Chaos Is Tyranny

On his show today, Andrew Klavan mentioned that Plato told us: “What erupts out of chaos is tyranny.” I looked for the quote and concluded he was paraphrasing. But I found this quote, and I’m highlighting what I think Klavan was referencing: 

By degrees the anarchy finds a way into private houses…The son is on a level with his father, he having no respect or reverence for either of his parents; and this is his freedom… Citizens…chafe impatiently at the least touch of authority… they will have no one over them… Such…is the fair and glorious beginning out of which springs tyranny… Liberty overmasters democracy…the excessive increase of anything often causes a reaction in the opposite direction… The excess of liberty, whether in States or individuals, seems only to pass into excess of slavery… And so tyranny naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme form of liberty.

By “the most extreme form of liberty,” Plato means anarchy, or chaos, not actual freedom.

The Spherical Model gives us a perspective when we’re dealing with ideas in the political sphere, and how they interrelate with the economic and social spheres.

I thought this might be a good time to review the idea of the Spherical Model and show some ideas on it.

The Political Sphere of the Spherical Model

Instead of right and left, we have three dimensions, so we use a sphere. North on the sphere is the freedom zone—the good direction—where we enjoy our God-given rights, and governments are limited to only protecting those rights.

South on the sphere is the tyranny zone—the bad direction—where we suffer oppression, and our rights are not respected.

That very farthest south area, the polar area, we might call totalitarian, because it would attempt total control over every aspect of life—actions, beliefs, associations, ways of doing business, use of money and property.

On the website, we use this description:

Totalitarianism means that the state has all the power—the police, the military. The state can do what it wants, and the mere citizen is without any rights except what the state decides to grant. Anarchy, on the other hand, means that power belongs to whoever is stronger and meaner than the next guy. If you threaten to beat people up (or kill them) if they don’t give you all their belongings, and you’re strong enough to mean it, then you have power. If someone else is stronger or better armed than you are, then you have to yield power to them. In other words, anarchy, while less organized, is power in the hands of the strongest and best armed—just as in totalitarianism.

A large part of world history has been the creation of chaos for the purpose of accumulating power over people. Stalin and Lenin stated that as their purpose. People like Obama’s advisor Rahm Emmanuel put it as, “Never let a crisis go to waste.” Use the chaos to build your power.

It doesn’t really matter what you call that southern tyranny: fascism, socialism, communism, or some other -ism or -archy. They’re still tyranny.

The horizontal direction on the sphere indicates level of interest, from individuals and families on up to states, nations, and world levels. At any of these levels, tyranny can be a statist tyranny—coercion run by the government. Or it can be anarchic tyranny—run by non-governmental individuals or groups that assert dominance by physical force. To the person being oppressed, it doesn’t make much difference who’s doing the oppressing.

Anarchy might mean lack of government, but there’s never a lack of people trying to exert power over others.

On the sphere, anarchic tyranny would always be to the west of statist tyranny. But when you look at the southern pole of the sphere, you can see that, whatever type of tyranny, at whatever level, they are very close to each other.

south pole view of the Spherical Model
with Anarchy adjacent to Statist Tyranny 

Communism, Socialism, and Fascism are close
and overlapping as varieties of statist tyranny.

The value of using the Spherical Model, rather than the typical left-right model, is that we can see just how close the “extreme left” (statist tyranny) is to the “extreme right” (also statist tyranny). And calling the “right” fascist, as though that were diametrically opposed to “socialist” or “communist” is misleading at best. They’re overlapping ideas.

Up there we have our Constitutional Republic. When we always abide by the Constitution, we remain up there in the freedom zone, with accompanying prosperity and civilization.

We can’t, as a people, compromise with southern hemisphere tyranny and expect to remain in the freedom zone. One compromise pulls us southward. The next compromise pulls us further southward. And so on, until the Constitution looks like a distant memory.

You can’t trust a party. You can choose a party that gets you closer to what you want—south to tyranny, poverty, and savagery; or north to freedom, prosperity, and civilization. And you can participate to move the ideas of that party toward your preferred ends.

