Citizen’s Arrests

New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham (D) has no understanding of duty or of law.  It seems that an armed group of citizen militia caught 200 illegal aliens in the act of illegally entering our nation near Sunland Park, NM, and they detained those illegal aliens until US Border Patrol agents—which those citizens called—could arrive and take charge.

In her response to this, Grisham said,

It should go without saying that regular citizens have no authority to arrest or detain anyone[.]

On the contrary, it should go without saying that regular citizens have both the authority and the duty to arrest and detain until the arrival of formally constituted authority—police or Border Patrol agents, for instance—persons committing crimes in the presence of those citizens.  It also should go without saying that that authority and that duty derive from the plain duties of citizenship.

It’s both instructive and illustrative that this Progressive-Democrat does not understand the obligations of citizenship.

Because It’s Hateful

Recall Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s (D, MN) insulting (at best) and dismissive description of the 9/11 terrorist attack that murdered nearly 3,000 Americans as “some people did something.”  President Donald Trump—among a host of other Americans—called her out for that despicable comment with a video of his own that juxtaposed her…comment…with the death and destruction that that “something” done by “some people” wrought.

Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) is actively distorting the facts surrounding the matter as she joins her fellow Progressive-Democrat in trying to make political hay out of Americans’, and the President’s, objections to Omar’s words.

The President’s words weigh a ton, and his hateful and inflammatory rhetoric creates real danger.  President Trump must take down his disrespectful and dangerous video.

Pelosi also loudly called the Capital Police to get them to

conduct[] a security assessment to safeguard Congresswoman Omar, her family, and her staff.
They will continue to monitor and address the threats she faces[.]

Because it’s disrespectful, dangerous—threatening, even—to call out hate speech when it’s spoken by Progressive-Democrats.

No. The only dangerous words are those of Omar’s saying that the murders of those nearly 3,000 Americans is no big deal.  The only violence done or threatened is by those Progressive-Democrats who agree, through their defense of Omar’s words, that those murders are only secondary to being criticized for their condoning Omar’s claims.

Incidentally, the comment thread in Trump’s video tweet illustrates just how ’round the bend the Left is, quite apart from their full-throated defense of Omar’s despicable bigotry.

Reparations, Again

Now the Progressive-Democratic Party members are desperately trying to show their virtue by touting reparations again.

HR 40 would establish a federal commission to study how slavery and Jim Crow impact African-Americans today. The bill’s language calls for suggestions to “remedy” slavery’s aftereffects.

My irony meter is pegged. Slavery and Jim Crow were then-Democratic Party institutions. The current crop of Progressive-Democrats doesn’t need taxpayer money to fund a commission whose purpose would be to dilute their past. They need only look in a mirror.

It [reparations] could amount to formal government recognition that slavery was an injustice committed by the US, for example.

I guess Progressive-Democrats think the Civil War was just some people [that] did something.

Timidity

Progressive-Democrat Mayor (South Bend, IN) and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg used to insist that, in addition to Black Lives Mattering, Blue Lives and All Lives Matter, also.

Not so much, anymore.

What I did not understand at that time was that that phrase just early, into mid-, especially 2015 was coming to be viewed as a sort of counter slogan to Black Lives Matter….
And so this statement that seems anodyne and something no one could be against actually wound up being used to devalue what the Black Lives Matter movement….

What utter, timid nonsense.

The devaluing was only in the fetid imaginations of those demanding the meanings of words be changed to suit their whims and not be kept in their true meanings.

All Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter do not in any way devalue the fact that Black Lives Matter or alter the premise of the Black Lives Matter movement that black lives matter.  Proclaiming the one in no way devalues the other; the two exist easily side by side without contradiction, without dialectic.

Buttigieg’s meek apology for uttering truisms is just his surrender of our lexicon to a narrow, activist move.

The governments of both Russia and the People’s Republic of China are well-known for their doublespeak and their…alteration…of the meanings of words and phrases to suit their political wishes.  Would a President Buttigieg further surrender our lexicon to them and speak using only terms and meanings of which they approve, too?

Is this another example of Progressive-Democrat flexibility to be offered to our enemies?

Protection

Facebook’s MFWIC Mark Zuckerberg wants the Federal government to regulate the industry in which Facebook plays such a significant role. As cited by The Wall Street Journal, Zuckerberg claims that

such intervention is vital to protect both the welfare of users and the fundamental values of an open internet.

He closed his op-ed, originally published in WaPo and the Irish news outlet Independent with this gem:

People shouldn’t have to rely on individual companies addressing these issues by themselves….

People shouldn’t have to rely on Government to dictate to private enterprise, and those enterprises’ leaders and managers need not be told what to do by the men of Government.  It’s entirely appropriate for people to expect “individual companies” to behave honestly and honorably—to address these issues to customers’ satisfaction without Government involvement.  After all, the managers of those companies are grown, adult human beings who clearly understand the difference between right and wrong.  And we customers clearly can withhold our custom from misbehaving businesses; we need no Government instruction for that, or Government protection from those misbehaviors.

Zuckerberg knows full well what regulations are necessary for the purpose.  Which means he knows full well the internal controls he needs to implement—wholly voluntarily and without Government intervention, or even prodding—to achieve those regulatory goals.

Instructively, Zuckerberg is not alone.  Apple’s Tim Cook and Alphabet’s Google honcho Sundar Pichai agree with him: they also want Government to impose “stricter privacy rules.”

In the end, though Zuckerberg, Cook, and Pichai aren’t interested in protecting consumers, much less their own—as Zuckerberg and Pichai have demonstrated repeatedly with Facebook’s and Google’s cavalier attitude toward customer’s privacy and control over personal data, and Cook’s willingness to work with the People’s Republic of China’s government to invade that nation’s citizen privacy in the name of government censorship.

No, all Zuckerberg (along with his fellow protectee wannbes) want is protection of their companies from competitors—even though their very size and market share afford all of that that they need.