimsy of a monarch or his ministers is serving the needs of the people?

Who can say that a government which makes the military immune to consequence for their predations on a civilian population is serving the needs of the people?

These are but some of the claims issued by Jefferson, and even by the standards of the eighteenth century they form a significant list of reasons the colonies were compelled to seek independence.

However, a closer inspection of the "facts" Jefferson submitted to a candid world shows them to be more than just a litany of grievances. While phrased in the negative, as things Britain did and ought not to have done, or not done and ought to have done, Jefferson's claims against the British crown are also an outline of how government should conduct itself towards its citizens.

The first entries in Jefferson's list echo England's earlier struggles between Parliament and the monarchy which culminated in the English Civil War--the moral imperative of representative government and the challenge such government posed to the very idea of a monarchy. Jefferson fixes responsibility for the failure to resolve these tensions directly on the monarchy, and asserts that such failure jeopardizes the colonies by leaving them "exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within."

However, Jefferson's litany of grievances also includes failures to establish sound immigration policies--in Jefferson's view government should serve to build a society people very much want to join--failures to build and sustain an independent judiciary capable of an impartial administration of justice, and failures to subordinate the military to civilian authority. It is worth noting that all of these issues would be explicitly addressed in the Constitution and the Bill Of Rights.

If the Constitution is a detailed blueprint for good governance, the Declaration of Independence is the first rendering of what good governance actually is.

The Conclusion: Independence The Only Course Left

The final paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence focus on something that often gets overlooked in America's understanding of the Fourth of July holiday: Independence was presented as a last resort, all prior efforts at reconciliation having failed.

The extent to which the Founding Fathers were reluctant to secede from Great Britain and form a new nation is debatable. Some had committed to achieving independence well before 1776, and the Battles of Lexington and Concord--viewed as the opening battles of the American Revolution--occurred a full year previously, and the subsequent Siege of Boston had only ended in March, 1776, when the British evacuated the city. Massachusetts, at least, was well on the way to independence long before the Declaration was even proposed.

Yet there was significant effort by the colonists to seek a rapprochement with Great Britain, as the Continental Congress has sent the "Olive Branch Petition" to London in July of 1775, at the height of the Seige of Boston, seeking the Crown's intervention with the British Parliament to find amicable resolution the the colonists' disputes.

We therefore beseech your Majesty, that your royal authority and influence may be graciously interposed to procure us relief from our afflicting fears and jealousies, occasioned by the system before-mentioned, and to settle peace through every part of our Dominions, with all humility submitting to your Majesty's wise consideration, whether it may not be expedient, for facilitating those important purposes, that your Majesty be pleased to direct some mode, by which the united applications of your faithful Colonists to the Throne, in pursuance of their common counsels, may be improved into a happy and permanent reconciliation; and that, in the mean time, measures may be taken for preventing the further destruction of the lives of your Majesty's subjects; and that such statutes as more immediately distress any of your Majesty's Colonies, may be repealed.

As a matter of simple historical record, the Continental Congress sought peace before independence, with war for independence being waged only after their attempts at peace were rebuffed, as the Olive Branch Petition was met with the Rebellion Proclamation.

The Declaration: A Case Not Just For Independence, But For Liberty And Freedom

Taken as a whole, the Declaration of Independence is not merely an assertion of fundamental human right and human dignity, but of the moral imperatives implicit in all such rights. The Declaration was the statement by the Continental Congress that the true aim of all government, in all places, and in all times, was the preservation of these fundamental rights. The overarching theme of the Declaration is not merely that America should be an independent nation, but that all governments regardless of form are called to elevate human society.

To the Founding Fathers, the elevation of human society came when personal liberty and personal freedom were maximized. So long as the British government could plausibly be seen to support those ends, they were not only willing but wanting to remain part of the British Empire. Once British government came to be seen as hostile to the colonists' liberty and freedom, however, there was no option but to seek independence.

Independence was not merely the colonists' right, but also their responsibility. The cause of liberty and freedom, a cause which transcends individual societies and nations, demanded it of them.

It is this transcendent quality of the Declaration that makes it one of the world's great political documents. Jefferson made the moral case for American independence by arguing the universal moral imperative of liberty and freedom, as relevant to the citizens of China and Hong Kong as to the citizens of the United States. 

Independence was--and is--the means, not the objective. Liberty and freedom were--and are--the objectives.

Thus did Thomas Jefferson show a decent respect to the opinion of Mankind: in declaring the "why" of American independence, he reminded all men everywhere what the proper role is for government in society. In stating the causes compelling independence, Jefferson made a case for the grounds on which all government is answerable to every society.

In drafting the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson laid a foundation for building good government in society. That we still consider the meaning of the Declaration today, some 244 years later, is testament to the foundation of government Jefferson built.

We have learned nothing from the death of George Floyd.

We have learned nothing from the riots and anarchy that followed.

The legacy media has learned nothing about the importance of reporting stories accurately and honestly.

Is it any surprise we have more hysteria, more riots, more howling mobs after the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks by the Atlanta Police?

Facts Always Matter

In every event, the facts are what matter most. The who, the how, the where, and the what are essential if we are to ever understand the why. In the shooting death of Rayshard Brooks, we must begin by establishing the facts as they have been reported thus far.

The police were called to a Wendy's restaurant late Friday, June 12, because of a complaint that someone had either fallen asleep or passed out in the drive-thru lane, impeding the flow of other customers. The man, 27-year old Rayshard Brooks, was reported by the police to be under the influence, and was placed under arrest after failing a field sobriety test. For reasons not known at this time, Rayshard Brooks resisted arrest.

Officers were responding to a complaint of a man in a vehicle parked in the drive-thru who was asleep, causing customers to drive around the vehicle. After Brooks failed a field sobriety test, the officers attempted to place him into custody, the GBI said. He resisted and a struggle ensued, leading the officer to deploy a Taser.

