It’s Friday, August 18th, 2017…but before we begin, submitted for your perusal, a video of a Campbell, CA traffic stop which went viral, generating enormous opposition to the officer’s actions (you’ll get a flavor for it in the first two minutes):
The passenger’s obvious death wish notwithstanding (frankly, had we been the cop in question, he’d have been capped for excessive obnoxiousness), as with sooooo many incidents misrepresented on the web, there’s far more to this particular story than is shown in the video, as reported by The Mercury News:
“…the first few minutes of the encounter, which did not make it into the now-viral video, included a “cordial conversation” between the occupants of the vehicle and the officer, who explained why he stopped them and asked for the license of the female driver and the car’s registration and proof of insurance.
The occupants spent several minutes looking for those documents, and at one point the officer told them to stay in the vehicle as he prepared to walk back to his motorcycle to write a ticket. [Campbell Police Captain Gary]Berg said it was around that time the passenger started to reach under his seat. “Unfortunately, the passenger’s unexpected movement toward the bottom of the seat caused the officer to perceive a threat and draw his handgun,” Berg said.
…The video also is missing the conclusion of the incident, which purportedly shows the officer explain his actions to the passenger, Berg said. “The passenger indicated he understood why it happened and actually apologized to the officer,” Berg said.
The motorists were then cited and allowed to continue their travels.”
More importantly, now compare the California encounter with what recently faced two Las Vegas officers:
Here’s the juice: the vast majority of line law enforcement personnel are hard-working, dedicated professionals performing (primarily because of Progressives) an increasingly thankless and highly dangerous job which sometimes demands split-second decisions.
We for one don’t plan to make them work any harder or decide any faster than necessary upon the occasion of our next traffic stop.
Now, here’s The Gouge!
First up, writing at NRO, Kyle Smith poses a conundrum which recalls one of our favorite scenes from Magnum Force:
“The orgiastic glee with which protesters tore down, then beat up, a century-old monument to a generic Confederate soldier in Durham, N.C., this week was alarming. The mob seemed to have lost control of itself. Who wears out his foot kicking a lump of metal? The urge to destroy could get out of hand very quickly, especially given the mixed signals sent by authorities: Durham police stood by and did nothing.Only the following day, after an outcry, did the sheriff announce he intended to seek charges.
Where does this end?
…Listen to the way the Left talks about the statues: “The truth is that the desperation to preserve this particular ‘heritage’ and ‘past’ is a facade for something more malignant,” wrote Christine Emba in the Washington Post. “It’s privileged status, not history, that’s being protected.” If this is a war on symbols of “privileged status,” it can never end.
Once every Confederate monument in the country is down, what then? How is a statue of an ordinary rebel soldier in Durham, N.C., more offensive than a gorgeous building-sized tribute to slave-owning racist Thomas Jefferson on the Tidal Basin? We are reaching the point where, if the Washington Monument were to be blown up tomorrow, it would be anyone’s guess whether jihadists or the “anti-fascist” Left did it.
Among northern sophisticates and intellectuals, there is, I think, a persistent condescension toward all things southern. Call it Northism: the need to erect a kind of moral and mental barrier at the Mason Dixon Line. Yet slavery’s evil infected the North as well. Slavery wasn’t fully illegal in New York until 1827. The very capital of our country is named for a slaveholder. When it comes to slavery, there is no expunging the moral stain. There is no expiating the sin.
Two miles from our offices at National Review, there is an 18-foot statue of Vladimir Lenin. (The real-estate website Curbed calls it “quirky.” It was commissioned by the Soviet Union and discovered in a junkyard in Moscow.) You will not doubt my sincerity when I say everyone at NR despises Lenin and everything he stands for. So will Kevin Williamson be putting on a balaclava and leading a band of self-appointed historical-correctness commissioners down to 178 Norfolk Street on a commando raid to pull it down? No. If a statue that has been standing in your city for years suddenly sends you into paroxysms of destructive rage, you are really determined to create a problem for yourself, and you’ll create another problem when it’s gone.