In recent years, the Democrat Party has sunk further southward. It has people in it that think they value freedom, prosperity, and civilization. But their party—it’s ideas, platform, and thought leaders—do not want those things. However, they use language to relabel things to convince people that they can bring about good results, while claiming the conservatives—their enemy—want all things bad, which they tend to describe in terms of tribalist biases: racism, bigotry, homophobia, sexism, etc.

They talk about a utopia, but not a real world. They think they should get credit for simply wanting some good outcome—even when everything they do can only lead southward, because it takes away individual rights and grants power to government far beyond government’s proper role. With the help of a willing, biased media, they get away with the relabeling, despite their own pitiful track record of bad outcomes—particularly for the minorities they claim to be compassionate about.

I wanted to talk about this today, because of the calls for defunding the police, in the wake of the protests—and then riots—in Minneapolis, and then around the country.

Black Lives Matter is claiming the high ground. They’re the protesters, not the rioters. They want the protests to remain peaceful; they just want to call for the elimination of racism among police. They want things to get better in society. It’s those rioters who are trying to tear down everything, to create chaos.

But who, then, is calling for the defunding of the police?

It turns out that Black Lives Matter has that on their website.

Maybe we need to know more about them. On their “What We Believe” page, they say they started out as a response to state-sponsored racism. They use Trayvon Martin as an example [he was killed while attacking citizen George Zimmerman, not by racist police, however]. They add Ferguson, Missouri, which, if you’ll recall, brought about the lie “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot,” when a black thief, Michael Brown, attacked a police officer, who killed him in self-defense, according to multiple eye witnesses, including black ones. Despite their lie about Brown being gunned down with his hands up in surrender, this is the case that “galvanized” their movement, which they claim is not only national but worldwide.

What a treasure this George Floyd case must be, a black man actually killed by police! And possibly even because of race. They leave out that everyone the whole country over is appalled by the killing, regardless of any guilt of the victim. This was not justice, and Americans everywhere want to see justice done.

Let’s go on. This is further down the page: 

We are guided by the fact that all Black lives matter, regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status, or location….

We are self-reflexive and do the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk….

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and “villages” that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

We foster a queer‐affirming network. When we gather, we do so with the intention of freeing ourselves from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking….

So, this complaint about blacks needing to be treated fairly is something of a “social justice” whatchagot stew.

They want to toss out the idea of gender. They want to get rid of the traditional family, remove the responsibility of rearing children from parents and place it on the collective, so that mothers are free to go protest.

On another page, they proudly claim they are working tirelessly to dismantle ICE and concentrate especially on freeing black illegal immigrants, of which they say there are 600,000.

If you’ve been sympathizing with them because George Floyd was black, consider whether the rest of their agenda is relevant to your George Floyd sympathy.

Consider also that one of their three founders (all three are self-styled Marxist-Leninists), Assata Shakur, whom they revere at every meeting, fled to Cuba after being convicted of shooting a police officer during a routine traffic stop, and, finding him wounded on the ground, executed him . BLM uses the final line of the Communist Manifesto as a battle cry, apparently condoning the millions of deaths that manifesto has led to.

Back in 2014 and 2015, at their inception, they declared war on law enforcement. As David Horowitz has written,

The Black Lives Matter activists fomented riots, burned and looted cities, and incited their followers with chants that ranged from “What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want them? Now!” to “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot.”[i]

Oh, and the hashtag #Defund the Police—that’s theirs. They say explicitly, “We call for a national defunding of police.” They’ve been putting forth that idea for years. It isn't a sudden response to the incident in Minneapolis. But now they are getting actual policymakers to go along with them.

The nine-member Minneapolis City Council voted over the weekend to dismantle and defund the city’s police department. They have a vague plan to cover public safety needs with social workers and counselors of some sort.

CNN host Alysin Camerota talked with Council President Lisa Bender, asking what most of us would think is the logical first question:

Camerota: What if, in the middle of the night, my home is broken into? Who do I call?