In the struggle, Brooks was Tased apparently twice, succeeded in grabbing a Taser from one of the arresting officers, and began to flee. While fleeing, he pointed the Taser at the officers, at which point he was shot by police.

GBI Director Vic Reynolds said Brooks had grabbed a Taser from one officer and appeared to point it at the officer as he fled. The officer fired an estimated three shots.

Despite an ongoing and incomplete investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms immediately proclaimed the shooting to be unjustified and called for the officer who shot Brooks, Garrett Rolfe, to be fired.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the police chief's resignation at a Saturday afternoon news conference, and had called for the immediate firing of the officer who opened fire.

"I do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force," Bottoms said.

Much of the encounter, including the shooting, has been captured on video and shared widely on social media. Police body-cam footage of the incident has also been released.

While there will be, no doubt, additional facts that will surface as news reporting and police investigations continue, the essential facts we have so far may be summarized thus:

• The police were called to the scene.

• Rayshard Brooks was obstructing the drive-thru lane of the Wendy's restaurant, prompting the call.

• The police concluded Brooks was under the influence and placed him under arrest.

• Brooks resisted arrest, fought with police, stole a Taser, and began to flee before turning to point what is reported to be the Taser at the officers.

• Officer Garrett Rolfe shot Rayshard Brooks.

These are the facts we may fairly conclude have been established.

Justified?

The debate, and the protests, that has arisen revolves around the question of whether the shooting was a justified use of deadly force by the police. Justification for deadly force is always an important question, and especially when it is done by the police.

I will not offer an opinion here whether the shooting was justified. The GBI must establish whether Officer Rolfe followed proper procedures in the encounter with Brooks, and whether the situation reasonably called for the use of deadly force.

I will offer an opinion on the propriety of Mayor Bottoms claiming the shooting to be unjustified. She was unequivocally wrong to do so. She was wrong because she does not have the full facts; no one has the full facts, as the investigation is ongoing.

This is not a situation such as with the death of George Floyd, where there is simply no possible justification for the police actions. As much as Mayor Bottoms may believe the shooting to be unjustified, many others on social media, pointing to the same video evidence, claim that it was. At a minimum, we must for the moment concede that we do not know the answer to the question of justification.

This Is Not About Rayshard Brooks

Where this shooting does parallel the death of George Floyd is in the ultimate irrelevancy of who Rayshard Brooks was as a person. His past is not a factor in deciding the merits and demerits of Officer Rolfe's actions. 

Going strictly by the established facts, we cannot say with certainty that race did or did not play a role. Contrary to the media myth, studies show that white police officers are not predisposed to shooting black suspects.

Reports of racially motivated, fatal shootings by police officers have garnered extensive public attention and sparked activism across the nation. New research from Michigan State University and University of Maryland reveals findings that flip many of these reports on their heads—white police officers are not more likely to shoot minorities citizens than non-white officers.

Moreover, nothing in the established facts highlights either Rayshard Brooks' or Garrett Rolfe's race as a significant factor. Even a cursory review of the media reporting shows references to race are gratuitous (and therefore misleading), as this lead paragraph in The Guardian shows:

Protesters have shut down a major highway in Atlanta and set fire to a Wendy’s restaurant where a black man was shot by police as he tried to escape arrest.

We cannot say--no one can say--with certainty that a suspect of any other ethnicity would have not been met with lethal force under the same circumstances. 

We can say--and should say--with certainty that, as with George Floyd, this shooting is not about Rayshard Brooks.

Rioting Is Still Not Protest

We can also say with certainty that, regardless of any injustice in Rayshard Brooks' death, the Wendy's restaurant itself had no role in it. The restaurant did not seek out Brooks' death, nor did it put a gun in anyone's hand.

There is no justification and no justice in people deciding to set fire to the Wendy's during a "protest". Arson is not now and never has been "protest", and it is unconscionable for the legacy media to describe such actions as protest--yet they do, repeatedly.

Again, from The Guardian:

Protesters have shut down a major highway in Atlanta and set fire to a Wendy’s restaurant where a black man was shot by police as he tried to escape arrest.

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

A fire broke out inside the Wendy’s restaurant in Atlanta where a black man was shot and killed by a police officer and where protesters gathered throughout Saturday. 

From the Associated Press (courtesy of 6ABC/WPVI News in Philadelphia):

Protesters on Saturday night set fire to the Wendy's restaurant where Brooks was fatally shot the night before and blocked traffic on a nearby highway. The fire was out by 11:30 p.m., but video from local news stations showed it again aflame around 4 a.m. Sunday. Atlanta police said 36 people were arrested at protests as of midnight. 

Protests do not cause spontaneous combustion in restaurants or anywhere else. The burning of the Wendy's restaurant was an act of arson, and the people who committed the arson were rioting, not protesting. They were not seeking justice for Rayshard Brooks nor for any other person. Media accounts portraying such actions as anything but riotous and illegal are simply false narratives.

Sadly, that is all the legacy media is able to provide any more. As was the case with George Floyd, and has been the case with so many news stories in recent memory, such as the CCPVirus "pandemic" or the execrable coverage by the media of President Trump, the legacy media dispenses with journalism in favor of click-bait, rage bait, and salacious headlines, exchanging informing the public for providing "infotainment."

The shooting of Rayshard Brooks is proving to be no different.

USA Today has even gone so far as to use Rayshard Brooks' family to promote a factually false depiction of events, suggesting that Brooks was simply "parked" and that police had no business engaging with him.

Crystal Brooks, who said she is Rayshard Brooks' sister-in-law, joined protesters outside the Atlanta Wendy's on Saturday night.  

