Masking Tyranny

I may be a progressive liberal, but I know history and human nature – and the nature of State power (from a career as a criminal prosecutor) – well enough to have some very conservative and libertarian impulses when it come to limitations and conditions on the State’s police powers.

This video from the Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson (who is still VERY much a conservative, BTW) expresses very well exactly my concerns around this Regime’s attempt to have masked, unidentified government agents wielding police powers in our streets.

This perversion of police power is an invitation to abuse and tyranny. I don’t understand how so many traditional conservatives seem to be OK with it simply because it’s ‘their’ team (but not really, and only for now…) trying to get away with it. The excuse that these agents’ identities need to be protected because of escalating violence and doxxing of them is mere puffery, if not outright bullshit.

Those who are given license to wield State power MUST be accountable to the public they are meant to serve: the alternative is ALWAYS the slippery slope to tyranny and abuse.

My graphic for this post is no mere chance or whim. I created it personally because I clearly see the paralels with the worst abuses of our past in which the fist of State power was often masked beneath a veneer of vigilante anonymity. Many in the Klan who terrorized their own era’s persecuted classes beneath hoods were, in fact, law enforcement hiding from public accountability. We must not allow this pernicious weed to take root in our garden once again.

Rick’s advice to ALWAYS call the real, identifiable, badge-carrying, and locally known and accountable police to report that there are gun-wielding masked thugs who are threatening your safety and peace when people like this appear on your streets is very sound. And I certainly agree with Rick’s assertion that if anyone were to attempt to enter my home in such a manner, they are not coming out again.

This is still America. The citizenry are the biggest threat to the continued existence and authority of the State because we can withdraw our consent to be governed when the government becomes destructive of our freedoms. That’s why the rule of law is so important – it protects the State from us as much it protects us from State.

Never forget that you inhabit the most powerful office in our system of government: citizen.