Bender: Yes, I mean, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors, and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege. Because for those of us for whom the system is working, I think we need to step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done.

In other words, you only think you deserve police protection from a home invasion because of your white privilege. Blacks, I guess she’s claiming, couldn’t call the police to protect them from a home invasion, because George Floyd was killed? But she isn’t asking you to imagine what it feels like to live in a system without protective police; she is forcing the people of her city to experience it.

Not to be outdone, New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio committed to diverting funding from police to “youth services” and “social services.” It's unclear how much money, and how many police jobs will be cut.

In our nation’s capital, Washington DC’s mayor had the street painted with “Black Lives Matter,” and renamed the place Black Lives Matter Plaza. Further down, the street was painted with “Defund the Police.”  

"Black Lives Matter" painted on street in DC
screenshot from here

Meanwhile, when protesters refused to obey the law and blocked a bridge, the black Dallas Police Chief Renee Hall had 674 arrested. "We warned them.... If you break the law, we will arrest you,” she said. 

As a regular law-abiding citizen, I much prefer the Texas way.

In the US we’re a federation; states and local jurisdictions can do some experimenting. My guess is that, in a city with no police, you will get a lot of crime—what we've always called crime. Bad guys come in with weapons, take what they want by force—what can you do? Defend yourself with your own gun—if you’re in a place that hasn’t already taken that right away from you.

We could watch and see.

But since we know that chaos leads to tyranny, we aren’t really guessing about how that experiment will turn out.

I suggest those cities fence themselves in first. Or, maybe, allow refugees to escape before the worst happens. Because, when people are given a clear choice, they don’t choose to live oppressed, poverty-stricken lives in a savage society. They’d rather enjoy their God-given rights, in a society that is much more likely to be prosperous for all, and where civilized people actually treat each other with respect and caring, regardless of race. People choose north.

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[i] Video here. 

Don’t Mistake Rioters for Protesters, Part II

Yesterday, there was this news: “This is the greatest 50-day rally in the history of the S&P 500.” You didn’t hear that? Hmm. 

It was good news. When there’s a sudden drop, you can expect a sudden recovery—unless interference keeps the bounce back from happening.

Some people don’t want a bounce back.

That’s why you’re not hearing about it. And maybe that’s why you are hearing about what is in the news.

In Part I we started talking about the difference between the protesters and the rioters. Let’s cover three related things today.

·       Your house is not on fire (unless the rioters have gotten to you).

·       Riots are not a reaction to racism; they are a reaction against freedom, free markets, and civilization.

·       Chaos, like other forms of tyranny, brings oppression, poverty, and savagery.

Your House Is Not on Fire

cartoon frame, by chainsawsuit.com
found on Facebook

There was a cartoon meme going around, attempting to describe what people mean when they say “black lives matter” and won’t accept “all lives matter” as a response. There are two people, each with a house behind them. The first one’s house is burning down. The second guy is holding a hose, spraying his own house, because “all houses matter.” He seems unaware of how useless that statement is when clearly his neighbor’s house is on fire and could use the hose.

The metaphor works only if there’s a house on fire. In this case the fire is purported to be “systemic racism.” Not just an occasional isolated incident among 325 million people, but a problem so pervasive that the house is burning down.

What is wrong with the metaphor? The house isn’t really on fire. There’s as much “fire” as you might have from lighting the occasional birthday candle in the house; you can easily blow it out and get along with living in the house in complete safety and comfort.

The counter to the metaphor is two people in front of two houses. One is screaming that his house is on fire, and the other one, who has looked, examined, checked inside, and verified that the house is not actually on fire, tries to calm the neighbor. Yes, all of our houses matter; we would not want a fire in anyone’s house.

To which the first screams again, in agony and frustration, “You don’t understand. My house is on fire!”

But it isn’t.

The narrative—the house-on-fire story—is that blacks, particularly black men, are in danger of being killed by racist police every time they leave their homes. Their mothers worry for them. Some people even call it a genocide happening right before our eyes.