"He wasn’t causing anyone any harm," she said. "The police went up to the car and even though the car was parked they pulled him out of the car and started tussling with him. He did grab the Taser, but he just grabbed the Taser and ran."

Not only is the Crystal Brooks' statement contradicted by other reporting on this story, the bodycam footage released by the Atlanta Police Department unequivocally establishes her statement to be factually false.  The footage shows an extended largely peaceful interaction between Brooks and the police officers that only became violent when Brooks resisted being placed in handcuffs as part of the arrest procedure.

USA Today is promoting "Fake News"; that is the kindest interpretation to be given the inclusion of demonstrable falsehoods in their reporting.

All Lives Matter, Or No Lives Matter

In the end, we are come to the same place as with the death of George Floyd: regardless of the merits or demerits of Rayshard Brooks' death, there is no justification for visiting wanton violence on innocent bystanders, and the wanton destruction of private property.

The decision by the Atlanta rioters (we must not dignify them as "protesters") to commit arson is a crime, and arguably an act of domestic terrorism. It condemnable and must be condemned.

A community is either safe as a whole or it is not safe as a whole. There is no third option. The notion espoused by the Atlanta rioters, that the safety concerns of but a portion of the community can be addressed without regard to the community as a whole, is odious and contemptible on its face. 

Black lives cannot be protected unless all lives are protected.

Black lives cannot be valued unless all lives are valued.

Black lives cannot matter unless all lives matter.

All lives must be protected. All lives must be valued. All lives must matter--or none of them will.

We have yet to learn this lesson. One has to wonder if we ever will.

The rallying cry for both the protests and the riots: "Black Lives Matter", the slogan popularized after a police officer shot and killed a young black man in self defense.

In both the present and the past, the rallying cry is simply the wrong message and the wrong motivation. In both the present and the past, "Black Lives Matter" seeks not to end injustice, but to rationalize it, and to amplify it.

In the past, present, and the future, black lives matter only if all lives matter. If all lives do not matter, then no lives matter. There is no third option.

All Facts Matter

As Daniel Patrick Moynihan so pithily quipped, "You are entitled to your opinion. But you are not entitled to your own facts." Facts are the basis of all reasoned argument, and whether we like them or not, facts invariably remain factual.

There are some salient facts that must be kept in mind both specifically in the death of George Floyd and in regards to police use of force more generally:

• The police were called when the proprietor of Cup Foods reported George Floyd attempted to make a purchase with a counterfeit $20 bill. Regardless of what transpired once the police arrived, the reason they engaged George Floyd was that they were asked to do so.

• The police officers, in their reports of the encounter, stated that Floyd appeared intoxicated. The autopsy report by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner showed Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system.

• Over the past four years, police have shot and killed approximately twice as many white people as black people. Black people account for approximately one-fifth of people shot to death by police during that time.

• In 2016, Tony Timpa, a white male, died in police custody after police officers pinned his neck and shoulders to the ground in a manner not disimilar to the George Floyd incident.

• Restraining a prone manacled suspect by pressing down on the neck and shoulders is known to potentially cause difficulty breathing, and Department Of Justice guidelines since 1995 have recommending getting suspects off their stomachs as soon as they are handcuffed.

There are, of course, innumerable other details, but these facts form the core of any analysis of George Floyd's death.

Derek Chauvin Was Wrong

While the video footage of MPD Officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd's neck is disturbing, what that footage does not show is any clear intent that Chauvin intended to kill George Floyd. Similarly, we cannot determine with precision the extent to which Chauvin's actions caused Floyd's death. Frustratingly, the autopsy report does not tell us if Floyd's cardiopulmonary arrest began before Chauvin knelt on his neck or arose directly because of it.

However, the extant evidence' lack of detail and precision only makes questionable the particular statutory homicide offense under Minnesota law applicable to Chauvin's actions. The argument that Chauvin committed homicide is compelling just on the video footage alone. The extent to which the homicide is second degree murder, third degree murder, or some form of manslaughter requires additional evidence and is for a jury to sort out at trial, but, based on the video evidences at hand, any claim of innocence by Chauvin would be a most extraordinary claim indeed.

Moreover, a number of other police agencies around the country have expressed disapproval and outrage over Chauvin's conduct. The Minneapolis Police Department, in charging Derek Chauvin, attested that Chauvin went against procedure and training when he knelt on Floyd's neck.

Did Derek Chauvin kill George Floyd? The extant evidence says he did. At a minimum, his actions--described as wrong by his own department as well as other police departments--contributed towards that death. That is homicide by definition.

But Was It Racist?

The presumption of racism by Derek Chauvin is hardly supported by clear evidence. The video evidence does not show any officer using racial slurs or language towards George Floyd.

The strongest evidence of racism is the history of accusations against the MPD of discrimination against black people, coupled with the fact that Derek Chauvin is white and George Floyd was black.

That is hardly strong evidence. Not every encounter between a white police officer and a black suspect is racist. 

Additionally, we cannot escape the reality the police were called to the scene, or that George Floyd had drugs in his system. Any presumption of racial animus simply because a police officer responds to a call is absurd on its face. Any presumption of racial animus simply because a police officer is called to deal with an intoxicated person is absurd on its face.

Regardless of Derek Chauvin's views on race, they could not possibly have been a factor leading him to participate in Floyd's arrest.

By the same token, charges of racism cannot be simply dismissed. Derek Chauvin violated police procedure. He has received a number of complaints over his 19-year career, and been involved in three shootings. One cannot argue with conviction that Derek Chauvin was a model police officer.

Moreover, he was the training officer for two of the other officers charged, Thomas Lane and J. Alexander Kueng, both of whom were new to the police force. The extent to which Chauvin's conduct history impacted the actions and decisions of Lane and Kueng is a matter to be adjudicated during their respective trials, but it would be quite the stretch to suggest that Chauvin's past had no impact.