Even if taking down the statues is a good idea, this isn’t the moment to do it. Emotions are running hot. When a mob is in a frenzy, maintain order until tempers cool. Don’t give it space to destroy. Rich believes that the statues need to go because they are becoming “rallying points for neo-Nazis,” but I can’t believe that the white supremacists, small and feeble as their movement is, would disappear if all of the old Confederate statues were taken down. If anything, that would give them a fillip of energy, a recruitment tool. The best response to white supremacists is to let them march and let them speak — then ridicule and marginalize them. This isn’t hard: They’re already ridiculous and marginal. Civil War statues may be beloved by white supremacists, but they are a kind of speech, and the antidote to bad speech is more speech. Don’t care for a statue of Robert E. Lee? Fine. I don’t either. Let’s recontextualize it. Let’s put up a statue of Harriet Tubman next to it. History is an ongoing discussion.”
In a related item, PJ Media‘s Tyler O’Neil suggests The Left consider reclassifying a number of other notables…
…to whom it’s paid homage in stone and steel over the years; including Saint Franklin, Mother Margaret and the late Lion of the Senate, Grand Cyclops Robert C. Byrd.
As Tucker Carlson relates in the following clip (featured as our Video of the Day at the top of the page in link #2), ignorance, especially of one’s own past, is not bliss.
But it wasa principle purpose of Progressives’ deliberate dumbing-down of America’s system of public education. If Little Johnny and Sally can neither read, write, reason nor accurately recount their nation’s history, how will they be able to discern truth from lies, Conservative reality from Leftist fantasy? They won’t…which has always been Liberalism’s desired result.
“…But let’s also notice how little this has to do with Charlottesville. Mr. Trump was essentially correct when he warned in his initial, widely panned comments, about danger from “many sides.” In one of those quirks of old-style magazine publishing, the Atlantic dropped a story, dated September, that went to press before Charlottesville and yet details the “The Rise of the Violent Left,” especially the Antifa movement that was in the middle of the Charlottesville brawl.
Mr. Trump, who perhaps actually paid attention to his Charlottesville briefing, may just have responded the way 99% of Americans would have to the full story.Or the way European publics in the 1920s and ’30s did when they saw Hitlerites and Stalinists battling in the streets and wanted nothing to do with either.
Happily, the social and political condition of America today is nothing like Germany circa 1930, even as both extreme right and extreme left peddle exactly the same delusive line that Trumpism is the force somehow carrying them to the centers of the Republican and Democratic parties, respectively.
To the extent there’s any truth to this, however, notice what the Atlantic chose as its subject: “Antifa’s violent tactics have elicited substantial support from the mainstream left,” which in the magazine’s reporting includes the Nation and Slate.com.
The overwhelming American sentiment after Charlottesville will be “Where were the cops?”Charlottesville is a Democratic town, in a state run by a Democratic governor. Its Mayor Mike Signer declared the city a “capital of resistance” shortly after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Its Vice Mayor Wes Bellamy last year was obliged to step down from a high-school teaching job because of misogynistic, homophobic and anti-white tweets.
The Atlantic quotes a pollster’s finding that 71% of Democrats detected “fascist undertones” in the Trump campaign. If the Hitlerites were spoiling for a fight in Charlottesville, they likely lacked any sway with the town fathers to keep the path clear for them.Perhaps not so the left-wing activists of Antifa.
At least the question is worth asking. Nobody is responsible for anticipating that a lone nut will drive a car into a crowd of mostly peaceful protesters.But for some reason, the city’s leaders failed to head off an antifascist rumble they saw coming from a long way off—and that arguably they had a duty to head off once they issued, however reluctantly, a legal rally permit to the white-supremacist groups.“
It’s vital to remember, the “far Right” (and we use that term only for purposes of discussion, as these skin-headed neo-Nazis have as much in common with The Right, i.e., Conservatism as Michelle Obama does middle America) is so out on the fringe, and so few in number they pose no real threat to anyone or anything, particularly if they’re simply marginalized and ignored.
In reality, the far more threatening side of this conflict…
…is far greater in number, has immeasurably more financing…
…controls colleges and cities across the country, and, in concert with Black Lives Matter, has, over the last few years, repeatedly trampled freedom of speech at events across the country, either through direct intimidation/disruption or simply threatening violence.
Two current cases in point, the first from Jeff Foutch…
First, state laws must single out violence and disorderly conduct in the context of mass expression for special and certain punishment, and the punishment must be meaningful to the kind of people who do this sort of thing. That means jail time. If existing laws are not strong enough to do the job, state legislatures should make them stronger, and everyone should know that the laws have been strengthened.