If this were happening, we would all be alarmed—the way we would be if our neighbor’s house actually were burning. We’d call for the fire department and use our water hoses to help in the meantime.

But where do you spray if there’s no fire?

Yesterday, Tucker Carlson on Fox News, went through the entire list of deaths of unarmed blacks in the US in 2019—data maintained since 2015 by The Washington Post. In 2019 there were ten: nine men and one woman. By Carlson’s count, in five of those cases, the suspect attacked an officer just before the shooting. In one, the discharge of the black police officer’s weapon was accidental during grappling with the suspect, and the officer was not charged.

That leaves four. In two of these cases, officers were not charged, because circumstances showed they had reason to believe they were being threatened. In two cases the officers were charged. One was of the female black woman. One was a case in which the officer claimed he had seen a gun pointed at him during a car chase; a gun was later found in the car. The officer was nevertheless charged.

By my count, that is one killing of an “unarmed” black man—who had a gun—and the police officer was charged. The case of the woman was a clear fatal error by the police officer, who was charged.

The black population in the US is 13%, roughly 42,250,000. Of these, 6% are male: 2,535,000. Even if you counted all nine of the unarmed black males killed in 2019, that’s 0.000355%. Not a genocide by any definition of that word. It is certainly not evidence that police are “hunting” black men, as Joy Reid recently claimed on MSNBC.

In fact, police officers of any race are less likely to shoot a black suspect than a white suspect, even though blacks are more likely to be committing crimes. Why? Most likely because of fear of being called racist. That fear is great enough to discourage officers from being willing to patrol predominantly black neighborhoods.

Killings by police continue on a downward trend for all races.

As for police officers, Carlson said,

At the same time, this country remains a dangerous place for police officers; 48 of them were murdered in 2019, according to FBI data. That’s more than the number of unarmed suspects killed of all races.

When the house-is-on-fire crowd are asked to give evidence, it’s usually anecdotal. Typically they refer to a traffic stop in which the person claims they were targeted because of their race—even though traffic stops mostly happen before the police officer knows the race of the driver. In other words, in our analogy, the smoke detector was set too sensitive and went off when the toast got slightly brown. We do not help by buying in to something that simply isn't true; we do better service by helping the panicked person see that there's no fire.

However, in 2018, the last year of complete data, killings of blacks by someone else happened about 7400 times more often than killing of blacks by a police officer. Most often this is black-on-black crime. If this were the house-on-fire, maybe we could talk. Maybe it’s a foundation problem—maybe it’s fatherless homes.

Riots Are Not a Reaction to Racism

Shop owners have been hurt and confused as they put up signs that say, “Black Store Owner,” or “We’re on your side,” to try to persuade the destroying rioters to pass them by. The rioters go right ahead and attack. It might even be that most of the looted businesses have had minority owners. These are people who were struggling to stay afloat during the coronavirus shutdown, and then this happens. Five minutes of rioting may have destroyed their entire life’s work and investment. Why would protesters do that? 

Trevon Ellis, barbershop owner in Minneapolis, lost all when rioters burned
down his shop. Image by Laylah Amatullah Barrayn for NPR, found here.

Because they’re not protesters getting carried away in the anger over the unjust killing of George Floyd. They are domestic terrorists using that moment as an opportunity for their own purposes. Those purposes are to destroy civil society. That is not an exaggeration; that is essentially what they say is their mission. They want to create so much chaos that business can’t be conducted—because they want to stop business exchanges of any sort.

You store owners—you are their enemy. They don’t care what color you are; they hate that you are making money in a free-market economy.

A Washington Examiner editorial put it this way: 

The senseless and callous police killing of George Floyd inspired peaceful protests at first, but now, it has become an excuse for a troupe of professional revolutionaries and marauders. They use these incidents in order to flex their muscle and test how far their impressionable recruits are willing to go in breaking the law.

