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On the ‘Sacredness’ of Our Institutions
Let me get the disclaimer done with: I don’t support rioting or invasions of government buildings. They should be stopped with whatever force is necessary.
But I’m not buying that there was some sort of desecration going on in the invasion of the Capitol Building. What is sacred in this nation is not institutions or buildings, but individual rights, liberty, and life. Whatever sacredness our institutions have is derivative of their core purpose in securing individual liberty. That’s a peculiarity of this nation we sometimes forget. The king is sacred in England, or the party in Communist China, but in a constitutional republic like ours, our government has only derivative sacredness.
We wave the flag, celebrate the Fourth of July, and have monuments in Washington DC as a way of holding individual liberty sacred. We should feel a sense of desecration when those core individual rights are violated, and only in a lesser sense when there is some attack on the institutions that protect them. George W. Bush expressed this in the wake of 9/11 when he said that “freedom had been attacked.” He understood that the significance of the attack on the Pentagon Building wasn’t that the building itself was really threatened, but that the real target was the individual liberty for which this nation stands. That is the thing to be concerned about.
Actual desecrations of individual rights and liberty have been occurring most of this year. To have secure individual rights means that one can trust that your rights won’t be violated by the government, and that the government will protect your rights from others who wish to violate them. Yet for most of this year, the government routinely stood by while BLM and Antifa rioters looted and burned private property, harassed citizens in their homes and at restaurants, blocked intersections, or set up “autonomous zones.” How many ordinary people’s lives were destroyed in these events? That is the desecration I am worried about. It happened when Joe Sixpack lost his livelihood when his hardware store was looted and burned, while police watched and did nothing.
By contrast, how many lives were destroyed in the Capitol Building invasion? I’m not talking about the rioters themselves. You get involved in a riot, you take your chances. I’m talking about ordinary, innocent people who go home from work and show up the next day to find their store looted. As far as I know, the number is zero. Whatever damage was done to the Capitol Building will be quickly repaired. In a few weeks, you won’t even be able to tell it ever happened. You can still see the boarded-up businesses in Portland and other cities, however.
Capitol Buildings, Congresses, Presidents, and Senates are not sacred. It is the individual liberty they are supposed to secure that is sacred.
Published in General
Yes, encouragement.
I think that is also called, what’s the word, oh yes… “incitement”.
Most of us who are not Demoncrats.
However it was cheered on by the leadership of the House of Representatives.
Further, while flag burning may be protected speech, according to a judge in DC, that is only the case with the American flag. Try to burn a BLM flag and you are banned from entering DC.
So, compared to the actual rights and privileges of liberty, the symbols of liberty come a distant second.
I would make a joke about them being the Stupid Party, but frankly, I think Mitch McConnell knew this would happen, and went along with the Democrats anyway to kneecap the dominant trend in the Republican party; and that is why I’ve hated him since Mississippi.
The answer is a bit lengthy, so I’ll refer you to my prior post What Are the Central Principles of the American Founding, here. I proposed 11 principles, derived from the Declaration and Constitution. This was written just over a year ago.
My first thought, and I still laugh at their fear and anger over what happened TO THEM. The guy crying over the loss of his business that represented life savings was just a pawn in their game.
What happened in Mississippi?
Long story short: Chris McDaniel was sort of a hybrid Tea Party/populist candidate who won more votes than Thad Cochran, an Establishment squish, in the 2014 Republican Senate primary. During the run-off election, McConnell (who during this time was openly at war against Tea Party challengers) helped orchestrate a campaign that amounted to portraying Chris McDaniel (and by extension his voters) as a racist and an extremist, in an effort to get progressive Democrats to vote in the run-off for Thad Cochran. It worked
This seems like a good time to bring up the fact that in 1954 Puerto Rican Nationalists fired 30 shots into the Well of the House of Representatives while it was in session, injuring 5.
This was far more of an attack on our system of government than what happened last week.
It considered such an outrageous act, that less than 25 years later President Carter pardoned the perpetrators, who were given a heroes welcome on their return to Puerto Rico.
In 2011 the Wisconsin State Capitol was occupied and mobbed for days, even weeks, because some people were opposed to Gov. Walkers reform bill.
I was told by supporters of that occupation, “This is what Democracy looks like”. There was a promotional clip for a local newscast that was shown repeatedly for months afterwards, which included one of the protestors screaming ‘This is *OUR* House”.
So you’ll forgive me if I don’t get too misty-eyed over the lamentations of the sacredness of a building that I’m hearingthis week