The problem has grown so great that nothing less than incarceration will be sufficient to stop it. The message must be that if you are involved in a protest and you break the law, you will go to jail, and not just overnight. You will cool your heels in the county jail for a minimum of a month or two until you learn to respect the rights of other people. (We’d make it county with a one or two month minimum the first time, state prison for not less than six months the second. Oh, and a hefty fine to offset the cost of their incarceration!)
That principle must apply to any kind of violence or disorder. Even crimes that in other contexts would appear minor, such as blocking access to a street or building, must result in real jail time. The whole point is to nip unlawful conduct in the bud before it blossoms into violence against people or destruction of property.
It doesn’t matter where the offenders are on the political spectrum or what they are protesting. It’s not up to them to decide whether their ends justify violent or criminal means. It’s up to the rest of us, through the responsible public officials, to insist they keep their conduct lawful and peaceful.
Second, the laws must be strictly enforced.This is where governorsmust be strong leaders…”
Because the mayor in almost every city of consequence across the country is a Dimocrat; and thus, as useless as…
We’re of the opinion, having seen their Russian narrative completely run out of steam, The Left, their shills in the MSM and RINO allies have seized upon Trump’s Charlottesville comments (talk about something as significant as a flea on the back of a rabid elephant!) to deflect from their own lies and failings.
But we’ll leave the last word on the subject to this forward from Balls Cotton:
Since we’re on the subject of Progressive-inspired political correctness run wild, courtesy of The College Fix via our old friend and Navy classmate Jim Gould, Mr. Peabody and Sherman must have activated…
…the Wayback Machine, because a certain Left Coast institution of lower learning is taking us on a journey into the past and the reign of Jim Crow…at least in what was then the Dimocratic-controlled South:
Which are what, exactly?!? We must admit we’re totally flummoxed by the notion the color of one’s skin somehow results in requirements for separate college orientations…or anything else separate…equal or otherwise!
Are we the only one sensing Liberals, rather than moving the country ahead, are taking us…
…backwards?!? MLK must be rolling over in his grave!
And if you find this trend towards segregation disturbing, hang onto your hat, as NRO‘s Alexandra Desanctis relates how now…
“CBS Newsreportedearlier this week that Iceland is leading the world in “eradicating Down syndrome births.”
One might be forgiven for assuming that Iceland has developed an innovative treatment for the chromosomal disorder. It turns out Iceland’s solution is much simpler, and much more sinister: using prenatal testing and abortion to systematically exterminate children with Down syndrome.This isn’t progress; it’s eugenics.
…Too many people today believe it is preferable, and indeed more humane, to murder children rather than allow them to suffer. But what life doesn’t have suffering?
Jerome Lejeune, the French geneticist who discovered the chromosomal basis for Down syndrome, once offered this perspective: “It cannot be denied that the price of these diseases is high — in suffering for the individual and in burdens for society. Not to mention what parents suffer! But we can assign a value to that price: It is precisely what a society must pay to remain fully human.”
The title of the CBS piece asks, “What kind of society do you want to live in?” The article’s implicit response seems to be, “One dedicated to eliminating abnormality and suffering by any means necessary.”But no admirable society eradicates suffering by eradicating those who suffer.To achieve true moral progress, we must reject the killing of the vulnerable and condemn any backwards society that promotes such a regime as a solution.“
Problem is, dear hearts, to Progressives, Iceland’s approach is progress! It’s the Margaret Sanger/Woodrow Wilson/Adolph Hitler twisted theory of eugenics enacted!
“An argument between two men about military branches resulted in one man’s death and the other man charged with murder, Texas police said. Austin police officers said they found Ross Barrow fighting another man, later identified as Allen Niedermann on Saturday.
…A witness told police Barrow and Niedermann were drinking and hanging out when they started talking about the different military branches they served in. At one point, the argument escalated when Barrow told Niedermann that he was going to kill him before jumping him, the witness said.
…It wasn’t immediately clear which branch Barrow or Niedermann served in.“
We’re gonna go out on a limb here and say the Air Force. Regardless, though the specific branch Mr. Barrow served in may not be clear, given his mug shot, one thing’s likely certain: he got out on a Section 8!
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