An Antifa rally in Manhattan last year.
Image by J.C. Rice, found here

I doubt you could say these revolting terrorists are deep thinkers. Have they thought through to the logical end how tearing down civil society will mess up their lives as well as ours?

It might be that they have in mind some imaginary fantasy utopia that they can create from scratch—once everyone is reduced to eking out their survival in some post-apocalyptic wasteland. Picture New York City as imagined in the movie Escape from New York. Or maybe like in Mad Max. Or possibly a more widespread 9/11. It doesn’t look like people comfortably housed and fed and enjoying the internet and their cell phones.

How do societies really look after their demise? Do they rise, Phoenix-like from the burning cinders? No. Archaeologists look for them where they rotted and got overgrown by trees, if they were in that kind of climate. Or beneath blowing dust or sand, if they were in that kind of climate.

The closest you might see, historically, is Europe following the Black Plague. Such a large percentage of the population was wiped out that many areas were faced with starting over—without the brainpower or resources that they’d recently had. It took centuries to build back up to the Renaissance. But even they didn’t have to start completely from scratch. There were still governments and property ownership, and people buying and selling their goods.

The bad guys always assume all will go better with them in charge? Why? Because they’re prideful enough to believe they’re so much more brilliant and advanced than any others who have tried it. And what is the evidence of this brilliance and goodness?

They’re delusional, and they’re power hungry. They’re not attempting to wipe out civilization so that a brilliant Thomas Jefferson can combine with a golden-hearted George Washington. They’re not even going to be looking for such minds and hearts. Nor would they submit to them if they arose. These are power mongers.

Someone is organizing them. I think we’ll be learning more about that in coming days—if there are any news media that do their job, but I wouldn’t expect to learn anything from the New York Times (a former newpaper[i]), CNN, or MSNBC, none of which have been seen seeking truth for a very long time.

There are likely to be multiple shadowy figures, George Soros types (possibly including him personally). It looks like a James Bond story. There’s a big bad guy, who plans to destroy the world for reasons that have meaning only to himself, but will, he thinks, result in his ultimate control of everyone and everything. And he’s surrounded by minions. So many minions that it keeps all the Hollywood wannabes employed for the filming of the climactic scene.

Did you ever think, “Why would somebody choose that life? Out on some obscure island, away from family and comforts of home, to work for this madman, who has no regard for them? They get paid, we assume. But enough for that? Do they all buy into the madman’s mission, thinking, “Once he’s in charge, he’ll put people like me in an important position”?

Those real life minions are out on the streets throwing bricks at Mom and Pop stores, and anything else with a window—playing their role in some evil villain’s master plan that includes destroying everything you value: your beliefs, life, liberty, property, family, and truth.

In the movies, James Bond or some other hero comes to the rescue and foils the plans. But, without a scriptwriter, we need that hero to be the rest of us: police officers, national guard troops, civic leaders, and ordinary everyday truth-telling citizens.

Chaos, Like Other Forms of Tyranny, Brings Oppression, Poverty, and Savagery

If you’ve got a civic leader saying, “We need to give them our sympathy, because their anger is justified,” that’s not a leader willing to use government for its proper role: protecting life, liberty, and property. They're telling you they don’t want you to enjoy freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

They're telling you they think violent damage to people and property is OK, if the perpetrator just claims to be angry about the accepted narrative. And that accepted narrative is that America is racist—and always has been; America is irredeemable.   

Ben Shapiro asked (and answered) the question on his show yesterday: What is the logical next step of someone with the belief that America is irredeemably racist and evil? That America must be torn down, totally destroyed. You can’t have something that you claim is rotten to the core and always has been, and then say, “But it will all be better if we just elect a Democrat as president again.” You can’t claim that systemic evil will be cured by a bit of tweaking.

You either have to be in favor of conserving, preserving, restoring our Constitution and the civilization it has nurtured; or you are in favor of overthrowing America and oppressing its people with some form of tyranny, with its attendant poverty and savagery.

What did Barack Obama mean by “fundamentally changing America”? He meant that the constitutional republic should be destroyed—and something else, something Marxist, should be put in its place.

