Posted: 12:49 PM - Dec 22, 2020
The reimagined police as servants of the left
By Carol Brown
We back the blue, but will they back us?
Like most conservatives, I support the police and the vital role they serve in a civilized society.
But like many conservatives, watching them stand down on orders from blue state mayors during months of riots was jarring. (They even stood down during a Back the Blue rally in Denver when speakers were attacked.)
Many of us asked how the police could obey such orders and allow criminals to have free rein in our streets – criminals whose victims, I might add, included over 2,000 police officers.
Don’t police officers swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution? Well, yes, they do. In fact, that is their paramount responsibility.
Perhaps this year, it seems we witnessed the rule and not the exception. The rule being that most people, including the police, will be cowards in the face of tyrants.
I have to assume that many police officers struggled with the position they were in this year, as noted in a piece written by David Hudson at Law Enforcement Today:
It’s scary stuff that does not bode well for the future.
And yesterday, perhaps a bit of that future arrived when anti-lockdown protestors tried to gain entry to the Oregon State Capitol building where the legislature was holding a special session. Breitbart reports:
So there’s that.
It also appears that some of the protestors were aggressive against the police (who were armed and in full riot gear), spraying them with tear gas and bear spray.
![]()
YouTube screengrab
For their part, the police appeared to get aggressive, pushing, using pepper spray, and shooting people at close range with rubber bullets. Four people were arrested.
This event was complicated. Among other things, it highlighted how differently the police may respond to one group and not another.
Antifa and BLM were allowed to destroy huge swaths of many cities across America, rioting with impunity using firearms, bats, bricks, fireworks, Molotov cocktails, fists, and just about anything you can use to destroy property and physically harm people.
On the other hand, a group of Oregonians were barred from entering a public place to protest lockdowns that are destroying people’s lives.
One would have hoped the police could have found a way to funnel people through a door and check for weapons, weeding out those who had them. But maybe not. I’m not a police officer, but understand enough to realize heated situations are complex and dangerous. But aren’t they trained to handle such situations?
It was maddening to see the disparity between how rioters were given free rein all year while folks in Oregon were met with the full force of the law.
And this is a huge concern because I fear the police may be slowly morphing into an arm of the Democrat party to be used against citizens in ways that target conservatives and allow Marxists to roam free, destroying everything in their path. This is one way I fear the left plans to “reimagine” the police. Law enforcement can become a tool at the disposal of tyrants to inflict grave harm and further corral the citizenry into submission. (See here for an AT blog from 2013 that addresses this very thing.)
Yesterday’s event in Oregon also highlights how it feels like a powder keg is about to blow across this country. Citizens are enraged and feel powerless. It feels like the stolen election was the final straw. If the ballot box is rigged, then what’s left? When you lose your voice in a civilized society, what remains? Violence, I’m afraid.
This situation also highlights a phenomenon that probably has a name, but far be it from me to know it. It goes like this: The left creates an environment that locks us out of power and silences our voice. All the while, they accuse us of being “extremists” and “terrorists” even though we’re peaceful, law-abiding citizens.
But then they push us up against the wall such that we feel out of options. It is at this point, that otherwise law-abiding and peaceful citizens may express their rage in violent ways for lack of any other choice. And in so doing, they become the thing they were falsely accused of being all along. Their now violent actions confirm in the minds of the mindless that, you see, they are extremists and terrorists!
It’s a trap, part of the tangled, dark, evil, sickness that is enveloping us from which we must break free.
To read more about what happened in Oregon yesterday, see here and here. Normally I would summarize more, but these days it’s hard to know what to believe that’s in print, another sad sign of the times.
Please God give us strength and show us a path through
Remember Obama's Civilian National Security Force?
By Doug Mainwaring
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Candidate Obama sent red flags up all over the country when he strongly proposed "Civilian security force."
![]()
Senator Obama introduces the idea of a Civilian National Security Force
Is Obama planning to have a Civilian Security Force in addition to the military? "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
That plank in the future president's platform was quickly removed, but evidently not discarded. It seems that it was merely safely tucked away until a more opportune time.
Now we see, perhaps, then-Candidate Obama's intent re-emerging -- not through the creation of a voluntary service program, but through the co-opting of various government agencies to suppress those whom this administration perceives as enemies.
Evidence is not lacking:
- The IRS has been used to target Tea Party groups and has leaked private information about other conservative organizations, such as the National Organization for Marriage.
-The EPA has been heaping monstrous regulations upon the U.S. coal industry in order to, essentially, kill it.
- When Tea Partiers organized a small protest/press conference in front of the IRS in Washington, D.C. last May, Homeland Security vehicles outnumbered the Tea Partier attendees. Homeland Security's overbearing, disproportionate presence was intimidating, as intended.