Was the incident racially motivated or racially influenced? Based solely on the evidence, the only reasonable answer is "I do not know". We do not know. We may suspect, but we cannot know.

Bad Conduct Is Bad Conduct, Regardless Of Race

What we do know is that Derek Chauvin's conduct was wrong. He violated police procedure and the evidence indicates that because he violated police procedure a man died.

We also know that police engage in bad conduct with non-black suspects. While they go unheralded in the legacy media, within any litany of police misconduct are deaths like that of Tony Timpa, a white man who died in a manner not unlike George Floyd's death. Unlike Floyd's autopsy report, the autopsy on Tony Timpa made no equivocation: the police played a role in his death.

An autopsy ruled Timpa's cause of death was a homicide, sudden cardiac death due to "the toxic effects of cocaine and the stress associated with physical restraint."

Also disturbing in Tony Timpa's death is the video footage that shows the officers involved mocking Timpa as he lay dying.

The footage also shows the officers mocking Timpa as he struggled to live. Shortly after one officer ridicules Timpa’s repeated cries for help, an officer notes that he appears to be “out cold.” 

They joke that he’s merely asleep and try to wake him: “It’s time for school. Wake up!” 

One officer mimics a teen saying: “I don’t want to go to school! Five more minutes, Mom!” 

They joke about buying him new shoes for the first day of school and making him a special breakfast, laughing loudly.

We should note that the footage of Chauvin does not show him mocking Floyd in this fashion. The casual disregard shown by the police for Tony Timpa's life greatly exceeded that shown by Derek Chauvin for George Floyd's life.

In a bizarre ending to the Timpa incident, the officers involved were indicted by a grand jury, only to have Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot dismiss the charges.

What we are forced to conclude from the Tony Timpa case is that police are just as capable of misconduct involving white suspects as they are of misconduct involving black suspects. The case against those police officers is every bit as compelling as the case against Derek Chauvin, and it remains a mystery why DA Creuzot did not follow through with trying them.

What is not a mystery is that bad conduct is bad conduct, regardless of race.

A Thought Experiment

The Tony Timpa case also invites us to engage in a simple thought experiment.

Ask yourself this one simple question: "Is it acceptable for a white officer to kneel on the neck of a white suspect?" The available answers are "Yes" and "No."

Ask yourself also this follow-up question: "Is it acceptable for a black officer to kneel on the neck of a black suspect?" Again, the available answers are "Yes" and "No."

If you answered "Yes" to either question, on what basis do you object to a white officer kneeling on the neck of a black suspect?

If you answered "No" to either question, on what basis do you conclude that race was a primary factor in George Floyd's death?

Given that police are broadly trained not to kneel on necks, the correct answer to both questions is clearly "No". Thus the relevant issues are not ones of racial animus but simple police misconduct without regard to race.

No Evidence Police Target Blacks For Killing

The relevance of race recedes further when we look at broader statistics on the use of lethal force by police. Drawing on data from the Washington Post's Police Shootings Database (which, we should note, seeks to prove a presumption of police brutality as well as racism), we very quickly see that most police shootings do not involve blacks.

Overall, the data shows a broadly consistent trend of approximately 1,000 police shootings each year, of which black deaths account for approximately 20-22%, while white deaths account for approximately 37-45%

In pretty much any given year, the police kill roughly twice as many white people as black people. Even if one accepts a premise of racial animus against blacks by police, the data does not indicate that police go out of their way to target or kill blacks. That assertion is not supported by even biased evidence.

Race Is Not The Issue. Police Brutality Is.

As I have said previously, George Floyd is not the issue. George Floyd's race is not the issue. Derek Chauvin's race is not the issue.

Police brutality is the issue. Period, full stop.

George Floyd should not have died in police custody. Neither should Tony Timpa have died. The police should be above the law, and should never think the badge is a license to disregard either fundamental rights or fundamental dignity.

This is not the message of "Black Lives Matter." It never has been. From the beginning, the movement has never been about police brutality or misconduct, pursuing an agenda of grievance based solely on race.

Black America is in a state of protest. The 21st-century civil rights movement, exemplified by the action taken by Garza and those like her, is democratic in its aims and agile in its responses. It is fuelled by grief and fury, by righteous rage against injustice and institutionalised racism and by frustration at the endemic brutality of the state against those it deems unworthy.

Yet the movement has said nothing about the murder of David Dorn, a retired black police officer murdered by looters during riots in St. Louis. Based on their silence, BLM does not believe David Dorn's life mattered.

Dave Patrick Underwood was a black Federal Protective Services officer shot and killed during riots in Oakland. Based on their silences, BLM does not believe Patrick Underwood's life matters.

Italia Marie Kelly was a biracial woman shot and killed as she was leaving a protest in Iowa City. Based on their silence, BLM does believe Italia Marie Kelly's life matters.

David McAtee was shot and killed in Louisville, Kentucky, after apparently firing on police. Based on their silence, BLM does not believe David McAtee's life mattered.

Chris Beaty was shot and killed in Indianopolis, Indiana, during a riot-related home invasion. Based on their silence, BLM does not believe Chris Beaty's life mattered.

Nor has the movement said anything about the wanton looting, arson, and violence in cities across the United States, much of which has harmed other black people, such as Minneapolis firefighter Korboi "KB" Balla, whose sports bar was destroyed by rioters just as it was set to open. Based on their silence, BLM does not believe Korboi Balla's life matters, nor his livelihood.