What did Maxine Waters mean recently when she said, “I don’t want to see these establishments opened back up”? Why not? 

The Political Sphere of the Spherical Model

We know what it takes to move up north, on the Spherical Model, to Freedom, Prosperity, and Civilization. 

Killing, looting, pillaging, destroying, hating, taking, controlling—those are all behaviors of tyrants, who bring oppression, poverty, and savagery, located far down south on the sphere.

These people are telling you what they intend. They want to take away your freedom, your earnings, and your civilization, and replace these with oppressive tyranny, enslavement and poverty, and the savagery left to humans without civilization.

Maybe it’s time to stop believing the false house-is-burning narrative and start believing those who say they are determined to burn down all our houses.

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[i] Andrew Klavan has made it his personal policy, every time he refers to the New York Times, to add “a former newspaper.” I agree with him that that is appropriate.

Don’t Mistake Rioters for Protesters

In Minneapolis Friday a police officer was arrested for the murder of a black man he was detaining and restraining in a manner that led to death. It was captured on video, so the whole country has seen it.

Protests break out calling for justice for George Floyd. The perpetrator is in custody. The other officers, who didn’t step in to prevent the officer’s actions, are also charged as accessories. All were immediately fired, not suspended, no waiting to see.

Terrence Floyd, brother of George Floyd, calls for peace.
"That's not going to bring my brother back at all," he says of riots.
Image from here.

The arrest wasn’t instantaneous. In such a high-profile case (because of the media), the prosecutors need to be careful not to charge more than they can prove. It doesn’t appear to be premeditated, for example, so if they charged first-degree murder and couldn’t prove it, the officer would be found not guilty. And, because of double jeopardy protection, he couldn’t be charged again for the same incident. So the charges are what they can prove for certain. If evidence later appears to prove a higher level crime, the charges can be raised.

There were things to take into account. I suggest this op-ed, which explains those legal details. 

But do you know anyone or have you heard anyone say that the brutality was justified and the police officer should be let off? In regular media? On social media? Anywhere?

This is one of those times that civil society is in agreement. A serious crime was committed, and there must be justice.

found on Ben Shapiro's Facebook page today

So what is being protested?

If justice is underway, what is the message of the protest?

I think it’s something like, “Until America can guarantee that this will never happen to another black person, America is evil.”

But that’s an impossible ask.

America was founded on the principle that all people are created equal—no one is entitled to more consideration under the law than another. Society isn’t stratified by birth, as it has historically been in most countries on earth throughout history.

Unfortunately, slavery of blacks was instituted on this continent by the Mother Country, and it needed to be rooted out. The Constitution was written with that expectation. It took too long, and it took a bloody Civil War to accomplish. But that’s what America sacrificed to make it happen.

Even then, people who had been taught their whole lives that people of a certain bloodline were inferior didn’t automatically unlearn that false teaching. It took another century for people to get fed up and actually grant equal rights.

We’re still divided. But let’s define things a little more carefully.

The Republican Party was created to fight slavery. All slaveholders were Democrats. Even in the northern non-slave states before the Civil War, the pro-slavery people were only Democrats. Coincidentally, it is Democrats who run the cities with most of the racial issues. This is true in Minneapolis—local on up to the governor.

The Republican Party pushed for the Civil Rights laws in the 60s. It was Democrats, mainly from former slave states, that resisted letting go of the Jim Crow laws they had perpetuated.

Then, somehow, the lie got told that it was the Republicans all along who had been racist. The lie became that what conservatives wanted to conserve were the old, pre-Civil Rights, ways. That conservatives wanted to conserve the Democrat way of thinking and living. That was never even close to reality.

So, here we are, decades later, and the lie is bigger. Now, at a time when most Americans don’t even understand the mindset of a racist, and have never felt that way in their lives, have never treated different races with disdain—those people are being told they’re guilty of systemic racism.

What are the protests saying, then? That we should stop being white, or Hispanic, or Asian, because blacks need to be knelt down to? If that isn’t it, what is the message of the protest?