![]()
Homeland Security Vehicles at May 2013 Tea Party press conference in front of IRS Washington, D.C. Headquarters.
-In recent weeks, U.S. Park Service employees have been deployed to treat their fellow Americans with contempt and disdain. Uniformed Park Service guards have intimidated and bullied senior citizens at Yellowstone Park, ostensibly holding them hostage until they could be escorted off National Park property. A tour guide described the actions of the Park Service employees as "Gestapo tactics."
Washington, D.C.'s open-air war memorials on the National Mall have been shut down and walled off by the Park Service to prevent WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam Vets in their sixties to nineties, often in wheelchairs, from paying homage to their fallen comrades. And when private citizens, aghast at the inhumane treatment of our aging veterans, pitched in to provide porta-potties for the vets because the Park Service had chosen to lock the public restrooms, denying access to this most basic human need to our Vets, the delivery of those porta-potties was denied. Human dignity be damned. Care and compassion be damned. Let elderly vets soil themselves.
![]()
Don's Johns delivered Port-A-John's to the World War II Memorial. National Park Service Ranger refused to accept the delivery. (Photo courtesy Michele Tennery.)
In yesterday's Fiscal Times, Ed Morrissey explained "How Federal Workers Became Obama's Private Army."
Even more disturbing is this: what we are now witnessing may also be a test to see if U.S. civil servants are willing to suppress their consciences and falsify their beliefs in order to continue to "fit in" at work. After all, IRS, EPA, Homeland Security, and U.S Park Service employees can reassure themselves, saying, "I'm only doing my job."
By Carol Brown
We back the blue, but will they back us?
Like most conservatives, I support the police and the vital role they serve in a civilized society.
But like many conservatives, watching them stand down on orders from blue state mayors during months of riots was jarring. (They even stood down during a Back the Blue rally in Denver when speakers were attacked.)
Many of us asked how the police could obey such orders and allow criminals to have free rein in our streets – criminals whose victims, I might add, included over 2,000 police officers.
Don’t police officers swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution? Well, yes, they do. In fact, that is their paramount responsibility.
Perhaps this year, it seems we witnessed the rule and not the exception. The rule being that most people, including the police, will be cowards in the face of tyrants.
I have to assume that many police officers struggled with the position they were in this year, as noted in a piece written by David Hudson at Law Enforcement Today:
But struggle as some may have, the end result was they obeyed, and in so doing abdicated their primary oath.There comes a time, and maybe more specifically, there will come a time, in which a law enforcement officer must remember what he or she swore to when taking this oath. Remember that order is everything, and by that, I mean the U.S. Constitution comes first, then State Constitution. Everything else is subordinate.
A law enforcement officer’s oath of office dilemma is this: “Do I enforce a law that is in opposition to the United States Constitution?” In the current climate we see that law enforcement officers may have to face this dilemma. I urge you to read about the Constitution, the powers delegated to Congress by the Constitution, the applicable laws passed by Congress and Supreme Court case law. I ask you to be introspective on how you will deal with this dilemma, all while taking into account what you swore before God and Country.
It’s scary stuff that does not bode well for the future.
And yesterday, perhaps a bit of that future arrived when anti-lockdown protestors tried to gain entry to the Oregon State Capitol building where the legislature was holding a special session. Breitbart reports:
It appears that some of the protestors showed up armed (some with firearms and at least one with a pitchfork). Although Oregon is an open carry state, several cities have open carry bans in public places. And as is the case in many open carry states, no firearms are allowed inside public buildings anywhere in the state.While legislative sessions are normally open to the public, today’s was closed to anyone other than lawmakers, police, some staff, and reporters, the Oregon Statesman-Journal reported. Legislators met to attempt to pass pandemic-relief measures including landlord and tenant assistance.
So there’s that.
It also appears that some of the protestors were aggressive against the police (who were armed and in full riot gear), spraying them with tear gas and bear spray.
YouTube screengrab
For their part, the police appeared to get aggressive, pushing, using pepper spray, and shooting people at close range with rubber bullets. Four people were arrested.
This event was complicated. Among other things, it highlighted how differently the police may respond to one group and not another.
Antifa and BLM were allowed to destroy huge swaths of many cities across America, rioting with impunity using firearms, bats, bricks, fireworks, Molotov cocktails, fists, and just about anything you can use to destroy property and physically harm people.
On the other hand, a group of Oregonians were barred from entering a public place to protest lockdowns that are destroying people’s lives.
One would have hoped the police could have found a way to funnel people through a door and check for weapons, weeding out those who had them. But maybe not. I’m not a police officer, but understand enough to realize heated situations are complex and dangerous. But aren’t they trained to handle such situations?
It was maddening to see the disparity between how rioters were given free rein all year while folks in Oregon were met with the full force of the law.
