Injustice For One Is Injustice For All

I don't remember who it was, but some president, relatively recently, once said, in a famous speech to the Nation, that Americans have the “right” to freedom from fear, and freedom from violence (and crime in general as I understood it). What he was saying was that we have the “right” to government protection... and that should scare the pants off anyone who knows anything about the history of government power and politics; I know it does me!

Nowhere in the constitution, nor in any statement or speech given by our “founding fathers”, is there any mention at all of our “right” to government protection. In fact, the bulk of everything they did upon establishing the foundation of the United States of America was directly and explicitly intended to protect the people FROM the government. The laws that were written, and the rights that were invoked --- our “human right” --- were the right to live free, and to protect OURSELVES! Not only from government, but from each other also.

 

And yet today people openly and disparagingly speak of “criminal rights” as if that is all that the men who drafted the constitution and the Bill of Rights cared about. After a modern school shooting, or some other heinous crime, the commercial media gives voice to those who cry, “Why doesn't the government do more to protect us?” (or, more empathically, “...to protect our children?”). I would say that nobody ever asks, “Why won't the government let us do more to protect ourselves?” - except that people do ask that (the NRA for example), but the commercial media – for some “mysterious” reason, doesn't give them much, if any, voice at all.

It's ironic, and telling, that while all police organizations endorse more laws (“tougher gun control”, that insures they're the only ones with guns, for example), they always insist, amongst themselves especially, that they themselves are primarily responsible for protecting their family and loved ones, not to mention themselves. That's because they know first-hand that the police rarely protect anyone, and almost always show up AFTER the crime. Their primary “job” is catching criminals, not stopping them. The police know, also first-hand, that the best, and in most cases the only, person to stop a crime from happening is the person that the crime happens to; the so-called victim himself.

So, why do the police insist on more “police protection”, when they know they can't protect anyone? The answer should be obvious --- so they can keep getting paid for wielding power and calling themselves the “good guys”.

Nowhere does the constitution ever say that criminals have rights and victims don't. And yet, men who can't protect themselves or their families (because of their ignorant expectation of police protection) insist that criminals are somehow “given rights” that they don't deserve, while victims have none. And they push for laws that are supposed to “protect the victims”, even though they never stop to consider that criminals are victims too, and most victims are criminals as well.

If, instead of expecting the police, and/or government, to protect them, they became determined to protect themselves --- the way police do --- then maybe they wouldn't be so ready to attack and undermine the very “rights” that were originally meant to protect them from such hypocritical and self-serving government officials. Maybe instead they'd push for laws that prevented the government from stopping a man from protecting himself (such as “gun control”) and seeking his own justice (many states no longer recognize “self-defense” as an excuse for many so-called “crimes”, such as shooting someone in public, not to mention challenging somone to a duel, which, as you may well recall, was a common means of “justice” amoungst the men who first drafted the Constitution).

George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, and the rest, understood that the most dangerous criminal of all was the one with the power of the people behind him. So they drafted the constitution, and then later added the Bill of Rights, “in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of [government] powers...” And today, George Bush, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and the rest, have all forgotten that crime isn't the problem; overzealous government is!

[J.D. Oct. 11, 2015]

P.S. The reason I think (and write) so much about justice (and injustice) isn't because I am a criminal trying to make excuses for my crimes. It's because in nature there are no “criminals”, and I believe there wouldn't be any in society either if we didn't invent them and then create the circumstances that cause the behavior we call crime to happen. In other words, I write this stuff not because I'm a criminal, but because I'm a man who sees no reason for crime at all. And I believe that when we understand how our current system promotes and propogates criminal behavior (mostly to justify government/police power and control, and taxation) that then we will find a way.

P.P.S. I don't advocate gun rights, or any other rights for that matter. I don't think it matters one lick what rights we are “given” or have “taken” from us. The thing that does matter is whether or not we understand our OBLIGATION to protect ourselves and our loved ones, including our country if need be (with, “if need be”, being the operative part of that last one). We are also obligated to seek our own justice, for as I have said before about taking justice into your own hands; there really is no place else where it belongs!