Houston Chronicle May 31, 2020

I’ve seen a number of people reference other protests—implying that this is just an escalation, because we didn’t listen before. Such a message covers the full front page of yesterday’s Houston Chronicle Sports section. Colin Kaepernick protested by refusing to stand for the National Anthem, and that offended us. “If only we had heard his message!” people say.

We did hear him. It wasn’t his method of protest that offended us. It was the lie of his message—that America is an evil, systemically racist country—this from a millionaire black man playing a ball game for a living, and not playing it spectacularly well enough to merit his hiring amid the bad media he brought on.

Black Live Matter protested. And when people of goodwill answered, “Yes, your lives do matter to us. All lives matter,” those people got shouted down with, “No! You’re not hearing us. Black lives matter!”

What is that supposed to mean? That our lives don’t matter because we don’t have the right skin color?

Their protests were related to the Ferguson incident, which wasn’t a case of racist police brutality; it was a case of a black thug attacking a police officer who defended himself; even black eyewitnesses testified of that. Still the protesters shouted the lie that the perpetrator had held his hands up and called don’t shoot and was just gunned down. When it was proven that didn’t happen, the protesters insisted, “It’s still symbolic of the systemic problem.” Then where is your real evidence?

I assert that there isn’t a systemic racist problem going on in America, particularly toward blacks. Black radio host Larry Elder has the stats. Such as today, when he pointed out that police are 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black man than the other way around. That studies that set out to prove racist police brutality found instead that, surprisingly, blacks are less likely to be harmed, because every officer is hyper-aware of the media ramifications of an error.

Elder recites the evidence often. So does black commentator Candace Owens. When they provide data, they’re called traitors. Sometimes they’re even called white supremacists, which is more than a little ironic. They get called these things because their experience and the data they provide does not coincide with the going narrative that there’s systemic racism in America. But those calling them those names don’t provide data; they only cite isolated incidents—which we all agree, when they actually happen, are injustices, and we all agree that justice should be done.

So, where is the evidence of this systemic, widespread problem that is making them so angry?

I’m not saying they don’t really feel what they’re feeling. I believe they do.

Steve Locke, who tells his story
of being detained because black
image from here

I read a story over the weekend, from an incident several years ago, that tells what they’re feeling better than most. It’s the experience of a black man, a college teacher in Massachusetts, who was heading to get a burrito for lunch before going to teach a class. Police pulled him over and questioned him, and then detained him. He fit the description, they said, of a black man, his approximate size, wearing a knit cap and a puffy coat, who had just robbed a nearby business. His jacket (a designer brand, and not a parka) didn’t look very puffy. He was wearing a lanyard showing his ID at the university. Everything he said checked out. He remained calm and respectful. Nevertheless, the police kept him, didn’t believe him, and were considering taking him to be identified by the victim. Fortunately, a detective arrived, saw that his story checked out. The new officer on the scene ran through the details and let him go.

This teacher had felt endangered. He believed it was because he was black. Literally, it was, because the actual perpetrator had been black. That is an unfortunate reality for blacks; they have a particular attribute that looks like the people who are doing an outsized proportion of the criminal activity. That’s a problem caused by those criminals, not generally by the police. But you can see how an officer—even a black officer—could come to be suspicious of people who, in their experience, so often turn out to be the bad guys.

I have sympathy for that teacher. It’s an upsetting thing to happen to a decent person. What could he have done to prevent it? Nothing. He even knew to handle the situation in a way that prevented escalation.

What could the police have done? Detected truth more accurately. Seriously. The detective who arrived later on the scene could tell almost instantly that this wasn’t the bad guy; this was a college professor, and his story rang true. Why didn’t the first officers see that? I don’t know. Maybe they need better training. Maybe they need more experience—combining more seasoned officers with newer ones until they learn? Maybe there’s something else.

But what I see is not racism, but police officers checking out someone who partly matched a not very detailed description of a criminal, a man who had the bad luck of being at the wrong place at that moment. That’s a very different thing from, “He’s black, so we’ve got it in for him. Let’s get him.”