The unidentified owners of the Valentine Deli Corp in the Bronx section of New York City had their business looted and vandalized by rioters incited by BLM, and one was quite vocal about it:

You says black lives matter. I worked here part-time. Plus I’m a part-owner of this store. You said black lives matter. Why don’t you choke me? I’m black. Look what you did to my store. Look at the things you’ve done, look. We’ve been here all night cleaning up,

BLM has yet to condemn the destruction of this or any other black-owned business. Based on their silence, BLM does not believe the lives of the Valentine Deli owners matter, or their livelihood.

These are but a few of the black lives extinguished as a direct result of the riots incited and encouraged under the rubric "Black Lives Matter". With neither expression of regret nor anything resembling apology, the anarchic chant "Black Lives Matter" has rolled through a number of black neighborhoods, destroying the very lives they claim matter.

By their actions, the BLM movement makes their chant a lie. By their actions, the BLM movement does not believe that black lives matter, or that any lives matter. By their actions, the BLM movement creates and perpetuates injustice.

All Lives Must Matter

Police brutality is wrong, not because it is visited upon a black man or a white man, but because the police are charged with enforcing the law and protecting the community. When police cross over the line, when they assault and kill citizens, the police become a threat to the community, and that must never stand. 

It does not matter if the person assaulted is white or black, or if the offending officer is white or black. A police officer who becomes a threat to the community must never be tolerated.

Rioting is wrong, not because it is done by blacks or whites, but because it is a direct assault on the community. The difference between riot and insurrection is merely one of degree. Riot, insurrection, violence of any kind is the primary reason communities need police forces, and why governments are charged with stopping riots.

It does not matter if rioters are white or black, or if the rioters are assaulting white communities or black communities. Rioters are a threat to every community and must never be tolerated.

A community is either safe as a whole or it is not safe as a whole. There is no third option. The notion of the BLM movement, that the safety concerns of but a portion of the community can be addressed without regard to the community as a whole, is absurd on its face. 

Black lives cannot be protected unless all lives are protected.

Black lives cannot be valued unless all lives are valued.

Black lives cannot matter unless all lives matter.

All lives must be protected. All lives must be valued. All lives must matter--or none of them will.

While Floyd is being laid to rest, the controversies surrounding his death are far from being laid to rest. Derek Chauvin and three other MPD officers are now facing criminal charges over his death, which sparked a number of protests as well as violent destructive riots nationwide.

Yet when we examine the current headlines on Google News, which are almost entirely stories related to George Floyd's death, there is a curious quality to most of them: very few of the stories are actually about George Floyd or even his death at the hands of the MPD. There is an important realization to be had from this, which is that George Floyd was never the issue. As counterintuitive as it may seem, the controversy and debate is not about George Floyd, nor should it be.

Due Process Is About The Crime

Throughout the civilized world, and in particular within the United States, there is one overarching legal doctrine applicable in all situations: everyone is equal before the law. The United States Constitution specifically guarantees due process for all people accused of a crime (Fifth Amendment), and further guarantees all people the equal protection of the laws (Fourteenth Amendment).

Especially in a moment such as this, these are important principles everyone should remember. Because of these clearly articulated legal and Constitutional standards, no person may lawfully be denied justice, regardless of his character, his personal history, or any other aspect of his person. Because of these clearly articulated legal and Constitutional standards, the commentary by the Minneapolis police union chief that George Floyd had "a violent criminal history" may be immediately dismissed as irrelevant. Because of these clearly articulated legal and Constitutional standards, the autopsy findings of various controlled substances within George Floyd's blood at the time of his death do not relieve Derek Chauvin of his guilt for having caused Floyd's death.

Due process means the law does not consider such things when deciding if a death qualifies as an homicide. The manner of death will impact the statutory offense of which Derek Chauvin may plausibly be convicted, but that is the extent of the significance.

Due process means that while George Floyd is at the center of all discussion, debate, and legal proceedings regarding his death, George Floyd the man is not and must never be a relevant factor in those discussions, debates, and legal proceedings.

Due process also means that Derek Chauvin is not entitled to either more or less rights by virtue of being a police officer. Just as George Floyd the man is not and must never be a relevant factor, so too must Derek Chauvin not be a relevant factor.

Due process means that our focus should be on what was done and not on who was doing it or to whom it was done. George Floyd's death was an injustice because he died, not because Derek Chauvin caused his death. George Floyd's death at the hands of a police officer was an injustice not because Derek Chauvin was a police officer, but because, as the statement of probable cause against him attests, MPD officers are specifically trained not to restrain suspects in the manner George Floyd was restrained.

Our Reactions Are About Us, Not About George Floyd

In similar token, our reactions to George Floyd's death are about who we are, not about George Floyd. Former NBA star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar actually hinted at this in his recent op-ed essay in the Los Angeles Times regarding George Floyd's death.

What was your first reaction when you saw the video of the white cop kneeling on George Floyd’s neck while Floyd croaked, “I can’t breathe”? 

If you’re white, you probably muttered a horrified, “Oh, my God” while shaking your head at the cruel injustice. If you’re black, you probably leapt to your feet, cursed, maybe threw something (certainly wanted to throw something), while shouting, “Not @#$%! again!” Then you remember the two white vigilantes accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through their neighborhood in February, and how if it wasn’t for that video emerging a few weeks ago, they would have gotten away with it. And how those Minneapolis cops claimed Floyd was resisting arrest but a store’s video showed he wasn’t. And how the cop on Floyd’s neck wasn’t an enraged redneck stereotype, but a sworn officer who looked calm and entitled and devoid of pity: the banality of evil incarnate.

The subtext of the essay is more important by far than the rationalizations offered up for the manner in which protests devolved into anarchic riots, looting, and violence. The subtext is that whether or not people protest, or even riot, proceeds from their reaction to Floyd's death.

With no small irony, even the protests over George Floyd's death are, ultimately, not about George Floyd. Rather, they are about the perception by others that his death was an injustice, a grievance for which there must be redress.