And this is a huge concern because I fear the police may be slowly morphing into an arm of the Democrat party to be used against citizens in ways that target conservatives and allow Marxists to roam free, destroying everything in their path. This is one way I fear the left plans to “reimagine” the police. Law enforcement can become a tool at the disposal of tyrants to inflict grave harm and further corral the citizenry into submission. (See here for an AT blog from 2013 that addresses this very thing.)
Yesterday’s event in Oregon also highlights how it feels like a powder keg is about to blow across this country. Citizens are enraged and feel powerless. It feels like the stolen election was the final straw. If the ballot box is rigged, then what’s left? When you lose your voice in a civilized society, what remains? Violence, I’m afraid.
This situation also highlights a phenomenon that probably has a name, but far be it from me to know it. It goes like this: The left creates an environment that locks us out of power and silences our voice. All the while, they accuse us of being “extremists” and “terrorists” even though we’re peaceful, law-abiding citizens.
But then they push us up against the wall such that we feel out of options. It is at this point, that otherwise law-abiding and peaceful citizens may express their rage in violent ways for lack of any other choice. And in so doing, they become the thing they were falsely accused of being all along. Their now violent actions confirm in the minds of the mindless that, you see, they are extremists and terrorists!
It’s a trap, part of the tangled, dark, evil, sickness that is enveloping us from which we must break free.
To read more about what happened in Oregon yesterday, see here and here. Normally I would summarize more, but these days it’s hard to know what to believe that’s in print, another sad sign of the times.
Please God give us strength and show us a path through
Remember Obama's Civilian National Security Force?
By Doug Mainwaring
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Candidate Obama sent red flags up all over the country when he strongly proposed "Civilian security force."
Senator Obama introduces the idea of a Civilian National Security Force
Is Obama planning to have a Civilian Security Force in addition to the military? "We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set," Obama said. "We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."
That plank in the future president's platform was quickly removed, but evidently not discarded. It seems that it was merely safely tucked away until a more opportune time.
Now we see, perhaps, then-Candidate Obama's intent re-emerging -- not through the creation of a voluntary service program, but through the co-opting of various government agencies to suppress those whom this administration perceives as enemies.
Evidence is not lacking:
- The IRS has been used to target Tea Party groups and has leaked private information about other conservative organizations, such as the National Organization for Marriage.
-The EPA has been heaping monstrous regulations upon the U.S. coal industry in order to, essentially, kill it.
- When Tea Partiers organized a small protest/press conference in front of the IRS in Washington, D.C. last May, Homeland Security vehicles outnumbered the Tea Partier attendees. Homeland Security's overbearing, disproportionate presence was intimidating, as intended.
Homeland Security Vehicles at May 2013 Tea Party press conference in front of IRS Washington, D.C. Headquarters.
-In recent weeks, U.S. Park Service employees have been deployed to treat their fellow Americans with contempt and disdain. Uniformed Park Service guards have intimidated and bullied senior citizens at Yellowstone Park, ostensibly holding them hostage until they could be escorted off National Park property. A tour guide described the actions of the Park Service employees as "Gestapo tactics."
Washington, D.C.'s open-air war memorials on the National Mall have been shut down and walled off by the Park Service to prevent WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam Vets in their sixties to nineties, often in wheelchairs, from paying homage to their fallen comrades. And when private citizens, aghast at the inhumane treatment of our aging veterans, pitched in to provide porta-potties for the vets because the Park Service had chosen to lock the public restrooms, denying access to this most basic human need to our Vets, the delivery of those porta-potties was denied. Human dignity be damned. Care and compassion be damned. Let elderly vets soil themselves.
Don's Johns delivered Port-A-John's to the World War II Memorial. National Park Service Ranger refused to accept the delivery. (Photo courtesy Michele Tennery.)
In yesterday's Fiscal Times, Ed Morrissey explained "How Federal Workers Became Obama's Private Army."
One wonders if this is a test, to see just how far the far left ideologues in the administration can go until the American people push back against their increasingly heavy-handed command-and-control tactics.... and it's part of a disturbing pattern emerging in the second term of Barack Obama. When law enforcement and tax enforcement become rankly political, Americans can no longer trust in their federal government, even when it's not shut down - and that won't stop after Obama leaves office, either. We are getting a clear lesson on the risks of larger government and regulatory overreach, and those risks go far beyond incompetence. Let's hope this serves as a wake-up call - and let's demand that Congress hold those accountable in the IRS and National Parks Service for their uncivil service.
Even more disturbing is this: what we are now witnessing may also be a test to see if U.S. civil servants are willing to suppress their consciences and falsify their beliefs in order to continue to "fit in" at work. After all, IRS, EPA, Homeland Security, and U.S Park Service employees can reassure themselves, saying, "I'm only doing my job."