No one’s arguing that racism never happens. Unfortunately, it does. The vast majority of Americans are not only not racist; they’re disgusted by actual racism.

We hear the peaceful protests. The message is, “We’re upset because of racism.” Yes. We understand.

It is similar to people who are afraid of the coronavirus. This fear is intensified for someone whose experience is that it has killed or severely affected someone close to them. So they insist on things that do not help fight coronavirus: economic collapse, wearing of facemasks alone outdoors, contact tracing at a point when prevalence is so widespread that such practices guarantee practically permanent loss of freedom. Yes, we understand you’re scared. The best solution is not to end society as we know it until every case of the virus in the world is gone; the best solution is for you to get a better understanding of the situation so you get over the fear. Then we can all cautiously get on with our lives with that new awareness.

We stopped being racist so long ago that most of us Americans have lived our entire lives without a racist heart. What more can we do? The best solution is not for all races to bow down to blacks in abject humiliation and repentance; that would be a lie coming from people who did not do anything wrong.

Protesters are saying this should never have happened. The people they’re protesting to? They agree. The message has been heard. The wheels of justice are underway. If you value civilization, it’s time to go home and watch the process play out.

Ah, but there’s the issue. People who do not value civilization are using this moment for their own nefarious purposes.

Protests are acceptable—even when their message is wrong, a lie, or misguided. Wrongness in a protest message has more to do with emotion overriding reason than it has to do with moral wrongness. So we value their right to express their views in peaceful protest.

Riots are not protests. Riots are evil acts of violence. They are literally anti-civilization; they are savage. They destroy property. They harm people—usually innocent people, sometimes even the demographic of people the protests were stated to support. And sometimes they take lives.

Rioters are criminals. Sometimes they get away with their crimes by overwhelming the law enforcement resources. That is intentional.

Some riots grow naturally out of crowd emotion. Mob mentality. Those are always bad.

The riots we’re seeing now are even worse; they are unnatural. They are instigated. They are planned. They are funded.

We don’t know all the details yet. And who knows whether the stories we’re seeing will turn out to be true.

Antifa is involved. US Attorney General Barr has identified them as the organizers of looting and mob violence across the country. And President Trump is right to label them a domestic terrorist organization. 

There’s a collection of photos from various cities, where people have noticed pallets of bricks showing up, mysteriously overnight, where there is no construction going on. They have cones placed around them. They’re staged strategically to be available—for throwing by rioting thugs. One instruction included a suburban neighborhood, miles from downtown, with the intention of making the previously safe feel unsafe.

Bricks pre-staged for rioting, image found here

Minneapolis, where the incident took place, and possibly Houston, where George Floyd was from, were not surprising locations. But these things are happening in cities all over the country. What is the message when thugs deface the Lincoln Memorial, where MLK gave his historic speech in the fight for Civil Rights? There is no connection between the damage caused by the evil rioters and the anti-racist message of peaceful protesters.

Anarchist rebels tend to make a common mistake—that once they set things in motion, people will rise up and join them.

What we need to have happen is the arrest and prosecution of each and every perpetrator of the crimes involved in rioting—violence, property damage, theft, assault, murder. Cleanse our free society of those who are actively working to oppress destroy our way of life so that they can get us vulnerable enough to easily oppress.

I believe the numbers of actual believers in the anarchist Antifa worldview are small. People of goodwill do not join such savages.

A community near Minneapolis held a food drive
to help victims of the riots. Image from here.

One good sign is that people showing up in the mornings—to clean up the damage. Pick up debris. Wash off graffiti. Repair what they can. That is what good people do: the exact opposite of the evildoers.

Here are eight examples of good things that have happened. 

Here’s a story of people in Minneapolis bringing groceries to the aid of victims of the riots.

Here is George Floyd’s brother calling for peace. 

What we need is overwhelming civilization to wash away the savagery. Let’s pray we can do it.