The grievance George Floyd's son Quincy Mason expressed reflected his pain at losing his father.

“No man or woman should be without their father,” Mason said.

The grievance various black community leaders have expressed is the anger at the claimed discrimination against blacks deaths such as George Floyd's typify.

“As a Black man, this is our norm. We have to be able to figure out new ways of how we navigate to be able to live life whatever you want to call normal,” [Nehemiah Center Re-entry Services Director Anthony] Cooper said in the town hall.

The grievance expressed by Iberville Parish Sheriff Brett Stassi is the frustration at having the good work done by most police law enforcement offices stained and tainted by the misconduct of one miscreant officer.

As the chief law enforcement officer of Iberville Parish, I share in the nation’s outrage over the tragic death of George Floyd. Situations of this caliber creates a stereotype that all law enforcement are harmful to those citizens we encounter. This is untrue and overshadows all the good law enforcement does for our community. Sadly, it takes one officer to destroy the image of our profession and the trust we have worked so hard to build over the years in our parish.

When people protest, it is these grievances--these perceptions of personal injury--for which redress is sought. It is these grievances which define the injustice of George Floyd's death.

It necessarily follows that correcting that injustice will reflect more how people react to George Floyd's death than the death itself.

This is not to delegitimize either people's reactions, their protests, or their desire to see the wrong made right. The pursuit of justice is always a pursuit by the living, not the dead, and thus the justice obtained will necessarily be for the living and not the dead.

Our reactions to such events are about us, and the justice we seek in response is for us. This is simply the nature of reality.

Justice Is For Us, Therefore Our Actions Must Be Justifiable

Justice is by its nature the apotheosis of all our fundamental rights. Our defense of our own civil liberties, which includes the defense of the liberties of others, is the pursuit of that justice.

Protests over the death of George Floyd, themselves expressions of the fundamental right of peaceable assembly, are the pursuit of that justice.

As the justice we seek is for us, our actions must be justifiable. We cannot set right even a single wrong by creating more wrongs. 

This is why the fundamental right is for peaceable assembly, and why protests above all must be peaceful. Actions taken during a protest which bring harm to another are by definition wrong actions. When the protests over George Floyd's death devolve into riots, not only are those riots wrong, they are the epitome of hypocrisy. 

Destroying private property, burning down businesses, sacking and looting stores are themselves acts of clear injustice. They are themselves crimes.

The shooting of retired police captain David Dorn was an act of clear injustice. It was murder, more cold blooded and calculated than the worst characterization of George Floyd's death at the hands of Derek Chauvin.

To suggest that unjust acts are necessary to produce justice is illogical, irrational, and simply absurd. The arguments advanced by members of the legacy media that riots, looting, and violence in the wake of George Floyd's death are a pathway to justice are similarly illogical, irrational, and absurd.

To achieve justice, we must always act justly.

Finding A Solution

Recognizing that George Floyd is not the issue is valuable for another reason: it shows a pathway towards actual solutions. 

The one consistent inference in all the grievances expressed over the death of George Floyd has been that such an event must not happen again, that we must strive to make whatever changes are necessary to prevent similar events from happening in the future.

As George Floyd is not the issue, George Floyd will not be a part of the solution. Whatever changes must be made to police procedures and police training to prevent future occurrences must not rely on any aspect of George Floyd or they will inevitably fail. Police procedures and training must not rely on any aspect of the suspect, nor even the police officer. 

We see this also in the statement of probable cause charging Derek Chauvin: he was trained not to take the actions that he did, yet he took them anyway. Setting aside the legal proceedings against Derek Chauvin and the three other police officers, the prevention of future such events must lie in police training. To borrow the military aphorism "train as you fight, fight as you train," police training and discipline must be such that police officers reflexively apply proper procedures and use proper protocols. 

The solution for the future--the justice for the future--is to raise police training to a point where a future Derek Chauvin does not deviate from the proper handling of a restrained suspect. Police training must be raised to a point where the psychological state of a police officer during any such incident is no longer relevant to how that officer conducts himself during the incident.

The breakdown that resulted in George Floyd's death was not a simple question of race or racial animus, even though many perceive racial animus in Derek Chauvin's actions (and, to be sure, racial animus cannot be excluded as a factor in Chauvin's behavior). The breakdown was either a lack of adequate procedures for handling an agitated suspect, a lack of adequate training in such procedures, or a lack of adequate discipline within the MPD to ensure such procedures were rigorously followed. Which of these particular elements were involved in that breakdown is beyond what can be divined from the facts presented to the public thus far (and it may be that all were involved), but that there was such a breakdown is demonstrated by the fact that George Floyd died when he should not have.

The Solution Is Always Equality Before The Law

The Constitutional guarantee is the equal protection of the laws. The Constitutional guarantee is due process for everyone. The police must treat every suspect with the same considerations, the same level of respect, and apply the same precautions, without fear or favor.

Whenever there is disparity of treatment--in either direction--the seeds of injustice are sown. Only when there is equality of treatment can we advance towards greater justice.

Watching the video of George Floyd's death, it is hard--it is impossible--to believe there was equality of treatment. Not all suspects are treated thus, and not all police officers treat suspects thus. Regardless of the catalyst for the disparity of treatment, be it racism, personal animus between George Floyd and Derek Chauvin, or any other factor, the beginning of the injustice is that disparity of treatment. 

The beginning of the solution is therefore equality of treatment.

To get to that equality of treatment, we begin by realizing that George Floyd was never the issue.

Because George Floyd was black and Derek Chauvin is white, many argue that Floyd's death is also an example of inexecusable racism within the Minneapolis Police Department itself. Certainly there have been few facts to rebut that particular charge, although the extent to which racial animus played a role cannot be conclusively established with facts currently available to the public.

