A Nation of Guns (part 1)

We are a nation of laws. How many times have we heard this assertion? Its meaning—In the United States, it is the law, not the individual that matters. No matter what the individual’s status or station, that individual is subject to the same laws as the rest of us.

Over the last few years however, something has happened. Through the explosion of news sources, information that would have heretofore been suppressed or ignored by the mainstream media is coming to light.

We now know that station and status do matter. The secretary of the Treasury is a tax cheat. So is the chairman of the House ways and means committee (the committee that writes the tax code). We know that sweetheart mortgages went to the most influential congresspeople.

Add to that, the fact that laws that have been on the books since the country’s founding are either being ignored by those who took an oath to enforce them, or they are being overturned by federal judges. Even the will of the electorate is subject to the oversight and veto of a single federal judge. It then becomes clear that laws are neither reliable nor reliably enforced. Indeed, we are not a nation of laws. We must, therefore, be a nation of guns. There is no other option.

The government, either by representative rebuke or judicial fiat, decides what the law is on a particular day and for particular people. It is then quite willing to use its police powers to enforce them.

This means the government is perfectly willing to point its guns at its citizens to enforce its will.

This scenario is acceptable so long as laws are consistent and consistently applied, and they are in keeping with the will of the electorate. But that is not what is happening now. The electorate expresses its voice and that voice is reversed. Officials who are exposed as offenders have apologists for their offenses and where you or I would be severely punished by our system, they are let off by offering up false contrition and in some rare cases, minimal restitution.

A government that rules like this is not representing a nation of laws, but a nation of guns. The government has the guns.

More to come.