War on the Right

The Conservative Treehouse reports that the Postal Service spying scandal isn’t spying on ALL Americans, just the Conservative ones. Since the election, Democrats have been making lists of enemies of the state. In the beginning, they openly bragged about it, but then were told to keep it quiet. Now that list is being expanded and we are on lists. Not only is the government doing it, they are crowdsourcing it.

If you get mail from the NRA, Republican politicians, the Second Amendment Foundation, GOA, veteran’s organizations, gun stores, or other right leaning sources, you are on the list. If the ads on your web browser or the emails in your spam folder are for gun related or Conservative websites, you are on the list. Even reading this blog, well-

As I have blogged before, Vzyali was a word that struck fear in the hearts of Soviet citizens. It means “have taken,” with “they” implied to have done the taking, as in “They have taken.” There was no pronoun or noun needed to indicate who “they” were- “they” were unspeakable. It was never “arrestovani” or arrested, because those who were taken were never seen or heard from again. 

One of the things that has scared the shit out of me is the communist habit of “disappearing” people. When I was a boy scout, my scoutmaster was a man who was born in the Soviet union. His parents smuggled him out hidden in the trunk of a car when he was a teenager. He never saw or heard from them again. They were taken, because the government found out that they committed the sin of smuggling their child to safety. Shot in the head, sent to a gulag. Who knows?

When the Soviets disappeared someone, they didn’t usually kill them. In fact, they usually didn’t, unless the killing was being used as a high profile example to drive a point home. Even in the days of Obama, the Federal government was targeting Conservatives. Now that the Democrats have seized control, they are about to get their tyranny on.

Some of the lists are openly on the web. So go to this one, and see if you are on it. Whether you are or not, find prominent Conservative citizens in your area and keep tabs on them. If they begin to disappear, you will know that vzyali. Likewise, get together a list of left wing locals. Keep tabs on them as well. Intelligence is the best tool we have right now.

The MSM and the left (I repeat myself) is all aflutter because a Republican in Minnesota has proposed a law that would strip convicted rioters of their ability to receive government giveaways. They claim it is a violation of the rights of the criminals. Let me explain why it isn’t:

1 You have a First Amendment right to PEACEABLY assemble. If you are convicted of a violent crime, you aren’t a protester, you are a rioter. Therefore, punishing someone for violent acts committed during a riot is not a violation of your first Amendment rights, any more than convicting someone of unlawfully shooting and killing a person is a violation of their Second Amendment rights.

2 You don’t have a right to those things. They are benefits. If people had a right to them, then you could not be denied for things like income.

3 They claim it adversely affects Blacks. Well, since BLM is a black organization, and that organization is the one rioting, that isn’t surprising. Who should it affect?

Don’t want to lose your benefits? Protest, but don’t riot. Are you really so stupid that you don’t know the difference? Or do you think WE are?

Hey! Military investigators- while you are purging the Military of people who express political opinions, why don’t you investigate this idiot?

You won’t, though, because he isn’t on the right. Yes, he is an idiot. He calls for the military to mutiny and “point our weapons at the people who keep killing black people.” The police kill a dozen or so black people a year. That isn’t even a single weekend in Chicago. Wanna point your weapons at those who kill black people? Point them at other blacks.

From a post made by Big Country, we get this:

The “can’t yell fire in a crowded theater” trope is worn out bullshit. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote what is perhaps the most well-known — yet misquoted and misused — phrase in Supreme Court history: “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”

Whenever a free speech controversy hits, someone will drag this phrase out as proof of limits on the First Amendment before using that limit as an excuse to violate other rights. Holmes’ quote has become a crutch for every censor in America, yet the quote is misunderstood. Those who quote Holmes might want to actually read the case where the phrase originated before using it as their main defense. If they did, they’d realize it was never binding law, and the case it comes from, U.S. v. Schenck, was overturned over 40 years ago.

U.S. v. Schenck had nothing to do with fires, theaters, or false statements. Instead, the Court was deciding whether Charles Schenck, the Secretary of the Socialist Party of America, could be convicted under the Espionage Act for writing and distributing a pamphlet that expressed his opposition to the draft during World War I. The pamphlet did not call for violence. It did not even call for civil disobedience. All it did was express opposition to the draft.

The Court’s description of the pamphlet proves it to be milder than any of the dozens of protests currently going on around this country every day:

It said, “Do not submit to intimidation,” but in form, at least, confined itself to peaceful measures such as a petition for the repeal of the act. The other and later printed side of the sheet was headed “Assert Your Rights.”

The crowded theater remark that everyone remembers was an analogy Holmes made before issuing the court’s holding. He was explaining that the First Amendment is not absolute. It is what lawyers call dictum, a justice’s ancillary opinion that doesn’t directly involve the facts of the case and has no binding authority. In fact, the statement was The actual ruling, that the pamphlet posed a “clear and present danger” to a nation at war, landed Schenk in prison and continued to haunt the court for years to come.

Two similar Supreme Court cases decided later the same year–Debs v. U.S. and Frohwerk v. U.S.–also sent anti-war activists to jail under the Espionage Act for the mildest of government criticism. Together, the three cases did more damage to First Amendment than any other set of cases in the 20th century.

It wasn’t until Brandenburg v. Ohio in 1969 that Schenck and any authority it carried was overturned. There, the Court held that inflammatory speech–and even speech advocating violence by members of the Ku Klux Klan–is protected under the First Amendment, unless the speech is directed to incite or produce imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action. (Note that this is the same reason why Trump can’t be prosecuted for what he said in his speech on January 6)

Today, despite the “crowded theater” quote’s legal irrelevance, advocates of government overreach have not stopped trotting it out as the final word on the lawful limits of the First Amendment. That quote is worse than useless in defining the boundaries of the limits on speech or on government tyranny. When used metaphorically, it can be deployed against any constitutional right. This is intellectually lazy and is outright dishonest.

Like the original case, this statement is being used by a tyrannical government that is using it to violate the rights of people who are on the wrong side of the political debate.