How many of those facts will ultimately be made public is a question still to be answered, for once again the legacy media has displayed its usual incompetence, indolence, and indifference to journalism, choosing instead to push narrative, with or without facts.

The Facts

The facts we have come largely from the one of the few competent bits of legacy media coverage of the event, courtesy of Minneapolis CBS affiliate WCCO.

Around 8PM on Monday, May 25, 2020, Minneapolis Police were called to Cup Foods, a take-out delicatessen in south-central Minneapolis, whose owners apparently believed George Floyd tried to make a purchase with a counterfeit $20 bill.

According to Minneapolis police, the encounter between Floyd and officers happened just after 8 p.m. Monday, when police were called to the 3700 block of Chicago Avenue South on a report of a man attempting to use forged documents at Cup Foods. WCCO asked a store manager about the police call, but they declined to comment. 

Officers found Floyd in a car at the scene. He appeared intoxicated, police say. Officers ordered him to get out of the car.

Police officers, including Derek Chauvin, took Floyd into custody. During the arrest, the officers lost control of the situation, with the result that, even though George Floyd had been handcuffed, Office Chauvin ended up kneeling on Floyd's neck. Floyd later died at Hennepin Healthcare after being transported by ambulance.

That Chauvin was kneeling on Floyd's neck is one of the facts we have, for a by-stander, Darnella Frazier, posted a video of the incident on her Facebook page later that night. Video stills from the footage are both unmistakable and damning. 

Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd's neck.

Even more disturbing, Derek Chauvin used his full body weight.

The medical dangers of such a maneuver are amply documented, and, as the State of Minnesota would assert when charging Chauvin in Floyd's death, kneeling on the neck is not an approved police restraint tactic by the Minneapolis Police Department.

Here, the media's concern for the facts ends, and their reflexive emphasis on narrative reasserts itself.

Protests Begin

Unsurprisingly, Minneapolis residents quickly began protesting Floyd's death. Equally unsurprisingly, government officials from Governor Tom Waltz on down to Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, expressed sorrow, anger, and even outrage. Sadly but also unsurprisingly, attention quickly zeroed in on the fact that George Floyd was a black man, and Derek Chauvin was a white police officer (he was fired shortly after the incident).

“Being black in America should not be a death sentence,” Frey said. “What we saw is horrible, completely and utterly messed up.”

At the same time, a peaceful protest began at the location of the incident, culminating in a march towards the police precinct station for that neighborhood.

Protesters began gathering at the scene of Floyd’s encounter with police Tuesday afternoon, with hundreds joining in before the crowd began to march towards Minneapolis Police’s 3rd Precinct, which is about two miles north of the scene.

As happens all too often when people seek redress from police brutality, the protest escalated.

Police in riot gear started making a barrier around the precinct at about 7:30 p.m. as protesters began to swarm. One video shows some protesters sitting on the ground, while officers deployed smoke bombs or tear gas and flash grenades. Other videos show protesters smashing squad cars, precinct windows, and throwing bricks and rocks. The protest carried on into the late night.

While the destruction of police property is hardly peaceful protest, this demonstration at least had the saving grace of focusing its anger on the police themselves. Subsequent events would not retain even that modicum of principle.

From Protest To Riot

The following night's protests quickly devolved into a general riot targeting no longer the police but the businesses surrounding the precinct. CNN, along with the rest of the legacy media, sought to minimize the shift, intimating the violence was somehow a natural "transition" of events.

On Wednesday night, Minneapolis' second day of protests transitioned to rioting and looting south of downtown, with people smashing their way into stores and setting businesses and other buildings ablaze.

CNN also shamefully leveraged Floyd's family to promote the demonstrably false trope that police systemically target and kill black men.

One of Floyd's brothers cried Thursday morning as he said his family wants protests to be peaceful, but stressed people are struggling with seeing another black man die following a police encounter, this one over the passing of an allegedly counterfeit $20 bill at a store.

CNN rather pointedly overlooks that, as studies have shown, significantly more white men than black men are killed by the police.

As researchers are quick to point out, FBI data on police shootings by race is notoriously incomplete, which may explain why Peter Moskos, assistant professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, decided to use figures from the website Killed by Police. 

Based on that data, Mr. Moskos reported that roughly 49 percent of those killed by officers from May 2013 to April 2015 were white, while 30 percent were black. He also found that 19 percent were Hispanic and 2 percent were Asian and other races.

The insistent injection of race by the media obscures the fact that police officers around the country condemn Derek Chauvin's behavior.

"There hasn't been one person, one police chief, anyone I've talked to, who doesn't see this exactly the same way. The police officer and those who were there that day failed George Floyd," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a law enforcement-oriented think tank based in Washington. "Every police officer that looked at that video who knows anything about tactics shook their head."

Nor is this a recent evolution in police thinking. Justice Department guidelines for restraining suspects has been clear on this point since at least 1995.

A Justice Department bulletin issued in 1995 warned that the technique can cause sudden death. "A person lying on his stomach has trouble breathing when pressure is applied to his back," it said. The advice: "As soon as the person is handcuffed, get him off his stomach."

Whether or not Derek Chauvin had any racial animus towards George Floyd is not known, but racial animus is not needed to establish that Chauvin's actions in this incident were not only dangerous, but well outside established police procedures adopted by virtually every police department in the United States. The media's reflexive insistence on making this a racial issue obscures the much larger issue of police officers failing to follow rules and guidelines put in place to safeguard both people's lives as well as their civil liberties.

Moreover, nationwide police disavowal of Derek Chauvin significantly undercuts any claim that police are systemically targeting blacks. While there are police officers who violate rules and even break the law in their dealings with black Americans, the data simply does not support the media trope that all cops target black people.

Riots...Err..."Protests" Spread

Where the media have truly become unhinged is in covering the rapid spread of riots and civil disturbances to other cities, all somehow in reaction to George Floyd's death.

This is how the Washington Post summed up the nationwide turn of events:

America’s persistent political dysfunction and racial inequality were laid bare this week, as the coronavirus death toll hit a tragic new milestone and as the country was served yet another reminder of how black people are killed by law enforcement in disproportionately high numbers. Together, the events present a grim tableau of a nation in crisis — one seared by violence against its citizens, plagued by a deadly disease that remains uncontained and rattled by a devastating blow to its economy.

That "racial inequality" includes the destruction of black-owned businesses such as the sports bar almost ready to be opened by Korboi Balla.

Minneapolis firefighter Korboi "KB" Balla says his dream was always to open a sports bar, something he almost achieved after "countless hours" working on the project. 

His initial open date in March had to be pushed back because of the coronavirus pandemic. He was ready to finally open his doors in June, but that plan came to a crashing halt when rioters destroyed his business on Wednesday.

When riots presumably catalyzed by the death of a black man result in the willful destruction of other black lives as well as black-owned property, "racial inequality" is not the problem. Fundamental lack of respect for the rule of law and for the rights of one's neighbors is the problem. 

Yet as the riots have spread across the country, the media has persisted in downplaying the violence, persistently characterizing events as mere "protests", as this lede from Deadline demonstrates.

The nation’s streets were filled with protesters Friday night, as angry reaction to the death of George Floyd continued to spread to at least 30 major US cities. 

Floyd died in Minneapolis police custody on Monday, and a day later activists began protests in that city. Things have since escalated there and elsewhere throughout the nation, with some locations seeing angry people attacking police and damaging cars trapped on freeways. Authorities are bracing for more as the weekend unfolds.

The destruction of property in Nashville was a riot, not a protest. 

Dallas was a riot not a protest.

Beating store owners practically to death is a riot, not a protest.

Where Is George Floyd?

Missing from both the riots and the legacy media accounts of them is any serious connection between the violence and George Floyd's death. The media makes a token mention of George Floyd's name at the beginning of their reporting, and then proceeds as if that were sufficient to link the riots to Floyd's death.

George Floyd was not in Los Angeles, nor Seattle, nor Nashville, nor Dallas, nor any of the other cities engulfed in riots purportedly in response to his death. Yet somehow violence in all these cities is to be excused because of his death.

Ironically, Houston, the one city with a definitive connection to George Floyd, as he was a native of the city's Third War, has been relatively peaceful, with protests only sporadically turning violent.

Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner implored protesters to remain respectful in airing their frustrations over the death of former Third Ward resident George Floyd, as an initially peaceful demonstration splintered off into groups that blocked highway entrances and threw objects at officers Friday evening.

Moreover, the media never addresses an essential question: how does looting a Target or burning down a Wendy's achieve any justice for George Floyd, or indeed any victim of police brutality? How does arson and murder of people with no connection either to George Floyd or the Minneapolis Police Department bring about any positive change?

The answer is both short and obvious: the riots do not bring either justice or positive change.

The riots are not about George Floyd. The riots are simply thuggish people behaving thuggishly, and using the tragedy of Floyd's death to justify their thuggish behavior. 

Narrative Is All That Matters

To the legacy media, however, narrative trumps reality, and the legacy media's chosen narrative for George Floyd's death is race. Thus we get CNN's Don Lemon's execrable illogic suggesting that all white people are somehow responsible for George Floyd's death:

Later on in the monologue, Lemon claimed, “To stop this, it is incumbent on people who hold the power in this society to help to do that. To do the heavy lifting. And guess who that is? Who is that, Chris?” 

“White people,” replied Cuomo

This, of course, is pure nonsense. Yes, police departments must address the bad and sometimes criminal behavior of rogue police officers. Police departments must take action when officers cross the line, whether out of racial animus or for any other reason.

What Don Lemon failed to acknowledge is that even Minneapolis' lamentable Mayor as well as Minnesota's governor did not hesitate to condemn Derek Chauvin. President Trump in similar vein asked the FBI and the Department of Justice to expedite their investigations into Floyd's death.

Don Lemon is so intent on pushing the narrative that he ignores the reality that no one thinks George Floyd's death is anything but wrong. Police officers condemn it. Governor Waltz condemned it. Mayor Jacob Frey condemned it. The rioters are attacking people who actually agree with them.

The legacy media does not care about such inconvenient truths, because they weaken the narrative.

Nor does legacy media care that innocent people are hurt and killed by people "standing up" against "racism", or that many of those hurt are themselves black.

Two Truths

Contrary to the simplistic narratives of the legacy media, it is possible for people to hold two ideas in their head at the same time. We can be outraged at George Floyd's death and be outraged at the rampant violence being done in his name.

We can call out the thugs who use any excuse to prey upon their neighbors without excusing thuggish police officers.

We can demand police officers be held to account for their crimes while demanding rioters and looters be held to account for theirs.

Above all, we can recognize that because George Floyd's death is inexcusable and unacceptable, so too must the looting and violence done in his name be inexcusable and unacceptable. 

This is not a simplistic question of race, but a fundamental question of right conduct and wrong conduct. Right conduct means standing up for the rights of others. Wrong conduct means victimizing others and disregarding those same rights.

To make George Floyd's death matter, people must focus on right conduct and condemn wrong conduct on all sides. To do otherwise is tantamount to saying that George Floyd's death does not matter--and that is itself wrong conduct.

The legacy media only calls out the wrong conduct that augments its chosen narrative, and ignores both the right and wrong conducts that contradict that narrative. By so doing, the legacy media has taken the position that George Floyd's death does not matter to them. That is unquestionably and inexcusably wrong conduct.

None of which matters to the legacy media. All of which must matter to everyone else.